3.5" LCD screen and reverse camera

OK, I found this on my table yesterday morning and boy, am I excited! The first items are the 3.5" LCD screen and an IR camera, while the second item is the set of six flickering candles (more on the next post). With no one else in the company except for the clerk, I quickly took them to the car in case everyone asks questions. I hate people asking me questions when I am doing something. And so, about two in the morning, with everyone sleeping, I was free to test them out.

The LCD screen and the camera is for my own project, where I am developing my own set of tools for testing CCTV points. It was due to the last two customers who made me realise that my current CCTV tester is inadequate. It would be good for testing the cable conditions and the power but that's as far as it got. Now, I will develop the MkII so that one person can attend to a CCTV service call instead of two. This would save time and money for the company in the long run as long as the tester is in good condition.

Hooray! And no one dared to ask me what was in the packages.
And I had to wait for more than 12 hours before I can start
opening them!

Testing the camera
Setting up them up for testing is easy because everything is already pre-wired and all I needed was some crocodile clip cables and a 12volt DC power supply. So, what am I testing here at so early in the morning? Simple:

1) The qualityof the LCD's image, and
2) The quality of the camera la.

OK, everything is set up. I have the LCD screen, the camera and yes,
the International unit of Internet measurement, the Coke can. I
purposel chose the small screen and not those 7-inch versions as I
presume they would fit neatly into the casing which I have ordered
locally from China (and not through Internet, OK?)

Not only that, the screen has not much control except for brightness. I
did not want the ON/OFF switch or any other switches. I will control it
via power to the unit. Great, isn't it? And yea, the whole system is PAL
so again, there is no PAL/NTSC switching. I do not mind if its auto but
I suspect its not. Still, this has not deviated from my requirements.

How to take the stand off, I am not sure but I know it cannot be snapped
off incase it breaks.So, I would have to void warranty (duh) and remove
the screws to do this, I suspect. The whole thing is made of plastic and if
I really did put this onto a car, the heat from the sun and from the inside
would have baked and warped the casing, cracking any electronics in the
process too. In the long run, the LCD would have died as well. Or will it?

The camera is quite big and not as compact as I have imagined. But
then, I was too excited to note the measurements from the Internet.
Still, its a nice design and very different from the ones I have seen in
the local shops here. FYI, I am holding it upside-down.

And this is the correct way of using the camera. You will need to make
the holes and then screw it in under some ledge or parts of the car. In
other words, you have to mount the camera upside-down.

Here is the setup for the test. One Coke can to the LEFT and HALO fig
to the RIGHT. The came will be pointing at the two objects inches away.

At first, ifyou're not familiar, you would notice the COKE can being on the
RIGHT and not left. And when you turn the camera around, the COKE
can is now in the correct orientation but its upside down........

So, you turn the camera back the right way and you notice the image is
flipped. This is weird. Maybe there is something wrong with the camera.

With a spare camera, I replaced it and tried the test again.

This time, the image is correct. The flipped image is not caused by the
LCD screen by by the camera. This is because, the camera automatically
flips the image so that what you're looking at, is a mirror image. You
would not understand this until you put the camera behind you and the
screen in front, just like in a car. Now, do you understand?

OK, here is another test, this time, we pretend as if you're reversing
the car to this wall, about 9 feet away. I took this image from my
Nikon D50 to show you the "actual" scene. To camera claims to have
a 120º viewing angle. This means that it would show a lot of things and
then lens is going to be giving an almost fish-eye type of images.

Again, this is using the new camera. Notice the images, especially the
door and the green box. So, when you reverse your car to the wall,
you can literally see a lot of things and not back into something or
someone. Which is great. The only problem now is to disguise the
camera because as Wife stated before, if you have such things in
the car, people would think there is something valuable inside...

With a normal camera, the image is "right" way round this time. But its
not as wide. I hav aimed the camera as close as possible to match the
new one by adjusting it to point betwen the door's 3rd & a half square
and the clothes rack. The limited view angle is very obvious especially
how problematic it is for me to make sure the green box is still visible.

So, now I have the LCD screen for my project but I am not going to use the reverse camera. Maybe there is a switch in there to set it back to show the correct image but this means I would have to open it up. Still, I could always install it in the car but then I would have to save up for another LCS screen, this time which must come as a rear-view mirror. And that, would have cost quite a bit.