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The Ultimate Corvette A/V system (PICS and VIDEOS)

R

Redshift-PFYC

Guest
This project has been in progress for a while, and I finally got all the components installed. The pictures aren’t great, and neither is the test video, but it gives you a good idea of what’s going on and where I mounted everything. Following are the bare bones details about what is in the system, where it’s mounted, and what it does. This was a long term project that took several different configurations and many hours of testing, changing, re-testing, and so on. I probably have at least 50 hours (not including some professional help on some of it) invested in this system and its current setup. Let’s not even go into the cost!

Four high resolution color “bullet” cameras. One shows the road ahead of the car and is mounted to the passenger side inside visor mount. One shows the driver’s hands and is mounted to the rollbar above and to the right of the driver’s head. One shows the rear view and is cleverly mounted INSIDE the 3rd brake light in the rear (yes, the camera is waterproof, yes, the brake light still works, and yes, it’s a reverse image camera for a more natural feeling while watching it on the LCD). The last camera shows the driver’s feet and is mounted above and to the left of the pedals. To ensure a good view of the pedals, I’ve hotwired a switch inside the center console that will turn on the driver’s footwell light so that even under very dark conditions, the pedals will be illuminated for filming.

Here are pictures of the cameras:

z06brakecams.jpg


z06drivercams.jpg


z06frontcams.jpg



The output from all four cameras goes to the four way combiner, shown here along with the VCR:

z06vcrs.jpg



The combiner output (all four camera views shown split-screen) then goes to the Datacam2 unit, shown here. It’s mounted on a plexiglass piece to allow me to zero out the accelerometer readings to “0” on level ground so that I get good readings when cornering, accelerating, and braking.

z06datacams.jpg


The Datacam2 adds speed, RPM, throttle position, brake (on or off), and lap time (when connected to a Hotlap timer which I use for track only).

The entire signal, now with telemetry and four camera views, then goes to the VCR for optional recording. The VCR is shown in the picture above. It has a remote that I keep in the center console and the sensor is in the driver’s footwell so I can easily control the unit without having to reach behind me and point the remote backwards.

This brings us to the in-dash LCD. The LCD has several inputs and I’ve got it set up to show any of the following that I may choose at any time:

  • Full screen view of rear camera only (the rollbar blocks the view in the rearview mirror, so this comes in very handy)
  • Split screen view of all four cameras as seen after the combiner combines the signals
  • VCR playback
  • Head unit playback (plays DVD, Video CD, etc.)
  • Navigation (not installed but easy to plug in)


The LCD is shown here:

z06lcd.jpg


That pretty much sums up the system. If you want to see an actual video recorded using this system, click here. This is an 8.5MB “Windows Media” format file, and is not very exciting. It shows me driving around town this afternoon just to test out the system to make sure everything worked.

I have updated the web page for this vehicle with most of the good pictures and videos that I have. To view that page, click here.

Comments and questions welcome. I’ll have much better on-track video using this system in a week or so, if the weather holds. Stay tuned.
 
Very nice work!! I'm an A/V tech and can really appreciate the time and effort you put into this project. Very clean. Now if you could only separately record each camera for later editing. That would be cool but not too convenient to carry 4 VCRs in your car.
:upthumbs
 

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