I installed a Boyo VTL110 license plate camera. When my car (BMW X5) is not running the picture looks fine (reverse and split view works). When the car is running the picture has horizontal interference. I can still see the picture okay but the whole screen is covered with lines. At first I thought I had bad connections as I am using the same hot and ground wires for the radio. I tried grounding directly to the car's body and pulled hot from an unused connector in the fuse box. Now the static is worst than it was before!

Other video works fine. I played a DVD and it looked fine with car running or not. I also tried connecting a video camera to the reverse input and the image looks fine. So it appears that the problem is the wiring. Can a noise filter help me?

I have searched this forum and the web and I can't find anyone with a similar problem. I really don't understand why this is happening; hopefully someone here has some insight.

have you tried another camera? do you have one available? I had a similiar problem, but tidy'd up the install and the picture dropped the lines.

No I don't have another camera. I can see where you are going though. That would narrow it down to either the camera or the wires. Well since the camera works fine with the car off then it leads me to believe that either I can't find a clean power\ground source or the camera is not capable of blocking any line noise (not sure if a camera should do this anyway).

maybe your pinching a wire where you mounted it. theres a few more possibilities

That could be. I had to route it through some tight spots. I'll double check it.

I do know that the little connector on my camera that is closer to the camera itself if not securely connected it will do that also. make sure its nice and snug

Well there are no pinched wires (as far as I can tell anyway). I think the important aspect of this problem is that it works fine with the car off. If wire connection was a problem then I would think the noise would display whether the car was on or off.

I'll try to isolate the video wire. Maybe it is sitting to close to a power wire.

I have also determined that the noise follows the beat of my music. When I turn the volume up loud with something that has heavy bass the image reacts to every beat.

Well basically check the video input with something else, see if you get lines, if so then mabye something with the avic unit itself, if not, the camera or wiring of the camera is bad.

It sounds to me like you're getting noise interference from the nav unit itself. Most likely your brand of camera cannot suppress the noise properly.

Can you tell me if the noise occurs only in full display and only while the car is in reverse (engine running) or does it also occur while in drive or park and viewing it via split screen along with the nav map (engine running)?

If the noise occurs only while in reverse (engine running), then there may be a problem with your reverse wire -to- taillight connection. BTW, did you run the Z1 reverse wire directly to one of the taillight's reverse bulb leads or did you connect this wire somewhere under the dash?

Either way, try adding a ground/noise suppressor inline with the ground wire of the camera (closest to camera).

Keep us posted. We're here to help.

Cheers,

Kevin

Hi OSUV, let's see here...

The noise occurs in full and split view mode. It does not occur in either view when the car is NOT running.

I could not wire the reverse wire directly to a reverse bulb because the X5 sends a pulse down the wire instead of a steady current. The pulse makes the Z1 think that I am moving in and out of reverse. The end result is that the image turns on and off. I had to use the pulsed reverse wire to power a relay, when the relay kicks on then power is sent to the reverse wire (from a constant source) (I know, a pain, but at least the pulsed current is strong enough to keep the relay on).

Well I decided to tackle another problem and then come back to the noise. The other problem was that my camera is too sensitive to light. It has a .3 LUX rating. When any source of light hits the camera it is like I am looking at the sun. After reading through the owners manual I find that I can set the brightness, contrast, dim levels of the camera.

So I turned down the brightness and dimmer and now the glare is greatly reduced and guess what else? The noise is gone! Well at least in split mode. When I switch to full mode for some reason my settings are not used and the image goes back to the default setting causing me to get noise.

I still need to test it some more to be sure the noise goes away with the lower dimmer level for all driving, including day and night. If not, I will give a noise suppressor a try.

Do you find it strange that the Z1 uses the review camera settings for split view but not for full view? Hopefully I missed something.

The full screen view is for while in reverse only which, to my knowledge, has no settings and therefore is not adjustable for brightness/contrast, etc. On the otherhand, the split screen view is while in map mode which has video settings. Really dumb huh?

Anyway, I'm glad that the brightness adjustment fixed the line noise problem. Actually, I'm not so sure that it fixed the problem as much as it hid the problem. I say this because your line problem did not occur with the engine off while the brighness was still adjusted high. If brightness was the entire problem, then the line noise should have occurred while the engine was off as well. Does this make sense?

Since your problem occurs in both full and split sreen modes, I doubt that the problem is with the reverse wire since that should affect the problem only while in reverse (full screen) but you said it was affected in both full and split screen mode.

It sounds to me that the root of your problem lies within having the engine running. So I would definitely try a noise suppressor. In fact you may want to try adding two; add a suppressor near the camera as well as one near the AVIC. But try one at a time and see if it gets better or clears it up completely. I am sure this will solve your problem. If it does not, then contact Pioneer and utilize their free support and as a last resort, try a different camera.

Isn't troubleshooting fun?

Please keep us posted. I want to hear how this turns out

Cheers,

Kevin

Try a shielded wire to the camera