An Engineering Weekend

[cropbiker]

Wasn't sure exactly where to put this but decided this was best. It is not quite a full 'How To' as I haven't perfectly recorded every step. That said there is enough detail here if you wanted to have a go yourself.

As an aside I have no relationship to any of the manufacturers I mention, these were just the products I chose to go with.

Going on a trip shortly and wanted to update the camera setup to give me front AND rear views simultaneously.

I wanted to be able to switch the cameras on and off from the cockpit either together or individually as required.

I decided to go for a pair of SJCam SJ5000X elite cameras with pseudo 4k recording (2k upscaled in reality), 1080 HD with 60 frames per second, built in wi-fi, LCD back screen and capable of being used as car dashcam and automatically starting recording when power is supplied via USB cable, this last part if critical for the chosen installation.

The first part was to provide switched USB power ports available at the rear and the front to plug the cameras into. These would provide the power supply to the cameras and activate the dashcam recording feature.

Decided to mount two waterproof, latching push on/off switches on the left hand panel by the glovebox. The relay to make live the power supply is also mounted in this area attached to the lock itself.

Live, with inline fuse and earth supplied to the relay by direct connection to the battery across the top of the yoke. Trigger live tapped into the Green and red wire supplying the glovebox cigarette port. Live out and earth piggy backed to the switches. USB ports run from rear where it is bolted to the side panel just above the right pannier as you sit on it. Front USB cable run up behind left mirror pod and stuck to dash just above left speaker.

Took some packaging as you can imagine to get all the wiring tucked away especially as I already had the Autocom switch to take the speaker output to the Autocom unit in the tail. Had to move this to the small plastic panel to the left of the yoke. Quick connectors are used for the feed from the battery and the lines to the USB ports to enable all to be easily disconnected to take the glovebox pod out when needed.

The 2 switches come live now when the engine is running and are illuminated when on supplying power to the USB ports. These trigger the start of recording on the cameras and stop recording when turned off. The cameras are set to loop recording filming 10 minute files and if you fill the card the oldest file is recorded over.

[cropbiker]

Here is where I mounted the USB ports front & rear

[cropbiker]

To mount the rear camera I drilled a hole through the top box deck and through the swan neck type camera mount that came with the cameras. I then just bolted this in place does not interfere with the top box mounting and the camera can be angled so that the top box does not come into the field of view.

[cropbiker]

The front mount was going to take a little more engineering.

Using a length of 2mm thick aluminium strip I put two bends in the strip about 10 cm apart and about 15 degree bend both toward the screen.

I then cut the ends down to about 14 cm from the bend point and cut them so they would be hidden by the black plastic screen mounting panels. I then drilled a 4mm hole dead centre of the front 10cm section and having lined up and marked the holes for the windscreen bolts drilled some larger 8mm holes through the ends.

[cropbiker]

Having dremmelled down the aluminium cuts and drills to get rid of any burrs I then covered the back of the strip with black duct tape before flipping over and repeating with the front of the strip.

[cropbiker]

I then flipped the strip over and covered the top surface of the strip with black duct tape too.

After that it was time to stick one of the sliding silicon discs that you can get for furniture feet dead centre so that a 4mm bolt could be passed through to hold in place. The discs I had already had a hole in the middle and a depth of silicon sufficient for the head of the bolt not to be in contact with the screen.

[cropbiker]

Next I drilled a 4 mm hole through one of the camera mounting parts supplied with the camera. Initially I just used the one shown in this pic but I found I could not tilt the camera back far enough in the waterproof case.

Second go I again used the swan next mount from the camera and this proved perfect.

Put a sticky pad underneath and bolted it in place with a dab of locktite. Then once tightly bolted cut off the excess bolt.

[cropbiker]

Finally, using the top 2 screen bolts I put my strip behind the plastic shields and bolted through to the screen arms.

Has proven to be perfect position as I can see the screen on the back of the camera and VERY stable, not vibration at all.