I have been having problems with my back up camera/monitor for some time.
When I first turn it on and it is cold I have no picture, after about 5 minutes I start to get a scrolling picture then it finally clears up. After that, it is intermittently distorted with some crazy colors. Does this sound like the monitor or camera? It is the original Javelina equipment with a color monitor. I suspect there may be some electrical interference also as the screen changes when the headlights are turned on. Mike Preising 2002 U-270, 34′
Try pulling off the multi-wire plug from the side of the Javelina control box. Clean both the plug and the exposed conductors with contact cleaner and re-install. This cleared up a lot of artifacts for me. Brett 1999 U320 42′
I had these very same symptoms with my back-up camera picture in my 2002 – red smeared lines of a picture that come and go with unpredictable time, temperature or vibration. It wasn’t difficult getting to it through the cupboards above the bed. To locate the problem I used a known good video source into the camera’s din connector to prove the rest of the system was working to the monitor. It was fine. I removed the pigtail from the camera and tested the wires for continuity – bingo, the red wire was broken, no continuous power was getting to the camera. The challenge was the disassembly of the din connector housing and opening the camera to make connections for the new piece of wire which I ran externally to the pigtail. It would have been a great deal easier at that point simply to cut out the din connector and solder the pigtail connections straight through.
In my case eventually one of the little wires broke and I lost the picture completely. If your difficulty is a broken wire it could be anywhere in the 45-foot line and in any of the four wires inside. A new line kit could be fun to install. I’m told there is a small conversion box in the dash near the 2U9 computer. It converts the din connections to discrete wires which actually enter the 2U9 (forward of the center console floor cupboard). A video signal injection test could be done there too. Another possibility, of course, your camera is going out or your 2U9 computer is failing. With coach ownership, the possibilities are endless!!
Your DIN connector could be making poor contact or has intermittent shorts at the wire connections. I’d wiggle the connector and tap on the camera as an initial test while watching the dash monitor. I suspect that most of these problems are from vibration, loose or crushed connections or wires. My camera is a Sony I was able to remove its back to see and test the whole line kit first (see below) from the internal in-line plug using straight pins and patch cords. That was a much easier way to see if the whole line was bad anywhere or if not, then the camera itself would be presumed to be faulty.
Five conductors in the DIN connector…red – positive voltage, a black – negative voltage, white – video conductor, the 4th color – can’t remember, but I think also was black or braided shield also as the ground for the video. And yellow – I don’t know what yellow does. If you are talented and manage to remove the plastic cover from either half of the DIN connector you will be able to see the wire colors and the shield/ground around the center video wire.
The in-line DIN plugs have 8 pins have an odd pattern: Video wires are in parenthesis. Voltage wires are the vertical pair either on the left of two video wires – or the right depending upon how you are looking at it. The yellow wire has to be one of the top ones if it is actually utilized – most simple cameras seemingly need only 4 wires – or even 3 with a common ground.
x x
x ( x) x
x (x) x
You should be able to trace the voltage with a voltmeter (7.5 VDC seems strange, but that is what it measured – I would have thought it should be 12 VDC), grounds with an ohmmeter and the hot video conductor you can determine the by experimentation.
In my case, I fed the hot side from a known working, external video source (Video recorder or a portable TV with video out jacks) with patch cords through a .1 uF cap (to protect the source) to all the pins until I found the ones that displayed the picture on the dash screen. This is presuming of course, that the problem you are tracing is not between the bedroom and the dash, in the 2U9 or the dash monitor. If you are good at soldering small wires because it is much easier, you might even consider cutting out the whole DIN connector (turn off the power first) and splice the wires back together when you’re done.
The design in different model years with different products could be, well… quite different! Jim Frerichs 2002 U320