I got a new car so I figured it was time to retire my trusty old VisionDrive VD-3000 that I've had for about six years now.
The problem is that the A118 is much thicker than the VisionDrive:
It's so thick that it doesn't even fit behind my rearview mirror- though that's probably because I have the mirror raised so much. I could always move the wedge mount up the windshield a couple of inches which would move the mirror farther from the windshield, but I want the lens to be even more discrete from the outside anyway.
I didn't want to 3D print a whole new case, like FasrCam, but I did need to find a better way of mounting it, so I cut up a few pieces of sheet metal to make a new bracket, and milled a piece of delrin to mount the lens so I could mount the A118 sideways on my windshield:
This setup allows me to mount the camera in the dotted area above the mirror:
That's the VisionDrive to the left of the mirror and the A118 to the right. The circle to the upper right of the mirror is the usual angle adjustment knob for the A118 (I only put the knob back on to cover the hole) and the circle to the right of that is the new lens.
Close up of the A118 from a different angle outside:
Sorry for the poor quality, the sun was going down- either there's too much light and glare, or not enough light.
I have since moved the camera inwards more towards the center of the car and down the windshield just a little bit. Here's a screen grab from earlier today:
Obviously, the rear view mirror is visible- you can see my hand on the shifter in the mirror on the video- and there's the dotted area just up in the corner. I figure I need to make a slightly longer bracket to move the lens closer to the window, though I'm not too worried about either the mirror or the dotted area since they're in the corners of the image.
Next steps:
One problem is that the A118 is just slightly visually intrusive from the driver's seat. It doesn't block the mirror, but it's still noticeable because it drops below the dotted area a little bit. Sorry, no photos of that yet. After I put the longer bracket on it, I may be able to move it father out of the way.
My VisionDrive didn't have a screensaver, so I had put in a switch to manually turn off the LCD backlight. Even though the A118 has the one minute screensaver timeout, I might look into putting a switch on its LCD too, just so it's not distracting at all, especially at night.
So why did I get a camera with an LCD in the first place? Oh yeah, just so I could set it up. If the Mobius had a shock sensor, panic button and GPS, I might have used that (actually, I'm trying to figure how to put that facing back).
I might have to dim the status LEDs too. Luckily in this position, they're facing away from me, so that's not a priority yet.
Hard wiring: the colored wires on the back of the rearview mirror stand out a lot in that second picture . I'll cover them or something, and probably add an inline 5v adapter so I don't have even more wires running up my A pillar.
I bought a cheap CPL filter for a camera phone that I hope to put into a fixture that will fit over the delrin lens mount. It's not that large of a filter, so it might clip the edges of the image. We'll see...
