My windshield camera died a couple of years ago and it was a bear to find a used replacement part. WIth a used part, you can pop it in, and drive as normal. With a new camera, which will cost you around $1,100, you will need to calibrate it at the dealer or a windshield replacement company. The dealer will charge you $2500-$3500 for the part and calibration. Used cameras go for $450-$750.
You might be thinking that you will just bite the bullet and buy a used one if your's goes bad. Well, good luck with that. It took me months and months of scouring ebay and online junkyards to find a single one that cost me $750. There just so happens to be one on ebay right now for $550; but as soon as that one is gone, it may be extremely difficult to find another one.
Judging from mine going bad and how difficult it is to find a used one; these cameras go bad at an alarming rate. The reason is that they overheat. I will provide some tips here to keep your camera much cooler than it would with the current, less than ideal, design from a thermal standpoint. I am a mechanical engineer with decades of thermal design experience.
I will update this periodically. First off, I would not recommend doing what I did. I have access to a wide array of free material and the experience to design, test, and assembly the parts. I ended up water cooling my windshield camera. I plugged into the cars ODII connector for constant 12 Volt power. I also installed thermal switches on the camera enclosure and near the water fed heatsink. This way the system is on at half power when the camera is warm and full power when the heatsink is warm. THis way, I dont drain the car battery too much, when cooling is not needed. On the camera is a water block connected with thermal adhesive.
The water is pumped via a 12V water pump.
The water is kept cool via a radiator and a 12v fan. (I used a smaller version of this picture, but this gives one the generally idea, as it looks very similiar to the one that I used, just with a 60mm fan and a proportionally smaller radiator.)
And I used tubing to run the water from the water pump located to the upper left of the foot brake to the windshield camera routed under the headliner and corners to connect the 2 locales.
That is way too costly and difficult to install for the average person. I do have simpler things that I recommend. First off is weather proof reflective aluminum tape. WIth special care to not block the camera line of site, I put this on both sides of the windshield on and just beyond the footprint of the camera. This will reflect radiative heat from the sun, the warm windshield and the black footprint of the camera facing the windshield will reflect the heat as well.
This is exact opposite of what most people do, which is to use a sun blocker on their windshield. This will create a very hot layer of air, exactly where the camera is located. It creates an oven for the windshield camera. With the reflective tape, we minimize the suns rays and the radiative heat transfer from everything warm in the area.
You want this aluminum tape to be as shiney as possible, which will reflect radiative heat as much as possible. I'll take some pics where I recommend putting it.
I will follow up in the future on the heatsink that I recommend mounting to the camera enclosure. One method is just using a heatsink. The other is using a different heatsink with a very small fan mounted to it. The fan can also be powered via very small wires routed to the ODBII connector near the foot brake that I mentioned earlier.
I will also go into how one can disassemble the camera housing to remove the existing thermal interface material (TIM); and how to purchase and apply a better, higher quality TIM to the camera chip/camera enclosure contact area. When I opened my bad camera, the TIM was all dry and crusty, which is the exact opposite of what you want in your TIM. Cheap TIM's dry out over time especially in hot environments, which is what happens in many Clarities. Once they dry out, the camera chip temp can soar, as it is no longer properly thermally mounted to the enclosure, which acts as a so-so heatsink in this application. The heatsink or the heatink/fan upgrade, along with a new TIM and the reflective tape, should keep these windshield camera microchips cool enough to last many more years.
Note: This wont help a camera that has already died. This is preventative maintenance for sure. I will update with more info and pics in the near future.
I also created a poll to see how many other people have had their windshield camera crap out and what they did about it, if so. This controls the cruise control feature, among other things like the autobraking with the Clarity.
You might be thinking that you will just bite the bullet and buy a used one if your's goes bad. Well, good luck with that. It took me months and months of scouring ebay and online junkyards to find a single one that cost me $750. There just so happens to be one on ebay right now for $550; but as soon as that one is gone, it may be extremely difficult to find another one.
Judging from mine going bad and how difficult it is to find a used one; these cameras go bad at an alarming rate. The reason is that they overheat. I will provide some tips here to keep your camera much cooler than it would with the current, less than ideal, design from a thermal standpoint. I am a mechanical engineer with decades of thermal design experience.
I will update this periodically. First off, I would not recommend doing what I did. I have access to a wide array of free material and the experience to design, test, and assembly the parts. I ended up water cooling my windshield camera. I plugged into the cars ODII connector for constant 12 Volt power. I also installed thermal switches on the camera enclosure and near the water fed heatsink. This way the system is on at half power when the camera is warm and full power when the heatsink is warm. THis way, I dont drain the car battery too much, when cooling is not needed. On the camera is a water block connected with thermal adhesive.
The water is pumped via a 12V water pump.
The water is kept cool via a radiator and a 12v fan. (I used a smaller version of this picture, but this gives one the generally idea, as it looks very similiar to the one that I used, just with a 60mm fan and a proportionally smaller radiator.)
And I used tubing to run the water from the water pump located to the upper left of the foot brake to the windshield camera routed under the headliner and corners to connect the 2 locales.
That is way too costly and difficult to install for the average person. I do have simpler things that I recommend. First off is weather proof reflective aluminum tape. WIth special care to not block the camera line of site, I put this on both sides of the windshield on and just beyond the footprint of the camera. This will reflect radiative heat from the sun, the warm windshield and the black footprint of the camera facing the windshield will reflect the heat as well.
This is exact opposite of what most people do, which is to use a sun blocker on their windshield. This will create a very hot layer of air, exactly where the camera is located. It creates an oven for the windshield camera. With the reflective tape, we minimize the suns rays and the radiative heat transfer from everything warm in the area.
You want this aluminum tape to be as shiney as possible, which will reflect radiative heat as much as possible. I'll take some pics where I recommend putting it.
I will follow up in the future on the heatsink that I recommend mounting to the camera enclosure. One method is just using a heatsink. The other is using a different heatsink with a very small fan mounted to it. The fan can also be powered via very small wires routed to the ODBII connector near the foot brake that I mentioned earlier.
I will also go into how one can disassemble the camera housing to remove the existing thermal interface material (TIM); and how to purchase and apply a better, higher quality TIM to the camera chip/camera enclosure contact area. When I opened my bad camera, the TIM was all dry and crusty, which is the exact opposite of what you want in your TIM. Cheap TIM's dry out over time especially in hot environments, which is what happens in many Clarities. Once they dry out, the camera chip temp can soar, as it is no longer properly thermally mounted to the enclosure, which acts as a so-so heatsink in this application. The heatsink or the heatink/fan upgrade, along with a new TIM and the reflective tape, should keep these windshield camera microchips cool enough to last many more years.
Note: This wont help a camera that has already died. This is preventative maintenance for sure. I will update with more info and pics in the near future.
I also created a poll to see how many other people have had their windshield camera crap out and what they did about it, if so. This controls the cruise control feature, among other things like the autobraking with the Clarity.
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