Seneca Dash Cam System build

[SloPoke]

Our 2015 Seneca 36FK came from the factory with a Jensen JRV215n Entertainment system in the dash of the cab. It supports the display of up to three cameras that are the Voyager models but only displays one at a time on the JVRN215n (head unit) display. We can set the default camera that is on display, or switch to other cameras by the touch-screen display - and it also has a trigger feature that will switch to the left or right cam with the turn signals and the rear camera with the reverse selector. The cameras are always powered on when the Head Unit is powered up.

On our most recent trip to Florida last winter, we had more "close calls" encountered on the road than we have in recent years. There were countless times we had very hard panic stops on I-10, I-20 and I-75 that I wished we had video of the other idiot driver to send to their companies. I've been looking at "Dash Cam's and related systems" for the Seneca some time as we have a 16-camera DVR System in our home/home-office - and love it.

So, last week our Head Unit decided to die... I've torn the dash apart from the drivers door to the passenger door tracing wires and troubleshooting the wiring to our Head Unit (It is a BIG MESS - Picture attached) and I am in the process of cleaning up the tangled mess and fixing poor splices/connections. We have been searching for a replacement head unit that had DVR camera functionality along with the other features that our old head-unit had that we have become accustomed to frequent use. We have followed other threads on later model radios... including these:
https://www.jaycoowners.com/forums/f...tml#post717933
https://www.jaycoowners.com/forums/f...gps-63654.html
https://www.jaycoowners.com/forums/f...000-43611.html
https://www.jaycoowners.com/forums/f...hxb-63806.html among others

We ended up finding a replacement for our JVR215n that is brand newly refurbished for $260 - plugs right in, same unit with a one-year warranty - It's ordered and on the way (delivery is scheduled Saturday)

... and DW was willing to let me add a 4CH DVR, a Forward Camera w/housing, wiring, power harness and all the hardware to go together.

Now we will be able to wake up the next morning in the wilderness boondocking and be able to see what really tore up our campsite in the middle of the night... heck, we might even get video of BigFoot!!!

More to come on Saturday with the build starting then....

[Robbbyr]

Will be following!

I have a Rexing dashcam now but will be interested to see what forward-facing camera you choose that will integrate with the DVR. Also wondering if you can "Y" the existing stock camera feeds so they simultaneously record but yet can also display on the dash radio screen as they do now.

Good luck, I will have to consult my Disbursement Officer if yours goes as you hope!.

[SloPoke]

Here is the parts listed on the invoice from RVCams:

Voyager 4-Channel Mobile DVR DVR4100
--Replaced DVR414G32X4 4/2017
--Includes (1) 256GB SSD (Solid-State Drive) and (1) SD Card slot (no card included)
--Includes GPS Support
--Event recording upon impact or alarm (events automatically copy to SD Card -- card not included)
--Includes (4) Voyager CEC-type Inputs.
--Dimensions: 8-7/8" x 8-3/4" 2-3/8"
--Use (4) 31000024 Y-cables if cameras will also go to a Voyager monitor


Voyager Color Keyhole Camera VCCYL37
--CCD Image sensor
--Mirrored/Normal image Selector Switch
--Requires CEC or VEC Cables
--Requires 1” Diameter Cutout
--Replaces VBCYL15, VCCYL35


Replacement Housing and Bracket - SIDHSGCRM
for Voyager Standard B/W and Color Side Cameras.


Voyager Y-Adapter.... 31000024
Allows one Voyager Camera to Connect to Two Voyager LCD Monitors.... Has one CEC
Female and two CEC Male connectors

Voyager 3' CEC Cable CEC03

[SloPoke]

Originally Posted by Robbbyr

Will be following!

I have a Rexing dashcam now but will be interested to see what forward-facing camera you choose that will integrate with the DVR. Also wondering if you can "Y" the existing stock camera feeds so they simultaneously record but yet can also display on the dash radio screen as they do now.

Good luck, I will have to consult my Disbursement Officer if yours goes as you hope!.

After spending a good amount of time with Tim@RVCams.com he confirmed that the DVR will record all 4 cams at the same time, and the display of the Left,Right and Rear cameras will be separated from the DVR functions by using the Y cable to split the signal from the cam to the DVR and the Head Unit.

The DVR includes 3G and WiFi connectivity, Wired Ethernet, Satellite Tracking and a bunch of other stuff...

This is the manual for the DVR: https://voyagercameras.com/downloads...ers_manual.pdf

[RyRoRyan]

My 215 failed and Jayco upgraded it under warranty to the JRV9000. I did the install as I did not want to wait for CW to fit it in. Pretty simple to do, cameras just plug right back in. New system is much more responsive and stable.

[SloPoke]

Originally Posted by RyRoRyan

My 215 failed and Jayco upgraded it under warranty to the JRV9000. I did the install as I did not want to wait for CW to fit it in. Pretty simple to do, cameras just plug right back in. New system is much more responsive and stable.

The JRV9000 was on the short list of units to replace our JRV215n. It has the closest set of features and compatibility to our 215 that we can find. You were lucky they did that on Warranty, but that was Jayco's warranty. Our only warranty option is to take our unit to CW and deal with the myriad of hassles and inconveniences that we get every time we go there for warranty work. Ours is the CW Extended Service Plan.

If we go and attempt to get CW to Warranty the radio.... We would have to wait for an appointment, pay the $100 deductible when we drop it off for them to look at it to see what is wrong with it - only to find six-fifteen days later what I have already determined. All power and ground wires are connected correctly, and it won't power on at all. So they will have to order a replacement for it... They said they would not put a JRV9000 in as a replacement, but would not be specific what they would replace it with. (that leaves me with a very uneasy feeling as they have always cut corners in everything they do in past visits)

Next comes the long and protracted waiting period for a replacement to be ordered, shipped from Taiwan, delayed by Customs from the gov-shutdown and then shipped ground freight from Florida Customs to Utah (10-days by truck). They won't let us have the Seneca back while they are waiting for it to arrive because they don't want to put the dash back after tearing it apart for troubleshooting. It will now be a month since we dropped it off and still not worked on until we call them every other day - asking for an update when they are going to fit it into the schedule to finish the replacement. And who knows what it will look like when it is finished and we get the Seneca back? What did they forget to hook up? What did they forget to plug back in when they put it back together? How many times will we need to take it back to get it done right??? NO! I can not go thru this over and over again...

This way, I'm going to pay an extra $160 for the privilege of doing it right myself (like you did), having a unit with the same features, not fewer. And I wont have to pay the extra shipping costs for getting the replacement from the Factory in Taiwan.

Adding the rest of the stuff while it is apart is going to be easy....
Cleaning up the wiring mess is not... but I have a couple of days before the stuff arrives...

[McGintys924]

We have the Dash cams in all cars and picked one up from Garmin for the Seneca as it always seems like people are looking for trouble. The system you are setting up sounds really great for the road and also for security while at the campground. When I see what Jayco does with this malfunctioning unit in my Seneca in April I will need to contact the same company and find out if they have a similar system for this unit. Thank you for sharing what is available these days and a reputable company.

One note is that we tried to report a driver who deliberately attempted to cause an accident (caught on tape) to our auto insurance (Amica) who literally told me the if they made the report official it would go against me. You would think that insurance would love video of bad drivers, but no.

[SloPoke]

So Saturday afternoon, the Fedex driver brought a well packed box of Everything needed to do the job. I anticipated that the refurbished JRV215n would just be a replacement radio, but no... It came with everything! I now have two of everything. GPS antenna, Remote Bluetooth Microphone, Mounting hardware, bezels, remote and all the harnesses. Just in the box for the radio. I also might point out - this is a brand new radio, there is no indication that this is refurbished at all.

Along with the big box came all of the DVR hardware, camera, sattelite / g-shock receiver along with the DVR itself. I took inventory of anything I might need to complete the job and picked up cables to wire a future Subwoofer and a video cable from the DVR.

I have spent about five hours now just cleaning up the rats-nest of wires and sketchy butt-connectors that look like they were crimped with a pair of cheap pliers. There was little rhyme-or-reason to how some of these wiring connections were put together, but now they are all being soldered, shrink-tube and finished with scotch #33.

I've got the Y-adapters in the line from each of the cameras, splitting to the Head Unit and to the DVR which will be velcro - mounted against the bulkhead under the cup-holders. The Power will be tied right into the same power for the Head Unit for B+, IGN and Ground (as recommended by the Seller) that way the cameras will stay on when either the coach power -or- ignition is on. Wires are now getting a little less of a nest look, and they are tied in looms and strain relief to fixed points where needed.

Tomorrow, the forward camera gets installed on the top of the dash... more gets torn apart for the second GPS antenna too. I should be starting to put it back together tomorrow - I hope. We are forecast to get 8-12" of snow tomorrow, so it should be a good day to be wiring inside!

[Rustynuts]

Nice work, can’t wait to see how it all turns out. I see you are as finicky with wiring as I am . All the wiring on our Seneca has drove me crazy! Especially when you find something like this under your bed!

[SloPoke]

Well... tonight was the smoke test!
(for those old-school engineers)

The good news is there was none.

We had to take an extra day to dig out of the latest storm, getting out to the Seneca was a bit of a challenge with the last snowfall. I had finished up the last of the wiring to the DVR, getting it all tucked back into the dash compartment right below where the radio head unit goes back in (there is very little room between the back of the head unit and the air plenum) so the radio will fit back in the cavity it will call home.

Fired up the Jensen JRV215n and it came alive. Splash screen and then it started to load the OS it runs. I put the head unit thru a full test of every function, tested each to insure that I did not have a cabling issue or anything not functioning as designed. Configured the BT and started to verify all of the AV functions next. Everything is functional, including the Navigational system. It is also MUCH more responsive - even with the screen protector still in place.

Next... set the AV input on the Head unit to the DVR output and powered on the DVR. It took about 10 seconds and the splash screen for Voyager popped up and the OS loaded. All 4 cameras popped up on the display a few seconds before the UPS truck comes into view... priceless!!! I grabbed the IR remote for the DVR and started to browse the setup and updated the network connection to take DHCP and set the cameras to Motion recording - all in less than 5 minutes.

The Head unit is secured back into the dash, the DVR still needs to be mounted to the bulkhead and the cables tucked behind the HVAC controls in the cab - then the dash will start to be put back together...

I called Stacy out to see the progress... her comment was "the pictures are amazing" and it was at night in darkness too!

[ready2retire&drive]

Looks like a great upgrade will have to keep this one in mind, when/if my unit goes out

[SloPoke]

It's been a few days, and the weather cooperated today. I was able to finish up getting the dash put back together after routing the final components to their homes on top of the dash. The forward cam has a chrome housing, that is getting painted the same color as the dash... and the G-sensor is mounted next to the Jensen GPS antenna. The DVR is tucked under the ash-tray/cup-holder console and the spare wires routed up and into the cavity above the cabin filter. Loops are marked and crossed to cancel any possible crosstalk.

I took a little more time to tear the drivers side of the dash apart, installing another switch in the left console for our new LED driving lights. And another day to re-route the USB cables inside the dash that power our Q-chargers on the A-pillars. And another few hours running ethernet cable back to our network switch.

Now the DVR has been recording non-stop for almost a week, catching everything in a 360-degree circle. The 256gb SSD is now starting to over-write the previous weeks activity.

So far, Very happy with how it turned out, I presume I will be happier once I read the manual and figure out some of the advanced features.

[SloPoke]

Short update... I have been working with ASA Electronics on some issues with trying to get this project finished. My issues are with the software on the DVR Recorder (and supplied with the DVR on CD/DVD) and how to extract the video from the system when there is a need to. RVCams.com relies on the Voyager company to provide the advanced technical support, especially for their software that is included with the DVR.

RVCams.com referred me to the technical teams at Voyager, but they could be more responsive so far. I have given them a lot of technical troubleshooting detail, and am still waiting for a solution for software that they have in their manual.

So far - the hardware is working well... Recording when there is activity and it is being stored on the SSD More updates to follow.

[SloPoke]

Well.. it has been a few weeks since the last update... Mother nature has been arguing with me darn near every day that we are not having anything like "global warming". I have been shoveling snow off the roof of the Seneca every other day and it is snowing even more right now as I type. I had to shovel a path to the drivers door to insert a USB stick into the DVR console. I wanted to get some "direct data" from the DVR after trying to install some of the "data-center oriented management software" they provided with the DVR. I am sure that I will be updating this thread with the results of that in a later post.

so... a 32gb USB-2 drive goes in the front console... I hook a mouse to the other USB port and use the DVR software to download the recorded data to the USB drive. The software has you select the start date/time and the duration you want to download to the USB. and I let er rip. - slowly I might add. No it is not USB-3... and slower than USB2 in my mind.

We had configured the recording to be "motion activated - with one minute following the last motion detected. I have to admit that our three dogs (Ellie, Oliver and Ned) occupied a huge portion of the motion video recorded.. (Mark S. can relate to that statement... remember them in your backyard??? )

So.. I downloaded a couple of hours of activity... Including one of the hundreds of blizzards we have had... Blizards take a lot of video... and I could watch the individual snowflakes falling at 10FPS. Two hours of .avi files amounted to about 2.2gb of data on the USB, but included the GPS tags in the data that the application extracted. Actually, the application showed the GPS location on a small map, the travel direction (was stationary) and the speed we were travelling (at a stop). It was embedded in the AVI file.

Resolution was sharp, (No not 4k - don't ask why) for the resolution of the Voyager cameras. ( I had set the recording quality at "highest") and I watched some significant misbehavior of our dogs during that time.

Tomorrow... It is supposed to snow more again... but there might be a chance that I can get another USB drive out there... and pull more data off... wish me luck!

[namusmc65]

All I can say is what a great upgrade and I wish I had your talent to tear in to a project like that. There are so any bird nests of wires I have found in our rig. Great job!

[Hog3loves]

Sounds like an awesome setup. Eagerly awaiting your first outing and that first sighting of Bigfoot...or whatever else your video and capture.

[RyRoRyan]

Look into the settings in the cameras or recording section. In many cases, many NVR's will show the live data at full res, but only record at a resolution much smaller in order to increase the length of time it can record for.

[SloPoke]

We are now on our first 1,100 miles on the new camera system, our first real trip out over the road for 2019. Yesterday I connected my laptop to the DVR (which is now wired with Cat-5 to our Seneca's network) and opened the DVR program by typing it's address into a browser. The browser settings will need to be adjusted so that you can run an "Active-x" browser control that displays the video in the browser. Once those settings are adjusted for your browser you can do everything you could do on the unit otherwise. I downloaded about 4 hours of data from the DVR to my Laptop and was able to use their app that shows your location on a map, the 4 camera's, your speed, GPS location in coordinates and the X-Y-Z measurements of the G-shock meter.

The app lets you search, and once watching the video - you have controls to fast foward/reverse, pause, slow motion and frame-by-frame playback. It worked very well... I even went back and reviewed one of our "Close-Calls" that happened. Now that I saw what happened in review, I would have been at fault.... even though I did not think so when it happened the day before.

So... for our first feedback - We like it so far.

[Captain Morgan]

SloPoke I found this thread specifically looking for this type of DVR project.

I'm looking to repro this except that I want to display the cam views and output from DVR on the LCD TVs that are in the rig.

THANKS for this exacting write up and pics!


.

[SloPoke]

Originally Posted by Captain Morgan

SloPoke I found this thread specifically looking for this type of DVR project.

I'm looking to repro this except that I want to display the cam views and output from DVR on the LCD TVs that are in the rig.

THANKS for this exacting write up and pics!
.

Glad this helps... One suggestion I might make... Buy a wireless mouse to plug into the USB port of the DVR so you can navigate the menu on the DVR where you are in front of your big TV's.

Another interesting find we made last week... We were boondocking and had a campsite that was pretty remote on a ridge. While we were away from camp we had some mysterious human visitors that we see on the DVR they were surveying our stuff and looking around.

We noticed the tire-prints that were not our Toyota's or the same footprint of Stacy / me when we returned from a day expedition... and went to the DVR to find out what really happened hours before while we were gone.

A white Subaru Outback with a black rocket box on it.