How To: Add a Backup Camera to a 2012 Ford F-250 Truck

May

2018

How To: Add a Backup Camera to a 2012 Ford F-250 Truck

I recently got a used Lance truck camper to be put on my 2012 F250 long bed truck. The F-250 has it’s backup camera in the tailgate and puts the display inside the mirror. The camper I bought had a regular NTSC camera attached to it, and four random wires hanging off the edge. I wanted to get it to work with my truck’s stock rear view mirror display. Here is how to do it, and below are things I discovered that made it take a long time. You could use this same techniques with any off the shelf security camera (or backup camera). For Ford trucks, make sure it is an NTSC camera, and not PAL.

First, buy a cord to adapt to the camera from the rear truck attachment. Here’s the cord I used; I have a 2012 F250, but the plug is the same for this year and this is cheaper:

I cut off the end that would normally plug into the tailgate camera. You could also find the plug itself and wire it up manually, but that would take more time.

The wiring from the cord is as follows:

Pin 1 is Violet with Gray strip and is +12 volts
Pin 2 is White with Green strip and is Video +
Pin 3 is Brown with Violet strip and is Video –
Pin 4 is Black and is a ground shield for Video. This is Not power ground and should not be used for Power Ground. (May not be used!)
Pin 5 is Black on Male connector and Black with White stripe on Female connector and is Power Ground.
Pin 6 is not used.

I found this via: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1176260-backup-camera-wiring.html

If you are using the cord I recommended above, note that the black power ground does not go through the cord! It is terminated on both ends, and it took me hours to realize they did this.

Take the positive 12 volts and power ground, and wire it to your camera. Take the Video+ and wire it to the center pin of a composite video input. Take the Video- and wire it to the ground of the composite video (the outer edge). If your composite video also has a shield, you can wire the “ground shield” line to this, otherwise it isn’t used. That is it!

Troubleshooting:

It took me a while to realize that the cord I bought didn’t have the power ground going all the way through. I finally used an Ohm meter to realize it was an open circuit and after I removed some wrappings I discovered it was terminated on both ends! How stupid…this wasted hours of my time.

The second problem I had was that the component video cable that was wired in my truck was faulty. I had to replace it. I would get a signal when I plugged directly into the camera, but not after I ran it through the line that exited the camper shell. I replaced it and it all worked! (This also took me hours to figure out…)