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by ncallaway 131 days ago
> Putting cameras into cars requires processors, ram, all manner of chips and compnents that a car didnt need before.

Was there a single mass market consumer car sold in the United States in this millennium that didn’t already have processors and RAM in them?

I would be absolutely shocked if there was a single car for which the relatively recent backup camera requirement required them to introduce processors and RAM for the first time.
2 comments
ChrisMarshallNY 131 days ago
I’m pretty sure that you can buy aftermarket backup cameras. The car can be a dumb bunny, and still have a good camera.
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stefanfisk 131 days ago
Yeah, my 2005 beater has both CarPlay and a backup camera. Cost me $40 and an hour of labor.
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numpad0 131 days ago
oh yeah. I've once bought a $10ish one on Amazon out of curiosity.

There's the yellow composite plug, a 12V input, and a small bit of wire to be cut to rotate image 180 degrees, at the other end of a 30ft cable from the camera. The composite goes into the existing infotainment. There would be a wire from shifter to infotainment that switches the display to external composite video when the gear lever is in reverse. I think it even came with a miniature hole saw in size of the camera module.

$10 and one afternoon later, I could have upgraded a dumb car to have one, complete with auto switch to backup on reverse. No software hacking needed. It's fundamentally an extremely simple thing.

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dotancohen 131 days ago
I believe that in some vehicles the backup camera actually runs on a separate (possibly real time, otherwise certainly heavily nice'ed) system. Tesla has a recall where they had to nice the backup camera software. The problem was if the display freezes or is delayed, then the driver is backing up and not aware that he doesn't see where he is going (he thinks that what he sees is representative of the area around the car currently).
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pornel 131 days ago
In Hyundai and Renault I've seen it first hand that it's a separate subsystem that works even when the infotainment is dead/unresponsive/glitchy (it's like that probably everywhere, these two are just the sample I have).
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