DIY FLIR Night Vision e90 LCI

[chuspb]

Hi,

First of all, THANKS to my friends Gerardo, Rafa and Juanjo, they helped me to do all this proccess.

I have installed the FLIR camera in my e90 LCI. I have written comments in the images. Sorry because there are many grammatical errors.

This is the final result. It make sense at night:

The reason to install this camera was a car crash i had 3 months ago, against a horse. This was my old car:



The car reacted very well. Luckily, i had no company at that moment. So i decided to buy another 3 series car, because i liked my car. I bought a 318 instead of a 320, and with the price different i bought the FLIR camera.

I tought about differents solutions about the monitor, because i don't have iDrive. I made some paper prototypes:



I really like the monitor in the dash part, but i wanted a plug-in solution, maeby with magnetics pieces or something. It was impossible to fit the monitor in that position.

So i decide to buy a rearview mirror monitor like this one:



Here there are the dimensions of the camera and bracket:

PathFindIR_OM.pdf
PathFindIR_Universal_Mounting_Bracket_OM.pdf

Also you need the FLIR cable to connect the camera to the monitor. I bought a fuse adapter in order to get the power from there:



This are the steps needed:












There are more images in the second part.

[chuspb]

I hope this can help other people.

[I M STIG]

Very, very cool. I thought about getting a FLIR setup since I have iDrive. I hope this helps your night driving, and I'm also glad you're safe from the Horse collision.

[THE TECH]

Any pics of this in action?

How did you not see a horse?

[chuspb]

I will upload a video in action.

I didn't see the horse because it was close night without moon light, and with cars in the other sense. So I had to drive with the cross light. The horse appeared from the right of the road, without time to react.

[mkPOTO]

great write up, im just confused how much of the mirror do you look at when your driving?

[chuspb]

In my opinion, the camera is only useful when you drive at night outside of cities and when you can not use the high beams. In that context, i think is get used to watch the screen more frequently. It depends on the road too. I don't think this device is going a safe you in all situations, but i think that my car crash could have been avoided, maybe others do not.

You can find more opinions here:

http://www.m3post.com/forums/showpos...7&postcount=16