[IT]

One of the biggest let downs with the whole reversing camera thing is that you have to then actually select the camera to see whats going on, which when your busy reversing, pulling gear levers, straining at mirrors and looking out for kids, cats, cattle and dustbins all gets a bit much.

Thankfully, the RNS-E can auto switch for you. Hurrah. As of software version 550 I beleive, which I'm not going to pretend I fully understand, but mine it new enough so I'm alright Jack.

Here is a screenshot of the vagcom setting:



Now, you can ignore the Lambo only thing as maybe my VCDS os out of date, or they havnt updated yet, but it will work on any EU unit with S/W greater than 550 providing you set adaption channel 4 to 1.

When you do this, then applying +12 to the RFSL pin on the back of the RNS-E (Pin C2) will switch the unit automatically into TV mode, which will then show you your camera...

This however, is not as straight forward as it seems (and for those of who are already thinking it doesnt sound straight forward, give up now )

Here are the problems:

1) To get an RNS-E in a D2, you must buy some sort of adapter cable, or home brew one. The latter is rare, so lets assume you buy a cable, in which case pin C2 wont be populated, nor do you have a spare pin to 'steal' in order to populate it. A trip to Audi parts coming up, or order an adapter cable with too much stuff eg phone when you dont have it, so you can steal those pins when it arrives....

2) By default, the RNS-E switches to TV mode. Full stop. It doesnt switch to TV mode. and then to AV2 or anything useful. If you were last watching ITV on terrestrial, then when you select reverse, thats what you get. Not so good. If however you just have a striaight forward single AV adapter (not an Audi tuner) then presumably you're home and dry in this department. There must be a way to get it to change to the input on the TV tuner for the camera - Apparently the lambo can be ordered with both TV tuner and camera, so it *must* switch..... Hmmm... More work needed

3) When I let the unit 'auto switch' the pictures goes all weird, lines across the top and the picture shifts down by an inch - This goes for the whole input to the RNS-E from the tuner, TV, menus, AV inputs, the camera everything until I turn the ignition on and off again. If i manually select AV2 in the TV, the picture is crystal clear.... AArrrrgh... From reading around at the moment I think that the auto switching camera input thing dictates an NTSC input, not a PAL and I think the wonderfully efficient non-english speaking folks abroad were annoyingly clever enough to realise that PAL is the default colour signal over here, and hence sent me that....

For those less aufait with TV signals, black and white it all the same, luminence is luminence, however for some reason when we all went colour suddenly lots of people had different ideas on how it should be done.... NTSC was overlayed over the black and white over in USA, Japan etc and we got variations of PAL (phase alternating line) over here in Europe... Technically ours is superior as it filters out interference better, but again I digress.....

The real problem usually stems from the NTSC 60hz and the PAL 50hz, and this refresh rate change usually causes the shift in horizontal allignment along with colour loss/distortion, which is exactly what I get when I 'auto switch'

So, I have ordered another camera, from a UK supplier as I need someone to understand 'please send me NTSC'....

I'll keep you posted...