Accessing cameras via coding

[Spinifex]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but here goes.

Is it possible to access the vehicles camera (lane-assist or front-assist, where fitted) via coding, VCDS, OBD or any other means?

Any talented programmers able to achieve this?

Reason being - I firmly believe the design rules will change within the next 10 years, to make dash-cams compulsory on new vehicles.
Instead of buying aftermarket cameras, why isn't the feed from OEM cameras accessible via OBD ports?
Or are they?

It would make sense to use the already-available camera for this purpose, and I'm interested to know if anyone has fiddled around with trying to access the signal to export to an external device/card-reader/recording device?

Thoughts?

[Guest001]

Problem might be trying to make it do two things at once Front assist on my car is a radar unit not a camera

[Spinifex]

Front assist on my car is a radar unit not a camera

Yeh, I wasn't 100% sure if there's just 1 camera installed, or 2....

I know my high beam assist uses the lane-assist camera, and it also works the traffic-sign recognition - so the signal/data from a camera can obviously be shared between multiple different functions.....

I realise the quality of the image captured in these cameras may not be brilliant in terms of dash-cam quality, but that will only improve into the future.

I just assume that if most other sensor inputs can be interrogated and displayed externally (while also being used by the ECU to actually operate the car), then the camera input can also be sniffed out and displayed externally as well?

[DV52]

Spinifex: Very good question - clearly from a lateral thinking brain!

The front camera that's mounted on the windshield in MQB vehicles (like my Golf mk7) doesn't use any analogue signals like the reversing camera, so I suspect that if it's possible to use the video signal for other purposes, you would need to look at the form of digitized signal that's produced by the camera (it's called R242 on the Golf).

As wired in my present car, the front camera output is directly connected to what VW call "J533" which is the diagnostic module and the main controller for the CAN network. This strongly suggests (to me at least) that the front camera output signal doesn't use any of the recognized video formats (like MP4, wmv, mkv). But rather, it suggests that either all the processing is done inside the camera unit itself (remembering that the camera only supports limited functions) and the output is purely a handshaking yes/no message, or the camera output signal only speaks CAN language (i.e. OBDII speak). This might make it difficult to interface the camera to an external device that expects to see a recognized video signal protocol- I think

But this doesn't mean that in the future (when (if?) dashcams are mandatory), the front (and even rear cameras) might be multi-tasking

Don

[Spinifex]

Thanks Don - always a very detailed response and perfectly understandable for the not-so-technical of us.

It's a pity it's not a "normal" video feed as such, that can be interpreted in a visual manner, but I can understand why it wouldn't be done that way.

I suspect though, that the camera would still be capable of producing a video feed, if it was programmed to do so...... as it's not JUST detecting a line marked on the road (which presumably would be pretty easy to program into a recognition module - a simple straight or dotted line within the field-of-view), but to capably recognise different speed signs in different formats, makes me think that it perhaps can also interpret actual live streams as well?

Or are the speed signs in slightly different formats depending on country, all pre-programmed into an internal database in the infotainment system? That would mean every single possible speed number (presumably in 5km/hr increments) would have to be programmed?

[Ozsko]

I think it would be a very brave person who tried to modify what is a primary safety/driver assistance system.

[kamold]

The canbus has a throughput of something like 128Kb/s. It was never designed for high bandwidth applications like video.
The camera module also does the processing and interpretation, sending out frames of data that contain what it sees, not the raw video.

There are aftermarket head units available with camera input modules that integrate a dashcam application with other functions but they don't integrate with the OEM camera, you would need to install another camera.

In theory one could hack the output from the OEM camera but it would entail dismantling the camera module and wiring up additional controllers to the right pins etc etc. So you could split the feed off such that the controller still got a signal but you could pull the raw image data off to somewhere else.

Therefor just buy a dashcam

[AdamD]

As wired in my present car, the front camera output is directly connected to what VW call "J533" which is the diagnostic module and the main controller for the CAN network. This strongly suggests (to me at least) that the front camera output signal doesn't use any of the recognized video formats (like MP4, wmv, mkv). But rather, it suggests that either all the processing is done inside the camera unit itself (remembering that the camera only supports limited functions) and the output is purely a handshaking yes/no message, or the camera output signal only speaks CAN language (i.e. OBDII speak). This might make it difficult to interface the camera to an external device that expects to see a recognized video signal protocol- I think

I read some info on this a couple of years back (so can't quote a source). The windscreen-mounted camera doesn't process the data itself (and you wouldn't expect it to given the multi-purpose role it plays - lane recognition, oncoming headlight recognition etc), but it is designed to only pick up very high contrast light sources - shiny lane markings, headlights and such. A representation of that data (potentially in a vector format or whatever) is then passed along to whatever controller(s) make use of it. So, in a nutshell, you'll never get a visible video signal from the device, as Don has suggested.

Also - mkv is a container for video and audio (frequently contains x264 video), it's not a video format itself.

[Spinifex]

Thanks all for responses. Understood.

I reckon in the future, quality streaming cameras will be installed by default, and those utilised for splitting off the safety features for input into the CAN network, rather than using basic cameras as currently used.

[arcadelt]

Reason being - I firmly believe the design rules will change within the next 10 years, to make dash-cams compulsory on new vehicles.

I'm not entirely sure the premise is correct. I think the future (perhaps not in ten years) will see the human taken out of the equation to avoid the incidents that dashcams are designed to capture.

[Spinifex]

....I think the future (perhaps not in ten years) will see the human taken out of the equation to avoid the incidents that dashcams are designed to capture......

Perhaps, but I think we're still a while away from fully autonomous cars being mainstream, and I'd be surprised if dashcams were not made compulsory, from the point of view of minimising fraudulent, incorrect or unnecessary insurance claims which cost the economy millions each year.