Well, I had thought I should probably avoid what is likely to be a long post unless there was some interest...but it makes sense that people would not be able to reply without knowing what I needed.
So here are the details:
As mentioned in my original post, I have two parking aid cameras installed on my truck. Both of these cameras are Ford factory OEM and were chosen for the clean fit and finished look. I currently have both of these cameras routed to a switching device (simple relay circuit) then the single video output of the switch device is then routed to the display of the trucks in-dash navigation system. Additionally the back camera video signal is also routed to the rearview mirror which has a small built-in LCD. Both cameras are powered all the time but the displays are triggered by a 12vdc signal. This signal is connected to the truck such that it is on whenever the truck is put in reverse. So to summarize the operation of the current setup, there are two cameras: one mounted on the rear and one mounted on the front. Both cameras can be displayed (one at a time) on the in dash navigation system and the rear camera is also displayed on the rearview mirror. There is a switch to control which camera is displayed on the navigation system. But the display only displays the camera signal when the reverse signal is on.
So that is what I currently have.
The first problem is that the camera mounted on the front of the truck is actually a backup camera and therefore it has a mirrored image (flipped left to right). I thought finding a device to flip the image would be a simple thing. However this has not proven to be true.
Another problem is that due to both cameras being Ford OEM (and therefore having distance markers) the images produced by the cameras are very similar. This similarity makes it very easy to inadvertently be looking at the image from the front camera while backing up…a recipe for problems
. To solve this I have decided I would like to add a bit of text overlay to both images. The image from the front camera would have the text ‘FRONT’ overlaid in the upper left corner while the image from the rear camera would say ‘REAR’.
Finally I need to be able to turn the display(s) on and switch the source for the display with buttons on my steering wheel (also OEM just re-purposed). In addition to being able turn the displays on from the switch they must still respond to the truck being put in reverse. This response should be that the display(s) are turned on and the source switched to the rear camera.
Because I am not sure I described everything clearly enough for people to understand what I am trying to accomplish, I created a schematic (of sorts) which I think will more clearly describe what I want.
Here it is (there may be issues with this...as I said this is not my area of expertise):
**broken link removed**