November 11, 2023 - November 16, 2023 - Early Thanksgiving - Backup Camera Saga - Module - Christmas - Audio Books

Early Thanksgiving Dinner:

On November 11th Alexa and Aaron came down from St. Louis to share an early Thanksgiving dinner before we leave for Florida. Kelly outdid herself once again with a great turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and buns. We were too stuffed to attack the pumpkin pie Alexa brought for dessert.

Dead Battery and Transmission Module:

The backup camera, monitor, and second wiring harness were returned. I went out to install them Tuesday and found that Homer's battery was completely dead. What? A little investigation while the battery was on the charger revealed that the dome light had been on. The doors had been closed and I hadn't gone near the dome light switch on the ceiling, so this befuddled me. Upon further investigation I found that sometimes the dome light would go off when the door was closed and sometimes it would not. I have no idea what that is about all of a sudden. I never had this issue before. I sprayed both buttons with contact cleaner and watched to make sure the light went off each time. From now on I will have to watch every time I close the door. 

Upon opening the hood to hook the charger to the battery I found the old transmission module laying on the top of the air cleaner on the top of the engine. I was shocked that it did not fall off on the fifty-mile, winding, two-lane trip home from the transmission shop several weeks ago. It is sizeable piece of equipment, about six inches by six inches by an inch and half thick. It could have done some damage. Here is a picture.

The good news is that this is absolute proof they replaced it with a new one.

Backup Monitor and Camera:

I plugged the monitor and camera into the wiring harness and hooked up 12-volt power. The monitor worked. Yippee!!! I then spent an hour fishing a wire from the top of the dash, where the monitor sits, to the bottom of the dash where the wiring harness connects to the cable going back to the camera. I got the wiring harness through the dash. Before continuing with the installation, I checked that the monitor was still operating. IT WASN'T! NOTHING! The monitor would not come on no matter what I did. I could again hear a low clicking noise coming from the monitor. That doesn't seem right. Why it has worked for the RV Cam guys every time and won't work for me I have no idea. I believe something is wrong with the monitor, but I don't want to buy a new one from them because I cannot return it if it is not the problem. I gave up on this project for this season and put Homer in storage. In the spring I will buy a new system. The current monitor is ten years old. The camera is much older than that and only in black and white.

Christmas:

Alexa is coming to Florida for Christmas this year, as well as Erin and the two grandsons from California. We will have a house full for a week. We are not used to having a toddler around so we will have to work on making the place "toddler proof" before he arrives. (If that is possible.) It will be great fun for these old people.

The Trip South:

While driving on long trips we like to listen to audio books which we download to our phones. In Homer we take a Bluetooth Bose speaker and set it on the engine doghouse and Bluetooth connect it to our phones. It works great. The Toyota truck has an upgraded Pioneer stereo system that has Bluetooth capability so we can communicate with our phones. Kelly and I tried multiple times to pair our phones to this stereo but it wouldn't recognize our phones to pair them. Encountering this technical glitch, we planned on using the "Homer method" (using our Bose Bluetooth speaker sitting on the counsel connected to our phones). In talking about this with my daughter, Annie, she informed me that if the stereo has an "Auxiliary" plug we can just buy a cable to connect the auxiliary plug on the stereo to the phone charging port. I had no idea you could do this. When cell phones had headphone jacks I had a cable to connect the auxiliary port on the stereo to the headphones port to broadcast from the phone through the stereo speakers. I immediately went to Walmart to pick up the cable we needed. They had 10,000 plugs and the only one out of stock was the one I needed. I got online and ordered one from Amazon. It arrived yesterday and upon plugging it in, the stereo will broadcast our audio books. YIPPEE! All we have to do Saturday morning is load a backpack with a change of clothes and our medicine and we are ready to roll with a one night stop over somewhere!