How to Add CarPlay and a Reverse Camera on the Cheap

I drive new cars every day, so I'm spoiled by the latest gadgets, gizmos, and safety gear. My other half doesn't care a lick about cars (opposites attract!), but appreciates the finer features rolling out in the new cars I drive—especially Apple CarPlay and reverse cameras. So when we purchased an extremely high value (read cheap) six-year-old Smart car last November, I promised to at least bring it up to 2018 specs on those two fronts.

Weeks later at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, I discovered a new entry-level stereo on the lavish Pioneer stand featuring Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and rearview camera compatibility, with a big, bright, high-def 6.2-inch capacitive-touch screen. Priced at $349 on popular catalogue sites, it's not the cheapest way to get these features. A Korean-made Dual brand unit at Walmart sells for $184 and matches most features with a bit more power output than the Thai-manufactured Pioneer (240 watts versus 200), but the Dual lacks an Aux-jack input—still a useful feature for connecting the oldest devices like a Walkman, Discman, vintage iPod, or our portable SiriusXM player. So I ordered a Pioneer MVH-1400NEX head unit, a Pioneer ND-BC8 rear-view camera ($100), and the requisite installation kits to adapt the head unit to the dash and to the stereo's wiring and antenna to the Smart's wiring (sites like Crutchfield.com sell these separately for $15, $13, and $8 but they typically throw them in for free when purchasing the stereo).

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Step one is to locate videos online illustrating how to remove the factory stereo. Without these I'd never have guessed that the only fastener securing the bezel surrounding my original Bosch radio was accessed by removing the switch panel beneath the radio, and that it had a TX20 Torx head. Of course, in the video the guy removed the switch panel by simply grabbing it and pulling. When I tried this, the switch faces broke free of their backing electronics. Yikes! Happily it all snapped back together after I used a putty knife to pry the back part out of the dash.

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Every man reading this just did an eye-roll, and yes, I too skimmed this typical English-as-a-second-language safety-first document. Said skimming would come back to haunt me, but I heeded the most critical notes warning "don't power up until you've done X or risk grave bodily harm or a voided warranty!" These included disconnecting the battery (always via the ground terminal), which prompted a hunt for the Smart's, which I discovered lives under the passenger footboard.

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With the instructions open for both the install-kit wiring harness and the new stereo, I determined which stereo wires matched up with which Smart harness adapter wires. Happily, most were the same or similar color. Lots of folks use crimp connections or (worse yet) twisting and tape, but the truly anal retentive among us know that the best way to join two wires for good is to slip a piece of heat-shrink on over one wire, slide it way back, strip the insulation, point the wires at each other twisting each around the other. Then apply flux paste and solder them. When they cool, slide the heat-shrink over the solder joint, applying heat from a lighter or match to seal it to the soldered joint like original insulation.

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The MVH-1400NEX supports Bluetooth hands-free calling, as did the factory radio, so it needs a microphone connection. Sadly, the YouTube consensus was that there's no connecting the factory mic wiring to an aftermarket radio. So I clipped the new microphone to the sunroof-shade track and tucked its wiring behind the A-pillar trim (using a broad putty knife), routing it up and over the steering column, securing it so that it never touches anything that moves, and plugging it in to the radio.

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Before mounting a new stereo, always double-check connections, plug everything in, reconnect the battery, key the ignition on, and try everything out. For me, nothing functioned. Comparing the install kit's harness against the end connected to the car, I discovered that both sides had several voids—in different locations. A big raspberry to the Metra Turbo Wire folks! Using a voltage meter, I determined which leads on the Smart harness supplied constant battery voltage, ignition-on voltage, and ground. Turns out a power lead and the ground were swapped, which blew a fuse. Moving these adapter-kit leads required using a super-skinny eyeglass-repair screwdriver to depress the retainer tang on the connectors that needed to move, clicking them back into their new spots. With the stereo up and running, the camera image still refused to appear on the screen. My skim of the instructions missed the explanation that to use a camera you must go into a settings menu and turn on the camera input jack. Oops.

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With everything functioning, it was time to mount the retaining brackets to the stereo, run the various USB and Aux jack cables to an accessible location (in my case, the glove box). The brackets and bezel fit perfectly, though the bezel was not an exact match of factory grain and gloss.

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Mounting the camera is a bigger job. This being a Smart car, such installations involve removing the plastic OUTER panel in question, never the inner panel. They all come off easily (thanks to YouTube tutorials) using TX10 and/or TX20 Torx fasteners. Mounting the camera next to a license-plate lamp presented an opportunity to simply select a drill bit the size of my wiring cable and force said spinning drill bit into the corner of the lamp's rectangular hole, creating a void for the cable to pass through next to the lamp bezel. The camera attaches with adhesive, though it is possible to drill tiny holes for small screws if the adhesive ever gives up. The camera cable includes a very small connecter, but it's not quite small enough to fit through the rubber conduit containing the rest of the tailgate's electrical leads, so I cut off the connector leaving enough wire to solder it back together. By shoving a rigid copper 8-gauge wire through the same conduit and taping it to the end of my cut cable, I was able to coax the camera wire through and into the vehicle interior. The head unit needs to know when the car is in reverse, and the easiest way to do this is to run a lead to a reverse lamp, so I soldered a 20-gauge wire to the wiring connector powering the reverse lamp. I then routed the camera wire and purple reverse lead together from there, under the cargo-area carpeting, along the sill plate, under the carpet and up into the dash to the head unit.

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Once everything was done and we listened to a few different sources, we discovered the crappy factory speaker in the driver door was blown. Off came the door skins and in went two new 6-inch speakers. When the mounting screw locations on the door were farther outboard than those on the speakers, I simply cut the speaker paper and support structure away from the outer plastic mounting ring of the old speakers and used these rings to clamp the new speakers in place. I probably should have made a video demonstrating that hack…