2006 Reverse camera suddenly not working.
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W221 S500
2006 Reverse camera suddenly not working.
Car has been parked for a week and the consumer shut off had shut down everything. Car started from the starter battery first go, and gradually everything came back to life except the camera.
A quick scan with DAS and no codes in the camera ecu which suggests that it is otherwise functional. Most of the modules had the obligatory low voltage codes, but everything else is fine.
I had a quick check of the coding in the CGW and Comand and everything appears to be as expected.
Thinking out loud, is the camera input activated as an option in Comand engineering mode? And could it have had a moment due to the voltage drop?
Camera is a factory spec retrofit using genuine parts including the harnesses and has been working flawlessly for almost 2 years.
A quick scan with DAS and no codes in the camera ecu which suggests that it is otherwise functional. Most of the modules had the obligatory low voltage codes, but everything else is fine.
I had a quick check of the coding in the CGW and Comand and everything appears to be as expected.
Thinking out loud, is the camera input activated as an option in Comand engineering mode? And could it have had a moment due to the voltage drop?
Camera is a factory spec retrofit using genuine parts including the harnesses and has been working flawlessly for almost 2 years.
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S500
the wires snap as a std feature of german engineering around the hinge area, and the cameras corrode inside...
diagnostics for the camera may never have been enabled, in a secondary element of the CGW the diagnostic capability can be turned on and off for lots of elements of the car...
for example if you fit DAB in Europe but don't enable diagnostics, the DAB will forever throw "irrelevant" info at the MOST and ALL the experts in the world will never sort it out - everything will work even merc dealers will never know why the car reports the MOST loop incorrectly and that the comand system is out of date yet they can't update it...
diagnostics for the camera may never have been enabled, in a secondary element of the CGW the diagnostic capability can be turned on and off for lots of elements of the car...
for example if you fit DAB in Europe but don't enable diagnostics, the DAB will forever throw "irrelevant" info at the MOST and ALL the experts in the world will never sort it out - everything will work even merc dealers will never know why the car reports the MOST loop incorrectly and that the comand system is out of date yet they can't update it...
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W221 S500
Pretty confident that's not the issue. It's the early set up with the camera ecu that's about 5" square, not the match box sized unit, and DAS is able to see and read the module. There's no codes in it.
When you select reverse, nothing happens on the display. It's almost as though Comand has forgotten that the camera is fitted... it had to be told that it had the camera signal wires fitted. Had it been a break in the harness at the hinge, it would simply go blank. The harness was brand new when I installed it in 2023 and is the correct factory harness following the correct factory routing as per the WIS retrofit.
Once the laptop is charged I will plug it back in and run through the camera function test.
I should add that both camera and ECU were second hand and were plug and play. Having come from another W221 they didn't require calibration and worked exactly as Stuttgart intended.
When you select reverse, nothing happens on the display. It's almost as though Comand has forgotten that the camera is fitted... it had to be told that it had the camera signal wires fitted. Had it been a break in the harness at the hinge, it would simply go blank. The harness was brand new when I installed it in 2023 and is the correct factory harness following the correct factory routing as per the WIS retrofit.
Once the laptop is charged I will plug it back in and run through the camera function test.
I should add that both camera and ECU were second hand and were plug and play. Having come from another W221 they didn't require calibration and worked exactly as Stuttgart intended.
Last edited by AL5461; Sep 7, 2025 at 11:18 PM.
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From: USA
Pretty confident that's not the issue. It's the early set up with the camera ecu that's about 5" square, not the match box sized unit, and DAS is able to see and read the module. There's no codes in it.
When you select reverse, nothing happens on the display. It's almost as though Comand has forgotten that the camera is fitted... it had to be told that it had the camera signal wires fitted. Had it been a break in the harness at the hinge, it would simply go blank. The harness was brand new when I installed it in 2023 and is the correct factory harness following the correct factory routing as per the WIS retrofit.
Once the laptop is charged I will plug it back in and run through the camera function test.
I should add that both camera and ECU were second hand and were plug and play. Having come from another W221 they didn't require calibration and worked exactly as Stuttgart intended.
When you select reverse, nothing happens on the display. It's almost as though Comand has forgotten that the camera is fitted... it had to be told that it had the camera signal wires fitted. Had it been a break in the harness at the hinge, it would simply go blank. The harness was brand new when I installed it in 2023 and is the correct factory harness following the correct factory routing as per the WIS retrofit.
Once the laptop is charged I will plug it back in and run through the camera function test.
I should add that both camera and ECU were second hand and were plug and play. Having come from another W221 they didn't require calibration and worked exactly as Stuttgart intended.
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W221 S500
It's a factory camera fitted with the factory ECU and factory harness purchased brand new from MB and fitted in the factory locations using the retrofit instructions on WIS. Two years ago by me.
It's been working perfectly fine until last week. I haven't used the car since then, so it hasn't been a priority.
When I get a chance, I'll investigate it in the manner I indicated in a previous post. And when I do, I'll report back.
In the meantime you can whistle Dixie...
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W221 S500
All working exactly as it should again.
When the battery went flat the Assistance settings defaulted to OFF.
So absolutely zero to do with the installation or wiring damage.
Cautionary note to self... RTFM before digging out the laptop🤦
When the battery went flat the Assistance settings defaulted to OFF.
So absolutely zero to do with the installation or wiring damage.
Cautionary note to self... RTFM before digging out the laptop🤦
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1983 Nissan Shltbox
Strong work. Glad to hear.
1) I didn't know who did the retrofit, you didn't mention
2) My comment wasn't a dig at you personally due to the above
3) "It's always in the history" is a very accurate general assumption as it is not at all uncommon for the root cause of an issue to be the mistake/sub-par workmanship of whoever touched it last, no matter what "it" is.
Thanks for following up with the solution.
1) I didn't know who did the retrofit, you didn't mention
2) My comment wasn't a dig at you personally due to the above
3) "It's always in the history" is a very accurate general assumption as it is not at all uncommon for the root cause of an issue to be the mistake/sub-par workmanship of whoever touched it last, no matter what "it" is.
Thanks for following up with the solution.
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W221 S500
Strong work. Glad to hear.
1) I didn't know who did the retrofit, you didn't mention
2) My comment wasn't a dig at you personally due to the above
3) "It's always in the history" is a very accurate general assumption as it is not at all uncommon for the root cause of an issue to be the mistake/sub-par workmanship of whoever touched it last, no matter what "it" is.
Thanks for following up with the solution.
1) I didn't know who did the retrofit, you didn't mention
2) My comment wasn't a dig at you personally due to the above
3) "It's always in the history" is a very accurate general assumption as it is not at all uncommon for the root cause of an issue to be the mistake/sub-par workmanship of whoever touched it last, no matter what "it" is.
Thanks for following up with the solution.
I have retrofitted a multitude factory options to the car inspite of a couple of persistent naysayers... so get a bit defensive when that work gets questioned.
I knew I had seen it in a menu somewhere but when I couldn't find it on DAS or in the Comand engineering mode I figured that I must have missed the obvious. IC was the one place I didn't look but there's a setting in there for saving four driver preferences. That's when I checked the Assistance menu on in the cluster and hey presto.
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W221 S500
If you bothered to read my previous posts...
It was working fine.
Then after the battery going flat it stopped working.
DAS showed absolutely nothing wrong with the coding or any faults in the system.
I then remembered the menu on the cluster and using the steering wheel controls, went into the Assistance menu and found that the camera was switched to OFF. Two button presses later and it works as it should.
If I had RTFM I would have saved some diagnosis time. But to counter your insinuation... All the menus are present and fully functional. As they would have been from the factory. I know you don't want to believe that someone can do any of this stuff without Benzninja, but that's the truth of it.
Just finished retrofitting several items to my new to me ML, and again it all works as it should. There's some learning and some head scratching involved and the hardest part is gathering the parts, but none of it is rocket science.
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W221 S500
Had to use the physical key to get into it and plugged in the laptop to clear out all the low voltage codes... when the consumer shut off had activated it takes an age for everything to come back online, but at no point were there any codes in the camera ecu.
I drove it forward off the drive to a car wash,.washed it, and drove home. Only used reverse to put it back onto the drive and saw that it wasn't working.
Immediate thought process was that washing it had somehow caused the issue so straight in with the diagnostics.
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1983 Nissan Shltbox
It is very strange. I've had terabytes of data still holding strong on unpowered external 2.5 HDD/SSD's sitting in closets for decades. You'd think cars could hold a settings memory the same.
