Soooo, I just came up with a crazy idea for the ipad. I'm not sure if this will work at all butttt... here it is.
While sitting in traffic on the way home from work yesterday, I though to myself, it sucks that the rear facing camera of the mini is useless now that it's in the dash. Then it hit me, the rear facing camera is a separate module that is clipped onto the motherboard of the mini. So if I unclip the camera and extend the wiring to sayyy.... the license plate, I can make myself a back up cam for the ipad mini.
Now, that being said, I know this will by no means be straight conversion. The impedance in a wire that will extend the length of the car is probably no longer negligible and a potential voltage sag or noise issue will develop. Also, depending on the data-rate of the camera communication, the length of the data wire, especially if a clock is included, will almost inevitably cause a transmission line scenario with the possibility of reflections on either end. I'm not sure if this will actually be an issue, just trying to make use of my college classes lol.
Two possible 'solutions' for these potential issues are: properly terminating and shielding the data and clock signals as to avoid reflections and using some sort of active circuit to counteract voltage sag. I'm sure this is more complicated that I think and that epapp will offer some 'real engineering' to help me out
In any case, I think it's worth trying out because, at the very least, it sound like it could be a challenging engineering problem that will be very satisfying if solved. Open to input or suggestions. BTW, copyright/ trademarked/ registered.. lol