Garmin StreetPilot 7500

[Jerry Winchester]

Does anyone on the board have one of these or ever used one?

http://www.garmin.com/products/sp7500/gallery/pt-sp7500DYN-LG.jpg

Since completion of the H3 Envy Taco Tour, I have coveted a better back up camera monitor and a cleaner set up for my GPS. I have been pulling the Garmin 396 out of my plane because it has the XM sat. weather and radio which I really like. This unit sits in its holder on the top of the dash with the power cord dangled down plugged into the lighter outlet.

Since the 7500 has AV input, I wanted to know if anyone had dash mounted one and integrated it with the backup camera? The literature says it can be done and it looks easy enough that even Lew could do it, but that may not be the case.

Of course, now that Mike bought the 496 at OSH last year and I used it on the trip, I may need one of those for the Bonanza. Unless the 596 shows up this year and I can one-up him at the same time........

[nrhareiner]

Good morning Jerry,

Yes, I do use the 7500 with the backup monitor capability. One of the problems in installing is to get power to the camera. I had a system where the monitor provided the power to the camera. I had to splice the wire powering the 7500 so that it would also get power to the camera. When that was done all worked well. The Garmin products provide great GPS capabilities.

Have fun

Kim Sloan
2002 Vantare XLII-S@
2007 Dodge Megacab

[MangoMike]

JDUB,

For what it's worth:

This was posted by Kerno in December of 2005 over at stuff:

Garmin is one of my favorite brands, so when I saw the post about a 7" screen I went right to the website. Yes, it is a 7" screen, but both the 7500 and the 7200 share the same mediocre 480 x 234 pixel resolution. I'll be waiting for more resolution for my $2000. Heck, the Garmin C340 with a 3.5 inch screen has 320 x 240 pixels. Let's see, a 7" screen is twice as tall as a 3.5 but has 8 less pixels of vertical resolution but costs well over twice as much. Huh?

I don't know if they've change the screen resolution since then.

...and don't even think of trying to one up me. Remember I'm a card carrying, formica badge member of the PP's.

mm

[MangoMike]

... and another thing.

The B & W camera in the Liberty has much better night time resolution than the color camera. The color camera is almost worthless at night as it barely picks up headlights. I would like to switch back to the B&W, or add another B&W monitor.

I would do a test run with a color camera at night to see the results in action. Of course if you don't have a guilty conscious and don't care who's following you, it probably doesn't matter.

mm

[BrianE]

Jerry,

Was hoping the 72/7500 would become a subject of conversation . I installed one last summer along with a new wide angle color backup monitor. I am also a Garmin aviation fan. I chose the 7200 and have been very happy with it. The resolution is just fine considering the display is large and the colors and contrast are excellent. Have found the Street Pilot system dead simple with directions accurate most of the time (we always check them against a map) but am a little disappointed at the POI database and its search capabilities. As with any LCD display, and all Garmin products seem to share problem, the unit must be mounted so it can be viewed without parallax and in a shaded area. Notice in the photo I had to tilt the unit to eliminate parallax (you can see that it doesn't fit the hole very well, will fix this after POG III). Overall I rate the installation as first class.

My original monitor was a '94 vintage B/W sony that Liberty had installed as original equipment. Since Sony is pretty proud of their products, and since I knew nothing about monitors, a web search turned up Tim at http://www.rvcams.com/. Tim informed me that Sony uses a 4 wire connection cable that is exclusive to their monitors. He has developed a set of adapters that allow the use of the more conventional wiring schemes common to cheaper and better monitors. The setup he sold me was up and running in about 2 hours and required no rewiring, soldering or butt connectors. To activate the monitor, I bought Garmin's DR cable which is designed for use with the 7500 for their dead reckoning feature and also has a single wire 12volt backup camera power source. This wire is designed to be connected to the reverse power source your current camera uses. Would suggest you don't do this because it takes no less than 6 selections in the Garmin to activate the monitor when you are not backing up. I simply installed a toggle switch which allows instant switching between monitor and nav functions of the GPS, works great. As to night use, the unit I installed was recommended by Tim and it works better than the Sony B/W did. Hope this helps.

BrianE
94Liberty XL

[jello_jeep]

... and another thing.

The B & W camera in the Liberty has much better night time resolution than the color camera. The color camera is almost worthless at night as it barely picks up headlights. I would like to switch back to the B&W, or add another B&W monitor.

mm

Mango, use a day/night cam. It will operate in color mode during the day so you get the nice colors to see (actually is better in daylight) and switches to b/w automatically at night for improved night resolution. If you want to be really cool, you can mount some infared illuminators on the tail and really see great at night! They also make some of the cameras with the IR illuminators built into the cam, range varying with the size of the camera & numbers or IRs.. If your statement above indicates you are thinking of adding another b/w monitor and run a "Y' from your existing color camera into both monitors, save your $$, the problem is the cam.

I have a Garmin 7200 I just got not long ago, and really love it. This far just set it on the dash, but in dash mounting is on the long list of things to do. I reckon I will have to opt for an exterior antenna for sure then!

[Jerry Winchester]

Mike,

Did you think to ask Chris "AP" Yates if he turned off the backup camera shortly after he turned off the CB shortly after he dumped that 150 gallons of turd water on his toad and everyone else rolling down the Interstate?

JDUB