Front and Rear Cameras In Your Toyota Alphard

One of the most important feature in the Toyota Alphard is the front and rear camera.

Driving such a big car on the road or in the car park required you to be able to see the surrounding. Without the cameras, you'll have to "judge" the distance of the objects around your car as you maneuver it. Imagine when you have to reverse park, you have to get down from the car to see how far you are from the objects behind you (it could be another car, a pole or the wall) which is very inconvenient. With the camera installed at the front/rear of your giant, you can instantly see the distance of the object from HU display without the need to get down.

The front camera is mounted at the lower edge of the center of the front grille.

Depending on the year of manufacture, you may have a two-sides view model or three-sides view front camera (the Toyota manual called it the BlindCorner option). If it is a two-sides view camera, you will see both sides of the front section of your car as shown below


If it is a three-sides view camera, you will see the left and right of the front edge of the car and also the front section directly in front of your front bumper (as shown in the photo below)


The front camera view is normally displayed on the HU the moment you switch on your car. You can turn if off by pressing the camera button on the steering wheel.

Most Alphard owners will normally leave the front camera view on the HU during their normal driving. The camera view will be turned off once the car started moving and it will also be automatically turn on again once the car come to a standstill.

For the three-sides view camera in the NFL model, there is an button on the HU to change the view from two-sides to three-sides or vice versa (see the circled button in the photo below). I have not seen such button on the pre-facelift model.


Also, on the NFL model, if you find it distracting, there is also a "auto" button labelled ”自動" that you "touched" (remember this is a touch screen LCD) on the HU to turn off the camera view when you start the car.


You can turn on the camera display manually by pressing the camera button on the steering wheel. I like to leave the camera off when I am driving and then only turn it on when I need it during parking.

The rear camera is mounted on the rear boot just above number plate. The rear camera view will only automatically turn on when you shift the gear lever to the reverse position. On the rear camera view, it show the maximum distance that your car can reverse in the form of a yellow rectangle and the extreme position in red line (see photo below)


When you start to turn your steering, the yellow line will move in the direction where you are turning to while a green line will appear to show where your car original position is relative to the current turning position (see photo below).


The middle yellow line is about 1 meter from the rear of the car while the red line is about 0.5 meter from the rear of the car. The white curve line at the bottom of the screen is the bumper edge.

You can maneuver your car into a parking lot using the yellow line for the turning angle, the green line as the guide to the parking lot position and the red line as the maximum distance you can move before you hit any object. Once you shift the gear lever out of the reverse position, the reverse camera view on the HU will be turn off automatically. Also, after the reverse camera view is turned on and you press any other buttons on the HU, the reverse camera display will be turn off automatically. Hence you'll need to shift the gear lever again into reserve position to see the rear camera view.

Typically, you will use both the camera views in conjunction with the sonar sensor to give you the confidence level on how safe to move close to the front or to reverse. Sonar sensor is not a standard option on the lower model so you'll need to check if the unit you are looking for come fitted with one.

The sonar sensor is shown in the photo below.

The four dots on each corner of the car will be lighted when the sonar sensor detected the car is too close to an object.

When you car get too close to an object, the sonar sensor will start to beep, the green dot of the corner which is close to that object will flash slowly in red now and a yellow icon will be lid on the HU showing which corner of your car is too close to that object. If you continue to move even closer to that object, the yellow icon will turn into red while the sonar's red dot will now flash continously. Please take caution when the red light flashes on as it mean you are too close to that object. Any further movement you make and your car may hit that object.

Once the red dot on the sonar sensor is lighted previously, the next time you switch on your engine, it will continue to light up again until you move your car away from that object to a safe distance. Therefore do not be alarmed when you hear a continuous beep and the red light flashing when you next switch on your car!