Tactical Vehicle 360° Camera Suite — From 11 Separate Power Supplies to One Power Module

A leading Turkish tactical wheeled vehicle manufacturer approached TEDEG Defence while developing a new situational awareness suite for its 4×4 armoured vehicle family. The suite combined 360° surround cameras, night-vision and driver-assistance cameras, a mission computer, an operator display and a crew seat module.

On the first integration prototype, every camera was fed from its own power supply, and the mission computer and display had converters of their own. As the suite grew, so did the number of boxes, connectors and cables in the cabin. Before moving to series production, the manufacturer decided to simplify the architecture and sent TEDEG a Technical Requirements Document together with an Interface Control Document (ICD). The requirement was clear: a single module, fed from the vehicle's 28 VDC military bus, providing isolated camera outputs, also supplying the mission computer, display and seat module, and carrying the video lines in the same harness.

Integration tests on the prototype vehicle and notes from the manufacturer's field trials made the drawbacks of the separately fed architecture plain:

• Harness size and failure points: every camera needed its own power supply, power cable and video cable. The harness volume in the cabin kept growing, and each new connection point became a potential failure point under vibration.
• Transients on the vehicle bus: transients from cranking, the alternator and load switching on the 28 VDC vehicle line passed straight through the commercial camera power supplies to the cameras, and some cameras showed image dropouts and restarts.
• Connector count: each camera used one power and one video connector, with audio and IR control lines routed separately. Assembly time and the risk of misconnection went up.
• Common ground and noise: because the supplies shared a common reference, ground-loop interference appeared on the video lines.
• Maintenance: when a camera failed in the field, it was hard to trace which supply fed which camera, and fault finding took longer.
• Military requirements: the commercial supplies in use were not designed to MIL-STD-1275E, MIL-STD-461G or MIL-STD-810G.

The manufacturer started a development and qualification programme with TEDEG for a solution that would meet all of these requirements in one module.

TEDEG Defence brought the manufacturer's requirements together in the SENTRA KBM Camera Power Distribution Module: every supply line the suite needs is distributed from one compact unit over galvanically isolated outputs. Configuration, pin assignments and harness interfaces were finalised for the platform through the manufacturer's ICD.

The verification unit (S/N 001, manufactured 06/2026) has been delivered to the manufacturer; integration testing on the prototype vehicle and series production qualification are under way.

• The entire suite is supplied from one module: at least 11 isolated camera outputs, the mission computer, the operator display and the seat module.
• One MIL-DTL-38999 connector per camera instead of separate power and video connectors, with the video lines in the same harness.
• The MIL-STD-1275E input and galvanic isolation separate vehicle bus transients from the camera side.
• During maintenance, each camera's supply can be traced connector by connector on a single module.
• The COTS design allows fast procurement in series production.