Installing parking sensors

Going straight from driving a little VW Golf to a big van with no back windows is pretty scary when it comes to parking up in towns and cities. I decided I either need a reversing camera or some kind of parking sensor. The latter was probably the cheaper and more practical of the options – I didn’t want to have to hide a TFT screen every time I leave it parked where as a cheap little LED indicator could be fixed permanently on the dash with no worry.

I payed about a tenner more (total £24.99) for a this wireless parking sensor because I really couldn’t be bothered to run in another wire from front to back.

reverse-parking-sensor-unboxing — The box consists of an LED dash display, sensor transmitter, 4 ultrasonic sensors with bezels and 21mm hole-saw

instructions — Manual has nice illustrations but the text reads a little strange at times. Its hardly needed anyway – this thing is pretty straight forward to install.

LED-display — I thought I’d start with the easiest thing – sticking down the LED display to the dash. It sits neatly and is not too imposing. I hid the wire down the back (it goes to the cigarette lighter socket)

The correct size hole-saw (21mm) comes in the box. It is important to get the holes for the sensors clean and of the exact size

sensor-holes — The sensors should only be mounted on plastic bumpers and on an area that is relatively flat and perpendicular to the floor

4-sensors — The 4 sensors are labelled ABDC. I installed these from left to right. They have rubber splines around the outside and fit nice and tight

Angled bezels are provided to get the sensors fitting level. I did not need these though

reverse-light-connections — I connected the power wires of the reverse sensor unit to the reverse brake light wires so it only comes on when the reverse gear is selected

sensor-connections — showing power and 4 sensor wires. This unit stays at the back of the vehicle and sends the sensor information to the LED display on the dash via radio frequency (433MHz I think)

mounting — I stuck this down with the provided double sided tape. I could put it a bit more out the way (inside the steel column) but I was concerned the signal would not reach all the way through my big van since this is primarily designed for a car.

dash-display — The display is nice. It has left and right distance gauge, an overall distance value and an audible beep at varying frequencies (fast beeps = closer to object)

Quick summary

A really decent parking sensor for just over 20 quid! This took about 90mins to install out of the box. The only thing I don’t like is the design/quality of the header connectors on the sensor PCB but thats just me being a bit of a design snob. I did notice the performance can be slightly erratic in the rain and when bushes are blowing about but nothing to worry about. Overall , this thing works well though and definitely worth the extra few quid for wireless.

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Old van to cosy home in 3 months

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