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.
The box consists of an LED dash display, sensor transmitter, 4 ultrasonic sensors with bezels and 21mm hole-saw
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.
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
The sensors should only be mounted on plastic bumpers and on an area that is relatively flat and perpendicular to the floor
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
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
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)
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.
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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Stan