Quote:
Originally Posted by Christ
Eddles - Check those links I posted above, you can get a camera/LCD combo for less than $100.
Matter of factly, if you could find a decent place to mount an overhead camera (flip down LCD), you'd probably still come in less than $100 after mounting the camera and have a fully functional rear view system.
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My main problem with the flip-down LCD screen is that it would block the rear view mirror wouldn't it... And I'm worried about having a 7" LCD screen "in my face" as it'd only be half a metre away. British cars are small by US standards as you know... 3.5" LCD screens are too small I believe. There's also the cost - more below.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about this subject on my commute today (140 miles round trip!) and I think the best solution for me is to mount 2 cameras in the rear bumper on the corners, linked to two LCD screens. My problem was placement, so I had the chance to have a good look on the inside of my car. The most obvious and best placement for the screens would be next to the door mirrors on the inside, but I'm worried about theft. (Oooh he has 2 GPSes, let nick them!) I then remembered several years ago someone mounted a dot matrix character based LCD screen in the sun visor, which made me think "Why not mount both LCD screens in the sun visor itself?". I quite like the idea, I can flip up the sun visor once I park the car, hiding the screens. The only problem being that if I need to use the sun visor to block the sun coming in the drivers side window, and I unmount it and flip it to the side, the LCD screens would be facing outside, on my side. My second problem is camera placement - I only have one shot on getting it right. Get it wrong, such as both cameras pointing up in the sky, and I'll need a new bumper. Still, I'm pretty tempted by this idea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
[Edit: the Kamm panels were added during the same period. I think that for my car the video mirrors added about 3% or ~1.5mpg. Which is in line with what Darin wrote at the beginning of this thread.
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Interesting. Taking the current fuel cost of my car, which is 6.30p per mile. I estimate I'll be driving 15,000 miles a year - which is optimistic - I usually drive 12,000 miles a year - it's hard to figure out this number at the moment as the current rate I'm driving, I'm driving 50,000 miles a year, but that'll no longer be the case next month. So, 15,000 * 6.30p = £945 a year. I feel a 3% reduction in fuel consumption is slightly optimistic for my car, but let's go for that... 3% of £945 is £28.35 a year. And that's optimistic. Taking the 2 LCD screens suggested by Christ, that's $110, and converting that to British money and excluding postage, that's £68. So the tech will take 2.4 years to pay off, more likely 3 years. However, I plan to keep my car until 2015 at least, and the system is sort of transferable between cars, this is fairly tempting. Of course, there is the possibility that I might sell the car way before 2015, or I crash it, or it breaks down beyond economical repair, but that's unlikely. I hope.
Additionally with the camera system, I get the benefit of better rear view in the dark, and a far better view out back especially considering the rear vision out of the back of my car is abysmal thanks to the really
high boot design, spoiler and the massive C pillar blocking the view out the back. With the rear view camera system, it'd be a much easier to park the car, as I only am able to see the upper half of the windscreen or rear window of other cars out of the rear window of my car when I reverse.