Parking lines

i've gotten pretty good using the camera too as long as there are some kind of lines or markers to follow.

I'm still trying to get the driveway squared away though. First, backing in from the street I have a soft ramp that puts the camera image in the air. That's not even the tricky part though. I only have grass on the one side I use to ( guess? ) my angle backing down the rest of the drive and I still haven't got the howto get into the center every time, around what seems like a bend in the grass line. I was also thinking of painting a line down the driveway a week or two ago. Great idea for the garage, and the pics came out good too.

The worst is when it's dark and raining or even worse snowing at night. Sometimes I just pull in front first and deal with backing out for the next drive.

 

I find the backup camera, only useful when you get to within 36 inches of your target. I still back in the old fashion way, staring through the hatch glass. I find it pretty useless, because it doesn't have predictive directional guide-lines. I've installed a similar backup camera on my 2002 GMC into a cheap double DIN head unit. Even that unit had predictive directional guide-lines. Great for backing into camp sites, since I'm usually loaded up and can't see through the rear glass.

 

Oh, if only you had the Panoramic View Monitor option, then you'd be really impressed. It's f-ing sweet.

 

Yeah its seems they used whatever cheap outdated cam they had left for the standard backup camera - the 360 is like a tickle down from an established (but not state of the art) Lexus system so it looks much better but still behind some other brands. Not that it matters much at this point.

 

This may be a bit off topic, but does anybody know of a hack to get the backup cam on at times other than just backing up?

 

I also added PAPI (Precision Approach Parking Indicator) to my garage - amazingly easy and consistent parking:

 

Man, more and more, I wish we had just increased our house budget another 50k to get a double car garage. We probably need to keep a second car, and I would love if we could have both in a garage, vs one outside all the time. We need to extend our single laneway for the other car to sit there anyway, so that we can more easily get the prius in and out of the garage anyway. Oh well. Such are the decisions and compromises we make. Don't really want to move either. Too happy with where we are and the location. Only minor gripe is that the second car will be outside all the time lol. And we'll need to have a future charge post put outside too as one day we're probably looking at BEV being standard.

 

Tube frame and canvis carport in the driveway? Or too funky for the neighborhood?

 

It doesnt change that its a single car laneway, and two car garage just makes it easier to work around given my wife does shift work. Swapping cars around is no fun on our somewhat busy at commute times street corner. It would be funky but I wouldn't care. But the ice and snow probably make a carport like that, less advisable. Unless we put it in front of the front door lmao. I don't think that would be looked well upon. I'll just end up putting a charging cord for the BEV future on a post out front im sure, for the car that parks on the interlock extended driveway.