trader wrote:Just bought a "new" touring car and a bit worried that the better half may nudge my pride and joy in the tandem garage. Created a domestic when I made the claim but I have a reversing set up with two sensors sitting around so I'm putting them on regardless (on the front). My query is seeing as they would be on all the time, what would the battery drain be like? I was going to just connect them up to the battery. Do they only used power when movement is detected?
Any views.
PS I have bought one of those infra red lights - I find it fantastic but she plows straight on....
Any views (cost to much to move her on so dont go there!)
In my mind you're mounting the sensors to the car - let me know if I'm wrong; but to answer your actual question: they will use power all the time, depending on the type they have to emit (usually) ultrasonic sound which they then wait for a reflection of the sound, if it reflects "fast" the sensor is close to something which triggers whatever it's plugged into saying "we're close to something" - there are different types of sensors, but they all work about the same way (needs power to emit something, needs power to pick up the signal being reflected, and finally needs power to beep or flash or both)
Having said that, they shouldn't use a great deal of power. I'd be more worried about them doing random things while driving around.
eg: If you're stopped in a turning lane, someone turning in from a side street across the front of the car is likely to trigger it, if you live in the city you're likely to last about 2 days before the better half tries to 'install' the sensors somewhere you'd rather not have them
I've lined up a shelf in the garage so when I can see it through the triangle window on the passenger side, the back of the car is in far enough to close the roller door. (Similar to taminga's strategy)
Something that worked really well for my ex was "the reflector game" - the road we lived on had a series of the blue fire hydrant reflectors on the road, we used to alternate running over the reflectors with the left and right wheels. The benefit of this is it's non-threatening (if you don't tell her why it's a game) and both of you will get very good at knowing where the edges of the car are - no points no wheels, one point one wheel, two points two wheels. She ended up at a nearly 100% hit rate, which was better then me
And finally, to complete the brain dump, remove the flashing light from the kit Magpie linked to, wire it to an air horn, and she'll have a very definitive "you should have stopped already" noise, and let her know that noise = too far - I'd try nearly everything else suggested before this, or you could find yourself beaten half to death with a rolling pin. Not saying all women are violent psychopaths, they just ... are ... sometimes....
