Parking Assist

I ordered the parking assist sensors last month. I decided to go with a 4 sensor set up for front and rear for a total of 8 sensors. Basically, you end up purchasing two 4 sensor kits. The purpose of parking sensors is to assist the driver with an audio/visual notification of obstructions within 5 feet of the front or rear bumpers.

This is one of the kits.

I already know that parking a car on the lift or under the lift will be a close thing. It is easy to park a car under the lift. It is harder to park a car going up the ramps and keep everything straight. I can park the Camry and Boxster without any problems. The minivan fits on the lift if you remove the side mirrors, so there are limitations to what I can park on the lift. The driver's rear view and perception in the GTM is minimal.

They sent me 2 sets of sensors. This is the basic set.

The sensors are  position inside the bumper fascia. This means it will be inside the fiberglass shell. Forward sensors are connected to the brake light. Rear sensors are connected to the reverse lights. You might think forward sensors are overkill, but I have discovered that parking the Corvette and/or the Boxster (with its new front end) can be a challenge as you just don't have a great sense for the distance between the front end and the curb.

This is the second set of sensirs that have double sided 3M auto motive tape.

The sensors connect to a control box. The control box is wired to a power source. Most likely with wire taps. This is very low power system. I will be employing LED lamps through out the GTM, so tapping these sensors into those circuits should be a minimal load.

Control box, power leads, buzzer and buzzer interface wire.

The control box has outlets for buzzer and display. I plan to only use a buzzer system. I will augment the parking assist sensors with forward and rear cameras wired into the stereo/Mp3/BlueTooth/GPS system on the center console. One of this year's projects is to upgrade the Boxster's electronics. I plan to add a camera to that project. I will use the Boxster as a camera test bed.

Control box with inputs for power, left sensor, left center sensor, right center sensor and ring sensor. Outputs for display and buzzer.

This set changes the ISIS wiring setup. At the time, I reasoned the parking assist required a separate circuit. Since this system is designed to piggyback on lighting circuits, there is no need for a separate ISIS circuit. The other change to the ISIS wiring diagrams is the elimination of a separate circuit for HomeLink. Since I am going with a GPS Navigation system on the center console, I can move HomeLink functionality to the rear view mirror.