This is an absolutely perfect observation, and addresses one side note I was leading to at the introduction of this thread: With the above products, we can literally "see" the difference in quality between the Chinese products and products available from a different country (the same company/country that provides out factory fuel pump). Unless you're a chemist with a mass spectrometer, you can't know the quality of the plastic in a Chinese CPS, ICP sensor, or UVCH. Unless you're a metallurgist, you can't know the quality of the metal in the Dorman up pipes. Short of being a scientist, the only way you know you just "Wally-Worlded" your Powerstroke, is in reflection on the side of the road or while backing off the throttle with exhaust leaks. But... if you have eyes, you can see the quality of their approach to camera and software products above - before the purchase. Zero difference in approach to their vehicle hardware - it's just easier to spot here.

 

I'm all about this 360 technology!

 

 

I bought a new Bosch construction tool the other day. I'd been eyeing it for several years now, but couldn't justify it, as the very uniquely engineered Bosch unit was the second most expensive model on the market for this particular type of tool, exceeded in price only by Festool, which is another German brand. But finally, an acute need for this tool arose, and the Bosch model popped up on a brief but significantly discounted sale, so I finally bought the gizmo.


Imagine my surprise when I opened up the Bosch box, only to find that the tool was Made in China!

 

Isn't that crazy? I was taught on a stick shift. I recently mentioned to my wife that it's probably going to be impossible to find a cheap manual car in 7 years for my oldest son to learn on. Most of the younger people I know who drive have no clue what a manual transmission is. When I bought my truck, I searched high and low for a manual that also had a manual transfer case, but could not find one with less than 500k miles. Every dang one that had a manual had esof 4wd. Go figure that one out! I settled on a auto with a manual transfer case.

 

Say something about this photo
I have a designated supply of tools fir my rig, which goes with me everywhere..CRAFTMAN...suffice to say, the 3/8 wratchet went on me. So, hit my local Sears for not the exchange, but to get new gizzards installed..sorry sir, we just replace now. Ok, cool.. They go and pull the wratchet off shelf, take mine and I'm on my way. Only to get home and see on package...MADE IN CHINA...damn

 

Okay, now you're gonna hate me....

Our plan is to get the Excursion a rear view camera setup to watch the hitch and then use the REMOTE CONTROLLED ELECTRIC TONGUE JACK to connect the camper from the driver's seat

Here's a video of the jack:



And for fellow tech junkies, here is the CHEAPEST place I found, no tax out of TX, $10 shipping

Husky Brute Electric Tongue Jack w/wireless remote - PPL Motor Homes

 

...and a 360deg Surround View Camera System link: https://www.rearviewsafety.com/safet...rvs-77554.html

Never tried one, not sure how well they work

Here is a "regular" wireless, quad camera, DVR system : https://www.rearviewsafety.com/safet...-rvs-4cam.html

 

Imagine my surprise when I opened up the Bosch box, only to find that the tool was Made in China!
__________________________________________________ _____________________
I am not sure how relevant this is but I believe that many tool manufacturers make a "Home Depot" line of products and a profesional grade. Priced accordingly. IE: One having plastic bodies and bushings for bearings and the other having steel/metal construction, ball beraings ETC.

 

Yes, it's sort of a little OT, but it's a good bump for Rich, and Rich did bring up the Bosch vs China quality issue. And if looking for 360 degree local telematics, I imagine that the same kind of brand bait and switch can happen with camera systems... with Bosch's name on the box, and China's name on the actual product.

This isn't a comment against country of origin per se, but Rich's point is well taken. There is a certain measure of manufacturing integrity in German and Swiss made products (where many Bosch products used to be made) that is wholly lacking in many products made in China.

Quite often, just when I thought that pot metal couldn't possibly be made any cheaper, that a nitrile glove couldn't possibly be made any thinner, that a piece of plastic couldn't possibly be made any more brittle... the manufacturers in China figure out how to make it even cheaper.

I bought a toilet brush at the dollar store. What could possibly go wrong with a toilet brush? Yes, the bristles started falling out the minute I used it, but I've seen that before. What I hadn't seen before in China's latest incarnation of this basic tool is the head snap entirely off. Inside the toilet bowl. Plastic handle snapped in two at barely a wipe, nothing close to a scrubbing.

Now about those gloves... to retrieve the brush head. Rip. Another one. Rip. Another. And another. I finally figured out that the box of 100 blue gloves isn't worth the savings, because it takes 10 gloves just to get a pair on your hands, and then go and try to do something with the gloves on, and it will take 10 more to finish the task.

I was buying and using medical gloves for dirty work some 30-40 years before it became popular and "OK" to do. You should have heard the laughter and ridicule I was subjected to in the early 80s. Same with "sleeves" (mechanic's sleeves, basketball player's sleeves, etc). I'd cut holes in the toes of tube socks and wear them on my arms. More laughter. Now they sell them. I should have patented the idea decades ago. But the ones available now come from China, and I can't get a pair of socks from China to last a year, compared to a pair of socks I cut up to use as sleeves back in 1981, that still is in use today.

So OT, yes. But no, not OT. Sous is right. All that technology crap is made so cheaply, it won't last long enough to be bothered with the fretting over installing it. More time in one's life would be saved by just getting out of the truck and walking over to look if there is any doubt about clearing an obstacle while backing or running a slalom course in the yard to park a boat.

And about that Bosch tool... Hydroman, there is a "professional" version, but it is only available in Europe, the United Kingdom, and Australia/New Zealand. Most of the parts are the same, but there are some features I'd like to have in the European version that didn't come on the USA version. And you are right, I did buy the tool at Home Depot... but there is no difference between the version that Home Depot sold and the version that any other Bosch authorized retailer in the USA sells. That I checked.

But only after the fact. If I wanted a Harbor Freight tool, I'd have gone to HF. I was/am kind of ticked, as this Bosch branded tool retails for $700. The HF version of the same tool is $200. Probably the same cost differential ratio as some of these camera systems Rich is considering.

One piece of technology that I found can work rather well when working with the spouse to back a trailer up is to use cellphones with blue tooth headsets. Each of you put in your ear piece, and call your spouse. The beauty of this is that it is like a telephone call. No keying the mic on a walkie talkie, no radio interference noise or fiddling with squelch dials required, no picking up transmissions from other folks using the family radio frequencies nearby, no missing what each other is saying due to the sequential nature of transmit/receive on walkie talkies, versus the simultaneity of being able to both talk and listen as with a phone.

Another beauty is that it is hands free. The spouse can still wildly and frantically over gesticulate, and the driver can still keep both hands on the wheel.

And finally, there is a certain calmness that prevails when communicating by phone, rather than yelling out the window, or screaming into the walkie talky. There is a certain intimacy in just speaking softly through the Bluetooth earpiece / boom mic, and that quiet intimacy promotes a sense of calm that makes the navigation through tricky backing situations so much easier.

So there is technology that has worked for me, and it didn't require a new hardwired purchase investment.

Another trick that I have learned with my spouse over the last 30 years is that the more difficult the backing situation, the better off we are letting HER do the driving, while I am standing outside the rig doing the directing. Then if there is an issue, it is entirely my fault for providing inadequate direction. That takes the pressure off of her. And the fact that she is doing the actual driving means that she knows that she is contributing meaningfully to the team effort, rather than her feeling ignored as she is gesticulating wildly because she forgot that if she can't see my face through the mirrors, I can't see her. And finally, when the rig is successfully parked, she's the winner. She did it.

This process completely eliminates any and all stress from the partner helping partner backing effort. I walk outside, sometimes right next to the driver's door with the window rolled down, and make suggestions to turn this way and that, jogging back and forth as required to check clearances, and she is in the driver's seat. Works really great.

So. Call each other and talk on the phone via Bluetooth. Or try a role reversal from typical tradition, and let her do the driving in the toughest, trickiest situations. Or buy a bunch of crap that will break in a year or two, and then give these ideas a try!

One more thing... if for anyone with 4WD who hasn't modified the vacuum engagement to permit the transfer case to be placed in 4LOW without engaging the front hubs... that mod is worth doing. Backing a trailer in 4 LOW is so much easier, because there is no torque converter lurching that launches the load from a standstill. In 4 low, all one has to do is let their foot off the brake, and the truck will softly pick itself up and start walking, no accelerator pedal needed, and if pedal is needed, there is no launch lurch. Another trick to taming tricky backing situations.

 

My friends 7 series BMW has this feature. I believe that it is a 2015. I want to say that it shows on this phone also. I believe he that it showed all of cars parked around it from his phone. His car was as much as my first house.

 

I would have to imagine that although it does take serious computing power to do this that heat and electrical draw are a non issue. One of the EE's in my old office used to work on some high level defense tech. The way he explained it to me is that there is a ton of energy savings to be had when designing a chip or system to do one specific task. Similar to how a GPU can be way faster and use less energy than a CPU at floating point calculations. But a better example of this is the ECU in our trucks. When that thing was developed it would have taken more computer than anyone had on their desks, at the time, to run all of the calculations our ECU's make. But since our ECU's don't have operating systems, background programs, and other crap wasting resources; and are designed from the ground up to perform a single task they can do it faster, and with far less energy consumption than a PC could have done at the time.

I would expect that the same would ring true for this camera tech. Although it is super power hungry on a computer that is designed to perform every type of calculation we have ever conceived. A dedicated platform should be able to do it with less resources. Unless this system comes with a mid-tower sized box to install in place of your subwoofer box. I would suspect that this remains true.

Then again what do I know I'm just a lowly ME who gave up the number crunching life to swing a hammer. Wrangling the angry pixies, and playing with imaginary numbers never was my thing.

 

It's even worse than that. Most cars these days have electric door locks and the interior handles will NOT unlock & open in a single pull, most won't unlock at all, you need to use the never used and thus largely unknown unlock lever tucked away by the handle. The reason for this - I believe - was to prevent the reach-thru-the-open-window-car-jackings of the 90's.

So when your Mom's car battery explodes while she's starting her car next to a gas pump and starts an engine fire, she can't open the door cause they auto-locked when she turned the key. Panicking, my Mom managed to find the strength to tear the handle off the door trying to open it. Fortunately, someone nearby had the sense and the ability to smash the window and reach in to unlock it and get her out.

 

[QUOTE=Y2KW57;17054315]Yes, it's sort of a little OT, but it's a good bump for Rich, and Rich did bring up the Bosch vs China quality issue. And if looking for 360 degree local telematics, I imagine that the same kind of brand bait and switch can happen with camera systems... with Bosch's name on the box, and China's name on the actual product.

This isn't a comment against country of origin per se, but Rich's point is well taken. There is a certain measure of manufacturing integrity in German and Swiss made products (where many Bosch products used to be made) that is wholly lacking in many products made in China.

Quite often, just when I thought that pot metal couldn't possibly be made any cheaper, that a nitrile glove couldn't possibly be made any thinner, that a piece of plastic couldn't possibly be made any more brittle... the manufacturers in China figure out how to make it even cheaper.

I bought a toilet brush at the dollar store. What could possibly go wrong with a toilet brush? Yes, the bristles started falling out the minute I used it, but I've seen that before. What I hadn't seen before in China's latest incarnation of this basic tool is the head snap entirely off. Inside the toilet bowl. Plastic handle snapped in two at barely a wipe, nothing close to a scrubbing.

Now about those gloves... to retrieve the brush head. Rip. Another one. Rip. Another. And another. I finally figured out that the box of 100 blue gloves isn't worth the savings, because it takes 10 gloves just to get a pair on your hands, and then go and try to do something with the gloves on, and it will take 10 more to finish the task.

I was buying and using medical gloves for dirty work some 30-40 years before it became popular and "OK" to do. You should have heard the laughter and ridicule I was subjected to in the early 80s. Same with "sleeves" (mechanic's sleeves, basketball player's sleeves, etc). I'd cut holes in the toes of tube socks and wear them on my arms. More laughter. Now they sell them. I should have patented the idea decades ago. But the ones available now come from China, and I can't get a pair of socks from China to last a year, compared to a pair of socks I cut up to use as sleeves back in 1981, that still is in use today.

So OT, yes. But no, not OT. Sous is right. All that technology crap is made so cheaply, it won't last long enough to be bothered with the fretting over installing it. More time in one's life would be saved by just getting out of the truck and walking over to look if there is any doubt about clearing an obstacle while backing or running a slalom course in the yard to park a boat.

And about that Bosch tool... Hydroman, there is a "professional" version, but it is only available in Europe, the United Kingdom, and Australia/New Zealand. Most of the parts are the same, but there are some features I'd like to have in the European version that didn't come on the USA version. And you are right, I did buy the tool at Home Depot... but there is no difference between the version that Home Depot sold and the version that any other Bosch authorized retailer in the USA sells. That I checked.

But only after the fact. If I wanted a Harbor Freight tool, I'd have gone to HF. I was/am kind of ticked, as this Bosch branded tool retails for $700. The HF version of the same tool is $200. Probably the same cost differential ratio as some of these camera systems Rich is considering.

One piece of technology that I found can work rather well when working with the spouse to back a trailer up is to use cellphones with blue tooth headsets. Each of you put in your ear piece, and call your spouse. The beauty of this is that it is like a telephone call. No keying the mic on a walkie talkie, no radio interference noise or fiddling with squelch dials required, no picking up transmissions from other folks using the family radio frequencies nearby, no missing what each other is saying due to the sequential nature of transmit/receive on walkie talkies, versus the simultaneity of being able to both talk and listen as with a phone.

Another beauty is that it is hands free. The spouse can still wildly and frantically over gesticulate, and the driver can still keep both hands on the wheel.

And finally, there is a certain calmness that prevails when communicating by phone, rather than yelling out the window, or screaming into the walkie talky. There is a certain intimacy in just speaking softly through the Bluetooth earpiece / boom mic, and that quiet intimacy promotes a sense of calm that makes the navigation through tricky backing situations so much easier.

So there is technology that has worked for me, and it didn't require a new hardwired purchase investment.

Another trick that I have learned with my spouse over the last 30 years is that the more difficult the backing situation, the better off we are letting HER do the driving, while I am standing outside the rig doing the directing. Then if there is an issue, it is entirely my fault for providing inadequate direction. That takes the pressure off of her. And the fact that she is doing the actual driving means that she knows that she is contributing meaningfully to the team effort, rather than her feeling ignored as she is gesticulating wildly because she forgot that if she can't see my face through the mirrors, I can't see her. And finally, when the rig is successfully parked, she's the winner. She did it.

This process completely eliminates any and all stress from the partner helping partner backing effort. I walk outside, sometimes right next to the driver's door with the window rolled down, and make suggestions to turn this way and that, jogging back and forth as required to check clearances, and she is in the driver's seat. Works really great.

So. Call each other and talk on the phone via Bluetooth. Or try a role reversal from typical tradition, and let her do the driving in the toughest, trickiest situations. Or buy a bunch of crap that will break in a year or two, and then give these ideas a try!

One more thing... if for anyone with 4WD who hasn't modified the vacuum engagement to permit the transfer case to be placed in 4LOW without engaging the front hubs... that mod is worth doing. Backing a trailer in 4 LOW is so much easier, because there is no torque converter lurching that launches the load from a standstill. In 4 low, all one has to do is let their foot off the brake, and the truck will softly pick itself up and start walking, no accelerator pedal needed, and if pedal is needed, there is no launch lurch. Another trick to taming tricky backing situations.[/QUOTE

I don't know if the tools are the same situation for Home Depot as there plumbing parts are. Being a plumber, I have ran across many big name faucet and shower valves that I needed to get parts for, and the plumbing supply shops don't have the part or even list the faucet in there books. They are specifically made for Home Depot with cheaper parts from china. The water heaters they carry are made by rheem, but they use entirely different parts as the rheem water heaters the supply shops carry. Every plumbing product I have encountered is cheaper in quality. ABS fittings are thinner, pvc fittings are thinner, copper fittings are thinner, copper pipe is not from the USA, angle stops have plastic insides vs. brass insides. There's a reason why most of the things you buy at Home Depot are cheaper, and it's not because they buy in bulk. Pretty sad state of affairs these days that quality products are getting harder and harder to come by. Even snap on has fell into this trap. Some of there tools don't say USA on them anymore.

 

We supply some things for Home Depot. It is a mess. The "specs" and "test methods" the ask for make no sense...... It is different than what we sell other customers.