khyros
Well-Known Member
- Thread starter
- #1
So there seems to be several folks talking about their Wolfbox and others looking to get one. I want to share my less than awesome 6mo review with it to hopefully provide another perspective.
Overall statement - the system works fine on a sunny summer day, but is riddled with issues otherwise. I would not recommend buying it, and am actively considering if I want to continue to use it or not, even after spending the money on it.
Problem Statement I am attempting to solve with a Wolfbox: 1) After driving the 6g Ranger, I want a front bumper offroad camera, 2) 8-10x / yr I end up with a roof cargo bag on top of my retrax tonneau cover, and I can't see out the rear view mirror.
Both of these problems appeared to be solved with a Wolfbox G900 Tri Camera, so I went all in. FYI, for anyone curious, the bronco RVM bracket does not work with the Ranger. First, I mounted the rear camera on the included license plate bracket. It vibrated so much it made me nauseous to look at the RVM, so that tells me that there is zero image stability in the s/w logic. I ended up using one of the 3M pads and sticking it to the bumper hitch cover, it now no longer has any vibration. But a problem I've found with it in this location is that headlights seem to hit it square on, so it's awful at night - you really can't see anything out of it in that location. This specific problem might be solved if you had it mounted higher, but for my specific use case, this is where it needs to go, and it's pretty pathetic there. Of note, it also gets nice and dirty from rain/dirt/slush there, so it also becomes pretty useless in inclement weather. As a fun little tidbit - it really can't handle lightning storms. The brightness of the lightning strike overwhelms the system, and it completely freaks out on the RVM for a couple seconds after the strike. Now that it's starting to get cold, I've had a couple of times where the RVC turns green, I would think this is a loose wire, but it's a digital signal, so I'm not sure how that would work.
On the screen itself, the non-electrical mirror leaves a lot to be desired. It's darker than the tinted RVM to begin with. During the day, you can still use it, but there's a noticeable degradation vs. the normal mirror. I have a rear facing child in the backseat, so it's too dark to use it to see him in the mirror even in daylight. This has led me to move the front camera to be a digital child camera, more on that later. You have 2 choices on how to aim the mirror - you can either have it aimed so you can use it, or you can angle it downwards so it doesn't see out of the back. If you have it aimed for use, you get double images during the day - you can clearly see a reflection like a mirror, and then overlaid on it the digital image. There are times that this might be useful, but it's mostly distracting, which has led me to tilting it down so it doesn't function as a mirror at all. I wish the mirror would be able to get dimmer at night - it's still quite bright, especially when there are lights aimed directly at the camera. There's also no logic on the display for handling LED headlights - as hopefully we all know at this point, LEDs dim by only being turned on a %age of the time - which means that on the display, they are constantly flickering on full brightness/off completely - very distracting. I'm sure this next complaint is tied to the wide angle view of the camera, but the depth of the camera is atrocious. A car at a normal following distance is maybe 1cm wide on the screen, while it would be ~10cm wide on the actual mirror. This means seeing anything further back than that is basically not possible. The positive of this is that if you see the front bumper of the car in the lane next to you, you're clear to merge. That has been handy on occasion with lane closures and rush hour traffic.
All of this would result in a 3 star review. It delivers what I want, but does so poorly. But now that it's <32deg, it seems that the touch screen phantom touches itself, and throughout my commute, it switches screens and pans up/down on my view all by itself. And if I turn the screen off and just try to use the mirror (which I now have angled down so I have to adjust)... it turns itself back on via phantom touch. This alone drops it down to 2 stars - it's borderline unsafe in the cold. I'm also not sure about what's going on with the unit's battery. Every time I get in my truck from overnight/at work, it yells that the battery is extremely low. I have it setup to only record in the event of a G force event, which should be the least battery intensive option, and yet it can't last 8hrs.
Outside of my official review, I want to add that I'm currently using the front bumper camera as a child camera. This is due to the short comings of the built in mirror, but is awesome. I really like being able to see him easily, and if I'm in 3 full camera mode, I can see pretty much all of him. The analog camera does really poorly in the dark, but it's designed to be on the front where there are headlights, so I don't actually hold that against it. I do wish I could customize the view on the screen - I would love for 2/3 to be the rear view mirror, and the other 1/3 to be the "front" camera, but that's a pretty niche want.
Overall statement - the system works fine on a sunny summer day, but is riddled with issues otherwise. I would not recommend buying it, and am actively considering if I want to continue to use it or not, even after spending the money on it.
Problem Statement I am attempting to solve with a Wolfbox: 1) After driving the 6g Ranger, I want a front bumper offroad camera, 2) 8-10x / yr I end up with a roof cargo bag on top of my retrax tonneau cover, and I can't see out the rear view mirror.
Both of these problems appeared to be solved with a Wolfbox G900 Tri Camera, so I went all in. FYI, for anyone curious, the bronco RVM bracket does not work with the Ranger. First, I mounted the rear camera on the included license plate bracket. It vibrated so much it made me nauseous to look at the RVM, so that tells me that there is zero image stability in the s/w logic. I ended up using one of the 3M pads and sticking it to the bumper hitch cover, it now no longer has any vibration. But a problem I've found with it in this location is that headlights seem to hit it square on, so it's awful at night - you really can't see anything out of it in that location. This specific problem might be solved if you had it mounted higher, but for my specific use case, this is where it needs to go, and it's pretty pathetic there. Of note, it also gets nice and dirty from rain/dirt/slush there, so it also becomes pretty useless in inclement weather. As a fun little tidbit - it really can't handle lightning storms. The brightness of the lightning strike overwhelms the system, and it completely freaks out on the RVM for a couple seconds after the strike. Now that it's starting to get cold, I've had a couple of times where the RVC turns green, I would think this is a loose wire, but it's a digital signal, so I'm not sure how that would work.
On the screen itself, the non-electrical mirror leaves a lot to be desired. It's darker than the tinted RVM to begin with. During the day, you can still use it, but there's a noticeable degradation vs. the normal mirror. I have a rear facing child in the backseat, so it's too dark to use it to see him in the mirror even in daylight. This has led me to move the front camera to be a digital child camera, more on that later. You have 2 choices on how to aim the mirror - you can either have it aimed so you can use it, or you can angle it downwards so it doesn't see out of the back. If you have it aimed for use, you get double images during the day - you can clearly see a reflection like a mirror, and then overlaid on it the digital image. There are times that this might be useful, but it's mostly distracting, which has led me to tilting it down so it doesn't function as a mirror at all. I wish the mirror would be able to get dimmer at night - it's still quite bright, especially when there are lights aimed directly at the camera. There's also no logic on the display for handling LED headlights - as hopefully we all know at this point, LEDs dim by only being turned on a %age of the time - which means that on the display, they are constantly flickering on full brightness/off completely - very distracting. I'm sure this next complaint is tied to the wide angle view of the camera, but the depth of the camera is atrocious. A car at a normal following distance is maybe 1cm wide on the screen, while it would be ~10cm wide on the actual mirror. This means seeing anything further back than that is basically not possible. The positive of this is that if you see the front bumper of the car in the lane next to you, you're clear to merge. That has been handy on occasion with lane closures and rush hour traffic.
All of this would result in a 3 star review. It delivers what I want, but does so poorly. But now that it's <32deg, it seems that the touch screen phantom touches itself, and throughout my commute, it switches screens and pans up/down on my view all by itself. And if I turn the screen off and just try to use the mirror (which I now have angled down so I have to adjust)... it turns itself back on via phantom touch. This alone drops it down to 2 stars - it's borderline unsafe in the cold. I'm also not sure about what's going on with the unit's battery. Every time I get in my truck from overnight/at work, it yells that the battery is extremely low. I have it setup to only record in the event of a G force event, which should be the least battery intensive option, and yet it can't last 8hrs.
Outside of my official review, I want to add that I'm currently using the front bumper camera as a child camera. This is due to the short comings of the built in mirror, but is awesome. I really like being able to see him easily, and if I'm in 3 full camera mode, I can see pretty much all of him. The analog camera does really poorly in the dark, but it's designed to be on the front where there are headlights, so I don't actually hold that against it. I do wish I could customize the view on the screen - I would love for 2/3 to be the rear view mirror, and the other 1/3 to be the "front" camera, but that's a pretty niche want.
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