Estimating RF recline angles... novel method

southpawboston

New member
this issue comes up from time to time. there are ways of estimating recline angle, a common one being to hold a piece of paper horizontally with your car on level ground, and just eyeballing the recline angle of the seat.

what i've been playing around with lately is something that seems to give reliable numbers. i take a picture of a carseat and open it in my CAD (computer-aided-design) software. then i draw a line along the side of the shell. the software spits back the angle of the line.

for this to work optimally, the pictures should be at or near a perfect straight-on profile shot of the carseat, shot at the same height as the carseat from an open rear passenger door, with the camera and car both level. the scale or size of the pic is not important.

i did this the other day for someone here, and used two photos taken from either side of the carseat. the pics weren't perfect, and the software still spit out numbers for each pic that were within 2 degrees of each other, so i think the method is pretty reliable, and probably near perfect if the pics are straight and level.

if anyone wants to get an estimate of their recline angle this way, just post a pic (or two or three, the more the better) here in this thread and i will post back with a picture of the line drawn through the seat and the calculated angle.
 
ADS

southpawboston

New member


last pic not used because it wasn't level. first two pics were really good. each one was within 2 degrees of the other. on average, you have about a 38.3 degree recline. :)


arly204.jpg


arly205.jpg
 

arly1983

New member
Oh, is it that reclined???

Somebody remind me? Is 45 the max and 30 the min?? So that would make me somewhere in the middle?

Wow, tha means you could really be upright!

Thanks, southpawboston. :) That is so cool!

I had been wondering if it was too upright but it is not even close.
 

kjcoggins0405

New member
My husband used it to hang a cabinet in the bathroom this weekend. And of course I took one look at it and thought, geez I should take it outside to look at the recline on our carseats. :whistle:
 

kjcoggins0405

New member
Southpaw, maybe I could take pictures of my two seats with the angle thingy up to it, then you could use your software. We could see how close you are. :thumbsup:
 

MamiOf3

New member
After seeing the other RF pics I think mine is REALLY reclined. The sad thing is I went to the seatcheck website and I went to the local state police dept. and the man listed on the seatcheck site is the one who inspected the install and said it was perfect :(

Sorry for the ramble. My son is 8 months old, about 23 pounds and 29-30 inches. Here are the pics. I'm so sorry they are HUGE :eek:

P5140574.jpg

P5140573.jpg

P5140568.jpg
 

southpawboston

New member
mamiof3, i just did the first pic since it seemed the most level. if you look at the left side door window line, it appears as the the pic may be slightly angled to the right. if that's true, than you could subtract about 1-2 degrees from the measurement i got.

mami01.jpg
 

southpawboston

New member
oh, and a comment about comparing different methods: that's a good idea. it's always good to compare data from different methods, and see how close each method gets to the next. no one method is perfect, and sometimes it's good to get averages from different methods.
 

MamiOf3

New member
mamiof3, i just did the first pic since it seemed the most level. if you look at the left side door window line, it appears as the the pic may be slightly angled to the right. if that's true, than you could subtract about 1-2 degrees from the measurement i got.

mami01.jpg

Thank you so much. I did try to get it as level as I could but the baby was crying and I was trying to hold him and the camera at the same time.
 

tarynsmum

Senior Community Member
I'm posting pics as soon as DD goes down for her nap. I have a feeling that her MA is reclined too much as well.

ETA: Here are the pictures. I *know* that it's reclined too much, now that I'm looking at it. Also, please tell me (although I know you all will anyway) if anything else is wonky.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g131/tarynsmum/P5140048.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g131/tarynsmum/P5140047.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g131/tarynsmum/P5140046.jpg

Also, I tried my hardest to get the camera as lined up as possible. I live on a hill, so I was basically tilting the camera so that the seat lined up. If it's not enough, I can re-take them, just let me know.
 
Last edited:

Mommy2Mya

New member
I just finished installing dd's carseat today after getting some tether advice, and I was wondering if you could do my pics too?:love: I'm not sure it it's too relined. It doesn't seem that way when she's in there, but I fiigured I'd find out. I took two pictures. I would have tried to maybe get better ones, but it's raining out. I didn't resize them because I wasn't sure how big you want them. Here they are(I'm not sure if you'll be able to click on them because I haven't figured out how to do that on this site yet):

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b13/eurobebe69/Marathon002.jpg
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b13/eurobebe69/Marathon001.jpg
 

southpawboston

New member
I'm posting pics as soon as DD goes down for her nap. I have a feeling that her MA is reclined too much as well.

ETA: Here are the pictures. I *know* that it's reclined too much, now that I'm looking at it. Also, please tell me (although I know you all will anyway) if anything else is wonky.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g131/tarynsmum/P5140048.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g131/tarynsmum/P5140047.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g131/tarynsmum/P5140046.jpg

Also, I tried my hardest to get the camera as lined up as possible. I live on a hill, so I was basically tilting the camera so that the seat lined up. If it's not enough, I can re-take them, just let me know.

i rotated #47 and #48 to try to approximate level. here's what i come up with: about 47.2 degrees, avg of the three pics:


tarynsmum.jpg
 

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