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Stay Safe Behind The Wheel With These Handy Gadgets

When you are in the driver’s seat, you need to make sure that you and your passengers are as safe as possible at all times. Sure, the best way to ensure this is by driving safely and following all of the various rules of the road. But that will only get you so far. It’s also advisable to invest in some of the top safety gadgets that are currently on the market. These can help to keep you as alert as possible to the environment around you, as well as making you aware of some not-so-obvious risks. Here are some of the best safety gadgets that you might want to consider for your vehicle.

Pixabay

Satnav

Satnav in a car might not seem like a gadget that can keep you safe, but it actually does have that benefit. If you aren’t too sure where you are heading, driving without a satnav can be quite nerve-wracking. Your nerves could easily leave you feeling very anxious. When we feel like this, it can be all too easy to end up making a rash decision when behind the wheel, and these can put us in danger. For instance, you might end up in the wrong lane, and trying to quickly correct that could lead to a collision with another unsuspecting vehicle.

Dash Cam

Have you ever thought about putting a dash cam into your car? Lots of other drivers are, especially employers who need a truck dash cam in each professional vehicle to monitor their fleet and employees’ driving. Your dash cam can monitor a range of data for you, depending on the type you get, but it can also provide evidence in the even that you are involved in a crash. You will be able to replay the footage to see who really was at fault.

Pixabay

Bluetooth Car Kit

We all know that it is incredibly unsafe to use your mobile phone when you are driving. Not only is it unsafe, but it is also highly illegal. Well, there is a way around all this. You just need to install a Bluetooth kit into the car. These kits allow you to connect your phone to your car via the Bluetooth connection. Then you will be able to safely answer your phone completely hands-free. These kits are so popular now that many car manufacturers are adding them to their new cars.

Blind Spot Mirrors

One of the most dangerous things about driving is the blind spot. This is the spot on the road that cannot be seen while looking in the mirrors or straight ahead. If there is a car in your blind spot, you could completely miss it and might drive into it. These days, there is a solution that can completely get rid of this spot – blind spot mirrors! You just attach them onto the wing mirror, and then you can look clearly into your blind spot.

It is highly recommended that you use most of these safety gadgets so that you are never in any danger while driving.

 

Who’s at the wheel? – Marshall Wolfe

Earlier this week I gave a presentation on my real-life experiences of using a Tesla Model S 100D. Marshall Wolfe were in attendance and very kindly blogged about it. Thanks for your support!

5G, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles   Marshall Wolfe were delighted to attend the IM  Breakfast Network event yesterday to discuss the development of CAV (Connected and Autonomous Vehicles) as we move across to the world of 5G.   Paul Muschamp gave us a glimpse of the future and all of a sudden TaaS (Transport As […]

Source: Who’s at the wheel? – Marshall Wolfe

DJI Mavic Pro – Review – A drone so stable it appears frozen in time #gadgetroadtrip

I have been flying drones for the last 18 months, specifically DJI drones. It’s no secret that DJI have cornered the drone market from beginner to corporate use. From simply aerial photography to flying cell towers, DJI seem to have it all.

As part of our recent Gadget Man Road Trip from Ness Point to Ardnamurchan, we took along a DJI Mavic Pro and Osmo+, in this review I’m going to be talking about the Mavic Pro.

Click here to buy the Mavic Pro

The first thing you notice immediately upon taking the drone out of it’s box is that it is absolutely tiny! The rotor blades and arms all fold very neatly into themselves, giving it the appearance of a sleeping bat. Nature has almost always proved to be the most efficient designer and it seems that DJI has taken quite many queues when designing the folding mechanism. Having the Mavic fold so gracefully means that it doesn’t take up a great deal of space and setting up is very quick, there’s no need to fixing rotor blades as they come fixed to the craft, so looking for that photographic moment is generally not lost as box to air time is very quick.

The drone is flown using a very neat controller that connects to your mobile device using USB. Aside from using the phone, the controller also displays important information on a LED display which makes read information in bright sunlight very easy. Operation of the drone is achieved via DJI’s own DJI Go4 software or using 3rd parties such as Litchi. It was supremely simple to operate the drone and its incredible stability gives you a very confident edge when flying.

DJI have placed the 4k camera and sensor at the front of the aircraft, doing away with the underslung designs preceding it. By doing this means that even quick acceleration doesn’t cause the rotors to obscure the display which is an all to common problem with most drones. The camera has a clear plastic dome which is easily removed to allow for clearer footage with less glare. The quality of the footage is jaw dropping! We weren’t massively lucky with the weather especially in Scotland, but we were still able to produce some amazing footage all the same, even in grey skies.

The Mavic can take still 12MP photos as well as video and can also be controlled by gestures and there is also a Wi-Fi mode with less features.

Stability wise, the Mavic Pro is awesome. As well as GPS and Glonass stabilisation, the drone also uses down facing stabilisation using additional cameras. By referencing the ground, the drone can hover almost stock-still in the sky, it’s quite unnerving to see. It also packs collision avoidance cameras too which is great when flying near to trees.

Flight times are excellent being more than 25 minutes and the drone is noticeably quieter than other aircraft I have used. Sport mode gives even greater performance and allows you to swoop around the sky with easer.

DJI have included their Geofencing software or NFZ (No fly zone) features on the drone which avoid it being flown in areas that are either illegal or dangerous such as near to airports or stadiums. This is a great inclusion which hopefully will help drones to gain a better reputation in the UK press.

Good drones don’t come cheap and DJI have positioned the Mavic Pro in the higher price bracket, however you are getting an exceedingly good aircraft for the money. I tested the ‘Combo Kit’ which comes with drone, 2 batteries, car charger, 3pin charger, controller, 16GB MicroSD and leather carry case, this comes in at around £1200, however there are deals without the added extras which bring the price under £950.

 

Look out for Black Friday deals which bring the price down even further

Matt Porter

The Gadget Man

 

 

Dell Latitude 7480 – A Smooth Portable Windows 10 Experience

Dell Latitude 7480 – A Smooth Portable Windows Experience

As a ‘Mac’ user for the last few years, I was interested to see whether a Windows Laptop could come close to my experience using a Macbook Pro, so when I received the Dell Latitude 7480 for review, I was eager to see if it could meet my expectations.

At first glance the Dell looked and felt very high quality, the aluminium of my existing laptop was replaced by a soft touch matt black finish. with e matt screen. I was pleased to see the keyboard was back lit which makes operation in dark areas much easier and it seems crammed with every kind of pointing device option I have ever seen!

The Dell was installed with Windows 10 and this ran up very quickly, ably assisted  by a 256GB SSD Drive which practically removes loading times, 8gb of memory and an incredibly fast Intel i7 processor. The colour production of the 14 inch screen was extremely impressive and the 1920 x 1080 resolution seemed plenty for the screen area.

The setup process was really simple, something I assume most Windows 10 PC’s now benefit from. The super fast drive and processor obviously help with this and I was up and running in a couple of minutes.

The laptop was very happy running on battery alone for significant amounts of time and even with fairly heavy use, lasted well. The charging connector is also lit in blue to make finding it in the dark very easy.

Connectivity wise, the Dell 7480 is packed with different sockets on each side of the device, with power socket, USB-C,  Thunderbolt 3, Full Sized HDMI, 3 x USB-3 , smart card reader, headphone jack, Simcard slot, Micro SD reader and Ethernet connector, plenty in fact to please any business person.

Along with the standard sized backlit keyboard, the laptop also had a mouse ‘stick’ in the centre of the keyboard, a touch pad and two sets of mouse buttons, 2 below the touch pad and 3 above just below the space bar. I found it quite surprising to find almost every iteration of navigation hardware on one laptop, but it was nice to have the options to choose from.

I spent quite a lot of time running fairly heavy duty software on the Dell Latitude 7480,  from Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe After Effects CC to Adobe Premiere CC and a couple of other video editors. Video editing is really processor and memory intensive, it requires the ability to copy and edit very large files. The Dell seemed to handle this will ease, I was able to plug in an external monitor via the HDMI port and edit large 4K video files without any noticeable lag.

The Latitude 7480 is aimed squarely at the business market and appeared to cope amiably with pretty much any task I threw at it.

As with Dell products, you can customise your order when purchasing from them. Prices start at £999, the model I tested out was in the region of £1360.

If you are looking for a very high performance laptop with excellent battery life and screen, you shouldn’t go far wrong with the 7480.

Matt Porter, The Gadget Man

Gadget Man – Episode 96 – Snapchat comes to the UK

Snap Inc, the company formerly known as Snapchat, has announced that it will set up its main international hub in the UK, in what is likely to be seen as a vote of confidence for British tech following the EU referendum result.

Here I talk to James Hazell on BBC Radio Suffolk about what I think Snapchat is good for. You can also listen to what Isaac thinks of the Snapchat and whether it is a Millennial Centric app.

Features Matt Porter, James Hazell and Isaac Chenery.

Gadget Man – Episode 95 – Building a motorised Go-Kart in the 1980’s

Back in the very early 1980’s, a couple of friends and I buiit a gokart called The Sheridan, it was made from an old metal pram and some planks of wood. It wasn’t the best go kart in the world. One day it was transformed by attaching a Suffolk Punch petrol lawnmower found in a rubbish skip. Here’s what happened…

Image Credit Paul Townsend https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/

Gadget Man – Episode 94 – Ode to Galaxian

The arcades back in 1980 were full of a new breed of entertainment. Machine after machine lined every square foot of these buildings. Each one entrancing their player in a mix of colourful graphics and amazing sound effects, from the ultimately recognisable Space Invaders with it’s booming bass line to the apocalyptic Defender (always on full volume) and Missile Command to the quirky Frogger and Centipede, every game enthralled the player, but none so much to me as Galaxian.