Stutopia

A short night run, seems to cope nicely with low light.

I picked up one of these little cameras for a road trip in the summer and some moderate track fun. I may install it as a full on dash cam if it proves to be nice and reliable. This is my first small video camera so i thought I'd post up a few thoughts on it and also a little bit of sample footage from my first test run. Straightforward purchase from fleabay, it's take about a fortnight to arrive, no drama. £60. http://www.ebay.co.u...ME:L:OU:GB:3160 It seems to be a contender at the mobius end of the market and I think it looks quite smart, with it's metallic look plastics and compact size. It's certainly not an eyesore when resting on your dash and not much bigger than a Zed key. It comes in a handy little box you can just about get everything back into if you fancy just stashing it away in the cubby if you don't use it all the time. I just, temporarily, sat it in between the oil pressure and voltmeter pods with some extremely weak double sided to keep it in place and not mark the pods. Sat there quite merrily without moving around. It'll need a better location for more serious use though as you can see from the test footage in the first youtube video of my test footage. In terms of setup and ease of use. It came with firmware pre-installed and a proprietary usb cable in the box and an AV lead - note it is not just a micro USB connector so, you'll need to go back to Innovv for a replacement/spare USB cable. I popped a Class 10, 32 GB, micro SD card in and performed a firmware update before I used it. There's good technical detail and some how to vids here: http://www.innovv.co...cification/ccn9 Couldn't have been easier to do the FW update (with the assistance of the videos) and FW was updated in about 10 minutes flat, including download time, malware scan, unzip, etc etc. Like any firmware update you do need your Captain Brave Pants on the first time as you fear you might brick it, but it was dead easy. As well as firmware, you can also download a little settings tool (which seems to be windows only, but ran fine on my iMac via VMWare). You can set it up dash cam style, e.g. auto record on power on, no audio, time and date stamp (which is a bit massive!) looping recording etc etc, you can also mess around with the exposure, light balance and saturation if the defaults aren't to your liking. It does also take photos (up to 3M) but I can't think of a reason you wouldn't just use your phone instead. It records in one of two resolutions and frame rates, 1920x1080 30fps and 1280x720 60fps, so far I've only used the first one. There's no on-board display, so you config it on your PC and have to do a bit of trial and error to get the framing correct, but it has such a wide field of vision you're unlikely to miss entirely whatever it is you're trying to capture. It's not got GPS or any speed monitoring stuff, so it won't grass you up for doing a few mph over the limit. It does have a G-sensor, so you could use it in parking mode and in theory it should fire up when an impact is detected (not tried this yet), it has three settings for impact sensitivity (small knock, light bang, nuclear holocaust). Last but not least, it has a cool trick that it can tell if it is upside down (handy for roof or windscreen mounting) and it flips the image the right way up for you. I've not tried this out yet. It can record in a one great big file (like a home movie) or auto store them in 1, 3, 5, 10, 30 minute long separate files which is good for getting the section you want off the camera without having to edit down loads of minutes of un-needed footage. It alleges to have a high dynamic range, which in theory gives decent low light performance, but I've yet to do a night run. I'll post up some footage when I do. Some simple, non-spirited footage below in town and on the motorway. There's a bit of motion blur and fast moving objects might require a pause and bit off effort to see detail, but I think it's more than adequate for my needs and if the reliability is strong I will probably configure it as a dash cam in the end All in all, it seems decent and delivers pretty well for £60 (not including memory card) you might want to splash out on the Innovv website for a mount for dash or windscreen or bike or helmet, but happily they don't take your pants down on price. Not sure I'd go for one of their memory cards though if you can find a known genuine one for similar money, no point in skimping on the recording media IMHO. http://www.innovv.co...shop--cart/cg1f Hopefully I'll get some footage from Croft the weekend after next that I can share, once I figure out the best place and way to mount it for an unrestricted view and minimal shake. If I have one gripe about it (well there has to be one) the sound recording is a bit pony. It seems to try and compensate for background noise (which in the Zed can be quite loud), so it adjusts the levels, most noticeably the treble. You can spot this in clip 1 below as the tunes on my stereo playing in the car sound flat. Not a big deal as a dash cam, but I'm curious to see how it performs as a regular video camera, from an audio capture perspective. This is the RAW 1080p video footage, not sure if youtube compress it though, but it gives a good idea. Obviously the positioning is rubs, so you get a lot of dash, but it was my first try! This is the same footage but cropped a bit, image stabilised and with a new soundtrack. You can see that even with fairly heavy cropping, the image quality stands up well I think.

along and post up some snaps when you get your hands on.

Or spray it square on? I like to work at angle to the paint, don't know if that is just psychological though

Another vote, mate in California. Surely international votes count triple?

along! Pictures PLEASE

PMs sent

I got some good suggestions in here: http://www.350z-uk.com/topic/78419-driving-experiences-recommendations/page__st__20 The Palmer Sports ones look the nuts.

Thanks mate, yours looked tidy too but I was day dreaming a bit in the slow traffic and didn't get a chance to have a good look! First one I've seen up in Cumbria, the weather was perfect for change on the BH, I love booming down the valleys upsetting crag rats with my exhaust!!

Looks sweet, if I was to make one suggestion it's the coolant tank could sexier/oranger

Just a cheeky little vid of the wax and water behaviour, mainly as I wanted play with my new camera and iMovie

I only had a quick ride in it, but it's very much a GT Cruiser for wafting around Europe, even against the Zed (which is by no means a light sports car) the Zed is a much harder and "dramatic" ride. That's not to take away from it, it's just made for a different experience.

Across any town city it'll drop off to somewhere between 10-15 mph, so if it's been running of a while and your an urban dweller/worker it'll seem low. Some bellend in a city rover beeped at me then overtook me in a 20 the other day for flashing a couple of cars out of side roads, always makes me laugh knobheads burning through built up areas - makes zero difference to your journey time if it's anything over a mile and it only takes one clown to walk out from between parked cars without looking.

Nearly forgot. Where the roof sits on some rubber/plastic trim on the boot there's some white marks all along the edge of where the roof sits. I tired to shift it with some APC and also the trim restorer but it wouldn't move. Any ideas anyone? I assume it's from moisture but I've never had a convertible.

Not sure TBH, it's one of those floating ones, without sails. I'm not a boat expert if you can't tell Hmmm, last night's pizza and chicken and chips tonight should make sure I don't get too malnourished!

Went back up to the lakes this weekend to see a mate's new purchase, BMW 645 V8 convertible. I'm not a huge fan of beemers but I must admit to being really impressed by how much car he's got for the cash, and also the sound of that V8 when you give it the beans is sensational. The paint on the outside was in very good condition, but it was in need of some love to bring it back to a nice glossy shine. The interior was less well cared for and needed a real going over, god only knows why people let their kids in their cars So the whole job took about 9 hours and was a fair bit of work so I didn't take that many pictures along the way sadly, and none of the interior. The car was treated to: TBW BH clay with some born sloppy lube Lime prime lite cleanse Megs deep crystal polish AMMO skin Amourall shield Auto Finesse wax from last month's waxybox Tyre gel C4 permanent trim restorer Gtechniq matte dash Auto glym leather cleaner then feed Auto glym convertible roof clean then seal Carpet clean Quick bit of APC to the engine bay plastics (didn't have anything else handy to do this properly) Before, not in bad nick at all, but a bit flat - not been washed for some time. The wheels desperately need a refurb, some kerbing and some of the brake dust has caked right in. After the initial TBW and clay, naked paint, already looks nice and shiny. Wheels came up nicely after some brush action and auto glym wheel cleaner. All done, several hours later. It's amazing how a day's worth of effort can make a car look really loved, it just needed a bit of Jap power to help fire up that V8 Whilst we were doing the beamer, my mate's Mum's black TT caught my eye. I've not been particularly excited about these before but I must admit I was quite taken by their lines up close and personal. When I saw the black paint I couldn't resist giving it a quick once over. What it really needs is a full paint correction, but we did our best to hide some of the swirls with poor boys liquid natty's and some armourall shield. Didn't have time for a proper job sadly, but I think it came up pretty nicely in the end considering. Before: I'm not sure swirl is a strong enough word! Looked much better after some camouflage went on, even managed some nice reflections. I really enjoyed working on the TT, mainly because it was much smaller than the beemer and the panels are nice and easy to work as they're not that intricate. Not cleaned up black paint before, but it's very much a double edged sword, it looks so nice when it's done, but it shows up every little mark I can't decide if the next car should be black or not, think it would drive my OCD tendencies crazy, wish we'd had some black hole glaze on hand. So after a weekend of washing cars, I've found two cars I quite like the look of - just going to start browsing auto trader...

Mutual wave on the A66, you were heading westbound. Anyone on here?

There's an ancient parable which might be handy here. A man decides to walk to the shops to get some fresh bread. It's a three hour walk each way to the shops, so it's a big effort for him, but he has a powerful lust for toast and a brew. When he gets to the shops he picks up his bread and as he's walking past the fridge he thinks to himself, "How much milk did I have back at the house?". In the end he decides he can't be certain he's out of milk, so he doesn't buy any. He walks the three hours home, slices up his loaf, whips out the butter and the marmalade and puts the kettle on. He's just about to tuck in to his delicious toast on his sunny veranda and the kettle boils. The man goes to the fridge and finds he was correct at the shop, he has got milk in there, but it's gone bad and smells like toe cheese. Thoroughly dejected, after his 6 hour exerts, the man says to himself, "I wish I'd bought that bloody flywheel when I was getting my clutch done."

I wasn't suggesting popping so shampoo in means you don't have to a TBW! I just like some shampoo in the lance too!

Always happy to help other people spend money. Yeah, AF are a "premium brand" which in the detailing world just means "expensive". It's worth considering if you can find a good offer on, although for some reason I've not bought any Avalanche since using the BH foam... I can't imagine why. Must be a decent lance to make the demon wash foam that nice and thick. I found it a lot runny with the half assed karcher foam gun, which lasted one wash. I tried the avalanche snowfoam and found the snow a bit disappointing TBH but, as you say, the actual cleaning power to be good. I want my foam insanely thick, with 10 dwell time!!! Might try the BH next. Does anyone else put some shampoo in as well as the inch or so of snowfoam? Edit: nice job by the way Graham

Looks superb, and like no other. Nice work.

Paint pedestrians and cyclists in the same stuff?

It's extremely practical and handy, but a "fun" tip? That's stretching fun beyond it's elastic limit.

Did she say which colour is best?

Voted and shared, anyone who can turn those plenums into mirrors deserves a vote, and is probably involved in voodoo