One of the additions I was going to make to the little GS was a pair of auxiliary riding lights. I'd seen a lot of the big Beemers with the Touratech aux lighting, and they certainly look the business. But then I clocked the price of them, and thought that a luxury weekend for two in a health spa would be cheaper. But then a quick trawl round eBay (on a quiet night shift) brought up a cheap alternative. Three Cree LEDs in each, low current draw of 15W, waterproof and, if not Touratech cool, at least not horrendously ugly. Thirty-three of your British pounds brought them to my door, I put them in the garage, and that was that.
The fact I didn't fit them on the first available day tells you something. I was already doubting whether I would keep the GS, and it seemed a waste of time and money to spend half a day putting them on there only to take them off again. Happy to buy them, unwilling to fit them, work that one out. So on a shelf they stayed.
Today was the first dry, sunny day for weeks, so I put some warm clothes on and spent the afternoon fitting them to the XTR. I needed to take the tank shrouds and tank off to do the wiring, and what a pleasure it is to have a bike where this is a two-minute task rather than a lengthy chore. On the XTR, the sidelights and indicators share a separate fused circuit, so I tapped into this for the power source. The lights between them should only draw 2.5A, and the XTR's generator puts out a maximum of 20A, so there shouldn't be a problem with having them on full-time.
Not matt-black and adventure-touring cool, but not two hundred quid either.
When I got them wired up and going, I was surprised how bright they were. From the front of the bike, they are brighter than the dipped beam.
The pattern is a focused spot beam rather then a foglight-style flood, so they won't make much of a difference to the light from the rider's point of view. The Yamaha's headlight is pretty good anyway. But they do make a very distinctive triangle of lights, which should aid my conspicuity. I'm not a big fan of hi-viz, always-on lights or the crazier gadgets like headlight modulators, but if others see me and identify me as a bike rather than an odd point of light somewhere in their field of vision I will be happy. At this time of year, my evening and morning commutes are in darkness, and the majority of my journey is on fast and unlit roads. If people see an unusual triangle of lights approaching them, assume it is an alien craft full of little green men come to kidnap them, and don't pull out in front of me because of it, that is a win as far as I am concerned.
It's dark now, and I have had a bit of a play trying to get them angled so that they are visible to the front without dazzling oncoming traffic. Already I can feel that the right-hand one is starting to get loose on its bracket, so tomorrow I may need to take them off again and do some beefing-up of the fittings. Thirty quid only gets you so much.
More on this at the weekend, when I have had a chance to use them in anger, as it were.
Ordered on Friday, arrived today (Tuesday). That's pretty good, considering it was the weekend. As I said before, there are many of these cameras on eBay, most being sold from Hong Kong or China, but I chose to buy from a seller near Cardiff. It's still a Chinese product (I am sure of this from the garbled instruction 'manual'), but at least it got here quickly and it's giving someone relatively local a bit of business. The seller was South_Park_Shop_2013, and I have no complaints about the transaction.
First impression, it works (phew). Second impression is that it's a damn sight better quality than it has any right to be, considering the price (£22.95 with free P&P). The slip of paper that contains the instructions needs a bit of interpretation, but it was enough to guide me through the setup and basic operation. First job was to mount it on the screen, and I've got it to sit just below the rear view mirror so that it doesn't get in the way too much.
It comes with a car charger, and the lead is both heavy-duty and about a mile long, and visually that is the only negative: there's a lot of it dangling about and it seems to coil round the gear lever like a drunken snake. However, that is something that can be addressed in due course. The view from the driver's seat is not too badly obtruded:
The little 2.5" screen is very useful for getting the aim right, and it will fold away if I feel I no longer need it. It's taken me a while to get a really firm mounting from all the swivels and joints, and I probably don't need the screen any more, but it's still a novelty, so it's staying for now. The image is small but clear:
Some initial observations about it in use:
It's of fairly flimsy construction (obviously) and there's a persistent rattle from the audio playback which sounds like a dog chewing lego. There's nothing in the car to make that rattle, so it must come from the casing itself. Not a big deal, considering the price.
Colour rendition is fair only. There's little saturation and everything looks greyish, and also bright light sources burn it out easily: green traffic lights look like oncoming headlights. But it's certainly good enough for the purpose, which is to provide a record of what goes on around the Nowheremobile.
The wide angle of the lens (120 deg) captures a lot of action, but it has the side-effect of making the drive seem faster than it really is. In the sample below, parts of it look like a stage of the World Rally Championships, but in reality it was a very calm and legal drive.
You can choose how big the recording segments are - 2, 5 or 15 minutes. I have selected 5 to start with and this seems to work OK. When the card is full (it takes a standard SD card, with a maximum of 32GB), it starts to overwrite the oldest file. For the purpose, this seems a very practical arrangement. In the case of an accident, you would only be interested in the final 30 seconds or so of the most recent segment. However, there is a delay of about 3 seconds between the recording of the segments, during which nothing is recorded, so it makes sense to keep the segments as long as practical.
I am using a 1GB card at the moment, and this is probably plenty. Using the VGA setting (lowest quality), a 15-minute drive used half the card's capacity, suggesting a ratio of 30 minutes per GB. For the purpose of recording a scenic journey, it would make sense to have a much larger card and record in 15-minute chunks, but for simple traffic monitoring the 1GB card will do. (However, I notice that Currys are doing a two-pack of Sandisk 16GB cards for twenty quid at the moment, so I am going to get one of those for the dashcam and use the other for my still camera.)
Here's a sample, recorded today in the pouring rain while coming back from getting some bits and bobs in Halfords. It's not intended to be interesting or sexy, so don't get the beers in and make a night of it, but it shows a fair example of what it will do. (There's a nice watersplash at 4.00.) I recorded this on the WXGA setting (1280 X 960) but the actual output isn't significantly better than the VGA (640 x 480) I tried at first, and the higher pixel count seems to make the motion a bit jerky, so I think I will revert to VGA for the time being.
There seems no reason why I can't mount it on the bike, although I think it will take a bit of ingenuity. But there's no way it will be weather-proof, and taking it out today would have drowned it. But come the summer ... It could be a cheap way of getting some on-bike footage, as a way of deciding whether it is worthwhile splashing the cash for a GoPro or something equally decent.
And another thing: it has IR illumination for night-time and a motion detection setting. I've been thinking about getting a wildlife camera to put in the garden at night, so tonight I think I am going to point it gardenwards with the IR on and see who visits.
Not many people know this, but several years ago I trained as a cabinetmaker. I went self-employed as a furniture maker and restorer for a year or two, but there was no money in it, and I returned to gainful employment elsewhere. Anyway, I was giving a colleague some advice on a DIY solution for cleaning old furniture (the exact composition of which escapes me for the time being - a lot of use I was there) and I was reminded of a quotation that my tutor printed out and displayed in the workshop. He reckoned it was essential reading for anyone involved in working with wood. Sure enough, Google came to the rescue and I found the full version. I could only remember the last two lines.
Anyway, I thought it was worth sharing.
The Testimony of the Tree
For a hundred years I breathe and live, the flower of beauty and the bread of kindness.
I am your friendly shade in the noonday heat of summer, and I stand pencilled against the winter twilight, a silhouette for dreams. At dawning in the spring I am filled with song, the host to a thousand birds, and I decorate the autumn with pageantry and colour.
Then comes the woodsman with his axe.
And still I serve.
I am the timber that builds your boat; the rafters of your cathedrals; the choirstalls of your church enriched by the magic of the carver's fingers. I am the beam that holds your house; the door of your homestead, and the lintel too. I am the handle of your hoe; the wood of your cradle; the bed on which you lie; the board of your table and the board for your bread.
OK, it's a slow night at work and I have been on eBay. I've had a good think about this camera business (see previous post), and I have decided that expecting something to live in the car and be available for day-to-day recording, and at the same time be a good video camera for bike rides is unreasonable. So I have decided to buy the cheapest thing I can find which fits the minimum requirements, and save the bike cam purchase for another day.
I am getting one of these:
which comes from eBay and costs the princely sum of £22.95 with free postage. It's got some good features, too:
runs off a battery and a 12v charger
records in chunks, choice of 2, 5 or 15 minutes
automatically over-writes the oldest file when the SC card is full
powers on with the car ignition
IR illumination for night recording
time and date stamp on recordings
motion detection, which might be interesting filming the wildlife that visits the garden overnight
will support an SD card up to 32GB.
The only downside I can see is that it's got a wide angle lens but the image may not fit a computer screen very well. The videograbs I have seen have a weird compressed perspective, although this may be a function of the small, square screen and a wide-angle image. We shall see. For under 25 beer tokens, if it works as described for a year I shall be happy.
And it is shipped from Pontypridd by a UK seller, not shipped from a warehouse in an industrial estate off the M25 by a seller in China. Pontypridd is almost local.
It should arrive in a few days. I will let you know how I get on.
Yesterday, I was on a short errand (in the car, as I had a load to carry) and had to pass the local college. There is a roundabout with traffic lights to control entry, and pedestrian crossings by the lights. As I approached the lights at green, I saw a young lad of about 16 waiting to cross the road. I wasn't going to stop for him, as the traffic lights were green, which meant that his pedestrian light was red, and I was in a queue of traffic. He looked me right in the eye as I approached. There was no way he hadn't seen me. And then, when I was about 10 metres away from him, he stepped out into the road in front of me. I had already covered the brake in anticipation, so my emergency stop was a good one, ABS and all, being on a damp and greasy road surface. He walked casually across in front of me and pulled a face at me. I'm sorry to say I reacted by giving him a good old V-sign, and drove off.
It occurred to me later that, had I hit him and caused him injury (which was entirely possible in the circumstances, as I only pulled up about 2-3 metres away from him), I would have had a hell of a job convincing people (the police and the courts, mainly) that I was not driving carelessly or improperly. Could I prove I was well within the speed limit and driving at a speed appropriate to the conditions? Could I prove the lights were in my favour and that his weren't? Sadly, my assumption is that I would be automatically held to blame as the motorist in the absence of evidence otherwise, and it would be up to me to prove my innocence rather then the other way round. An experience of the courts a few years ago with a speeding case has left me with no faith whatsoever in the reasonableness or impartiality of the justice system.
So I am thinking about getting a dash cam. One of those devices that fasten to the inside of the windscreen and record basically what the driver sees. I understand that some of them have a 'looping' feature, where the cam records for 10-20 minutes or so and then starts recording over the stored footage. That would be ideal for this situation, as it is usually only the last 30 seconds or so that would be relevant in the case of an accident. Of course, a facility for continuous recording would be good too, of reasonable quality for putting on the Web. And if it could be waterproof and motorcycle-mountable, well ...
But I get ahead of myself. I have checked out what's available online, and it seems you could spend anything from about £40 to over £200 on one of these devices, and the cheap ones seem to have a lot of the required features. I know some of you will have one of these, or something similar and relevant. Any advice for someone who wants good functionality without spending a fortune? Requirements would be:
Reasonable colour image quality and frame rate
SD card or similar storage for easy transfer to PC
Format compatible with other devices, i.e. mpeg, mov, avi etc.
Looping facility
Nice to have:
Still or time-lapse facility
Inbuilt screen to frame the correct view when setting up
Weather resistance
Compatible with large storage cards for extended use
12v and battery operation
Flexibility in mounting (i.e. helmet or motorcycle).
As an aside, if you haven't already done so, go to YouTube and search for 'Russian dashcams' if you want a real fright. Apparently so many Russian drivers are uninsured that a lot of people (especially commercial drivers like truckers) have a dashcam running routinely to provide evidence for when the inevitable happens. Some of the footage is merely funny, but some will scare the pants off you. I'm convinced many Russian drivers either have a death wish, or are blind drunk, or both.
