Monday, February 26, 2024

Experience with Navman MiVue Pro 4K dashcam from the Qantas store.

I recently purchased a Navman MiVue 4K Pro dashcam from the Qantas store using points plus pay and thought I'd share my experience. Qantas had the MiVue 4K Pro discounted about $40 off and I was able to use my Qantas points, so ended up getting the MiVue 4K Pro for about $30 out of pocket.

My main reason for wanting the MiVue Pro 4K dashcam is I produce driving videos and moving to 4K from full HD felt like it was the right step. Personally, I also use the dashcam in case the footage is needed for evidence. Not so much for accidents, but more so from fines from government bodies. The government is tightening down on everything and whilst it's claimed to be for road safety, the clamping down seems to be making little difference to road safety, but it is certainly increasing government revenue.

The government is not immune to making errors. If I'm in the wrong I'll pay the fine. I won't be happy, but I'll take it on the chin. A s an example I once drove around Box Hill looking for a parking spot after dropping someone off at a hospital. I spent 10-15 minutes looking for a suitable parking spot. I found one in Medway Street, Box Hill and left the keys with my wife so she could use the car to drive home. I took the bus home. I was very careful and checked all signage. Turned out I was parked in a 2-hour parking area. One side of the road had no restriction and the other side, electric metered parking. It made no sense to me why I was booked.

After checking all the signage I realised the issue was the placement of the parking signs. I couldn't see the parking signs in one direction as thick trees blocked the view and in the other, the sign was on an angle leaning into the trees. I learnt from this, don't just look for the signs, look also for the poles. You shouldn't have to make this amount of effort to see parking signs.

However, I was parked midway between the signs (50m from each) making the distance between the signs 100m. Checking the Australian standard revealed the maximum distance should not exceed 75m and so the parking signage exceeded the standard, which means in my mind they're void. I took the matter to court which took nearly two years to resolve and the case was dropped by the Whitehorse City council. No skin off their nose wasting people's time, they get paid their salaries, but a huge waste of my time and plenty of angst. The dashcam footage was evidence for me, but in the end wasn't needed. I'm happy to take an issue to court if I think the government is wrong, but it is a long process, hardly worth the time, feels like extortion as the risk is you lose financially can increase significantly, and in the end, it boils down to whatever the magistrate rules. 

So, for me the dashcam provides evidence and also enables me to capture material for my YouTube channel.

The following is what I've found over the last few months of using the Navman MiVue 4k Po dashcam.

The 4K image is slightly better than the full HD Navman MiVue 150 Safety camera I already owned. Initially I found it very difficult to see the better quality. My screens are FHD and not 4K, but over time I used techniques to zoom into the video and you could see it was easier to read number plates, lines on the road were sharper and road signage was slightly easier to read.

Keep in mind going from FHD to 4K means two pixels instead of one in each direction. In effect it's like being twice as close. Reading a number plate on a car on a FHD video further away than 3-4 metres is usually not possible, whereas the 4K video gives a little extra distance. Not much, just a little.

From an accident point of view, the likelihood of getting a number plate you can read is unlikely, unless you run up the bum of a car in front and then you're the one in the wrong. Cars from the side, or rear, you're not going to get the number plate. But you will get the environment and what was going on at the time of the accident. Will it make a difference to your insurance claim? Probably not, it may make it a little easier, and if you're in the wrong, makes it easier to prove you're at fault.

In terms of video quality the MiVue 4K Pro produces a slightly sharper image, however what I've found is there's more white specs in the image. What may be bark or leaves on the road, looks like white specs so it tends to lose a little detail.

The MiVue 4K Pro has what's called ADAS features, (advanced driving-assistance system). There is lane departure warning, forward collision warning and forward moving off warning. There are also safety features including notification of fixed speed/red light cameras, school zones, train crossings, check speed zone and accident blackspots.

So far, I've found the lane departure warning useless and warns all the time when you're not departing a lane. A slight curve, a run-in lane on a freeway, almost any reason will set if off, so often it is useless. This was turned off after a few days.

The second feature is the forward collision warning which advises you that you are travelling too close to the car in front. Very rarely are you travelling too close. Sometimes there's not even a car in front of you and you're told you're too close. When you take off at the lights and the cars are spreading out you're told you're travelling to close. But when you really are travelling too close as in you've taken too long to slow down so are getting very close to the car in front of you, not even a peep. So, a pretty useless feature. I turned this off after a few weeks.

The train crossing ahead gave a false alert on a freeway when the railway was under the freeway. I don't see any use in the train crossing ahead alert as train crossings are pretty easy to see in advance.

Check speed zone seemed to come on when it made no sense and the accident blackspot doesn't seem relevant when you're driving along. You can't disable these features individually.

I do like having the red light, speed camera notifications which also gives the speed, although these can get out of date so can advise the wrong speed. I'd suggest Waze is probably a better tool, but it does mean your mobile battery gets drain on your mobile if it's not plugged in. Waze also lets you know if you're speeding at any time, although Waze isn't good at school zones or variable speed limits as you get the default speed and that's wrong at certain times.

Overall, I find the advanced features of a dashcam to be a waste of the additional money and using Waze and a more basic dashcam more cost effective. Unfortunately, sometimes to get the better-quality video from the dashcam you have to move up to a more expensive unit and these features are included.

Installation of the MiVue Pro 4K was a bit tricky. You first stick an electrostatic sticker to your windscreen and then stick the mount onto the sticker. If you get the placement wrong or want to move it you can, but you can see the sticker picks up dirt left even after thoroughly cleaning the windscreen. You can't adjust the angle horizontally after you've affixed the dashcam.

I like that the dashcam sits flatter on the windscreen, but that also creates a problem. The display is on more of an angle and difficult to read. Very difficult to read compared to the older MiVue 150. I now struggle to read the display with the angle meaning using it to check my speed is more difficult.

I've found the power lead connection to be very loose and has caused the MiVue 4K Pro to fail. You need to make sure the dashcam is on every time. I'll end up using one of my older cables as the cable is far too loose when plugged in.

My older memory cards would not work in the MiVue 4K Pro. I was OK with that. There's a feature to test if the SD card is suitable but this test feature is useless because if requires electronics on the card which isn't on the card I purchased that was recommended by Navman. Initially I thought the expensive card I'd purchased couldn't be used. Turns out the card is fine, just that the test requires electronics that doesn't exist on the card.

Would I buy the Navman MiVue 4K Pro again. For me the answer is yes as I wanted the 4K quality for my videos. You like to improve the quality you deliver to your viewers. I really would be happy to continue to use the MiVue 150 dashcam if I had not purchased the MiVue 4K Pro. I think the extra features are a waste of money and time. I do like and use the GPS data that's recorded with the videos and some cameras don't record this data.

In terms of image quality, I have noticed an artifact appear at the bottom of the video which is a large bluish spot when driving towards the sun. This does not happen on the MiVue 150.

Overall, I'd say the Navman MiVue 4K Pro for me at least, is not good value for money. This isn't to say other 4K dashcams would be any better, just that for my needs and the extra money, the MiVue 4K Pro fell short of my expectations.

Kelvin

Monday, January 16, 2023

Problem Ejecting USB Mass Storage Device

How many times do you try to eject a USB memory stick/drive and get the message, "Problem Ejecting USB Mass Storage Device". This pop up also includes the statement, "This device is currently in use. Close any programs or windows that might be using the device and then try again."

It doesn't matter what you close, with everything closed, but you still end up with the message, "Problem Ejecting USB Mass Storage Device".

One way around this is to close down your computer. That's a bit inconvenient so I decided to work out if there was an easier way. It turns out that logging out and then logging back in then allows for the device to be ejected. Still not ideal but quicker than shutting down and starting up the computer again.

Kelvin
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Thursday, October 13, 2022

Channel 7 app on Google Chromecast with TV picks up the wrong location. Sydney instead of Melbourne.

A problem with the Channel 7 app is that it does not allow you to select your location. The reason this is a problem is it can pick up the wrong location. For example we're in Melbourne and the Channel 7 app often only lets us see news from Sydney which obviously isn't right. I do wish Channel 7 would allow us to select the location but that's not possible at the moment.

The reason this happens is we use our mobile phones as hotspots using the Vodafone service. The Vodafone service allocates an IP address but in this case the Channel 7 app sees the IP address as being located in Sydney. On the mobile phones the Channel 7 app uses the GPS and determines the mobile phone location is in Melbourne and the Channel 7 app works correctly on the mobile phone. However, the Channel 7 app on Google Chromecast with TV uses the IP address which is thought to be in Sydney. That means when you're in Melbourne and want to watch the Channel 7 news you can only watch the Sydney news.

The good thing is when I reported the issue to support for Channel 7 they let me know the app uses the Maxmind service. You can report the location of IP address to Maxmind and Maxmind will update the location for the IP address within a fews days. After the update the Channel 7 app will know the location and display the right shows (e.g. News) for Melbourne.

Do the following to report the correct location to Maxmind for the IP address.

Go to www.Maxmind.com
Go to the bottom of the page and select the link GeoIP Data Correction (Submit GeoIP Data Corrections | MaxMind).
Select the first link For a small number of IP addresses, including your own, through our online forms.
Then select the link Correct the geolocation of one IP address or IP range.
Enter the details requested by the form
Agree to the terms and conditions
Click Submit

After submitting you'll receive an email letter you know they've received your submission and it will be reviewed. Once reviewed you'll receive an email letting you know if the submission is successful or not.

In a few days the IP address will be associated with the location submitted.

Something I do wonder is how do Vodafone allocate the IP addresses your mobile phone uses when it connects to the tower. If the IP addresses are permanently assigned there's no issue. However, if the IP address move around from one location to another, in time someone else may assign a different location to the IP address, although that's not an issue as you'll be using a different IP address to.


Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Chromecast iPhone to TV

Let's say you have pictures on you iPhone from a recent holiday and want to share them with everyone in the room on the big screen TV. The TV has a Google Chromecast.

Whilst it is possible to use an app what I've heard is the free apps start charging. So what's the easiest way to do it for free.

It's actually quite easy.

Plug your iPhone into a Windows computer and use the iPhone effectively as a disk and you can access the photos (and videos) in the DCIM folder.

Now cast your Windows computer to the big screen TV.

Open the files on the iPhone which then display on your computer and are cast to the big screen TV. You can step through the photos easily one by one or look at the thumbnails and only show the photos you want. Videos may take longer to transfer over the cable but still, you should be able to view and cast short videos relatively easily.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Monday, October 3, 2022

What does ρгό𝔪σŞm mean? (Hint: promosm)

I received a comment on a YouTube video recently with just the text "ρгό𝔪σŞm". I received no notification. I had no clue what it meant. I thought it was using another language so put the text into Google Translate which came up with nonsense.

I searched Google for "ρгό𝔪σŞm" and found others also didn't know what it meant either. I then searched using Bing and found a video that helped.

Once you sit back and realise they've used Greek letters which look like English letters it starts to make sense. I thought this was quite funny that I didn't see it earlier.

ρгό𝔪σŞm = promosm or PromoSM

That is Social Media Promotion.

Now if you type in promosm into Google or YouTube you'll quickly see what the comment spam is about.

It does appear this is comment spam is generated by a bot. I decided the best thing to do was to click on Report for the comment in YouTube, so basically from my point of view it's gone.

I would be very wary of these companies. Getting subscribers on YouTube can be hard so it's easy to start looking for easy options. Taking easy options often has unexpected consequences. Some being scams but most probably being a waste of time and money.

Hope this information helps others.

Kelvin

Feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel if this information helps.
https://www.youtube.com/user/kelvineldridge?sub_confirmation=1



Monday, August 8, 2022

Scam on Jimmy Tries World (jimmytriesworld) on YouTube in response to a reply I wrote.

I recently watched an interesting video on the YouTube channel Jimmy Tries World (jimmytriesworld). I like to thank creators to show my appreciation. Much to my surprise I received the following reply letting me know I'd won a brand new 'Giveaway.


The image in the reply is Jimmy's image but the '@jimmytriesworld on telegram' wasn't the name of the YouTube channel. Of course Jimmy may have been making an offer for marketing purposes so I couldn't be sure. I've not seen scams on YouTube like this before so I thought the best way to confirm was to post another comment. Whilst I felt it was unlikely I'd get a reply since Jimmy gets thousands of comments I was pleasantly surprised that Jimmy responded and confirmed the reply was a scam. Here's a copy of the reply.


Hopefully by sharing this example of a YouTube scam it helps others to spot YouTube scams. Whilst I've been using YouTube for a while as a creator and I'm an IT consultant, scams that I've not seen before could easily trick. The only lesson I can pass on really is trust your instinct. If something surprises you, is unexpected, may even get you interested, pause for a moment and do some investigating. A moment's pause may save you a lot of grief. In this case I hadn't entered a competition so it didn't make sense, but that's not to say there was a competition running I wasn't aware of. So I started doing searches on Google and found the reply was most likely a scam.

Thanks also to Jimmy for taking the time to respond and confirm the reply was a scam. I should point out this scam has nothing to do with Jimmy, just scammers finding another way to trick people.

Kelvin


Sunday, August 7, 2022

Seagate external hard drive failure with bad block, format drive message.

Ever get that sinking feeling your hard drive has failed. Yep. Happened to me. Now usually I have a backup of my files but this time I was using a new hard drive as a backup to my dashcam memory card to copy files before they got overwritten. There in lies my failure. I only have a single copy of the dashcam file and now they're gone. About a month and a half of dashcam files. Not a huge problem losing the files but it is very disappointing.



I tried quite a few programs to recover the files and quite a few didn't do anything and so far haven't recovered the files. I thought I'd share the outcome of each program I tried.

Easeus (trial version)
The trial version of Easeus doesn't allow you to save files but can in theory show you what the program can recover. I didn't let the program complete as it was reporting bad sectors and was taking an extremely long time. What it did show however was interesting. There were many files on the external drive I didn't put there. That was a reminder that Windows uses the external drive as temporary storage which increases the risk of the disk failing. Note to self for future. Unplug external drives when not in use. I think that was my main mistake and may have led to the external disk failing.

Recuva
Nothing

Disk Drill
Nothing

DiskGenius
Nothing

TestDisk/Photorec
Nothing from Photorec. Nothing so far from TeskDisk but hopeful something might be returned.

Remo Recover
Nothing

In other words so far everything I have tried has failed. I'll update this post if I have any success.

Kelvin