Gifts for car lovers
Four cool auto gadgets that are sure to please
By Mathieu Yuill
November 20, 2011
November 20, 2011
Holiday season can be tough for those with car fans on their gift lists. Unless a new car is within your budget, choosing what to wrap up is tough and you usually have to settle for a gift card or a manufacturer-branded T-shirt. We’re here to help. After some digging, we found four cool auto gadgets that are sure to please.
BlueAnt S4 speakerphone
Some provinces have introduced legislation outlawing the use of hand-held electronic devices while behind the wheel but, until recently, you would be hard-pressed to find a new vehicle that included Bluetooth as a standard feature. But times are changing and even sub-$20,000 vehicles come equipped with Bluetooth for hands-free calling and audio streaming. That’s great if you’re buying a new car, but what about the car you’re driving now? There is a plethora of hands-free devices on the market today—both in-ear and visor models—but few look as good or function as well as the BlueAnt S4.
Priced at $99, the voice-controlled S4 sports a textured black finish with silver accents. To make a call you don’t have to push a button—just say “BlueAnt, speak to me” and the unit is ready to take instructions. When a call comes in, the S4 reads out the caller’s name. Telling it to “Answer” or “Ignore” allows you to keep both hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
But people also receive text messages while driving. Ford’s Sync technology is one of the few on-board systems that does a decent job of handling these; it can read messages aloud and even respond using a series of canned answers. The S4 also offers similar functionality through free software available for Android and BlackBerry phones. (Sorry, Windows 7 and iPhone users.)
The S4 ($99) comes equipped with A2DP support, which means it can play music or podcasts stored on your smartphone or broadcast turn-by-turn directions from your mobile’s GPS application.
LiveView GPS tracker
Lots of vehicles come with GPS to help you find your way, but using that same technology to keep tabs on your own vehicle is less common. Why do that? First: in the event of a car theft you have a tool to allow police to accurately track your vehicle. Second: you have teenaged drivers in the house.
LiveView offers several units specifically targeted at parents who want to monitor where their children are taking the car or how fast they’re driving. About the size of a deck of cards, LiveView’s Live Trac PT-10 retails for $399 plus a monthly subscription of $40. This gives unlimited access to tracking data and alerts.
The problem many GPS trackers have is the delay between when the event occurs and when an update arrives. Some have delays as long as 10 minutes. In that amount of time your car could be long gone (if being stolen) or worse (if being operated by your children). LiveView’s Live Trac PT-10 updates every 10 seconds when the vehicle is travelling more than 15km per hour.
A tracking device is no good if it doesn’t have a wide variety of notification options. The Live Trac can be accessed by e-mail, SMS or a Web interface, and virtual boundaries can be set instructing the device to let you know if the unit has left the prescribed area. It’s also possible to set speed notifications that are triggered when the car starts moving or goes over a certain speed limit.
A 90-day history logs every move the vehicle makes and a dedicated app is available for the iPhone and iPad, allowing you to view information on the go.
Midland XTC300VP4 mountable camera
Midland is known for CB radios, but it entered the mobile recording market last year, targeting extreme sports enthusiasts with cameras that could be attached to helmets. This year it added suction cups, making the cameras perfect for dashboards.
Why would you want to record your drive? There are a number of reasons but mainly to collect evidence in the case of an accident or traffic ticket, to record great scenery during rides in the mountains or through parks and, of course, to chronicle your best laps as you race around a track.
The XTC300VP4 can shoot in 480p, 720p and true hi-def 1080p and accepts SD cards with up to 32GB of storage. With every 11 minutes of HD footage using 1GB of space, you can record for up to five hours before needing to swap out cards. The camera has no viewfinder—as it is designed to be mounted—but does include a submersible case good for up to 100 feet under water.
A great dashboard cam has to have a great viewing angle. A 127-degree lens is standard on the XTC300VP4, which is wide enough to capture more than human eyes can in one sweep.
Spot Connect
Have you ever been in a place where your mobile phone just doesn’t get service? It’s jarring for people accustomed to an always-connected lifestyle.
The Spot Connect is a small device that links to your mobile phone through Bluetooth and then connects via satellite to send short e-mail messages, text messages, updates to Facebook or Twitter, or an emergency SOS signal.
It does not make your mobile into a satellite phone, but for times when you’re travelling in a sparsely populated area, or even if you just enter a local dead zone, you can use the Spot Connect to send predefined messages. Perhaps your teenager has a friend whose house in the valley just doesn’t get service. With the Spot Connect you could have him or her use the “check-in” feature, sending you an e-mail or Facebook or Twitter update. The device stores a waypoint that can be checked later to see where the check-in happened.
The Spot Connect retails for $169 and requires a $100 per-year fee to keep it active.
Also read:
Backbone's Hot Gadget reviews
BlueAnt S4 speakerphone
Some provinces have introduced legislation outlawing the use of hand-held electronic devices while behind the wheel but, until recently, you would be hard-pressed to find a new vehicle that included Bluetooth as a standard feature. But times are changing and even sub-$20,000 vehicles come equipped with Bluetooth for hands-free calling and audio streaming. That’s great if you’re buying a new car, but what about the car you’re driving now? There is a plethora of hands-free devices on the market today—both in-ear and visor models—but few look as good or function as well as the BlueAnt S4. Priced at $99, the voice-controlled S4 sports a textured black finish with silver accents. To make a call you don’t have to push a button—just say “BlueAnt, speak to me” and the unit is ready to take instructions. When a call comes in, the S4 reads out the caller’s name. Telling it to “Answer” or “Ignore” allows you to keep both hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
But people also receive text messages while driving. Ford’s Sync technology is one of the few on-board systems that does a decent job of handling these; it can read messages aloud and even respond using a series of canned answers. The S4 also offers similar functionality through free software available for Android and BlackBerry phones. (Sorry, Windows 7 and iPhone users.)
The S4 ($99) comes equipped with A2DP support, which means it can play music or podcasts stored on your smartphone or broadcast turn-by-turn directions from your mobile’s GPS application.
LiveView GPS tracker
Lots of vehicles come with GPS to help you find your way, but using that same technology to keep tabs on your own vehicle is less common. Why do that? First: in the event of a car theft you have a tool to allow police to accurately track your vehicle. Second: you have teenaged drivers in the house. LiveView offers several units specifically targeted at parents who want to monitor where their children are taking the car or how fast they’re driving. About the size of a deck of cards, LiveView’s Live Trac PT-10 retails for $399 plus a monthly subscription of $40. This gives unlimited access to tracking data and alerts.
The problem many GPS trackers have is the delay between when the event occurs and when an update arrives. Some have delays as long as 10 minutes. In that amount of time your car could be long gone (if being stolen) or worse (if being operated by your children). LiveView’s Live Trac PT-10 updates every 10 seconds when the vehicle is travelling more than 15km per hour.
A tracking device is no good if it doesn’t have a wide variety of notification options. The Live Trac can be accessed by e-mail, SMS or a Web interface, and virtual boundaries can be set instructing the device to let you know if the unit has left the prescribed area. It’s also possible to set speed notifications that are triggered when the car starts moving or goes over a certain speed limit.
A 90-day history logs every move the vehicle makes and a dedicated app is available for the iPhone and iPad, allowing you to view information on the go.
Midland XTC300VP4 mountable camera
Midland is known for CB radios, but it entered the mobile recording market last year, targeting extreme sports enthusiasts with cameras that could be attached to helmets. This year it added suction cups, making the cameras perfect for dashboards. Why would you want to record your drive? There are a number of reasons but mainly to collect evidence in the case of an accident or traffic ticket, to record great scenery during rides in the mountains or through parks and, of course, to chronicle your best laps as you race around a track.
The XTC300VP4 can shoot in 480p, 720p and true hi-def 1080p and accepts SD cards with up to 32GB of storage. With every 11 minutes of HD footage using 1GB of space, you can record for up to five hours before needing to swap out cards. The camera has no viewfinder—as it is designed to be mounted—but does include a submersible case good for up to 100 feet under water.
A great dashboard cam has to have a great viewing angle. A 127-degree lens is standard on the XTC300VP4, which is wide enough to capture more than human eyes can in one sweep.
Spot Connect
Have you ever been in a place where your mobile phone just doesn’t get service? It’s jarring for people accustomed to an always-connected lifestyle. The Spot Connect is a small device that links to your mobile phone through Bluetooth and then connects via satellite to send short e-mail messages, text messages, updates to Facebook or Twitter, or an emergency SOS signal.
It does not make your mobile into a satellite phone, but for times when you’re travelling in a sparsely populated area, or even if you just enter a local dead zone, you can use the Spot Connect to send predefined messages. Perhaps your teenager has a friend whose house in the valley just doesn’t get service. With the Spot Connect you could have him or her use the “check-in” feature, sending you an e-mail or Facebook or Twitter update. The device stores a waypoint that can be checked later to see where the check-in happened.
The Spot Connect retails for $169 and requires a $100 per-year fee to keep it active.
Also read:
Backbone's Hot Gadget reviews
