Aspman

I'm genuinely having trouble telling cars apart these days the designs are so similar and deadly dull. thise LEDs will be a PITA to change (and no doubt very expensive) if they break or get nudged.

Should be a sweet spot for mpg and reliability. suspect that engine could do 500k with care, the rest of the car will be like Triggers broom.

My only real problem with the Scoobs are that they are a bit slow for me as an evreyday car. But we're going to rejig all our motors I think (bar the coupe).

Is anyone up to date with the MOT Vs dash lights situation. I've a couple of cars with 'informational' lights /alerts. Mrs' Mini has a "check drivetrain" alert up after it went through a heavy rain shower. I'm pretty certain it was nothing more than a fleck of water on a sensor but I can't clear the alert with a normal OBS reader. Similarly my Quattroporte has a "Service Overdue" light up. Apparently they near to impossible to clear unless you have Maserati software which no one does but them pretty much. Just wondering if these will actually be an issue or not.

Just wait till your car is a write off because the onboard software is unsupported after 7yr. Plenty people chucking away other (otherwise usable) electrical kit for the same reason.

Did you nick that one George? I don't want a new one. Told the chap no electric, no hybrid. Keep it simple.

Trying to reconcile all our cars right now. Current thinking is that we could replace the Jimny and and countryman with something like a Scooby Outback or forrester. That'll load lug and be comfy enough to go on holiday (slowly) plus do my winter days in the field. Then we'd freed up to get somethign silly with 4 seats. Maybe that M5 comp I've hankered after or an M4 etc. Remover the need for a big boot and the choices open out. But I have stated no hybrid, no electric. I think this is probably the last chance to get someting big and oily

So 18month is on and looks like the Mazzer has to go. No for any problems just that reality means we need a bit more of a load lugger. The mazzer has a huge boot but it's a slot so great for 2 but a struggle for 4. Also my Mrs has refused to drive it as the 21 inch alloys are worth about 30% of the car and she's notorious for knocking kerbs. I will be sad to see it go, it's so preeety. It's also increadibly comfortable and a properly nice place to sit in. It's foibles are forgivable, it's not the best to drive, the gearbox has it's own mind, the CD player can't really be used because the gear selector is in the way. But it's been completely reliable and not too bad on fuel. People keep asking me if it's broken yet and it genuinely hasn't not a sqeak or a rattle even. I've made one enquiry on a 530d Touring but the dealer very much gave a "we don't want your car" price.I spoke to the dealer I bought the mazzer from and he'd quite like it back though we haven't agreed a price. He's off on a hunt to find a replacement since ideally we'll do a deal again. So fingers crossed next car is some form of V8 estate.

Yes and I have signed up to volunteer for this

No. But they do provide evidence to support additional police patrols or modification to roads to improve safety. However, for HGVs it might be different. The time code on each picture IS verifiable as it's linked to a proper interet timesource. That could be compares to the tacho on an hgv. i.e. there is a picture of you at x location at y time. this is a 40 what does your tacho say?

Tesla well know for quality issues. they're a drivetrain manufacturer learning how to put together a car. Most car manufacturers have been building cars for 100yr+ in one form or another. They might choose not to use every lesson learned but they do have a lot of experience in all the tricky little areas that are needed to make a car. I think Tesla still has the air of fasion and rebellion about it for now but this will fade and if they can't up the quality they'll start to look like a French manufacturer. Pretty cars that fall apart.

Bloody low drivers

Getting the pi in and working was a way to try to get around that. I work from home in a room that faces the road. Noise defintey changes on road conditions, the car sound faster when the road is wet for instance. And yes some cars sound faster than they are going. But some cars are phenominally over the limit and that is obvious. Often it's the same cars. I now recognise a few of them. A beat-up old Focus ST, a new Fiesta ST, Blue 3 series etc, I see these cars every day and have thought they were always too fast. Pi is proving it to some extent. We are getting more police presence on the road and most visits result in 3-5 referrals to procurator (so court appearance not just 3 points).

the Pi records all cars speeds above 17mph to generally exclude cyclists and pedestrians. The percentage speeding is significant but not the majority. The app can chart by hour the average speed but also records each event. I'm working on a way to extract the data as a CSV so it's easier to plug into Excel. It's not perfect and the AI can glitch where it detects more than one object on a vehicle, I've noted a few unlikely speeds (clocked a bin lorry at 88 but it was probably stationary or close to 5mph as it was collecting so the AI has glitch on an part of the image shape) but these are fairly minimal and generally obvious. We actually have the data from the council monitoring but I'm not particularly adept at excel analysis. Can upload if anyone wants to play.

Going back, that was the council prior to the VAS signs going up. It was the usual setup with a couple of pneumatic tubes

We have 3x VAS signage up that does exactly this. But they don't record or even log speeds.

I should just be allowed to throw rocks at them or something

Think it was a Rover 45

As I type this evening already If anything I think this was under reading and he was still gunning it as he passed me, still another 600m of 40mpg limit to go.

To follow this up I have this working quite well now using this set of instructions. https://core-electronics.com.au/guides/detect-speed-raspberry-pi/ I did upgrade to a Pi 4b with more memory. It's taken some tweaking but it is producing pretty reliable results now. In contact with the community council initially to see what can be done with the data. One of our regular little neds - The red box is the detection area. The green box is the object detected. the green box doesn't always surround the car sometimes it picks up on a part, or lights for instance. the system doesn't detect cars as such, it detects moving objects and tracks the object through the detection area comparing frames. It has some known values taken from a reference calibration image which it useses to calculate the speed.

You'll need to load a CC into one of those systems and you should consider if you are comfortable with that. I'm not aware of any security leaks but I'm always uncomfortable at the level of intrusion these companies leverage through their services. that said I've given in and have a CC in my AppleWallet. And it has save my bacon a couple of times when I've forgotten a real wallet. Just make sure you've got autopayment turned off etc in any app stores. There should be an additional challenge to any payments.

I had a painter in with a car in this style. Said that the car was not, registered, mot'd, taxed or insured. As long as you don't touch the system no one bothers you. Typically British, follow the rules and you get clobbered with the slightest infraction. Don't follow them at all and it's too much bother to catch you.

definitely got a few of them round here

Not done this one for a while (ownership order and sometimes having more than one at a time) 1989 Vauxhall Astra 1.3 Merit 1997 Vaxhall Astra 1.6 16v Arctic 2001 Ford Focus 1.9TD 2004 Renault Clio 1.5dCi (100hp) 1993 Kawasaki ZXR400 2007 Skoda Octavia VRS TFSI (and starting in these hallowed halls) 2010 Honda Accord 2.2d 2015 Mazda 3 2.2d 2016 BMW 335d 2013 Mini Clubman Cooper 2019 Mini Countryman JCW 2018 Ranger Rover Vogue V6d 2013 Mini Coupe JCW 2016 Suzuki Jimny 1.3 2016 Mazerati Quattroporte V6d The BMW 335d and the RR Vogue are probably the closest I've got to the perfect car to do everything. If the BMW was an estate with uprated M sport brakes I think it would have nailed it. I can see us going back to either of those cars in some way.

Nooooo, they're not useless they're just waiting for their moment. (he says hiding SCSI and coax cables)