ADUK Archive

akirk wrote:how does GPS measure g-force? is it accurate enough to really detect different types of cornering?

camera gimbal heads are expensive - but you could pick up a gimbal bearing for c. £60 - or pop along to a yachty boot sale on the south coast and get one for a few pounds - build your own stand...

I don't think they use the GPS to measure g-force. I think it may be use for time spend in different location, speed, etc. to determine risks.

I haven't looked into it in detail but I expect it uses the phone's accelerometer. In practice GPS is good for linear speed and tolerable for slow acceleration, but the accelerometer would be the only way to get a measure of short term smoothness. Remember that it's about pattern matching over time, not every single anomalous value. I expect it works quite well.

Well, you can monitor it yourself with various free accelerometer apps. You're looking for prolonged acceleration in a single plane so in theory you can filter out a load of noise with that alone. Plus a phone in a car ought to be comparatively static.

Typical GPS polling, for power consumption reasons if nothing else, is usually multiple seconds which isn't very good. I don't know what a practically acceptable sampling rate for the accelerometer is but it's a lot better.

If we're looking for a real world pattern of say "passengers thrown forward under harsh acceleration", I'd suggest it's doable, especially if backed up with GPS. Something subtler like a good measure of gearchange smoothness, maybe not.

Acceleration encompasses deceleration

WhoseGeneration wrote:

Kimosabe wrote:
I feel it's simply a matter of time before drivers are remotely observed,

Chip implanted at birth, it's the only way forward.

Remote biometrics? I think that's what some folk refer to as 'smartphones'. Oh the irony

I see no point in dragging our heels over this 'human chip and pin' thing, because it's an inevitability....but they'll have to catch me with a tranquiliser gun first and I wont be taking prisoners.

Kimosabe wrote:
I see no point in dragging our heels over this 'human chip and pin' thing, because it's an inevitability....but they'll have to catch me with a tranquiliser gun first and I wont be taking prisoners.

To be a bit "political", "they" might catch you but I doubt "they" will catch members of ISIS.
See the problem?

WhoseGeneration wrote:

Kimosabe wrote:
I see no point in dragging our heels over this 'human chip and pin' thing, because it's an inevitability....but they'll have to catch me with a tranquiliser gun first and I wont be taking prisoners.

To be a bit "political", "they" might catch you but I doubt "they" will catch members of ISIS.
See the problem?

Regardless of this, i'm handing myself in now incase I do something vaguely erroneous in future. Best to get it over with.

akirk wrote:Those refer to fitted black box recorders...
does anyone know whether the car's built in computer maintains a permanent record of data - or does it only push it out in real time?

Alasdair

It's not permanent - they just don't have the memory capacity to store all data for all time. But they do have buffers which store some parameters for a period of time. How much depends on the memory and that varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.

These days many do have enough to reconstruct information about how the car is driven (for example you can identify harsh acceleration from fuel trim data), how long such data is kept varies from minutes to a few hours. Some high spec cars have track modes than include capture and storage of a lot of data (which is made available to the driver).

Aftermarket scan tools that read both OBDII and manufacturer specific data are widely available now so getting at the data is not difficult, and the police can and do extract it when investigating suspected offences where the effort to do so is warranted (eg fatalities).