2014 Equipment Upgrades?

[Jeff Smith]

If someone knows how long you can turn it off for please let me know.

You can turn it off and back on indefinitely, but when you turn it on it will no longer be unlimited. Just fought them on this a couple of weeks ago.

 

[Derek Weston]

Last year I upgraded my camcorder to a Panasonic HC-X920 - very nice quality. It takes reasonable stills but I want to get a digital camera for exclusively taking pics. I don't think I'll do DSLR for the time being, as I don't think it'll ultimately be worth it, unless I really start to get into stills photography more than just the 2 weeks chasing per year.

I also got a heavier tripod last year - I made sure I used it a lot more - the new camcorder also does timelapse, so I got to do a lot of that, rather than using up hours of SD card and then speeding it up!

I'm toying with what do use my GoPro2 for this year - the last few years have seen me use it to take stills every 10 seconds throughout the chase day, facing forwards. This is great for looking back at a whole day's chasing, but having to change the battery every 2 hours, download all the stills, etc etc, means it's a bit of a bind, and I don't always look back at the stuff. I might use it purely for video once the chase is getting interesting.

Other than that I'll use the Baron system as usual, as a backup - I know it's rarely need these days (I rent a Verizon 4G MiFi for the trip) but it's nice to have it, just in case.

I also used my iPad and RadarScope last year - really liked that, especially being able to quickly open it up and get the radar, wherever I was at the time (e.g. eating, at night in the motel, etc) - no waiting around for it to boot like a laptop.

Also upgraded to the latest DeLorme maps last year.

FWIW, you can rig a go pro up to use your vehicles power source... they sell adapters. With a 64gb card you should be able to get about 8hrs in regular video mode. (or probably much longer with stills)

 

[Paul Knightley]

Thanks Derek - sadly the GP2 only takes up to 32GB, as far as I know. I'll have a look for a power adapter.

 

[John Wetter]

Just a couple incremental updates for me...

I got a new vehicle last year (a Ford Edge) so had to do a bunch of re-wiring and a new base plate for the Jotto Desk, etc. so that's all set this year. I hard wire everything to the battery so that took some time and cabling. I also got a new Nikon D7100 last year which was amazing. Love that camera!

For 2014:
1. Will buy a boom mic for the D7100 and hold off on buying a new camcorder. I've just found I don't care about video nearly as much as my stills but would like some decent audio when I decide to shoot some with the DSLR.
2. Buy the GPS receiver for the D7100. I've been using the DeLorme logs to import into Lightroom to match up with photos, but I'm ready to just get it done right from the start.
3. An LTE amp. Gordon, any update?!?! I switched from Sprint to Verizon for the whole family back in October, so want to have an amp for the LTE goodness this year.

That's about it. The big expected expense is the LTE amp which I really want to get going with. Haven't decided if I'm going to go with a cradlepoint or just a mifi yet.

 

[Joshua Nall]

I purchased an Asus 11.6" notebook computer to replace my old mini Dell, and I will be upgrading to Grlevel3 version 2. Had a heck of a time researching if the asus was well enough equiped to handle radar and mapping software. For instance, on the Grlevelx site it says your computer needs a pentium or equivalent processor. How do you know what is equivalent? This one has a celeron I believe, and i finally found someone saying in the owners forums they had an older computer with a celeron processor and said it worked fine. Anyhow I went with it, even though I'm still not sure if the graphics card supports smoothing.... which I don't really care about. Hope to have it fixed up with all the software and a DC power converter soon if everything goes smoothly. Someone just tell me what antivirus to get! Trying to figure out which is good or not is worse than getting a virus... has to be. Now that COD has 4km Nam and HRRR, I'm thinking GRlevel3 and delorme and the COD site will be all this little computer will have to do.

I tried aquapel once. Had the same experience as most others. The water does not run off nearly as well. I use rain X and hardly ever run my wipers. Usually swipe some towels from a fast food resturaunt bathroom and wipe it on before every chase. I'm sure everyone knows this, but the original rainX is what you want. The cleaner and wiper fluid is different stuff.

Also, I've seen others stating aircards were breaking the usb ports, so I've always run a cord from my laptop to the card. Hope that's an easy fix.

I would love to add additional hail protection to some of my glass and lights but that is looking to be a little too involved to get done this year.

 

[Timothy Finn]

Well, after some study of the floor in the Grand Cherokee, I can see exactly why there's no laptop mount made for it.....there's a massive hump in the floorpan between the front seat mounting points, and in effect, the seat straddles this miniature mountain range in the floor.

Regardless, I have begun buying other items for the new ride:

1. Uniden BCT7 scanner from the 'Bay. I know it's an older unit, however, I had one in another car I had that was stolen, and while it would not trunk, it was a GREAT scanner.
2. Glass mount scanner antenna. I know some will have negative things to say, but I have had pretty good luck with them, and I hate drilling holes in my car. Atop that, it looks like a cell phone antenna, and I like the stealth factor. The Jeep is from that approximate era, no one will give that antenna a second glance.
3. New GlobalSat BU353 GPS transponder, since mine seems to have run off. No problem, I get to update the the newer SiRF IV chipset.
4. Cobra 800 Watt power inverter. In the truck we were using the 12V power point, in the Jeep, this one will be wired direct to the alternator output.
5. Two HD dashcam setups, one facing the road, one facing the interior of the car, so I can finally start editing out decent videos. I know it won't be prosumer camera quality, but hey, I'm on a budget here, LOL.
6. Nice windshield cradle mount for my HTC One. I miss having a smaller radar screen right on the windshield, and since this phone has a nice screen, I can't think of any reason why to not use it like that.

Tim

 

[Bob Schafer]

You would be hardpressed to find any computer nowadays that does NOT handle the radar and mapping. What's important is how much muscle your CPU and GPU have. I first used GRL3 with an HP bought in 2008, and it did okay, but not great. When that computer died (broken motherboard!) and I started researching how to replace it, I learned that there is a reason some computers cost a lot more than others. Previously, I had no idea.

http://cpubenchmark.net/

I found that the broken HP had a CPU that scored about 850. The GPU score was pretty bad. I ended up buying an ASUS for $330, shipped, (on Cyber Monday in 2011) with a CPU that scored 1900+, and the GPU's score was about 8 times higher than the old HP. I doubt if you could even find a new computer for sale today with a CPU score below 1000, and that's even if you look for one in the $200-$300 price range. Last November I bought my dad a new desktop ASUS for $350 (shipped), and its CPU scored ~3000. It is insanely fast compared to the old HP. "Pentium" processors have been around since the 1990's, and the earlier ones would have gotten CPU scores of what, 50? I bought a computer for my business in 1998 that had a Pentium 3, but that's surely not what GR means when they say "Pentium".

I recommend Avast! (their exclamation point). A computer guru pointed me in that direction about 5 years ago, and since installing Avast! I haven't had a single virus. Seriously. I do have a really locked-down computer, though, including a bunch of other measures.

Yeah, plugging the data card into an extension cord is going to really help. Much less stress on the motherboard. Just make sure it's secured in a manner that it doesn't get pulled/yanked or whatever.

I purchased an Asus 11.6" notebook computer to replace my old mini Dell, and I will be upgrading to Grlevel3 version 2. Had a heck of a time researching if the asus was well enough equiped to handle radar and mapping software. For instance, on the Grlevelx site it says your computer needs a pentium or equivalent processor. How do you know what is equivalent? This one has a celeron I believe, and i finally found someone saying in the owners forums they had an older computer with a celeron processor and said it worked fine. Anyhow I went with it, even though I'm still not sure if the graphics card supports smoothing.... which I don't really care about. Hope to have it fixed up with all the software and a DC power converter soon if everything goes smoothly. Someone just tell me what antivirus to get! Trying to figure out which is good or not is worse than getting a virus... has to be. Now that COD has 4km Nam and HRRR, I'm thinking GRlevel3 and delorme and the COD site will be all this little computer will have to do.

I tried aquapel once. Had the same experience as most others. The water does not run off nearly as well. I use rain X and hardly ever run my wipers. Usually swipe some towels from a fast food resturaunt bathroom and wipe it on before every chase. I'm sure everyone knows this, but the original rainX is what you want. The cleaner and wiper fluid is different stuff.

Also, I've seen others stating aircards were breaking the usb ports, so I've always run a cord from my laptop to the card. Hope that's an easy fix.

I would love to add additional hail protection to some of my glass and lights but that is looking to be a little too involved to get done this year.

 

[Joshua Nall]

I appreciate the information and run down on old verses new computers and their CPUs, etc.., Bob. It has to do more with the speed rather than the kind or brand of CPU I understand. This one should do ok then as it is a new computer, just a regular laptop I suppose, only smaller. Thanks for the recommendation on the antivirus also. Avast! is what I have on my home computer but it has acquired some sort of bug recently. It won't "go back" from one page to the previous one as my history seems to become these adds that are then blocked. I've read that I need some sort of program to debug it but haven't got around to it. Anyway, this may not be something that Avast could have prevented and I can't complain to much since I only have the free version. It has caused me to try to learn a little bit about it all though, especially since I will be setting up this new computer.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Download and run Malwarebytes. You have malware, (most likely) and that's not Avast's department. Another thing I do is run Firefox with NoScript. Other people like different browsers, and there's nothing particularly wrong with Chrome or even Explorer these days, but NoScript works awesome, and it only works with FF. Dad runs Explorer, and I don't object to that.

When I was in Ardara Ireland last September, the lady running the B&B had a "house" computer that was doing the same thing as yours. I got her permission to D/L Malwarebytes, did so, and cleaned her right up.

I can't claim to know that much about CPU's, but I know it isn't just the processor speed that matters. i.e. One processor running at 3.1GHz isn't necessarily going to get work done faster than a processor running at 2.0GHz. I guess it depends on how many cores there are and some other things beyond my level of knowledge. That's why I just look at cpubenchmark. You can easily find CPU's in there that have higher scores than ones running faster.

One more thing: Make sure you create a "User" profile for everyday net surfing (at lower privileges)! Don't run in the "administrator" mode on a day-to-day basis! Do a search to read the reasons why.

 

[Joshua Nall]

Yes! Malwarebytes was it. Haven't been back on here in a while, thanks for the response and tips.

 

[Tim Carley]

I am running a MIFI 4510 on a Wilson sleek 4g booster on a 9db antenna. With the Verizon extended 3g network I don't think there are many places in the plains that I won't have coverage. Best provider, without a doubt!