As I continue to ride the wave of euphoria of completing the 1200 mile east to west Gadget Road Trip with my lifelong friend Andy. Today I joined BBC Radio Suffolk’s Sarah Lilley on the Sofa in Ipswich and explained how the challenge came about and how it felt to drive 1200 miles in an Electric Car and why I love Gadgets!
I also talked about how I met Vanessa, how I listen to music and an ill fated trip to Tunisia in 1996.
Listen in to the stream, bookmark the site, we have a LOAD of reviews coming up over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!
Many people will know that I am a particular fan of flying a drone as a hobby and also a fan of historical Suffolk.
Recently I took some lovely footage of Shotley Pier and Ganges Pier at Shotley Gate. I was delighted to find that the East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star have featured them as part of their article on the Bristol Pier refurbishment.
You can view the videos below
Community efforts to save one of Suffolk’s historic piers have received a five-figure funding boost.
I was back on air this morning with Mark Murphy and James Hazell to talk about drones and the immense rise in their popularity.
With popularity comes a degree of public worry and a much larger degree of press coverage. Should drones be licensed? Should people need to take a proficiency test to use them? All of this was covered on BBC Radio Suffolk this morning along with interviews with The Civil Aviation Authority and local pilots.
Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles come in all shapes and sizes and can range in price from £10 to literally thousands. Many of the more expensive semi professional drones have ‘Geo Fencing’ which stops the drones from flying in banned areas or ‘No Fly Zones’.
Of course it is possible to build your own drone. Kits are widely available and many people have built their own drones from scratch using light weight computers such as the Raspberry Pi. In this case, no licensing is going to stop the production of these kinds of drones and increasingly advanced techniques such as GPS ‘way point’ route planning means that the pilot does not need to be in radio contact during the flight and therefore distances of 7km possible before battery charging is necessary.
Currently in the UK, I can’t see how any ‘proficiency’ testing can be brought in being, it would be far too costly and reliant of the purchaser of the drone. Tracking the drones is equally difficult without elaborate (and expensive) tracking transmitter/receivers being added to the drone.
Consequently, it lays with the manufacturers of these devices to ensure that their equipment is safe, easy to use, legal and abides by any global no fly zones.
I will be reviewing the Parrot Bebop 2 camera drone very soon, so stay ‘tuned’.
I’ve finished testing the Parrot Bebop 2 camera drone. A fully review is coming up shortly. In the meantime here is a selection of footage I have taken over the last couple of weeks.
Drones are never far from the news at the moment and with the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) currently in progress in Law Vegas, there has already been some big announcements in this area.
But none quite so big as the EHANG 184 Autonomous Flying Vehicle. Stay tuned for more CES announcements. You can watch the official video below for more about the EHANG 184 and it’s founders ideology of safe aerial transportation.
The gadgets are coming in thick and fast at the moment, but one gadget I was really looking forward to reviewing is none other than the Star Wars BB8 Droid from Sphero, not only was it featured on the show but I also spent some time in the green room demonstrating it to none other than magician Paul Daniels and singer Andy Abrahams. I also had the duty of cracking open our fully brewed keg of Brew Barrel which featured last week, it was very tasty!!!
Listen in to the stream above and watch out for a full review on BB8 in the next few days
Star Wars – The Force Awakens – BB8 Sphero App Enabled Droid
Star Wars – The Force Awakens – BB8 Sphero App Enabled Droid
Star Wars – The Force Awakens – BB8 Sphero App Enabled Droid
Star Wars – The Force Awakens – BB8 Sphero App Enabled Droid
Star Wars – The Force Awakens – BB8 Sphero App Enabled Droid
Star Wars – The Force Awakens – BB8 Sphero App Enabled Droid
Star Wars – The Force Awakens – BB8 Sphero App Enabled Droid
Star Wars – The Force Awakens – BB8 Sphero App Enabled Droid DIGITAL CAMERA
Star Wars – The Force Awakens – BB8 Sphero App Enabled Droid
This week we chat about the Soloshot2. Billed as ‘your robot cameraman’, it takes away the pain of filming your activities. It does this by tracking your movements using a remote wrist strap which is tracked by the main camera mount unit.
Below is some footage filmed using the Soloshot 2 a couple of weeks ago.
Thanks to William at Soloshot UK for his efforts!!
I was delighted to be invited to the BBC Radio Suffolk Studios to provide gadget and technology advice for callers on Rachael Sloane’s show.
I answered some very interesting questions about iMessage, Crochet Hooks with inbuilt lights, which is the best Wordprocessor and lots of other bits by text and email.
I also took a New Year selfie with Rachael, it was great fun!!
The audio recorded on the day is attached as ever at the top of the page.
It’s been a great year reviewing such a wide range of gadgets from smart watches to high end sports cars. It’s been quite a ride, I’ve really enjoyed the whole experience, so thank you to all involved from BBC Radio Suffolk to the PR agencies and companies that have been so generous allowing me to try out all the wonderful tech!
This morning I spoke to Mark Murphy about my favourite gadgets of the year and the Gadget which won the gadget of the Year.
Smart Watches
We have a lot of fun reviewing some smart wear. We reviewed the Samsung Gear 2, Sony Smartwatch 2 and Sony Smartband. My favourite was the Gear 2, purely for James Bond features. However we have been asking to review other watches, but none have been sent out. Let’s hope this improves next year.
Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 – Wearable of the Year 2014
Sony Smartwatch 2
Sony Smartband
Smart Phones and Tablets
We were never short of phones and tablets which is not surprising given the size of the marketplace. HTC, Samsung, LG, Asus, Nokia and Motorola all supplied us with review units. HTC phones exhibited the best built quality and screen sharpness. LG had the best screen of the two Quad HD displays (the other being the Galaxy Note 4). Motorola was the best value for money with it’s Moto G.
Overall, our favourite handset started and remained the Nokia Lumia 1520. A six inch incredibly vibrant screen, superb battery life and exquisite camera. Although very large, it was by far the nicest of the all the handsets we reviewed
We also reviewed three tables, the Samungs Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2, the Nokia Lumia 2520 and the Asus Transformer. The Tab Pro 12.2 was our favourite with massive 12.2 inch screen with better than HD quality, the Nokia 2520 with Windows 8.1RT on board was close behind.
HTC One M8 HTC One Mini 2 Nokia Lumia 1520 – Smart Device of the Year 2014 Sony Xperia Z2 Moto G Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 Nokia Lumia 2520 Tablet Nokia Lumia 630 Asus Zenfone 6 Asus Transformer LG G3 Asus Zenfone 5 Samsung Galaxy S5 Samsung Galaxy Alpha Samsung Galaxy Note 4
Cameras
We reviewed a number of cameras this year, as expected the GoPro models come ahead of most others for their durability and quality of movies and photos. The Samsung Galaxy Camera 2 was excellent and was a fully functional Android device to boot. The Sony Actioncam was good, but kept fogging up which spoilt most of it’s footage. The Autographer was…. weird.
GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition – Camera of the Year 2014 Samsung Galaxy Camera 2 Sony Actioncam Autographer BT Homecam GoPro Hero Selfie Stick
Electric Bikes
I loved reviewing the electric bikes this year. I started out with the mindset that electric bikes would be a welcome relief from simply reviewing mobile phones for a year, but I ended up extending my ‘E’ vehicle reviews to cars. It was thoroughly interesting and liberating to get out in the Suffolk countryside and off the beaten track to test out these bikes. The Sparta is not really designed for off-road, but was capable and fast used for travelling to work. The Smart Ebike was fabulous and I loved every minute of using it, especially off-road. The Batribike was excellent in every area, I only marked if down for off-road use, but this was a little unfair as it had road tyres.
Sparta Ion/RX+ Smart Ebike – Ebike of the Year 2014 – Joint Winner Batribike Granite Pro – Ebike of the Year 2014 – Joint Winner
Electric Cars
This was an amazing experience from the beginning. The Renault Twizy was small and exciting to drive, but really only designed to replace moped type use. The Renault Zoe was an excellent car, out of all, this was the one car which could truly offer and alternative to fossil fuelled cars both in size and price. The BMW i3 was interesting and very fast. Design wise it hardly resembled an standard BMW but it was high spec and beautiful to drive. The BMW i8 was outstanding to look at and drive. It was like sitting in Red 5 at the end of Star Wars Episode IV, and the most exhilarating drive so far (electric car wise). I didn’t get to test the Tesla Model S this year, but in a week or so, I am looking forward to reviewing it.
I also got to experience 3 AMG ‘normally’ aspirated vehicles. I say normal, there was nothing normal about these vehicles. I experienced the G63 (G Wagon), the S63 and the C63 Edition 507. The C63 was simply mind shattering. When a manufacturer electronically limits to the top speed to 171mph, you know something is afoot.
Renault Twizy
Renault Zoe
BMW i3
BMW i8 – Car of the Year 2014
The Rest
I got to test out other gadgets and gizmos, ranging from domestic gadgets to toys and drones. The drones were fun, but in some cases difficult to control. The Ankidrive was fun and the Samsung Smart TV with Soundbar was very cool indeed. However, by far the best gadget we tried out was the iRobot Roomba 880. This is a fantastic vacuum cleaner and has remained in use at least three times a day since July this year. It does a brilliant job of vacuuming up just about any type of debris on any surface. It was fantastic!!
iRobot Roomba 880 – Winner Samsung Smart TV and Soundbar Ankidrive Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Parrot Jumping Sumo
Overall Gadget of the Year 2014
The Gadget Man – Gadget of the Year 2014 – iRobot Roomba 880
We’ve certainly tried and tested many gadgets this year. Some were disappointments, some were surprising successes. But at the end of the year, you simply have to hand the Gadget of the Year award to a recipient that deserves it for providing above and beyond expectation. With this in mind, we simply have to award the Gadget of the Year Award 2014 to iRobot Roomba 880. It’s a fantastic piece of equipment which has genuinely helped us around the house.
This morning’s gadget slot was probably the most fun we’ve had so far!! Today I featured the Anki Drive a physical car racing game which effortlessly merges the real world with arcade racing and adds buckets of artificial intelligence.
You can buy Ankidrive online direct from Amazon by clicking the image below….
Both Mark and myself can vouch how quickly it can be unrolled and set up as I managed while a song was playing. I haven’t even touched on what you can do with this ‘racing game’, but I can tell you I was seriously impressed!! Full written review coming soon, in the meantime listen to the attached audio stream and the short video filmed by the lovely Jaimielee.
Thanks to the wonderful Lauren Armour at Hotwire PR for getting this over to me at such short notice!!!
Both Mark and myself can vouch how quickly it can be unrolled and set up as I managed while a song was playing. I haven’t even touched on what you can do with this ‘racing game’, but I can tell you I was seriously impressed!! Full written review coming soon, in the meantime listen to the attached audio stream and the short video filmed by the lovely Jaimielee.