New Toys and other thoughts

Today I put together two of my latest toys. A camera and a digital recorder. Now before you go saying “but you could have bought an all-in-one unit” I bought two separate pieces for a specific reason. The rear camera used solely for seeing what’s right behind me is excellent but as collisions from the rear are pretty common, I figured I’d put a recorder onto that camera. That will involve putting a Y connector onto my existing camera so that the image is shared between the rear view monitor and the recorder. Put together it all looks quite a muddle.

I’ll have to do some work on it. The power inlet on the recorder (the blue unit) has no indication of polarity and is bizarrely supplied with a 120v power adaptor that also has no indication of polarity. The camera comes with a color coded blank ended cable. Now that I can simply connect to my 12v system with zero issues. It took a while to work out how to put it together as the instructions are in Chenglish. Needless to say the recorder unit came straight from China for $20 and the camera came from somewhere in the USA but likely originated in China for $10.

The instructions for the recorder unit are somewhat more opaque than a tub of black paint but it seems that the recorder will record in VGA and QVGA. Apparently if I fiddle with it enough I can get it to record in VGA. I don’t really see the necessity of that to be honest. QVGA will adequately show a vehicle failing to stop and running into the back of me. It’s not as though a front license plate being recorded in detail is important because in SC as in many other states, nobody uses front license plates.

The camera is a little strange. It seems there’s no right way up that’s clearly identifiable and it’s not adjustable. That’s OK though as that is eventually intended for use in the front windscreen. I’ll hide it behind the second driver fan so it’s not impeding my view of anything. It’s supposed to be weatherproof and I’m supposed to be able to put it on the exterior but behind the windscreen makes more sense.

If the recorder works then I might be getting a couple more and another camera. That way I can hide one camera so that it records everything and everybody coming up the steps with one setup to record happenings in front of the bus and the existing backup camera being used to record happenings behind the bus.

The recorder has apparently got some date-time thing on it but that’s never going to be accurate as it’ll only be on while the ignition is on. I just don’t see the point of recording anything when I’m parked as all it does is burn up battery power.

The other day I was in a discussion on one of those school bus groups. You know - the kind of group that makes you roll your eyeballs and question how such people managed to slither out of their mother’s womb! In fact that sparked a conversation at work.

Where I work, I work with mechanics, school bus drivers and people of all kinds of professions. There’s even a former Marine sniper working with us. Thus, I work among experts on school busses. I’d even say I’m an expert too since I drive about 30K miles a year with them and diagnose faults.

On that god forsaken group they had been complaining about engines and transmissions burning out and about how useless some transmissions are and how useless some engines are etc. This same group is the same group that talks happily about feeding engines designed to run off diesel with trash vegetable oil that’s been thrown out by McDonalds etc. Needless to say when I brought reality to their fantasy, I was summarily ejected from the group with no notification or anything else. I regard myself as quite happy now. That group had been spoiling my mood for weeks. The problem of people preferring fantasy over truth is very evident in today’s world. Look at the number of kooky pseudo religions that proliferate! This was a problem known about thousands of years ago and is even mentioned in the Old Testement.

So, according to the “group” I should be running my schoolbus at 65 - 70 mph and getting 12mpg out of it. According to them it’s all because my engine had been de-tuned and the transmission de-tuned. All of that is the biggest load of horse dung I’ve ever heard of.

School busses (as opposed to activity busses) are specified “must be able to achieve 55mph” and are limited to 55 or 57mph by a governor. School busses are designed specifically to spend 90% of their time on back roads and dirt tracks, not on the interstate. In my time driving school busses I did drive on the interstate for a few miles most days one year but that was the exception. My current route is 100% back roads, dirt tracks and winding country roads. Those roads are so narrow I have to hit the rumble strip every time something big comes in the other direction.

Then there’s the going up and down hills and the fact most don’t seem to understand why there are markings on their automatic gear shifter other than D, N and R. Notice there’s no P (park) position on a bus gear selector unlike on a car. On long down grades and steep down grades it is better to have the gear selector in something other than D so the engine can take control of speed. Eventually brakes will heat up and fade rendering them temporarily useless. This is why there are runaway truck lanes on many hills. Similarly going up hills, you can max the acellerator and try to keep up with the traffic, overheating the engine on the way or you can recognize you’re driving a big vehicle and keep the gear selector in a lower gear and keep the revs down to 2,000rpm. That will prevent you overheating and straining the engine. You will be going slowly but that’s what big vehicles do - you’re not driving a car.

I’m going to hypothesize that most of the most irksome people on that laughable group don’t actually own a school bus and have no idea how to drive anything bigger than a small car. Add that ignorance to a complete lack of understanding of how to drive something wide, tall and long then throw in air brakes as well which is another level of complication and the situation gets scary. in fact, at work where we all have CDLs (commercial driving licenses) and drive busses every day, we’re all a bit nervous about people driving big vehicles that don’t have CDLs and experience.