We can’t all be race car drivers, but with a bit of gadgetry, we can still load our cars with gear that makes us feel more like we have a research team behind us. If you know someone in love with their car, these ideas could work a treat.
Telstra Prepaid 4G Car WiFi
Price:Â $79
The whole idea of a SIM card for a car never really took off, and considering how far mobile technology has come in the past few years, we’re kind of glad it didn’t.
These days, you can always just use your phone as a mobile hotspot, but even that can be too pesky, so if you’re keen to always have internet in your car for other devices — say a tablet that works as your GPS or something else — a 4G dongle made for a car could be idea.
Telstra equips 3GB of data with this one, but it’s a prepaid device, so topping up doesn’t require a contract.
Laser Portable Power Bank and Car Jump Starter
Price: $130
Power banks are a fairly normal thing for a mobile user to keep with them, what with the one day life of smartphones these days, but what happens when your car runs out of juice?
In these situations, you know full well that a jump start is what you need, and Laser’s take on this is to deliver a portable power bank for your phone that can also work as a starter for your car.
And hey, it even has a torch inside, too. Neato.
Uniden iGO Cam 820
Price: $170
The idea of a camera to watch what happens as you drive isn’t new, and people have been tackling this technology for quite some time, using it to capture the road just in case they get involved in an accident.
The Uniden’s iGO 820 improves upon this formula by bringing in two cameras so you have both the front and the back sorted, and they’re night vision cameras to boot.
And just to make things even more complicated, there’s even a three camera model in the iGO Cam 850, which increases the price to $200 but packs in a camera to capture what goes on inside the car as well.
Garmin NuviCam LMT
Price: $499
The above idea of a camera to monitor what happens to your car as you drive is one idea, but another is to use that camera to tell you how you’re driving, and that’s kind of the point of a GPS being produced by Garmin.
This model is a little different to your standard GPS, featuring a large LCD screen and mapping to tell you where you’re headed, but also running a camera to monitor your driving, a feature that will rely on a set of smarts to tell you if you’re driving too close to someone, or if you’re beginning to drift off.
Even your final destination is factored into the camera, with a technology built to decipher building numbers to tell you when you really have reached your final destination.
Shark Skwal Motorcycle Helmet
Price: $350
We weren’t going to forget the motorcyclists out there, and we can’t forget them with the one piece of technology they rely on: helmets.
For the two-wheeled enthusiasts, the Skwal is a helmet with LEDs around it, designed to let people see you while you paint the night with green as you ride.
Better, the battery to keep this thing charged is rechargeable via microUSB, the standard that charges so many other gadgets.
