Inexpensive Dash Camera

Have you ever wanted to record your driving?
Some may ask to why anyone would ever want to do that. Well, a few reasons to why it is a good idea

  • If you get into a car accident and it was not your fault, there is your proof
  • If you witness a car accident and the person that caused the accident says it was not their fault, you have proof
  • If you have ever been accused of trying to run someone over, this is your proof that they are lying and have issues (yes, this happened to me)
  • If you have ever been in a situation where you said that you wish you would have been video recording something while driving, now you can
  • If you witness some sort of illegal activity, now you have video proof of it

There are many, many other uses besides the ones above
Well, you dont have to spend a ton of money on a dash camera. If you have a cellphone with a decent camera, or even a backup cellphone with a decent camera and it is running Android you have all that you need to have a dash camera.
I bought a inexpensive windshield mount for my phone ( I have the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, so it is a big phone) and the holder works for it, with some room to spare (not to mention that I have a otterbox on it, so it is even thicker. The windshield mount that I bought can be purched for around $2.00 at wish. Note that it can take a few weeks for it to arrive at your house.
After you have that, all you need to do is head over to the Google Play store and download and possibly purchase Auto Guard. I think I paid under $20.00 for this, to which it may even be cheaper than that. This app not only does a video recording, but it also records your GPS location and your speed. When you play back a recording it will show a map under the video of where you were and the speed you were going, to which it will also record the audio. Some have wondered about the storage on their phone filling up, well this app can automatically back up all the videos to Youtube if you want it to. For the backup, you can specify if it should backup on Cellular or on Wi-Fi only, and you can specify if it should backup when charging only, or at any time.
I have found this little app to be quite useful in recording some almost accidents that I have gotten into due to people pulling out directly in front of me when driving.

here are some screen shots from the app on the Google Play Store





Here is some info regarding the app from the Google Play store
Your smart phone can be clever as you with AutoGuard, the best Blackbox application, will give you wonderful experiences. Key Features - (Pro) Background recording: Multitasking with other apps (like navigation) - Upload videos on YouTube.com with captions for location and time information - Capture photos at important situation automatically - Show the video and map information on one screen - Automatically starts video recording when put into car dock or connect with bluetooth devices - Records driving video, speed, GPS, and nearest address - Supports high resolutions (1080p, 720p) - Traces path driven on 3D Google maps - Snapshot (supports auto focus, flash & gallery) - Send recorded information via E-mail AutoGuard records various lengths of video, acceleration, latitude, longitude, and speed. The video recorded can be limited to save space on your phone. After the space is filled it will automatically delete the oldest videos, unless marked to be saved. AutoGuard Pro can be set to automatically start when placed in a car dock and run in the background. You can adjust video resolution, bitrates, the sensitivity of the accelerator, and GPS update time. With Pro Version(AutoGrard Pro Unlocker), you are ad free, can sync your videos on Youtube.com & Multitask AutoGuard with other apps such as Navigation or Mp3. Visit AutoGuard's home and get more valuable information! https://plus.google.com/communities/109441776333405866373 -------------------- Why AutoGuard needs the contact permission? - List up Gmail accounts for uploading videos to Youtube. - Referral check. AutoGuard doesn't need any other information rather than your gmail address. Anyone who wants to help translating will be welcome. Thanks. =:) Support languages : English, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Taiwanese, Lithuanian, Polish, Turkish, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech & Slovak.




Make your own ringtones for your Android device

This is something that I have been doing for quite a long time now, even when I had my Palm Treo, and it is extremely easy to do on your computer.
What I use to make my ringtones with, is I download a program called Audacity, and when you use Audacity it may require you to download a plugin or install a plugin called Lame encoder

Basically, with this program you can import a MP3 file from your collection of music that you have paid for, and you can extract a certain part of the MP3 and turn that into a ringtone or a notification tone on your cellphone or tablet.
After you install Audacity, you can either import a MP3 or "drag" into into the stage.

Once you do that, you can play and select the part of the MP3 that you want to keep.

What I do once I select the part that I want to keep, is I go to Edit then Copy or [CTRL + C] for a keyboard shortcut, then in Audacity go to File - New and then paste the audio into a new audacity window. From here I can finely tune what I want to keep as a ringtone and then once I have it the way that I want it I can save it as a MP3, as File - Export Audio (this is where the Lame encoder comes into place).

I can save it directly to my phone if I have my phone plugged into my PC or I can save it to my Google Drive folder on my PC and then use the Drive AutoSync post that I made earlier to automatically download the ringtone to either one device or multiple devices that I have Drive Autosync installed on. I will usually have to reboot my phone for the new ringtone to show up to select (For Android there is a folder in the root that is called Ringtones. There is usually another folder called Notifications or it may be under Audio - Notifications for the notification tones). This will allow you to make your own ringtones for one or multiple devices without having to pay for ringtones or try to find the exact ones that you want.