Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month, Net Work has some of the latest news on electric cars, tips and tricks for running an
Android-based TV system and advice on setting up a two-screen Windows PC.
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n last month’s Net Work, I
discussed some of the trends appearing
in the electric vehicle (EV) market,
starting with the now Chinese-owned
‘MG’ marque, a re-emerging former British
car brand that has ambitions for growth
in the UK and Europe. After introducing
a small range of petrol cars, MG Motors
is busily positioning itself as makers of
all-electric battery (BEV) and plug-in
hybrid (PHEV) cars, as demonstrated in
a recent TV advertising campaign for the
MG ZS EV that I mentioned last month
(see https://youtu.be/mAqeTrA8I3c). We
Brits also like our estate cars (station
wagons), and MG has launched the MG5
SW, a new 52.5kWh EV station wagon
with a range of (up to) 214 miles. The
brand is also launching in Ireland and
aims to expand further across Europe
and Australia, backed by the resources of
China’s SAIC motor group. For everyday
consumers, MG’s emphasis will be on
affordability, promising an era of ‘electric
for everyone’.
The zany Honda ‘e’ (see last month)
is an astonishing mini town car bristling with LCDs and electronics aimed
purely at urban drivers. Readers can
find an engaging review of Honda’s
baby battery car (and its interactive
LCD aquarium!) on YouTube at https://
youtu.be/x6G-3_Aasao
The same channel also reviewed
Volkswagen’s forthcoming ID.3 all-electric car, VW’s third iteration of its ‘world
car’ following the VW Beetle and Golf.
This ‘1st Edition’ BEV costs nearly
£39,000 ($50,000) before government
grants (cheaper ones are in the pipeline)
and VW reportedly expects to sell three
million electric vehicles a year within
four years, so expect them (and similar
SEAT brand cars) to become a common
sight before the decade is out.
See https://youtu.be/4yntwHNCDBo
for an early review, and details of VW
electric cars can be found on VW’s web
site at: www.volkswagen.co.uk/electric
Electric car WLTP...
How to measure fuel economy of an electric car? For those who, like the author,
still check their miles per gallon, a new
set of rules has been adopted that covers
both new petrol/diesel cars and EVs.
The term ‘WLTP’ (World harmonised
Light-vehicle Test Procedure) is cropping up everywhere, including electric
vehicle marketing which aims to give
buyers real-world fuel consumption of
vehicles. We might have to re-think our
motoring habits and get used to the idea
of journeys being interrupted by a 30
or 40-minute break to ‘refuel’ our plugin cars at a (hopefully) nearby charging
point. More advice about WLTP data
can be found on the UK government
website at: https://bit.ly/pe-jan21-wltp
It is still early days for electric vehicles as new petrol, diesel and hybrid
sales are not scheduled to be banned
in the UK until the year 2030. Until
then, many drivers might prefer to
hang on and let the BEV market mature.
An emerging trend is that of owners
VW’s forthcoming ID.3 BEV aims to be easy to live with and brings
affordable electric motoring to the masses.
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facing potentially ruinous repair bills
once their car warranties have expired.
Worrying reports circulate of £40,000
hybrid cars suffering major electric
failures after just three years, leaving
owners with nearly £3,000 in repair
bills from workshops unfamiliar with
this new technology and car manufacturers reluctant to pitch in to help.
Android on TV
Set-top box maker Humax has launched
the first 4K Freeview Play recorder
that also runs Android TV. The feature-filled Humax Aura has a 1TB or
2TB hard drive and can pause or play
live TV as well as recording 4K HDR
programmes, plus the Aura also runs
Android TV 9, which gives access to
some 5,000 apps on Google Play Store.
Freeview Play offers built-in catch-up
TV for mainstream TV channels and it
can also record up to four programmes
at a time while watching a fifth. Parents might welcome the Kids Zone
feature and the remote carries Google
Assistant and Prime Video buttons. Its
built-in Google Assistant interacts in
the usual way and allows smart control of compatible IoT devices, while
the Chromecast-like operation allows
content on other compatible devices
to be cast to the Humax Aura.
A not-yet-available Aura Android
app promises to allow live or recorded content to be streamed around the
house and reminders to be set. Assuming the app will be fully supported in
The VW’s dashboard has a central display and smaller screens in
front of the driver. Note the ‘Play’ and ‘Pause’ pedals.
Practical Electronics | January | 2021
the future, the Aura could be a worthwhile way of adding Android PVR
functionality to a 4K or HD TV. The
recorder costs £249 or £279 depending on disk capacity. More details at:
https://bit.ly/pe-jan21-aura
If a fully-fledged 4K Android TV
recorder is not for you, Google has finally launched its ‘Chromecast with
Google TV’, a 4K dongle with voice
remote control sporting Google Assistant, Netflix and YouTube buttons (see
Net Work, November 2020). It adds
Chromecast-style Android TV services
to any TV with an HDMI port, which
may give an older TV a new lease of
life. All the usual streaming services
are available, including Amazon Prime,
mainstream catch-up TV, Google apps
and, of course, Netflix and YouTube.
The dongle aims to make it easy to
cast content from other Android and
iOS devices. Where Wi-Fi is weak, an
Ethernet cable can be connected to a
special mains-powered USB adaptor,
available separately. The ‘Chromecast
with Google TV’ debuted on YouTube
at: https://youtu.be/EPluWn8RT3Y and
can be purchased for £59.99 at store.
google.com, but expect special offers
to be available.
Amazon users might choose from
their latest line-up of Fire TV Stick
HDMI dongles and several models are
now available in time for Christmas: the
cheapest ‘Lite’ version (£29.99) has an
Alexa voice remote and the mid-range
TV Stick (£39.99) adds TV volume
and power buttons which (only) work
with ‘compatible’ TVs and soundbars,
Chromecast with Google TV offers 4K
connectivity with Android TV features and a
voice remote control.
Amazon’s Fire TV Cube has a built-in
speaker and Alexa commands interface
with your TV screen.
Practical Electronics | January | 2021
The Humax
Aura is a
4K personal
video
recorder
complete
with Freeview
Play and
Android TV.
1TB and
2TB disk
capacities
are available.
Amazon says. A more powerful 4K UHD
version (£49.99) is also sold, and if your
Wi-Fi coverage is patchy then wired
Ethernet adaptors are sold separately.
For hands-free control with a single
TV, Amazon’s Fire TV Cube might be the
answer. It has a built-in speaker offering
the usual Alexa interface, displaying
on the TV screen as well. The Fire TV
Cube costs £109.99 and claims to control certain smart devices and selected
‘compatible’ Sky satellite receivers too,
but do check the specs carefully. Full details are on Amazon.co.uk and do keep
a close eye on prices and reviews: these
can drop wildly over a holiday weekend so set up the Camelizer plug-in to
alert you of price drops, see: https://
camelcamelcamel.com/camelizer
Twin-dows 10!
After upgrading a work PC to Windows 10, a 22-inch monitor was left
over that still had plenty of life in it.
What to do with a surplus screen that
was too good to throw away? Provided your PC motherboard or video
card has a suitable spare video port,
Windows 10 can make short work of
adding a second monitor to allow dual-screen operation and increase your
desktop’s ‘real estate’. After hooking up
a second screen, simply hit [Windows
key] + P to ‘project’ your desktop on
to the second monitor, choosing the
‘Extend’ mode from the menu. If your
main monitor goes blank, keep holding
the Windows key and hit ‘P’ to cycle
through the options.
Dual-screen operation has proved
very handy for a busy desktop worker,
with the extra screen space great for
dragging active windows or website
shortcuts sideways out of the way.
Using a PC TV tuner, such as a Hauppauge USB type, means you can drop
a TV window onto the second monitor or you could watch Freeview TV in
a web browser instead; go to: https://
bit.ly/pe-jan21-free and choose ‘watch
now’ or ‘catch up’, then drop the new
TV browser window onto the second
monitor. This idea works very well,
though the odd freeze or lockup has
occurred in practice.
The author’s ordinary video card
drives both a DVI and VGA monitor in
dual-screen mode without any problem.
Spare (or lengthier) video cables are
readily available online, as are wireless
Wi-Fi display dongles (untested by the
author) that enable PC or mobile device
screens to be mirrored on the monitor
from a distance. Thanks to the simple
setup in Windows 10 it’s easy to build
a dual-screen option, so if you have a
spare monitor gathering dust why not
test it on a spare video port and see if
dual-screen mode will work for you.
Some other handy keyboard shortcuts worth knowing include:
Win + P
dual monitors
Win + V
clipboard history
Win + I
PC system settings
Win + Tab 30-day timeline
Win + D
toggle Windows desktop
Win + E
File Explorer
Win + L
Lock your PC
Win + R
Open the Run... dialogue
Win + Pause/Break About page
Ctrl + Shift + Esc Task Manager
A list of Windows keyboard shortcuts
is on Microsoft’s website: https://tinyurl.
com/y5o7pwp2 (some are now obsolete).
Archiving disks
One final tip: after upgrading the aforementioned PC, like many users I was
left with a handful of hard disks that
contained valuable legacy data, files and
photos, so I archived the drives safely
in plastic HDD storage boxes sourced
on eBay (eg, https://tinyurl.com/y53jtngp). For many years I’ve relied on a
handy cataloguing program called SuperCat which can index entire hard
disks or data DVDs and catalogue them
in a searchable database. I can easily
search the catalogue on-screen in order
to pinpoint the relevant hard drive. A
30-day trial of this neat little program
(32/64-bit, Windows 10 compatible,
$35) can be downloaded from http://
no-nonsense-software.com/supercat
Wishing all our readers a Happy
Christmas and a safer 2021.
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
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