The McKenzies' Blog…

The other day the postman dropped off a new toy for the kids … it was the Dexim AppSpeed RF Race Car – Audi R8 shipped over from the good folks at MobileFun.co.uk.  If you’ve not checked out the site get on over and check it out.  Wait, not yet, read this first then go check it out.  Geez

The car arrived while the kids were at school, so of course I had to open the box and check out the contents, you know just for safety reasons, health and safety and all

So, this is what came in the box.  The item as delivered is an iPhone Accessory and/or an iPad Accessory. This means that it will not work on other smart phones.   I was going to take some close up shots of the product, but honestly they have great close up photos over at product page, check them out there.

The hardest part of getting this car to work really was getting it out of the box haha once it was out, I plugged the car into my laptop to charge as I couldn’t find any AAA batteries to hand, the charging cable is just USB on one end and the small plug on the other end for the car.  It took me a moment to find where to plug it in though, I didn’t read the manual .

The charge took about 5 minutes I suppose when the blinking light on the charger cable stopped flashing, that’s the signal it’s play time.  Yeah, I had to look at the manual in the end to confirm what the flashing was all about.

While the car was charging, I got the transmitter plugged into the iPad and installed the free app from iTunes.

The interface for the app is quite simple.  You’ve got 2 ways to control the car, either by the gravity sensor or by on-screen controls.  I found the on-screen controls to be cumbersome as you need to hold the speed control down and select the direction.  This was slightly easier on the iPhone then the iPad due to the screen size. Controlling the car would be even easier if the app provided 2 on-screen “joysticks” rather then the button and slider arrangement.   However, the easiest way to control the car is with the gravity sensor.  For this you only need to tip the iPhone or iPad away from or towards you to make the car for forward or backward, respectively.   The kids also found the gravity sensor to be the best way to control the car.

The interface also comes with some pre-set manoeuvres, one drives it around in a circle, another drives it forward in a zig-zag pattern and another makes the car “dance” to some included music with the app.  There doesn’t seem to be any way to change the music to something already on your device, if there was I couldn’t find it..   The only other control is really the speed control.  You can pre-set the maximum speed of the car, which is handy when first learning to control it.  It defaults to a speed of “8” and goes from 1 to 15, however at 1 I found the car moved at speeds resembling that of the tectonic plates  while at 15 it was shooting around the kitchen floor just about out of control.

I was surprised by the size of the car, it was smaller then I’d expected (yeah yeah I could have looked at the specs, but as I’m a bloke you just know that would never happen )

Here’s a little video showing the car in motion.  The video starts at with my daughter (operating the car via an iPhone, not mine, I’m an Android man through and through) driving the car around in some circles forward and backward.  At around 45 seconds the car is switched into “Dance” mode.

 

If you’re looking for a cool little toy to stem the boredom of the office life, get a couple of these and race them with your mates around the office   I’d love the try out the Helicopter as well, nothing breaks up a boring day like a little areal combat around the halls of the office hah

I’d like to thank the great folks over at MobileFun.co.uk for the chance to play with this cool little car.  It would be cool to build a little track and race a couple of them around.