Lumi Gateway v3. Do not attempt it if you bought yours in 2019/2020 onwards. It’s most likely not going to work. Check if your MAC starts with 7C:49:EB, if it does it likely won’t work for you too.
USB-UART TTL is a good skill to have. Good experience for me. 🙂
Along with all the other certifications over these years; namely swimming, technology, product certifications, talent development, class 4, crucial conversations, i’ve just gotten another one. TPDVL (Taxi Private Driving Vocational License).
I thought maybe I should share my experience with you and some materials that will be useful since it is still fresh in my mind, there’s also a way to get through each paper with ease in a single seating if you combine my method below and your instructor’s tips. I’ll post what I can remember in this blog post. I hope to elaborate in details, but I might miss a couple of points, so while it’s still fresh, leave me a comment below if you need clarity.
If you are doing PDVL, skip the Paper 3 guides I have below. It’s a very long post since it details down as much of what I can remember from the class / exam.
These tips should also be relevant for TDVL/PDVL/TPDVL students in other schools since we’re using digital examinations (Paper 1, 2 and 3 – which is a combination of 3A/3B sitting in one go). But take note of my summary at the end of the post.
Nothing in this post has school materials, but studying guide, questions and exam strategy that I found useful.
*Note it is better to use desktop/laptop/larger screen to view this blog post.
3 hours in total. 1 hour each Paper, and you have to start at the same time with everybody. My strategy is to always aim to complete each question fast, you can review it at the end and find you have more than half the time left to do so.
Paper 1 – Service Quality, Health and Safety (Logic & common sense trumps)
Paper 2 – Taxi and Private Hire Car Rules & Regulations (Memory Game and Common Sense)
Paper 3 – Route Planning (Fastest Fingers First and use Taxi Stand codes in Google Map)
I’ll share notes below including exam answers that came out for me while i’m sorting it.
Logical & common Sense paper, i’ve scored the best here. Did not study it, just glanced through the material provided by STA. Might as well give you the questions that came out for me.
Skip the content that talks about cholesterol / calories / balanced meal / smoking.
Just memorize these keywords marked in bold as it came out on my exam:
1. Counter terrorism- objective is to detect, deter and prevent acts of terrorism.
2. Normal Bus lane operating hours – 7:30 to 9:30am and 5pm to 8pm Monday to Friday. Also remember Full Day Bus Lane too.
3. Terrorism – violence, fear and intimidation
4. It is the role of Traffic Police and Land Transport Authority to government the infringement of rules and regulations
5. 5 Key factors of quality chauffeured car services: Sound regulations, competent/companies/fleet owners/competent drivers/booking service providers/Enlightened customers
6. Taxi & PHC on-going cost: Fuel, Medisave, fuel
7. PHC Driver & Passenger should see their published fares on mobile app shown on mobile phone screens.
8. Any health question or about road safety, it’s always the health of yourself and driver’s health.
9. As a driver you are responsible for the passenger’s well being
10. The question is: why do we need to wash our hands frequently? the answer is: to keep our hands free of bacteria.
Some DIPS came out on Paper 1 and 2, but I had to apply the same thinking process and figured I might as well try my luck with the answer $150 and 3 or 4 demerit points.
I think I mentioned a fair bit above about Paper 2. So in this section i’ll be sharing with you the tabular template that will simplify your learning. PDVL candidates ignore the taxi offences.
The table is classified together by its penalty demerits points (eg., Court, Fine, Revoke). Take note of the bold and red text, that’s all you need to look out for in the questions that will be asked in different form. The line items (row) in the image are arranged in the order marked in the number points ascending order.
You will need to know whether the offence results in license revoked or suspension. Your points will only return to you 24 months after the first offence.
| No of Demerit Points | Suspension Period | Duration of points accumulation |
|---|---|---|
| 6 to 10 | 2 weeks | Within 24 months |
| 11 to 15 | 4 weeks | Within 24 months |
| 16 – 20 | 8 weeks | Within 24 months |
| 21 and above | License Revoked | Within 24 months |
This is how I memorize the table. Example of how you can use the tabular template for your study. After you gone through the table, keywords marked in red and bold are the ones you need to memorize to help you also remember the penalty demerits. Below is an example of my notes derived from the tabular table:
Disclaimer: Please check with your school which apps you can use, and whether you are able to use finger-zoom functionality which most of the students I know are using and instructor in STA actually discourages, although during exam it wasn’t actively checked or specifically laid out rules to say that you cannot use finger-zoom or other functionalities within Google Maps.
Take a look at the difference before and after you import the Taxi locations. You will see taxi stand/stop/pudo marked by the same LTA color codes, and also description of each public stand (which road is it for – e.g., E27 Taxi Stand – Bernam Street outside Fuji Xerox Towers).
beast78 from hardwarezone thread suggest you to use OneMap. In my opinion, that depends on whether your school allows you to use them, “
Just to add, for Paper 3, it is advisable to download and use OneMap.
The app isn’t very good compared to Google Maps, but it has some specific Singapore venues that can be found much easier than Google Maps, and it has all the taxi stand codes as well. Plus, its shortest route feature from point A and point B will always show a route that is very close to the correct answer. So no need to study or memorize the 40 routes at all. I got 39/40 just by using this app alone without having to use Google or Google Maps.“
Click on every single images to see the after result. Now you can just search for road names to get the right public stand code+number.
If you’re not so technical, write a comment below. I will try my best to help you answer them before your tests.
Let’s start with ‘Identifying Fixed Routes’. You are encouraged to read through the 40 fixed routes by the school, and roughly get a hang of what they meant. The instructor taught us to memorize the Changi Airport routes (10 of them), since 2 of them will at least appear out of 6.
(I did try to memorize the 10 x changi routes in under 20-minutes, but gave up eventually). I just took the points above and went in. The mock exam had couple of routes tested, so you should at least try to memorize that only or practice until it becomes muscle memory. To pass, you need to take in the points above and don’t debate with the answer. The instructor stresses this, “if you want to pass or not?”.
Identify the Shortest Route.
If you have road experience, it definitely is useful. Otherwise don’t worry, use Google Maps, tap in the two location and when up to 3 directions shows up, select the (1) with the shortest path by distance. Use that as your guiding path for your answer. I didn’t particularly find this useful as I relied on finding individual road that I was unfamiliar with, while mentality plotting the road to the destination and rely on my gut feel for the answer.
If you’re unsure about the roads, start with the overview of how the suggested routes are first, identify the shortest path, then at least know how the route is taking you using the highways across the island before zooming down to the last few roads to the final destination.
This section is where your fastest fingers will benefit you the most. I cleared it the fastest. Here are some questions & answer for your practice that I can remember:
You’ll have some struggle finding one or two places e.g., the qn above ask to look for Forest Hills Condo. Just to be sure I went back to Street Directory for it. Google Map placed this on the wrong location and classified this condo Apartment as a bus stop, thus does not include a address. I will submit a fix to Google Maps with the right location, address and category.
For Embassies you have no choice but to use Street Directory, page 64. Google Maps does not have many of the embassy details.
For Expressway Flyover, use Street Directory, page 10-11, easiest.
For Hotels, use Google Maps, otherwise Street Directory, page 81. (remember hotels section coincidentally falls on the same number of Hotel 81).
I found the mock paper very useful, same questions came out as well, it helped the students pass since the difficulty is higher for Paper 3.
I did it once through the day before the exam, and went through the answers whether they are right or wrong – so as to muscle-map or code it into my memory.
Paper 2 is indeed the hardest interms of effort needed compared to Paper 3. Paper 3 has abit of luck involved because I did not put effort into memorizing it – just did the mock paper. Paper 1 blah.
There are a few differences between each school from what i’ve gathered over forums and blogs. However I will be only representing STA examination room (class room) which has a camera and a single proctor/invigilator. It is impossible in my opinion for the invigilator to eyeball all 20+ exam candidates, however, the camera will come in useful to deter cheating and prove that there are intermingling between students or illegally using applications. Of course you can use privacy filters so nobody knows what you’re using, but I do not advocate cheating.
There is actually no need to use outdated Street Directory to find public stands. Especially when time is of core essence for taxi drivers, you want to use the fastest way to get all the public stand location, and direct you there. Google Map offers you the best way for realistic practical real world driving experience. OneMap allows you to find the public stand codes, search for the four public stand code answers, you’ll get the answer when identifying the road next to the right taxi stand immediately.
Take note that the exam is using all the new traffic/vocational license rules that applies after 16 October 2020. Meaning to say that your chauffeured private hire car will need to under Annual Vehicle Inspection instead of once every 3,5,7 year(s).
Finally, once you’re done. There will be a lady who will be asking whether you are keen to sign up for petrol discount cards with Shell and Esso. Both are 25% at the time of writing. And also if you’re keen to explore driving with GoJek. You’ll be going down to level 1 and wait for your temporary vocational license paper. Once given, go over to the opposite unit which is 10 steps away from STA, and get your Shell driver discount card. Grab has 3 folks sitting there not entertaining us or enticing us to sign up.
If you fail, do not worry, STA has slots in the afternoon on the same day for you to retake the individual paper(s).
This is all I can remember now. Hope it works out well for you. Good Luck!
You might find it useful!
I even found Magic Sizing green bottle here! Great for ironing clothes that wrinkles no matter how you iron.
When ironing clothes material that are hard to remove wrinkles, dress shirt for men, or woman shirts, this is the bottle you can use. For example, Egyptian Cotton or Cotton 100% materials, I found great success with these bottles.
Just penning down some important milestones and task. Whether you are driving bikes or cars, the procedures are the same.
* Assuming you have covered the VISA application procedures, and I’m not covering it in this post.
Making Thai insurance is one of the mandatory list of item to do to drive your vehicle across Malaysia (Bukit Kayu Hitam) and Thailand (Sadao) borders. You can find the shops couple of kilometres before the custom. I made mine in this shop – Refer to the picture here, they prepare everything for you in under 17-20 MYR.
You need to bring:
1. Vehicle Registration Details (Singapore Log Card)
2. Passport
3. Road Tax (just in case)
Once you are at the borders, there’s two control points to process your entry:
1. Passport Control (prepare 2 ringgit, passport, and the white slip of paper prepared earlier) – they will collect your arrival slip at this point
2. Vehicle Control (pass your copies of insurance and passport to them)
You’ll find the departure slip stapled to your passport. Do not lose this, as you’ll need to make report to the local police station and inform your embassy. Customs will handle the rest of the process later.
Every now depending on your passport country entry VISA requirements, you also need to make known to the officer if you are staying beyond your VISA limits.
Now, go back to your vehicle and drive through safely, enjoy your entry to Thailand.
Happy driving, obey the laws and culture of the people. Happy new year 2017!
Been bored lately. Cleaned up my laptop’s vent and replaced thermal paste.
Finally after months of search, found this Faultless Hot Iron Cleaner at Jalan Besar’s NTUC, that’s after patronising so many fairprice outlets! The online fairprice customer service email channel doesn’t suggest where I can find it in retail outlets after 3 weeks of communication.
This is one helluva great product to clean your iron sole plate without spoiling the gliding technology, check out the reviews on Amazon. You will notice it’s more than half price cheaper if you buy it in singapore (fairprice, cold storage, giant), I’ve only found it at Jalan Besar.
Hope this post helps someone in future.
It’s a tough choice between having Google Cloud Print, Duplex ADF, Fax.
This weekend I started to meddle with the print server capabilities of the router. I had prior experience with printer and scanner support during my work as a customer service executive with Canon Marketing Singapore. Canon never promised any support for products that were not sold with network access capabilities, and it is fair since we paid a lower price for this printer. My work requires me to test the printers at times to test is authenticity with some higher-end print servers. Thus I never had faith with print server technologies from 3rd party vendor unless they are proprietary. However, I was impressed with the Asus router since it supported scanning and printing from the multifunctional printer/scanner that hardly any hi-end print servers support. And it supports most of the operating system models as long as Canon provides driver support.
Asus did not provide any adequate instructions to the configuration of any typical/multifunctional supported list of printers with the router, yet it boost support for many of the printers you can find in the market during it’s launch period. The forums are not as active with their home support and I also highly doubt how much support they provide via email or phone support.
If you had previously connected the device printer to the same computer physically with drivers installed, the installation will be much easier. I will advise you to install the machine with the physical USB cable on the machine prior to setting up the wireless printing capability. However, if you hadn’t it is also possible. Both windows and mac are supported. If you are novice, there are links below you should click on as you go.
Generally the steps are similar to the ones in the youtube video provided by Asus, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neFK-I_G90w. If you are new to this, please go through the YouTube video first!
I’m running Asus RT56U with Padawan’s 3rd-party firmware (v 3.4.3.6-064), it shouldn’t matter if you are actually using the original firmware. Since padawan’s version is based off the original firmware.
Here’s how I got it running,
1. Connect the Canon MFP to Asus RT56U physically using USB cable
2. Access your Asus Router page typically (http://192.168.1.1) on your browser to check that your printer has been recognised. See image below.
3. Next, download Asus EZ Printer Setup Utility from Asus website. or click here to access asus support or direct download here (Version 1.0.3.4).
File Description from Asus Website
“Utility supports MFP (Multi-function Peripheral, MFP or All-in-One Printer) version 1.0.3.4
This utility can help you set up the USB printer to connect to the router, and use EZ printer sharing in Windows OS.”
OS Support: Win 2003 / Win XP / Win Vista / Win 7 / Win 8
4. Run the setup file (Printer.exe) inclusive in the archived file.
5. By now, your printer and scanner should work off-the-bat since you had the driver installed previously. Test it and give it a go.
However if you hadn’t, I would recommend you first to restart the computer and see any prompt appears for you to install the driver of the printer. Or whether it has automatically been installed. Check the device and printer page if the printer has been installed. If not these are the steps you should try. These also works for Mac.
1. Manually add the printer under Devices and Printer (full instructions windows here and mac here). Specify the driver, select a local LPT or COM port to complete the installation. Then under the broken printer’s Printer Properties, add a Standard TCP/IP Port and specify LPRServer under Queue Name. Press Ok button twice and try printing again.
2. Now restart your computer. Magically another copy of the printer labelled ‘Canon MP258 series Printer Copy 2’ will be installed. This is the one you should be keeping as it will allow you to scan and print immediately. You can delete the other printer.
I hope all these works, if nothing works for you, post in the comments. I will usually reply you within a day or week.
I’m a singaporean guy who loves travelling, and immersing into the life of others to experience their cultures. Here’s a list of items i bring frequently overseas,
– Smart Phone with GPS capability
– USB Phone Charger
– Mobile Phone Charger 5000mAh capacity at least (enough to charge iPhone 5 1.5 times)
– A Spare smart phone for local SIM card
– Local currency as spare cash
– Travel Adapter with USB Charging port (1.0A at least per port)
– Moisturisers
– Soap bar
byon's blog - my daily rant! 