To answer the OP question.
The Stoneridge SE5000 Exakt is the first Vehicle Unit (VU) to gain type approval under the modified operating rules that were published last year. Although, VDO launched their v1.4 a few months back and I have no reason to doubt that Actia and EFAS have either got type approval or will have very shortly. From October this year, any newly activated VU will have to comply with the new regulation anyway.
All the new units will assign activity (driving, work, availability or break/rest) to whole calendar minutes, however, the way the determine what to assign a ‘split minute’ to has changed. Previously, the minute was assigned to the longest activity in that minute. If both periods were the same length then the activity was assigned to the last activity selected. Think of the first 30 seconds being ‘break’ and the last 30 seconds being ‘work.’ The whole minute will be assigned to ‘work’ as that was the last activity to be selected. Had the periods been 40 seconds ‘break’ and 20 seconds ‘work’ then the minute would be called ‘break,’ because that was the longest activity in the minute.
The real change comes when we consider ‘driving.’ The older VUs work on the rule that when signals are received from the motion sensor for 5 consecutive seconds the VU will record ‘driving.’ Once 'driving has been recognised that calendar minute will be recorded as ‘driving’ regardless of what happened in the rest of that minute. The new VUs do not apply the rule that ‘driving’ takes precedence, instead the activity assigned to a calendar minute will be the longest continuous activity measured in that minute. For example; 20 seconds of movement followed by 40 seconds of ‘work’ will now be recorded as ‘work,’ previously the minute would have been recorded as; ‘driving.’ However, 20 seconds of movement followed by 19 seconds of ‘work’ followed by 6 seconds of movement followed by 15 seconds of ‘work,’ will be recorded as ‘driving.’ Although there is 26 seconds of movement and 44 seconds of ‘work’ in the calendar minute, the longest continuous activity is ‘driving’ at 20 seconds.
The scenarios are endless, just like the arguments are regarding whether it’s a true record or not. Accept that if the VU says’ you’re ‘driving’ you’re ‘driving,’ because that is the legal record and everybody is in the same boat. There are a whole heap of arguments about instruments recording in ‘seconds’ rather than ‘calendar minutes,’ for the time being forget it. The memory capacity would have to increase enormously and the legislation would have to be completely rewritten and for what real world benefit? Remember, analogue charts are only really readable to one minute block, unless using some very specialised equipment. With the current tolerances employed by enforcement agencies there is no point moving to a system with a higher degree of resolution.
Other Exakt feature; simplified manual entry system compared with previous SE5000 models (that wouldn’t be difficult, really).
Manual entries can be entered in local time and the VU will convert them to UTC.
Manual entries can be reviewed before they are written to the card.
It is possible to assign all the time between last card ejection and subsequent insertion to ‘rest’ with only a couple of key presses.
Faster download times.
Faster printing times.
Breaks can be selected to either '561 or the older '3820 specification. Although AETR rules have now changed to match the EU '561 rules to change the software completely would require a rewrite of the legislation, that won’t happen anytime soon.
Default activity record on ignition ‘on’ or ‘off’ can be changed using a Company Card, rather than the vehicle having to be taken to a Tacho Centre.
Think that just about covers it for the moment. Just to say, the driving time change has proved to be a real ‘winner’ for companies where their vehicles are involved in a lot of stop start operations; urban traffic, multi-drop etc. Both VDO and Stoneridge are offering deals to companies wanting to change to the new Tachos in existing vehicles. It isn’t possible to update the software in the old VUs.