2011 Gadget Rundown

January 7th, 2012 No Comments »

The end of another year, and I’m left with a massive pile of gadgets collected over that year. 2011 was quite a good year for gadgets and for this web site as a whole. In the first half of 2011 I launched my gadget fund, mkaing use of my first WordPress plugin called the Olimometer – the intention being to display a visible representation of how much money has been raised towards purchasing gadgets to review on this site. The Olimometer has seen just short of 2000 downloads worldwide at the time of writing. In creating the Olimometer, I was reminded how much I enjoyed development and later in the year I turned my hand to mobile app creation. Vital Values was the first of these apps, soon followed by Watercolour Reference. I started development on the iPhone, and eventually ported them to Android and Windows Phone 7 too. I can happily let it be known that I’m currently developing my first mobile game which should launch in the first quarter of 2012.  In June I took the decision to sever the link between personal blogging (now relegated to Facebook and Twitter) and my gadget-based fantasies and purchases. In November, I completely redesigned the site to make use of the emerging CSS3 technologies now supported by modern web browsers which bumped me up the search engine listings significantly once again. But what were my favourite toys of the year??? I shall divulge my top five right now:

#5 TBS6984 Quad-Tuner DVB-S2 TV Card
Intended to be the core of my ultimate home TV system, sadly I haven’t yet sorted this out. To be honest I’m having a few issues getting the card to play nicely with MediaPortal’s TV Server software on Windows Home Server 2011. It’s an unusual setup I have, and once the hardware works it works perfectly. But, there’s the annoying 30 second delay when tuning to a channel over the network. As a local TV card it is perfect though, and I have plans to sort these issues out.

#4 APC BackUPS ES 700
Here in sunny South Wales we get quite a few power cuts and blips. This UPS has saved my server several times over the last few months by keeping it alive at the times the power companies aren’t able to. It hasn’t yet had to perform a graceful shutdown, with the longest power cut being just over 10 minutes and well within the 20 minute battery life. It is also providing lightning surge protection for the network connection coming from the router, and ordinary surge protection for the switch and monitor in my server rack.

 

#3 Sony STRDH820 AV Receiver
This is a recent purchase to replace the old Onkyo AV Reciever (which was recently repaired). Aside from providing support for far more speakers than I ever believe I’ll need, it also makes my home cinema system 3D-ready. I have a 3D-ready PS3, and a 3D ready amp…. just need a TV now. Sound quality is amazing, and the price of this amp makes it a bargain. Upconversion from analog to HDMI works seamlessly and the customisable display names is nice touch. My two gripes with the amp concern the static noise you get when the amp switches between audio sources (DD to DPL etc..) for a brief second, and of course the fact I now have a redundant Wii-HDMI adapter.

#2 Parrot MKi9200 Bluetooth Handsfree Car Kit
My birthday present, which was supposed to be a new car stereo, ended up as this Bluetooth car kit. I use it on every commute, listening to podcasts on my way home from work, and to answer phone calls to mobile phone companies in India who want to sell me another contract. I’m told that sound quality on the other end is quite good – still noticable that I’m on a handsfree kit, but audible. I don’t use the fancy screen which is kept hidden away in the dash, and I don’t use the SD card reader, USB port or iPod port either. I just stream music and other audio from my phone via Bluetooth and it works extremely well. The wireless remote strapped to my steering wheel took a bit of getting used to, but once positioned slightly more recessed than shown in the review photos it was much easier to live with.

#1 HTC 7 Mozart – Windows Phone 7
And of course, at #1, it has to be my new mobile phone. The HTC 7 Mozart running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system is amazing. It has its pitfalls: hardware-wise, why limit a phone to 8GB??? Not enough at all and I plan to pull the thing apart and upgrade it this year. As far as the software goes, my main gripe is the lack of built in navigation. It does now have a form of navigation but using this in the car is dangerous. It doesn’t auto-reroute if you go off track, it doesn’t speak the instructions, and it relies on the data connection with no option to cache your maps for the journey. Other than that, it is awesome. Using it is simple – everything you need is integrated in to the phone. Facebook, Twitter, Live, LinkedIn are all natively supported, pulling in contact details from all sources and linking them together. The number of apps available are increasing by the day, and it’s no surprise given how easy it is to develop for – of all the mobile operating systems I am developing for, the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 environment and C# language are the smoothest combination of all. If only Microsoft would stop trying to compete with Apple’s iPhone, and instead concentrate on converting Android users from their inconsistent user interface they might just achieve the market penetration required to make this operating system a stayer.

Gadgets not making the top 5 include the excellent BenQ G2220HD Monitor which I use every day, my wife’s Fujifilm Finepix AV130 camera which cost under £50, and the useful LG BH10LS30 Blu-Ray burner which proves itself extremely useful for backing up up the massive collection of HD home video footage. There was also my new watch for Christmas 2010 which appeared as a 2011 review – this doesn’t count towards 2011 though.


How to fix an Onkyo TX-SR606

January 1st, 2012 6 Comments »

I know that I was fed up with my Onkyo, and I know I have replaced it with a shiny new Sony model, but when I discovered a YouTube video walking the viewer through the simple process of mending the exact fault I was experiencing I figured I had nothing to lose. So I started to collect the parts; first of all I needed a new soldering iron because the one I had was pretty much in welding territory. I purchased a Weller mini 12W one which seemed as good as any. I should mention at this point for full disclosure that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I’m not an electronics expert and only have a basic overview of electronic components based on what I learnt about two decades ago at school. All I’m doing here is using common sense and following the instructions of the video, which advises you replace five specific capacitors on the HDMI control board – I therefore take no responsibility for you breaking your amp even more, blowing your house up, electrocuting yourself, or anything else that may happen if you follow these instructions. Once replaced, this should fix the common fault associated with HDMI switching. In my case, the fault caused the amp to display nothing on the screen output from the HDMI port when switching between HDMI sources, unless you wait for about 10 minutes and then power-cycle the amp. Also, component pass-through to HDMI didn’t work at all.

Right then, replace the capacitors? What are they then? I found these two images on a forum (so they’re not my photos, I’m not taking credit!) detailing the top and bottom of the HDMI circuit, the capacitors to replace have been marked with a blue marker pen. In the video, these surface-mount capacitors are replaced with similar surface-mount capacitors. Most forums however suggest you buy the barrel-type capacitors specified as “100µF 25V”. I decided that these latter ones would be a lot easier to solder, and purchased these ones from Hobbytronics.co.uk. Once they’d arrived I assembled the rest of my tools: some solder (which I already had), metal tweezers to hold the components and (importantly) act as a heat sink during the solder process, a marker pen, and some pointy nosed pliers.

Now, I’m going to assume you have already opened up your amp, unscrewed the HDMI ports, removed the ribbon cable from the HDMI board, removed the strange 4-wires from that other port on the board by pushing the port down and pulling the wires out of the grippy thingy, then unplugged

Step one, use my marker pen to mark up the capacitors to remove – I didn’t want to remove the wrong ones because that would be far too much effort in the long run.

Step two, remove one of the old capacitors from the circuit board. This is easy, get your pliers, grip the capacitor and wiggle until it comes off. You’ll end up with two pins sticking up, so wiggle those off too, and finally remove the plastic base that was underneath the old capacitor.

Step three, work out which way around my new capacitors needed to go – I needed to make sure the polarity is correct or things could go bang. Turns out that the existing capacitors have a less-than-semi-circle black section marked on the top. This black mark corresponds with the squared edge of the border on the circuit board underneath the capacitor. Take a close look at this border and you’ll notice it is a square with two corners cut-out. Now take a look at your new capacitors and you’ll see one side has a grey stripe. The pin on the capacitor on the side of the grey stripe needs to be soldered to the contact nearest the squared edge of the box (opposite to the edge with the cut-outs).

Step four, trim the excess from the pins on the capacitor. I went for about 15mm on each pin.

Step five, use your soldering iron and solder to weld the new capacitor to the correct pins on the board. I can’t really give you many tips here because this bit takes practise – just make sure you use your tweezers or a crocodile clip attached to the contact you are soldering to act as a heat sink otherwise you could blow something else up. The ultimate aim is to make sure the capacitor is attached securely to the contacts on the board. You may want to practise your soldering on something else beforehand to make sure you have your technique right.

Step six, repeat steps two-five for the remaining four capacitors, then put your circuit board back in the amp, screw it back together, plug it in and test it. In my photo, you can see the new capacitor attached to the circuit board in the centre of the image. Also note the two old capacitors yet to be replaced top left and bottom right coloured red with marker pen, the fourth capacitor has been removed (just to the right of the new one – you can see the box marked out on the board). The fifth and final capacitor is on the reverse side of the circuit board.

Mine worked straight away – well chuffed. No including the cost of the soldering iron, I spent £2.30 on the capacitors, £2 of which was the delivery charge. I also spent an extra 30p on spare capacitors just in case I made a mess of things. My Onkyo TX-SR606 is now as good as new.

The Search for a Silent Clock

December 24th, 2011 No Comments »

It was at about 3am when my 5-year-old daughter started calling for me. After being on the wall of her bedroom for about 6 months, she’d finally decided at that moment in time that she no longer wanted her pink wall clock in her room any more because the ticking was keeping her awake. Fair enough, it would have annoyed me too… I’d mounted rubber feet on it, removed the echoing plastic face cover and the second hand itself, and taped up the mechanism all in an attempt to soften the ticking. It was only cheap anyway so it’s not a problem. But what was a problem was the screw left in the wall where the clock used to be. I can’t leave a screw unused, or an empty screw hole… so I started to look for a new clock.

My first stop was the TFA 60.3504 Radio Controlled Wall Clock. This looked perfect, and can also be classed as a gadget! The radio-controlled feature of the clock means that once the battery has been inserted, within 5 minutes the hands had automatically spun around to display the correct time (in the UK…). The unit itself looked really nice, but there was a problem. The Amazon description advises that this clock has a sweep-second hand. For those not in the know, a sweep-second hand is a seconds hand which moves in a smooth sweeping motion, as opposed to an abrupt stepped ticking motion. Clocks fitted with a sweep-second hand are usually considerably quieter than a ticking clock. Sadly though, the TFA 60.3504 (a nice simple name to remember?) ticks. It’s not a loud tick, but it’s certainly not bedroom friendly. I’m afraid it had to go back.


That’s when I discovered clock #3: Acctim Yoko Quiet Silent Sweep Second Hand Quartz Wall Clock. Wow, such a long name. This clock doesn’t have any fancy radio controlled auto setting sadly… If it did it would have been perfect. Importantly for its intended use however it is very very very quiet and has the all important sweep-second hand! When you insert the battery, it does make a very quiet grumbling sound as the mechanism strives to provide a smooth motion, but this is well below audible levels from a few metres away in bed. Physically, this clock is on the large side though, measuring 32cm in diameter. For my daughter though that is probably an advantage – she’s learning to tell the time and the large face and numbers make it very clear to read.

To conclude, if you want a quiet night, go for the Acctim. If you want subtly cool gadgetness, go for the TFA 60.3504. They’re both superb wall clocks.

Buffalo LinkStation Duo

December 17th, 2011 2 Comments »

Sadly this isn’t my new toy: it belongs to the Father-in-law whose aging Freecom NAS was no longer up to the job. The brief was reasonably simple on the surface of things, to be able to store a large music collection and enabling that collection to be streamed to a wireless music player, whilst also being accessible from a laptop both online and offline. Well, seeing the LinkStation Duo 2TB available for a comparatively low price on Amazon I suggested he go for it. Why the Pro Duo version and not the standard Live? Mainly because the 2TB Duo NAS consists of two 1TB drives and lets you run them mirrored (RAID1) for resiliency. If one drive were to fail, your data is safe and sound on the other one – all you need to do is buy a new 1TB drive and swap it over with the faulty one. The NAS should then rebuild the array and resiliency is once again restored. It’s a simple but effective concept which I have relied on for many years and protects you against the failure of a single hard drive at any one time. It doesn’t of course replace the need for regular backups off-site somewhere which will be the subject of a future blog I’m sure.

Buffalo_LS_Duo_350After plugging the NAS in, ignoring the supplied CD, I went straight to the web interface. Setting the hostname and giving it a static IP address was simple enough, but a word of advice to anyone deciding to run the automatic firmware update process: don’t. The upgrade was about 250MB, with no progress bar whilst the download or install took place. I’d suggest you browse to the Buffalo Tech web site and download the firmware manually that way first, then apply it to the NAS afterwards. Once I had updated it, I proceeded to the RAID configuration. This could be simpler in my opinion, but I figured out how to remove the default RAID0 (striped) partition, and then create a new mirrored one afterwards.

Linkstation Pro Duo - Web Sys InfoCreating folders is the easiest task of all to complete and I won’t discuss that here, and creating new user accounts to protect those folders is also pretty simple. Keep in mind that by default a user is given read-only access to each folder and you’ll have to make sure you select read-write in the appropriate drop-down list if that is what’s needed. Another general tip for NAS users is to make sure you create user accounts exactly in-line with the user accounts you log on to Windows with. If you click on an icon labelled ‘Bob’ and then type in a password to get in to Windows, make sure you create a user account called ‘Bob’ (note the capital) with the same password to enable seamless access.

The NAS supports Windows offline folders, which is handy for laptop users, and also boasts DLNA capabilities (works okay if a little un-customisable) and acts as an iTunes server (I didn’t test this one). More interestingly though is the bittorrent server built in to the firmware – this is becoming a standard feature of many NASs lately and allows you to download, from a legitimate source of course, peer-to-peer hosted files without leaving a computer on. Just think of all those Linkstation Pro Duo - No CoverUbuntu source disks you can easily acquire in that manner. An even more useful feature, which I’d often thought was daft not to include on all NASs, is a web server and database server! Your NAS is running a web server anyway, so why not allow you to upload your own custom files in a virtual folder on that web server? I couldn’t suggest using the NAS as a production web server, but for test and development it should be ideal.

Physically, the NAS is not one of the smallest around, but then again it does pack in two standard 3.5" drives and a hefty processor by comparison. It’s a sleek black unit with three bright LEDs on the front and in operation it is remarkably quiet. I’ve been advised that it can make quite a noise on occasions which I have tracked down to being drive re-synchronisation – basically, don’t power the NAS off unless you’ve done a graceful shutdown by sliding the off switch at the rear of the unit and waited for the lights to go out. If you need to replace a hard drive, you just pop the front cover off and slide one out – simples.

Netgear DGN1000 ADSL Router

December 10th, 2011 No Comments »

When your broadband connection goes down you feel completely helpless don’t you? Or is that just me? Well, my ADSL router died a few weeks ago and I needed to get it back up and running as soon as possible. I found an old Siemens router in the garage from when I used Tiscali so I reconfigured this, plugged it in and all was well. For a week or two. Then that router died too with an almost identical fault – power light would come on, but it would never boot. Grrr, I had a few choices – order a new one online (er, how?) or go to an actual shop thing and buy one. My local PC World / Currys / Comet / Tesco turned out to be less than useful unless I had over £70 to burn and keeping in mind that BT Infinity will be rearing its head within the next couple of months I was reluctant to spend much given that I’ll need new hardware anyway when I sign up to that. Thankfully Argos rescued me, and the Netgear DGN1000 was purchased.

The router is shiny and black with wall mountable screw holes on the back which is always a nice touch… if it was going to be a permanent installation I’d have used these but in the interest of keeping my walls clean I have propped it precariously in the corner of my lounge instead so as my 2-year-old son can ‘test’ it fully. Installation of the router was very straight forward – I’ve used a lot of Netgear ADSL routers over the years, mainly the DG834G varieties and the interface in the DGN1000 is more or less the same. The router automatically detected the line parameters and prompted me for my credentials which were duly supplied… and there we are, all connected! Of course I had to make a number of changes to default configuration to align it with my existing network infrastructure: the LAN addressing had to be changed to 192.168.1.0/24 from 192.168.0.0/24 and of course this means re-addressing the router to 192.168.1.1 – a very easy task; the DHCP scope needed to be adjusted in a similar manner, and limited to fewer addresses which prevents overlap with the statics on my LAN; and a few inbound traffic rules needed to be added forwarding to my server for remote access. All this was easy to do and quite intuitive, but the most important thing was the Wi-Fi configuration. Now, I don’t make use of Wi-Fi on my router because I have a dedicated access point elsewhere in the house, so I usually disable it straight away. This time I decided to test it out specifically for this review. Netgear, quite stupidly in my opinion, enable Wi-Fi on their routers out of the box. Not only do they enable them, but they give them a standard SSID of NETGEAR and turn off all encryption leaving the router completely open. The DGN1000 includes Wireless-N support across a single radio meaning it can theoretically support up to 150Mbps. More expensive models sport double antennae meaning they can go up to 300Mbps if you need that kind of bandwidth. After locking down the configuration to WPA2-AES I gave the wireless connection a good hammering. Compared to my existing 802.11g network which normally connected at around 40Mbps, the 802.11n access point gave me connection speeds of 64Mbps. Of course in real life this doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but transfer speeds to my server generally felt a little nippier by comparison although I didn’t bother with anything scientific. If I ever get hold of a 300Mbps access point then I’ll do some proper playing for you.

Netgear DGN1000I do have a couple of beefs with the router. Firstly, connection speeds are a little lower than my late Huawai router, syncing at around 3.8Mbps instead of the previous 4.5Mbps but I’m not noticing the difference really – I’m getting enough to stream BBC iPlayer in high quality. My second beef concerns the manner in which it deals with internal requests to services which are hosted internally to the LAN, but using an Internet facing DNS name / IP address. Not following me? Well, my Windows Home Server sits on my LAN, and if I wish to connect to the server when I’m out and about on someone else’s Internet connection, I simply open a web browser, type in the special secret URL associated with my server, and the web browser goes away and hits my router at home, which port forwards me through on TCP 80 to my server inside my LAN. All fine and dandy, but what if I’m sitting at home on my LAN and I do the same thing – you’d think that the router should be able to understand that it is actually supposed to port forward you to a specific host on your LAN, but what it actually does is ignore its ruleset and connect you straight to the internal web interface of the router. I haven’t had this issue since I first made use of a Netgear DG834G v1 many years ago and even then the problem was resolved after a few months via a firmware update. Why Netgear have allowed this problem to creep back in I’m not sure but I’ll update this review if it gets fixed.

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