One of my pet hates is the soft-touch rubberised coating some manufactures put on their kit. It invariably fails sooner or later. Indeed, I’ve had quite a lot of kit over the years where the rubberised coating has failed. Fortunately it is usually fixable – or to be more precise, removable. Depending on the coating’s…
One of the most annoying features on standard SD cards is the write protect tab. This tab often seems to get caught and pushed into the “read only” position when one inserts an SD card into a card reader or camera. Thus rendering the card “read only”. It seems a particular issue with the slots…
I’m often amazed by the money some Hi-Fi buffs spend on their systems. I’m something of a tightwad, and I took a rather different approach. This involves mixed tech – or as I prefer to call it, “appropriate technology“. I run one of these. It used to be an Acer Windows box, but all that…
I’ve been flirting with affordable LED in the studio for over a decade. And on each experiment, I’ve had change out of fifty quid. My latest sortie involved a pair of these things They have simple removable diffuser, reducing the need for a soft-box, they’re fairly robust and in addition to being dimmable they also…
I suffered my first hard disk failure way back in 1987. Fortunately I recovered 99% of my data. However, successful recovery required quite a lengthy struggle and a somewhat inelegant bodge. Since then, I’ve held something of a fascination, some might even say an obsession with backup systems. Over the years, I have tried all…
Problem is that memory cards can and do fail – even the expensive ones. And of course the world is littered with fakes. Being a bit of an old skinflint, almost all my memory cards have come from Amazon or similar. But I always add one extra precautionary step to the process between purchase and…
Photographer pal changed the batteries in his dead YN565EX II speedlight flash gun. Unfortunately when he tried to witch it on, it didn’t work. He tried several sets of batteries. No luck. For those not familiar with the device, the Yongnuo YN565EX II is a relatively affordable battery-powered Chinese flash speedlight for both professional and…
My experience of street photography is to make oneself looks as insignificant and unprofessional as possible – which comes rather too naturally to me, TBH! 🙂 Kit should be small, light and ideally somewhat battered looking – a “distressed” look that most of my kit usually acquires after a few weeks’ service. No expensive-looking kit…
Having all become familiar with USB C, seems the USB Group has just announced an even newer and faster connection standard, to be known as “USB D”. Of course, like all new Universal Serial Bus connectors, it will be completely incompatible with all previous USB standards. To guarantee incompatibility, the new connectors will be circular….
I don’t quite know how I managed it but my personal/business dataset has now grown to around 17 Terrabytes. Most of it is spread across multiple smaller disks. This is becoming increasingly difficult to manage. In fact, we are decommissioning our 4TB drives. This is partly because they are well beyond recommended end of life,…
For my little IT business, the possibility of power cuts is very bad news indeed. So we invested in one of these things – a “UA1101l” power storage unit. On paper, it stores about 3.6 MJ (megajoules) or 1 kWh (kilowatt hour) in EV (electric vehicle) grade LiFePO4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries. My tests suggest…
We’re busy replacing a customer’s ageing Sonos distributed sound system with a Linux Media Server (c/w SAMBA for remaining Sonos kit) c/w these tiny Linux-powered SBCs (single board commuters) as replacements. Granted, this is merely a prototype. This unit us based upon a Raspberry pi 4B c/w 8GiB RAM, a capacitative touchscreen and an external…
I just bought a Geiger counter from a seller on AliExpress. Well it’s actually a Geiger counter and EMF (electromagnetic field) meter, all combined into a single device. I have no idea who actually makes these things. There is no branding other than a model number “BR-9C”. Though I did discover that the enclosures used…
A lot of buzz on the interwebs about Samsung mobile phone batteries. Whilst Samsung devices do seem particularly problematic, it can be an issue with lithium polymer batteries generally – especially the super skinny type. They really don’t like getting hot. I confess I documented this repair rather badly but I did remember to capture…
Due to its construction, ours is quite a difficult house for “whole house Wi-Fi” due to its solid internal dividing walls, downstairs and upstairs. In fact, my first DIY job when we moved in here, back in 2012, was to run Cat 5e Ethernet cables to every room that we were likely to use a…
A few folks have asked me what I use to keep our various networking and internet connectivity kit neat and tidy, yet reasonably service friendly. Well, I have to admit that it was rather a muddle for a many years. That was until I decided to make a simple multistorey stainless steel router rack. Moreover,…
For reasons I won’t bore you with now, my wife and I need to be rather careful regarding respiratory infections. I did my last model shoot 2020-03-08, shut everything down pro tem due to COVID. Amongst other projects, I used the time-out to undertake a fairly major refurbishment of my studio. I wanted to get…
One of the problems with modern life is the plethora of plug-in mains adaptors or “wall warts” as they call them on the other side of “The Pond”. Aside from the mess of wires, and the fact that often they are plugged into multi-gang power sockets an heaped on top of one another, building up…
Raspberry π4 for ZoneMinder Part 1 – Raspberry π4 8GB for Zoneminder Part 2 – Update: Raspberry π4 8GB for Zoneminder Part 3 – Another update: Raspberry π4 for Zoneminder (you are here) My π4 Zoneminder has been running for just over two months. Overall I’m pretty happy with it. The main issue I had…
A lot of folks complaining that they have to go buy yet another set of USB leads, thanks to this newfangled USB C plug that’s come along. So what’s it all about and why do practically all new smartphones come equipped with it? Main reason is that it allows suitably equipped mobile devices to charge…
There are many ways to break an SD slot, but a surprisingly common one is to jam a tiny piece of plastic it it that has snapped off from a damaged SD card. The tiny plastic dividers between an CD card’s contacts can snap off. I’ve had quite several cards do that over the years….
Following on from my last article, this is Raspberry π4 8GB for Zoneminder part 2. Now I have had time to set it up and test it for a while. Firstly, I decided to abandon the ARM64 version of Ubuntu on π because it seems slow and clunky. Basically it seems the current beta ARM64…
This is a overview of my adventures experimenting with a tiny Raspberry π4 8GB for Zoneminder GNU/Linux-based security system. Raspberry π4 for ZoneMinder Part 1 – Raspberry π4 8GB for Zoneminder (you are here) Part 2 – Update: Raspberry π4 8GB for Zoneminder Part 3 – Another update: Raspberry π4 for Zoneminder Background I have…
Back in 2015 I bought 3 pairs of studio flash heads (one pair 400 joule, one pair 360 joule and one pair 200 joule). They were supplied as bargain bundles, complete with stands, brollies etc. via sellers on eBay. They were quite a bargain. Each flash head worked out at approximately £50 per unit, They…
Our Floureon pan tilt and zoom external IP camera has shipped a bit of water. It lives on the south west corner of the building and gets battered by the strong south westerly prevailing winds we have here. So I took it off the wall this morning and dismantled it on my work bench. It…
