sounds, sensors, stones
It’s always the capacitors causing trouble these days, and if it’s not them it’s the connectors 😉 When I started work decades back, in Test, on units that had a Z80 microprocessor I kept a Z80 spare. When a faulty unit came in, I always tried swapping the microprocessor. Never in my time there did … Continue reading "it’s always the capacitors – Logitech SB3 one channel low audio fix"
I am writing this from a field recordist’s point of view, not a podcaster POV. Podcasting seems to be the design intended use case. There’s nothing more commonplace in the modern urban setting than somebody with earbuds glommed onto the delights within their a smartphone. Pair some binaural in-ear microphones like Soundman OKMIIs with a … Continue reading "Røde AI-Micro USB-C phone interface"
After disappointing results measuring frequency with an Arduino due to the Arduino system interrupts stealing clock cycles, I tried a 16F628A PIC. This is a much more primitive chip. In my system it has only one job, to spit out a count of 4MHz main system clock cycles that have passed between the onboard comparator … Continue reading "measuring frequency with a 16F628A PIC"
A cautionary tale for those trying to measure frequency using Arduino
Been nearly ten years since I last looked at this. Most people’s interest in paramagnetism seemed to be soil testing with the Phil Callahan Soil Meter (PCSM), mine was investigating megalithic sites. I have Fabrice to thank for this and much useful information about the PCSM. I had unsatisfactory results in the field, lacking sensitivity. … Continue reading "Paramagnetism revisited"
I bought this noname kit, from somewhere in China. I may want two of these in the end, to compare radiation near one site compared with the general background, so getting cost down1 is worth having, and I can’t moan about the price, delivered for < £25 including tube. But I can moan about the … Continue reading "CAJOE ebay geiger counter kit"
I wanted to take an IR photo at dawn. IR photos are easy enough these days, you can either butcher the camera you already have taking out the IR filter, or you can use a Raspberry Pi NoIR camera where they have taken the filter out/not fitted it at the factory. The dawn part, however, … Continue reading "Running a Raspberry Pi off a LiPo battery"
This is for a piezo contact mic that is powered off a field recorder’s plug-in-power supply. That is for small recorders like Olympus’s LS10, LS-5, LS14 series, which are typically unbalanced audio inputs, stereo on a 3.5mm jack, not for a P48 phantom power from a mixer or pro recorder1. You also get an opportunity … Continue reading "piezo contact microphone preamp for plug-in-power"
I bought this must’ve been 2016. It was a bad move from the get-go, because the hard disk is only 32Gb. And it had Windows 10, and 32Gb is only just enough to get Windows on. Pretty soon I had to use an outboard hard drive to be able to update windows, and by about … Continue reading "HP Stream 11 lives again with Xubuntu"
I bought this Chinese HW-131 breadboard power supply, which seems to be a Chinese clone of another Chinese product, the YwRobot MB U2. There are reports of unreliability with that device run off 12V, the suggestion is to run it of less than 12V if you are drawing notable power from it because heatsinking is … Continue reading "Chinese HW-131 breadboard power supply, clone of YwRobot MB U2"