Tag: technojunk

July 23, 2024 – Are We Done Yet?

July 23, 2024 /

The last major component has been added to my office. Something that started in the winter of 2021 is done… almost. The actual last thing that I want to do is replace my chair with something more becoming of sitting in it all day long. I have decided that my chair sucks a lot.

My chair is not new. Technically that is an upgrade. But the TV is new (to me). This is the component that knits all of my techno junk together. It acts as a second monitor, I have it connected to the VCR, the Blue-Ray player and the X-Box 360. All of those qualify as techno junk in my book.

If you recall three years ago, I actually wired my office for surround sound. My thought was that I was going to finally put those speakers in a home they deserve. I did mess around with them early on but unfortunately, the space does not totally work. My speakers are way too large for the space.

Thinking back retrospectively, I could have built my office differently to accommodate for the speakers I have. That would have involved moving the door more centrally in the space.. But, I would have lost out on some of my usable space for my couch and that does get used.

Like everything in life, it is a compromise. I have considered purchasing some micro speakers like the Bose brand and then I really could make it happen. After all, everything is wired and ready to go. I haven’t totally ruled that out but that would then violate one of my tenants. That is putting to use the techno junk that I have lying around.

Sometimes I turn on the local news on mute while I am working. I enjoy it and it makes me feel more connected. Like this is some kind or war room or control center. Technically, it is the home of AltF4 and is probably the single place I spend time in my life. Nine hours of working beats 6 hours of sleeping. That is actually my justification for the chair.

Like all done projects, it is not totally done. I need to wire the TV output to the receiver. I am still on the lookout for a subwoofer. I occasionally see one at a good price but the timing is not right. I want it to be both cheap and easy. I am weighing the real want for surround sound. I don’t have an actual remote for the TV. We have another Panasonic TV. I can use that remote for the advanced functions. It will cease to be a goal and more like a ‘some day’ desire.

End Your Programming Routine: I feel good that all the old misfit toys now have a home. I don’t know if I will ever sit down and watch a VCR tape in full surround sound, but I could. I feel like one of those TV shows where I can hack into any piece of data and solve a crime or get information. Yeah, it is a fantasy but it is done with a $12.50 TV and a bunch of cast off electronics (including the computer).

June 5, 2024 – What I Know About Scanners and a Lot I Don’t

June 5, 2024 /

Sometimes it is easier to troubleshoot with more than one device. When you have a reference for comparison, it can make a big difference. I have almost given up on the Software Defined Radio as a scanner. While I can tune in on simple GMRS frequencies, I have heard nothing on the emergency frequencies.

I decided to purchase a proper scanner. With that, I would have a second device to compare what is happening on the SDR with a reference. I think it was a steal of a deal on eBay at $68. I will talk about some of the things that I have learned about scanners.

It is true that you can buy a new scanner for a little over $100. The problem is that these devices are for analog signal only. This would be a good device to take to a NASCAR race but there is a whole world of technology out there.

Then there are digital radios. Those scanners start over $200. The more sophisticated departments are using trunked radios which means that they operate on more than one frequency for privacy purposes. These are about $500. Now, you can see why my eBay deal was so good.

This is the Realistic Pro-2052. It is actually made by Uniden and is a trunking scanner. It was clearly used. It is missing one of the feet to prop it up at an angle and didn’t come with an antenna. I bought one for $8 and plugged it in. Within 20 minutes, I heard my first ambulance call. I had the same frequency on the SDR for a week and didn’t hear a thing.

This scanner also has an RS-232 port on it. Auxiliary software can be purchased to do additional programming. For that reason, I added serial ports to my Linux computer. This is a whole realm of things that I have to figure out in my free time (I find it pretty easy to dream up things to do with all of my excessive free time).

I have had it running for a couple of days now. Nothing really exciting has happened. There have been a lot of calls for transport and lift assistance. That is pretty much what I expected for mid-week. It seems like the weekend get a little looser. I probably won’t be near the scanner much on the weekend unless I move it upstairs.

What I really need to do is read the manual. The scanner is programmed by whomever owned it last. I tend to push buttons until I get what I want. That is not really how it is intended to be used. You are supposed to bank up all these channels in groups and then let it run. Something else to do in my free time.

End Your Programming Routine: I am happy to report that since I threatened the SDR with a real scanner, I started hearing the fire broadcasts. It seems to be that I wasn’t using the software properly. That is pretty neat because I now have two ways of listening. Don’t forget that one of the tenants of preparedness is ‘two is one’. This one being portable will be helpful to bring into the bunker during the apocalypse. 🙂

June 4, 2024 – Man, Americans Love Cheap TVs

June 4, 2024 /

I include myself in that statement as well. I have been looking for the final piece for my office and I found it at a second hand store a couple of weeks ago. It is a Panasonic 32″ LCD TV. The best part is that I paid $12.50 for it. I plan on using it for a second monitor as well as connecting techno junk to it. I have a VCR, Blu-ray player and an X-Box 360.

It is not something that I do a lot, but every so often I stop into second hand stores looking for techno junk. I had hoped that I would be farther along but I am looking for to build my younger son a hi-fi system. I want a receiver that has a phono input and a turntable first. The trick is, it has to be a reasonable price. I see them for $75-100 occasionally but that is too much in my mind when I can buy them on eBay for $50.

It seems like two or three years ago, I saw many to fit my criteria. But, it seems like the market caught onto the steal of a deal these $25 receivers were. Phono inputs disappeared from about 2000 to 2020. The point of those is that they are amplified inputs whereas plugging into one of the other choices are not. That means that you can put a DVD into a CD input and the only harm would be the label not matching. But, you cant plug a traditional record player into a CD input, it sounds bad.

The point of all of that is receivers became ubiquitous in the same time that phono inputs were phased out. Now, audio/visual systems are out of vogue to be replaced by sound bars. We did the same ourselves which is why I ended up with the system in my office. But, this also makes finding the right receiver significantly difficult to find.

I should be writing about TVs and not audio equipment. I have considered buying several different TVs. What made this one different was the price. The sticker said $25 and it was half off. It doesn’t hurt that it is a Panasonic.

We have three different brands in our house. We have two Samsungs that are LED TVs. We have a Magnavox that is an LCD TV and a Panasonic that is a Plasma TV. I say all of the time that I don’t watch much TV and I truly don’t. But, the one I watch the most is the smallest (32″ Magnavox). I turn on the news while I am cooking or a game while I am canning.

The TV that I like the most is the Plasma TV. It was our first flat screen. I appreciate the color of TV. I find it to be the brightest in all lighting conditions. It is big enough but it seems like it is not compensating for something else. I hate the washed out LED screens. I don’t like the bluish cast that they make either.

I have been a longtime fan of the brand Panasonic. It is sad that they lost out in the TV wars because I think that they made some of the best electronics around. Our last TV we replaced around Super Bowl I was about to throw a brick through it. It would turn off while watching, it would fail to turn on and the software was garbage. It was one of those Chinese brands not allowed in the government buildings out of spyware concerns.

One downside of buying used is often things are missing. In this case it is the remote control. That will likely cost more than the TV itself. But, the good news is that since I already have a Panasonic TV, VCR and DVD player plus a universal remote for my receiver, I will not rush out and buy one. I will look for one second hand and if I never find one, it wont be a big deal.

End Your Programming Routine: My techno junk pursuit is all about opportunity. I am only willing to buy it if it is cheap. Anybody can plunk down a chunk of change and setup a shiny system. I am all about keeping good old equipment running, even if it is out of vogue. It is doubly exciting when it is a bargain.

May 15, 2024 – The Monster Is Growing

May 15, 2024 /

This is kind of a fun one for me. I have had some time lately where my wife is getting long visits with friends. As a result, I hide out in the basement working on my experiment with Linux and radios. I do have my Software Defined Radio working, it is just not quite dialed in.

I am monitoring the stations that say are Police/Fire but I have yet to hear anything. It is kind of like fishing. You don’t catch anything if you don’t try but just because you are fishing doesn’t mean that you are going to catch anything. I don’t know if my antenna is not good enough or the frequencies are wrong or the software doesn’t work as advertised.

Regardless, the bottom monitor was one that I had in my office. It stopped working reliably in December of last year. It would plug in and work for a day until the computer went to sleep and then it would stop working until I unplugged it for a day or so. I replaced the monitor and put it in the recycle pile.

But, since the monitor was in my way, I decided to test it a little further and plug it into my Linux computer. I had a bit of a working theory that there was something to do with the graphics card since the monitor seemed to work on one machine but not when I switched over to another computer with a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch. Low and behold, it worked all week. Then I decided to hook two monitors up and it worked another two weeks.

Rather than throwing a 27″ monitor away. I decided to go for it and order a dual monitor stand. In the picture you can see that the tower on the left is the computer I have been talking about. The tower on the right is my XP machine running Linux Mint (32-bit). You read that correctly, Windows XP. This is the machine that my wife insists still has pictures and data that she still wants. These two also have a KVM switch attached to them.

Given that the Linux Mint computer is almost twenty years old and running out of date hardware, it actually runs pretty well. In fact, it runs significantly better than when I try to boot into XP. That is a good 10 minute wait before everything gets going. As an example, I swapped out the wireless card with one that I replaced in my main computer around Christmas time (to add Bluetooth). Mint recognized the card and added a driver and XP did not. I don’t really care because both of them are wired as well. I use it mostly as a troubleshooting tool.

I learned though that the same KVM problem came back when I tried to use the 27″ monitor as the primary monitor by both systems. This means that the upper monitor is the one that works with both computers but I don’t see myself using the old Linux Mint machine much given that it is somewhat limited. I wouldn’t have done this anyway if I didn’t have two monitors in the first place.

Given that I am getting things real cozy in that spot, I started thinking about it would make a good place to put some radios as well. Lately, I have been scrolling through a lot of vintage CB base stations and different GMRS radios. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of that is in my future. I will have to modify shotgun hull storage area to do so. Given that reloads can’t be used in trap competition it is unlikely that I will be ever doing that.

End Your Programming Routine: My only real problem with this new setup is that it is cold. It is not a good place to sit for a long time even bundled up. That being said, it is kind of fun re-purposing old hardware and upgrading at the cost of pennies on the dollar compared to their technological heyday. If I have to keep something around, I might as well enjoy it.

April 16, 2024 – Have You Considered a Portable Monitor?

April 16, 2024 /

I have. All the way back to 2010, I had a co-worker that had one. They have been around a long time and the original ones were more like an iPad size. I was amazed at how inexpensive they have become as well when I was looking. They used to cost more than a real monitor. Only recently have I put it more in the want category.

I resisted a second monitor for a long time. Most of my co-workers had second monitors long before me. My logic was that I spent a lot of time on the road 25-50% travel and I didn’t want it to become a necessity. I finally got one in 2013. I think it was because the company was making so much money that the owners decided to re-invest some of it.

I worked for a small company and everything other than what they gave us, we had to justify or buy it ourselves. I have come nearly 180 degrees since that time. I used to feel like I would spend nothing from my own money because it wasn’t necessary. But, today I prefer to own my own equipment and comfort and productivity are worth the money. Not to mention that if I own the stuff, I can use it how I choose, like my work with AltF4.

One day, I showed up at work and voila, I had a new monitor. The owner said ‘Got to protect those eyes from strain’. I said thanks. I also got a new chair that way as well. It really does help as a programmer and those things that go along with the job. I can have the code open on one screen and a document open on another. It can definitely be done without a second monitor, but the process takes probably four times longer.

When I got back into the workforce in 2021 I was a contractor. In that case, I didn’t even have options to requisition additional job hardware so I bought my own. I held off as long as I could but it was just so inefficient flipping back and forth amongst screens that the cost was worth it.

Should you have a travel monitor? That depends. How much mobile work do you do (meaning not having a dedicated space)? How valuable is having a second screen? How small is you laptop? I purchased one a few weeks ago so that I could move from my office to the dining room table while my wife was in bed. Here are some of the things that I learned.

  1. Setting all of that stuff up every day is a pain. It probably takes 5-10 minutes for setup and take down.
  2. It is hard to get comfortable in a confined space. There are extra cords for the monitor and to be effective, the monitor has to be positioned correctly. This interferes with where I want to place and use the mouse.
  3. If you truly are travelling, this adds a lot of weight and bulk. My backpack has room for two laptops. I must warn that it is heavy.
  4. It has been helpful for my work however. I can do all the things I do in my office, just not quite as well.

I think that I am going to come down on the side of ‘I like the idea more than the practice’. It is worth all of the effort for setup if I am going to stay in one spot all day but not moving from place to place. If and when I am travelling for work, I very well may not take it unless I can leave my setup day after day. Travel work is usually more support work and not document writing, having a second screen is less necessary in those cases.

End Your Programming Routine: Should you get a travel monitor? My advice is no unless you absolutely need two monitors to work. It really is not worth the space, time and hassle. Since I am at home, it really isn’t a big deal but I really don’t see myself actually travelling with it.

March 28, 2024 – No Wonder People Hate Technology

March 28, 2024 /

I am a programmer for goodness sake, why is so much information bad? A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the hard drive on my primary desktop was almost filled. It wasn’t that long ago that I went on a cutting spree trying to free up space on that hard drive (a couple of months). I finally figured out that One drive was syncing everything wherever it was connected. I thought that I was putting stuff into One drive to keep my hard drive clean.

At the same time, I had enough of my laptop. The hard drive is constantly pegging at 100% use. It cripples the ability to do anything on the computer and has for many years. I had an idea, I am going to swap that hard drive for a solid state drive and take the old hard drive and put it into my desktop that is almost full.

I am no idiot. In the old days, you had a CD-ROM that you put into the drive and you rebuilt the operating system from disk. Well, I don’t even have an optical drive in my laptop. So, I looked up multiple instructions that concurred. Create a recovery drive on USB. Replace the hard drive and then boot from the recovery drive to rebuild the operating system. “NNNNNT, Wrong”.

First of all, a recovery drive is only for rebuilding working and existing hard drives. Trust me, I spent hours trying to make it work. I don’t care what expert said what, it does not work. It wasn’t even easy to build the recovery drive either. I spent probably six hours messing around with that.

The instructions say, you need a 32GB USB drive. OK, I went out and bought one. Then, it says use the recovery drive utility built into Windows. After two hours, the first one failed. Two more hours and the second one failed. I started checking the internet for why this was happening. As it turns out, the USB drive needed to be formatted in NTSC and not FAT32 format. Once I did that, add another two hours to create the recovery drive.

I swapped the hard drive and then booted from the recovery drive. At first, I tried the option that restored my settings. That got to 70% complete and then I was alerted that there was an error. I tried it again, same result. Then third attempt, I tried a new install, also failed. I went to bed for the night, pissed and bewildered.

The next morning, I started checking the internet and found out that this can only be done with a Windows image. The registration component is apparently on the motherboard. I didn’t want to ruin my recovery drive in case I still needed it, but I needed an 8GB drive for Windows 11 media. The only drive I had of that size was my bootable Ubuntu image. It turns out, when you build an Ubuntu drive, it write protects those files and so my 8GB drive had three partitions that I could not get rid of. I had to download Rufus again just to get rid of the partitions.

One of the permaculture principles is the problem is the solution. So, fortunately, all of my data was backed up to One Drive. But, I did have to re-connect mail, and download browsers and Microsoft 365 and all that stuff. This is the easy stuff since I have been religiously using Bit-Locker to store all of my account information. And now, I am just clicking through and adding stuff.

Did this make a performance difference? You bet it did. I no longer want to throw my laptop off of a building. Installing the old hard drive should be easy (compared to this). Once I have all of that working, I am going to start ripping DVDs of content that I am keeping on One Drive. I don’t want to get rid of my podcast raw data and things like that, but I certainly don’t need to keep easy access to it and I definitely don’t want it clogging up my hard drive. That is a whole different story. Even though I have a DVD burner, that is not working either.

End Your Programming Routine: We are in the habit of taking all information as good information, myself included. When multiple sources had the same instructions, I took for granted that it was correct. It may be that this was valid for Windows 10 and not 11, I don’t know what was wrong. This should have been done in a couple of hours and stretched into days based on bad information. I am glad that I had more than one computer and USB drive.

October 19, 2023 – Review: Hauppage 1196 PCIe Tuner Card

October 19, 2023 /

Here is something that I haven’t done in a while and that is an honest to goodness product review. I have had on my list to try out a tuner card for several years, since I built my office. A large part of that is that I want to have live TV in the basement when I was doing the things I do down there. It is particularly true when football season is on.

To be fair, it is hard to review something without comparing the item to something else. This is a pretty niche market, computer hardware that broadcast TV. From my research, there are several variations, but let’s start with the two basic categories. There is an expansion card option and a USB option. I chose the expansion card because I had an empty PCIe slot and all of my USB ports are full.

I will say that if you are shy about getting into computer hardware or don’t even know what a PCIe slot looks like, it is probably best to stick to the USB model unless you are going to get some help. It is a more invasive and permanent installation. But, I think that you can find a lot of deals on used or old hardware, like I did.

These things were really intended to build ‘media computers’ that managed your live TV, recorded TV, movies, music, etc. That idea has become passé with the takeover of mobile devices and cloud services. No longer is absolute quality of picture and sound the driver of media but portability.

I haven’t spent a lot of time with the software, but I like the concept. I turn on the morning news with the sound off and the Closed Captioning on. That way it is not really disturbing me but is on in the background. I catch the weather and traffic while I go about my work.

I mention it briefly below but the programming guide seems to be the driver of functionality. This does cause some problems when it doesn’t have data or update like it should. But, it also nice to see the spectrum of what is on, I rarely watch TV just to watch it. I really miss the old days of TV guide because now I just don’t turn on the TV.

One of the reasons I drug my feet on this was because I was going to add a TV as a second monitor. In that case, I could take my antenna connection and plug it into the TV instead of adding another card. But, that is really not a priority. It will happen, but I am going to buy it used and cheap and I wanted the capability to watch football now if I happened to be in the basement.

It is also hard to argue with the price. New, these things are around $70-80 on Amazon. I paid $19 off of e-Bay. Sure, I didn’t get the remote control or the software included in purchase. I had to buy the software separately which cost me $13. But, I don’t really need the remote and so all in it was $32. A serviceable, used TV is going to cost $25-50 likely. But now, I won’t have to mess with input switching.

I call this technojunk because it gives new life an purpose to old hardware. Yes, it is a computer that I use every day but it is supposedly supported on Windows 7, 8 and Linux as well. I debated setting it up on my Linux computer but that is going to be my Software Defined Radio and other things machine. Plus, I prefer the main interface to the remote one and I am in my office five days a week.

ScoreAdvantagesDisadvantages
Value4/5I paid less than half of the list price by buying usedBe aware that if you buy used that you will also need to buy a software license
Other devices on your network can access live TV through the softwareI did not get a remote control that comes with the full package
Works with ATSC (antenna) and NTSC signals (cable)Requires some computer knowledge to install card. Installation instructions can be cryptic and dated
Quality3/5 A lot of flexibility to record to specific directory or NASThe software relies highly on the electronic programming guide. Not all stations provide data.
Channels can be configured in the order you would like to viewIn full screen mode, controls disappear, requires remote to operate properly
Full screen mode has a fuzzy picture
Performance 4/5Extends TV to all devices connected to the same network as computer This is a single tuner, it means that you can only record one program at a time
You can finally record live broadcast TV again without paying a serviceThis is old technology without modern inputs/outputs
Runs all day without impacting internet bandwidthWatching TV on extended devices has less control than the base software

End Your Programming Routine: This wasn’t necessary, just fun. I spend very little time watching TV, but when I see Walker, Texas Ranger on it brings back memories. I used to record and watch This Old House before digital TV, but now I can stream it if I really want to follow along. I do like the ability to see the local news while I am going about my day. So, why not?

October 3, 2023 – My Technojunk is About to Go Overdrive

October 3, 2023 /

I may do some YouTube videos on some of this stuff. It is amazing how bad some of them are. I am smart enough to get the gist and read between the lines. But, I can rely on all of my technical background to supplement the bits of information I get from others. I strongly suspect that if you are not a computer geek or electrical engineer then a lot of this help is just Greek to most.

Since I built my office, I have been contemplating getting a PC tuner card to play broadcast TV on my computer. I planned for it by running antenna wire into my office. I even bought a card that I thought was a steal at $10. I am the one that got stolen from because I didn’t realize that it was a tuner for the old analog broadcasting (and cable and satellite) which kind of defeated the purpose. Ten dollars was a pretty cheap lesson and now I know that the broadcast format today it ATSC Version 1.

I was reading an article that ATSC Version 3 is on the horizon. This effectively means that all of today’s current TV tuners will become obsolete as this new technology. But it also means higher resolution and mobile capability. Probably at some point, this will be integrated technology into everything. But for now, I will settle for just the TV tuner that works.

Looking at used cards, I was wondering about how to get the software. My research has informed me that it is the software that matters unless your computer is frozen in time (disconnected from the internet). The reason being is that you need manufacturer support to ensure these devices keep working as the operating systems continuously upgrade. So, I was reading that I can buy the software as well as a bare card and hopefully get this system working.

The thing that really sold me is that the latest version of the software gives its own IP streaming capability. This means that I can have this program running on one computer and access it from any device on the network. This should mean that I can access live TV from all of my devices which is what I am going for to augment this football season. I don’t really want to sit down and watch a game as much as I want to have it on in the background while I am doing something else.

I am hoping that installing this card is nearly a slam dunk. My next subject is going to raise the roof on things. About three weeks ago, we got a text saying that there were some armed suspects of a stolen car on the loose and running from the police nearby. It turns out that there were five juveniles in a stolen car being chased by the police. Their path took the chase around our house and ended in the neighboring city.

The day after, four were caught and one remained at-large. It turns out that the driver shot at sheriff’s deputies while the foot chase pursued. But, the fact remains that if it wasn’t for that text, we would have not known anything that was going on. That seems to be ignorant. I have been wanting to get a police scanner for a long time but I don’t know or understand all of the technologies.

I have known for a long time that many of these frequencies are streamed on the internet. I was thinking, why don’t I setup one of those old computers that I setup to run Linux just have it streaming the scanner broadcast. The computer is just sitting there and it is even on. It would be my own scanner base station.

I started looking around and I have heard of this term Software Defined Radio, but I didn’t realize how simple it was. It is actually a radio receiver that is plugged into a USB port and the computer does what a radio does. In essence, the USB dongle is the radio and the software does all the work. An even better plus, drivers and software can run on Linux so now I can repurpose that computer into something useful. My own software defined radio, hopefully for scanner purposes at a very cheap opening cost.

I am going to take it slow. The one video I half watched said that I actually needed two USB radios to make a scanner. I am not sure why yet but I am going to start with one to get it installed and see if I can pick-up anything. I will work my way up to two and more radio stuff.

Despite my lack of desire to talk to strange people over the radio, I actually think that radios are a perfect blend of technojunk, science and preparedness. I don’t know how deep I really want to go with this but I would like to add CB radio to my pickup to monitor logging traffic if or when I am in the woods on a week day. I also think that it is miles more reliable that the handheld walkie-talkies so talking with others in a hunting party would be much better as well.

End Your Programming Routine: I am doing it. I am taking a baby step into radio communications. I am probably starting on a different end than most people do because the technology wasn’t available when they were learning. That being said, this is a much cheaper entry point for me. I know that cheaper often leads to less satisfaction and more struggle, but I also don’t have much to lose. Stay tuned for more technojunk in the near future.