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Gadget Wisdom

Author: David Shanske

Registration time

2011-09-25 06:23:49

Website

https://david.shanske.com/

Email

david@shanske.com

All posts by David Shanske

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Reflecting on Life with a Chromebook

Acer Chromebook C7

A week ago, we announced a product review challenge. Spending time with a Chromebook to see if it could be our daily driver. Let’s review the conditions of our challenge. We’d use the device in lieu of our primary productivity machine. So, we’d still have our Android phone for what we used it for. So, it wasn’t the ‘only’ thing used.

Let’s go over a few areas…

Mail

Most mail services have a webmail option, so this isn’t an issue. We use Google Apps mail for our primary address anyway, which is browser based.

Social Networking

We’ve never been able to find a Twitter client we really liked anyway, so using web based ones wasn’t any better or worse. Facebook and Google Plus are web-based anyway, so no difference there.

Chat and IRC

There are no good Chrome extensions for IRC. But most IRC servers have a web client. Will do in a pinch. For chat, we tried a few options. The Chat by Google extension is nice, but only supports one account. We have two, a personal and a business account. So we tried Imo.im, Trillian, etc. Imo.im, nicely, supports desktop notifications.

Productivity

We usually use OpenOffice for simple word processing, but Google Docs is a fine option.

Connectivity

We found an SSH extension for connecting to our Linux box.

So, after all this, what is the conclusion?

We spend much of our day in a browser. This blog is run on an installation of WordPress. The interface is browser based. Our email is browser-based, although we have used email clients in the past. More and more things are based in the browser, so it is logical to have a computer that offers just a browser. And as a secondary system, that is fine. But we’re going back to a full Linux-based system for our daily use.

To that end, the Acer C7 Chromebook is a great secondary system. The touchpad was the only part of it that truly annoyed. But the solution there was to simply hook up an external mouse. After a week, we installed ChrUbuntu, a Ubuntu Linux fork designed for use on Chromebooks, and now dual-boot.

In order to install an alternate OS on a Chromebook, you have to place it into Developer Mode, which means you get an annoying splash screen every time you boot. It also doesn’t support a boot menu, so you have to change settings in a terminal window to switch OSes. But it does give the machine the ability to run full-fledged programs. And there are a few that, if ported to Chrome, might cause us to revisit this.

On a weekend trip, we opted to take the Asus Transformer, a 10 inch tablet with a keyboard dock, over the 11.6 inch Chromebook. So, a few native apps might change our mind.

What do you think? Leave a comment on the matter.

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Published on January 28, 2013
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Taking the Chromebook Challenge

Acer C7 Chromebook

The Gadget Wisdom labs has recently acquired an Acer C7 Chromebook for testing purposes. The C7 has a list price of $199 and offers an 11.6″ screen, a Celeron processor. The hard drive and memory are upgradeable.

It’s competition in the Chromebook space is the $249 ARM-based Samsung Chromebook.  But, while the Samsung is sleeker than the Acer C7, it lacks the possible benefits of a x86 processor and upgradable components if you want to hack the thing.

But, why buy a Chromebook(other than the compelling price for a secondary system), even if you want to hack it to pieces? Many people live in their browser anyway, so why not have a computer that lives entirely in the browser?

So, that is a challenge we’re prepared to try. We’ve been setting up web-based equivalents of our standard daily programs, and will be trying to live with ChromeOS only while our primary machine gets a clean install of the latest version of its OS.

Will we last a whole week, which is the goal? Or is ChromeOS only good for trips where all you want is a browser? How does it compare to our experiments with the Asus Transformer, which is Android with a keyboard dock.

Stay tuned.

 

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Published on January 18, 2013
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Back to Thinking About Podcasting Studios

Alesis MultiMix 8 USB Podcast setup left side ...

Audio equipment has a special passion for us for some reason. None amongst our numbers are musicians per se, but the interest remains.

As you may know, the Android Buffet podcast is also a project of the Weneca Media Group, the unofficial parent of Gadget Wisdom and a few other sites. Much of our sound equipment collection is based on serving the needs of that podcast…and actually consists of three basic studio models.

  1. The Home Studio – This is a permanent installation…well, as permanent as we get
  2. The Mobile Studio – This is the single-person mobile studio, designed to fit in a carry-on bag.
  3. The SELF Studio – Used only once, at the SouthEast Linux Fest, this was enough equipment to do a multi-person show live.

Everything continues to evolve each time we assemble it for a trip. The requirements we have are simple.

  1. A co-host and/or guest, coming in over the Internet.
  2. A mostly live to tape performance…editing a podcast is a pain…so we quickly gave it up.
  3. Live audio streaming.

Video sounds like a lot of fun, at least as fun as doing audio. However, the amount of work and cost required to do video is exponentially higher for less of a return. Many podcasts do video as merely an extension of audio. You end up with talking heads, which is sometimes interesting, but not quite worth the effort.

Streaming, when coupled with a live chat room, is a great thing. Many shows offer both of these, and it has become essential to our podcast model. We started out hosting ourselves, but now use a third-party Icecast server. It’s running right now, running repeats. Tune in at androidbuffet.com/live.

The issues come in designing the equipment to run this. We tried slaving everything through a single computer, but using an analog mixer meant connections went into the computer and back out again, which was also confusing. So, ideally, each function should have an independent system.

  1. Co-Host/Outside Audio
    • This has been done by a computer of varying processing capabilities as well as an old Android phone.
  2. Streamer
    • There is no Icecast streamer for Android(volunteers to port it, anyone?)
    • Tried using a Raspberry Pi, but there were some issues. Will be revisiting this with the new 512MB Pi.
  3. Recorder
    • This has been another computer, but also a dedicated hardware recorder which supports line-in and records to SD cards for easy and quick editing.

Part of the problem is, of course, Linux. There are some limitations in Linux compatibility and software. But we aren’t changing that, or using a hardware mixer. Everything else is up for grabs.

More specifics to come, but would appreciate suggestions to simplify this, while maintaining the quality and ease of recording.

Published on December 26, 2012
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Review: Xenyx 302USB

71dvr0Ij1GL._AA1000_On a recent trip, we needed to reassess our recording priorities for an episode of the Android Buffet podcast. The podcast records every week, and we didn’t want to miss an episode.

With the increasing costs of baggage for air travel, it makes it hard to bring a large amount of equipment. That is where this little item comes into play.

The Xenyx 302USB is a USB powered mixer that is four inches by five inches, and fits in the palm of your hand. Not only is it USB powered, but it provides a USB audio interface to a computer.

This makes for a useful way to merge in sources, as Android Buffet is recorded live-to-tape….or mostly unedited. It makes it easier to merge in a microphone and a few sources on the fly, as there aren’t many of them.

Surpisingly, the Xenyx 302USB provides phantom power, which we have yet to test.

There were some complaints about hiss, but we didn’t experience any large amount of it. In the end, this item satisfies a simple need.. There are very few products this small that offer basic mixing at this level.

And for a list price of fifty dollars, it is certainly an addition to your portable recording arsenal. At home, you may want something better.

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Published on December 23, 2012
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Equipping your UPS – Planning

Geek out: Power protection

Hot on the heels of discussing emergency power for mobile, it is time to discuss thoughts about Uninterruptable Power Supplies(UPS). These battery backup devices use heavy-duty batteries to power your electronics in the event of failure. When power is lost, it automatically powers using the batteries.

The first rule of UPSes is to always get ones with a removable/replaceable battery. You can get replacement batteries without much issue, although manufacturers would obviously prefer you replace the unit.

Our current favorite simple UPS for home use is the APC BE550G. This is an 8 outlet 550VA UPS. The green feature is a master outlet, which turns controlled outlets off when the master device is off. This is also a great green feature for various surge protectors.

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However, the basic UPSes may have trouble with some power supplies, so mileage may vary. The issue is voltage regulation, and pure sine waves(necessary for Active PFC power supplies). There are more expensive UPSes, and more full featured ones. There are advantages to voltage regulation and purer power, but for some devices, it doesn’t matter.

Also, there are some issues with APC. We had used Belkin for a while, but had longevity and design issues. The Belkins we had tended to put the outlets on the top, which made placement difficult. There is also Cyberpower, which some people enjoy, but we’ve never tried one. We may next time.

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This Cyberpower Unit looks promises, offering an LCD control screen with basic stats. This looks rather promising for non-computer uses.

These devices were originally marketed for computers. They were designed for safe shutdown of a computer and monitor, and things have changed. More people are using these to power other devices. In preparing for this post, we started reading reviews, and people are powering big screen TVs and other devices.

So, that is the sort of planning we want to discuss. For your cable modem, your router, etc. We have a simple 300VA UPS hooked up to our cordless telephone system, so it will work for a while in a power outage. As these devices are much lower power than a computer, many can run for hours with just a few necessary networking components hooked in.

The first step, even if you do not want to get into the wattage details, is to make an inventory of the devices you want to power. Make separate lists for extended outages, power hiccups, and voltage drops. Basically, most computers you may want to merely make a graceful shutdown, but you may want your networking gear to last for hours.

We predict, in our area, lots of people will be hiring electricians to install transfer switches for portable or permanent generators, after extended periods of power loss. But for the installation of a manual transfer switch will be close to a thousand dollars, if not more, as it requires disconnecting your house power in order to install the cutoff, and probably an adjustment of your house breaker box.

If your area isn’t prone to long power outages, you want to cover a few hours of power outage or irregular power, which is much less expensive than generators.

In the end, always buy UPSes with replaceable batteries, pick the devices that works for you, and do the advance planning.

What are your tips for planning for power loss with UPSes?

 

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Published on November 25, 2012
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Give the Gift of Emergency Power This Holiday Season

English: A side by side line up of D, C, AA, A...

Last month, Hurricane Sandy hit hard in the New York area, in many places that hadn’t seen devastation of that level in half a century. Many people lost power and internet for days. Many people lost more than that…and our sympathies go out to them.

But, while we fortunately came out of it without any serious issues, it as given us a lot of time to think about emergency preparedness. The need to prepare for the unexpected.

One of the coolest devices we saw being used during this was the BioLite CampStove. This is a small portable camp stove that, when stowed, is the size of a water bottle. It uses twigs and other simple fuel, and can not only cook, but provide USB charging. The company took to the streets during the power outages to offer power and a warm drink. The list price is roughly $130 direct, and the money is partially used to fund a larger version used in third-world countries.

Most people will need to handle an outage of hours or a perhaps a day or two. A long extended outage does happen, but in most areas is not as common. In the case of New York, individuals were heading to areas that had power in search of a charge. Corporations sent in portable charging stations, people crowded around generators, and more.

Now, for individuals on the go in urban areas, carrying a camp stove is not a viable option. Solar is a possibility, but charging by solar takes hours. We haven’t had much luck in solar charging, but we haven’t tried lately. There have been a lot of developments in this area. We may try again.

Crank chargers seem like a lot of fun, and are great for portable radios and lights, but powering a cell phone is a bit hard. In testing, fifteen minutes of cranking got a few percent points of power back into a smartphone, but the crank broke off right after that, so future testing will not be possible.

That leads us to the most useful of emergency power measures….the battery. Buying extra batteries for devices works. But every time you get a new cell phone or other specialty device, you end up needing to buy new batteries. Devices that use standardized batteries, such as AA and AAA, are easier to keep batteries on hand for. But, with the increasing number of devices that use USB charging, you can get a battery with USB output, that will work with a variety of devices.

Buying batteries is not a problem. The issue is being prepared. In many cases, you can prepare for an emergency…bad weather, etc. may cause you to check your equipment. But many things will happen unexpectedly.  It is a good idea to keep good care of these items.

Next, we’ll be discussing UPS power…

Published on November 23, 2012
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Boxee announces Boxee TV

Image representing Boxee as depicted in CrunchBase

Boxee disappointed us a while back, when they discontinued their software in favor of their hardware solution. From the beginning, their hardware has suffered from problems, and software updates have been too infrequent.

Boxee has been at the forefront of negotiating for the future of unencrypted basic cable. As we previously have written, we aren’t thrilled with the solution the FCC came up with. But now, it is more clear why.

Boxee has announced the $99 Boxee TV. It is a DVR that stores recordings in the cloud(for $15 a month) and uses your antenna/basic unencrypted cable to do so.  It contains many of the Boxee apps, but not as many as the legacy Boxee box. By the way, they are killing the Boxee Box, except for maintenance updates.

This is just yet another example of Boxee pivoting again, and is bound to fail again. Not because some of their ideas aren’t good. But the Boxee Box attracted Cord Cutters…and it has a mandatory(not optional), $15 a month charge. In order to store in the cloud, you need to transcode and downgrade your HD signal.

And it relies on Cloudee, their cloud video service, to remain in business for the device to work. Boxee doesn’t have the best track record so far on continuing to provide service to its users. Tested did the math and estimated at 2 hours of recorded TV per day, that would be over 50GB uploaded a month at the estimated data rate.

So, to conclude. Don’t buy it. Don’t suggest anyone buy it. Because Boxee and its people will just dissapoint.

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Published on October 17, 2012
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FCC Kills clearQAM – Everyone Needs a Box

no-cable-tv

The FCC has issued an order amending its rules to allow cable operators to encrypt the basic service tier. This tier consists of broadcast and a few other assorted stations.

Their rationale for this is that it will ‘benefit’ consumers who can have their service activated and deactivated remotely, reducing truck rolls and waits for service calls.  The problem is the “small number” of cable subscribers who will be adversely affected.

A few years ago, you could change channels directly on your TV. These were cable channels…channels you paid for. You are still paying for them, but now you have to pay to rent equipment from the cable company. The current cost of a box from our cable provider is $10 a month, plus a $4 fee. To rent a cable card is only $2.50, by comparison.

This is an issue. The $90 a year difference would pay for a cable box purchase in two years, or pay the additional cost to add a cablecard slot to the average television. This has not happened.

As a condition of the FCC Rule, operators must provide either a converter box with home networking capability that can provide access to basic channels or allow existing equipment access with software upgrades. But, we have some doubts as to the utility of these devices.

As a user of open-source software, it is unlikely that they will allow anything to be used that they cannot control. So, in the end, it is time to break out the broadcast antenna.

There is, of course, the cablecard option, however, Time Warner Cable, our local cable company, is the only company to make a cablecard essentially useless to a Linux user.

Maybe it is time to cut the cord. That’s still an option, right? You can get Internet without TV, right?

 

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Published on October 14, 2012
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Shrinking Your Electronics by Thinking Embedded Systems

English: Extract from Raspberry Pi board at Tr...

Electronics are getting smaller.  People don’t have desktops in as large a number as they once did. Many have laptops, netbooks, tablets, etc.

This is an area we’ve been thinking about a lot lately, mostly due to the flood of inexpensive systems on a board, led by the Raspberry Pi. The Pi is a computer the size of a credit card, and the commonly sold version includes RCA video, HDMI video, two USB ports, and an Ethernet Port. The entire assembly is powered by a microUSB charger of the sort bundled with phones and other electronics. The GPU onboard is capable of blu-ray quality playback. There is no built in drive, the OS is loaded off of an SD card. You can hook in a USB drive, but not as a boot drive.

There is a special version of Fedora, Debian, and even an XBMC port to turn the Pi into a full-fledged media center

Now, this won’t be taking the place of a full-fledged PC for many things, but the Pi, and some of the competing devices are perfect for ’embedded system’ type functions.

An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. With something like a Pi, with its pricing, even with the purchase of a case(we mentioned case not included, right?) you can buy multiple Pis and use them to do one thing.

This changes design conceptions a lot. When you are trying to figure out your connected home and life, you can build a Pi to boot, launch a function, and perform it well, just like your cable box(well, like your cable box could be), VoIP phone, etc.

We currently have a quad-core server, that does multiple functions. It does do CPU scaling when idle, but many of the functions could be taken over by a Pi. Using Wake On Lan functionality, the Pi could even wake up the full computer and transfer control to it.

There are a lot of good ideas here. Have a device that does one thing, and nothing else. This would mean incredible long term stability, and because the Pi loads its OS on an SD card, you could have different SD cards to change the Pi’s functionality.

What ideas do you have? We’re just getting started.

Published on October 12, 2012
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Feed Changes

English: This icon, known as the "feed ic...

To All RSS Subscribers:

Due to the recent uncertainty regarding the future of Feedburner, we are removing all redirects to Feedburner. All links on the site will now use local feeds. If possible, please update your subscriptions.

If not, the Feedburner feeds will continue to be maintained for as long as Google continues to offer the service, but we feel that self-hosting all feeds is the more prudent long-term move.

Feed: http://www.gadgetwisdom.com/feed/

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Published on October 7, 2012
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