As time passes, one accumulates a lot of different devices. Recently though, I discovered that you can in fact have too many connected at one time. That mystified me, because, while I had never really looked into it, I thought the number was in the double, not single digits. Some of this is apparently my mistake.

I keep a KVM switch on my desk. These devices allow you to share peripherals between devices, such as keyboards, monitors, mice, and in my case, a webcam and microphone. KVM literally stands for Keyboard/Video/Mouse Switch. Why do I need more than one of these? Because I have to isolate my work system from my personal system.

A while back, I opted to upgrade to a USB3.0 KVM switch as part of an upgrade to the maximum monitor resolution. It was then that my problems began. Apparently, despite discussions of maximum capacity, that sharply goes down on some hardware, and reduces everything to well below its theoretical maximum limit. I would frequently have my webcam or my microphone not working because of these capacity issues.

There is probably a simple wiring solution to this, but it prompted me to start considering a possible second KVM upgrade. There are a lot of different items to consider here:

• How many USB ports the device will have.
• Do you need USB C?
• Do you need built in audio?
• How many monitors do you want? 1, 2, or 3?

Make a list of all the things you want to connect to determine how many ports you need. Here is my list. I am only including items that need to go via the KVM.

• Speakers – I wouldn’t mind having something that could handle audio from each device independently.
• Microphone – Both computers need audio conferencing capabilities
• Camera – Both computers need video conferencing capabilities
• Mouse
• Keyboard

Good quality audio and video devices are often USB3 now, but mice and keyboards usually are not. That is also why KVM switches have dedicated separate ports for the mouse and keyboard.

At time of original posting, Amazon has a sale on a well-reviewed USB3.0 KVM Switch, that supports dual monitors via HDMI for 2 computers.  You may want to share between two devices with USB-C ports, such as two laptops, and can go with this 4K model, which supports a single HDMI monitor. Up and down the price ranges, featuring different connectors(HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C, etc), you can find something that is right for you in this area.

 

 

 

Earlier this summer, I dug my old Nintendo Entertainment System out of a box. I have been trying to reduce the boxes of stuff I retain that I don’t use. I have built some emulators to allow me to relieve some of the games of my youth…but nothing is like the authentic original experience. So I plugged the Nintendo in…and relived the frequent issue of my childhood…the flashing red light. When I was a kid, the solution to that was to blow on the cartridge. However, it is the 21st century now, and I have the internet to research an issue.

After going down some rabbit holes, I discovered that you could add an HDMI output with a board that someone developed…and is no longer sold…and a variety of other interesting items. But I was able to secure a new power adapter, a replacement cartridge connector, and an RCA to HDMI adapter.

So, if you have an old game system in your closet, why not take it out, clean it up, maybe refinish it a bit, and restore it to a place of use?

If you don’t want to do that…there’s always the other way. I discovered I had just missed a large event in my hometown of New York. The Long Island Retro Gaming Expo at the Cradle of Aviation museum. There is a community of enthusiastic people in every fandom if you just look.

In the meantime…can someone help me fix my Super Nintendo?

 

Many of us are travelling more than we used to, but there is no reason we can’t have a great work setup while on the road.

This post serves as a packing list, among other things, for my travel gear. These allow me to be productive from anywhere. It’s a good opportunity to go over what I keep in my bag, and over time, talk more specifically about the items I keep in there and why.

• A Walmart Onn Android 4K TV puck – Powered by micro-USB, used for streaming in hotel rooms
• 2 Ainope Right Angle USB-C to USB-C 6 foot cables, braided 60W rating – any USB-C cables might do.
• 2 Baseus 100W retractable USC-C PD 5A 3.3 foot cable –
• EMEET USB Speakerphone for Live Streaming – Got this on sale, but you can’t get it anymore. Good because it is compact, and a webcam and speakerphone in one. I’m fine in the shortterm, but will look for alternatives to suggest.
• Charger for a Pinetime Watch – More on the Pinetime in future
• An Ikea LED USB lamp . – Some hotels do not have a desk light and this takes up almost no space.
• Generic USB/battery operated LED clock – I use my phone for alarms, but I honestly can’t be bothered to fiddle for it when I’m trying to sleep in a hotel room while experiencing jetlag. This was just the smallest clock with digits I could see without my glasses. About the size of a harmonica. There are dozens of these.
• 200W GAN USB C Charger Block, 4 USB-C PD ports, 4 USB-A ports – Can power everything with plenty of ports. I have one of these on my desk as well.
• The 65% K6 Keyboard…I wrote about my Keyboard search previously.
• Graffiti Fat Wrist Rest for small keyboards – Wrist rest for the keyboard
• Dierya Kemove X Keyboard Travel Case – To protect my keyboard while traveling.
• A GL.iNet travel router, right now I have the Slate Plus which was on sale, but there is a budget version available now, the Opal. There are advantages to the Slate Plus over the Opal…but for hotel trips, you can forego them. Having a travel router has a variety of advantages.
• A portable monitor – I have a few of these of various sizes and capabilities. A 15.6, and a 12. I can mix and match depending on the computer I’m bringing…laptop, mini PC, etc, to form a variety of different configurations. More on that in future. But, this either requires HDMI cabling, sometimes mini-HDMI, sometimes full-HDMI, plus USB power, or USB-C connections.
• Folding Laptop Stand – They don’t make the one I have anymore, but there are a lot of these. This unfolds, lifting the laptop up so I can place my keyboard below it. This assumes I bring a laptop, and not a mini-PC
• Trackball – I prefer a trackball to a mouse. My two favorites are:
  • Logi M580 – this is a thumb controlled trackball that fits easily into a bag
  • Kensington Expert Wireless Trackball – Also comes in a wired. This thing looks big because of the provided wrist rest, but is not that much bigger than the Logi M580, which I’ve taken on many trips.

 

I’ve been working on upgrades to my desk, and tried out the Vivo 16 Inch Above/Behind VESA Monitor Livestream Device Shelf Mount.

The image is a stock image from the manufacturer, not my setup, but this replaced so many things for me. It attaches to a monitor mount in between the bracket and the monitor. Not only is it good as a shelf, but I’m able to attach accessories to it.

I’ve bought two of these, one for each of my monitors. There is a webcam attached with an adjustable ball head, an old tablet that shows an information display, and a light to better light the webcam. As the bezel of monitors becomes thinner, attaching a webcam to the monitor itself is starting to actually hide some of the screen. You can mount a webcam or even a professional camera dead center and still have plenty of room on the shelf to add more small items.

The height you can adjust it to does depend on your monitor. I had to put them at different heights on different monitors due to where the ports were in relation to the mount. You may also have issues if the back of your monitor is curved. Reading reviews on Amazon, some people solved these issues by cutting off some of the bracket to make it shorter. Others had to get longer screws than the ones provided or get standoffs, both of which are fairly common needs for VESA monitor mounts.

Other people used it to hold speakers, as a shelf for their remotes, microphones, etc.

There are competing products, but none of them at a $20 price point.

• Ulanzi makes a similar top shelf for $43 at time of publish, which includes 3 ballheads…but you can get better ball heads yourself if you need them.
• HumanCentric offers theirs for $56 at time of publish. They have 3 sizes, a small, medium and extra large, the extra large being the $56 one and roughly the same shelf space as the Vivo. It seems to offer no specific advantage, except it is slightly shorter in length(so maybe you don’t need to cut it if it covers your ports), but hardly worth the price increase for that.

 

In all the mounting gear I’ve purchased for my desk, the price does seem high for what is essentially a piece of metal with some holes in it. But convenience is worth something. I have a second desk I use elsewhere where I will be using this to replace a cheap boom arm that holds up my webcam.

In a previous post, I discussed digital locks. Digital locks are locks that can be opened with a keypad over a key, and are either electronic or mechanical. There are other types of non-keyed locks. Increasingly, the market is filled with smart locks. Smart locks are ones that can be operated remotely and cover a broad range of options. This consists of a few different options:

• Complete replacement – this removes the entire lock mechanism and replaces it with the completely new mechanism. There are both deadbolt and knob replacement options here.
• Retrofit deadbolt – This replaces the thumb turn of your deadbolt. The exterior appearance of the door, and the locking mechanism remain the same
• Renter Options – These options attach on top of the thumb turn of deadbolts to allow for easy removal.

There are a few different interface options as well. And some have combinations of these

• Key – Just because it is a smartlock doesn’t mean it can’t have a physical key as well
• Keypad – Not only do some models offer built in keypads, some offer it as a separate unit you can attach to the doorframe, leaving no built in lock interface
• Fingerprint – Biometric sensors
• Bluetooth – These locks usually allow you to open/close with your phone only, or have a gateway/hub that allows you to do so over a network connection. These hubs, as well as the phone app to control the lock over bluetooth  are usually proprietary to the manufacturer.
• Zigbee/Z-Wave – Zigbee and Z-Wave are two established home automation wireless protocols. They both require a hub/gateway. But unlike Bluetooth, there are a variety of devices with support for one or both of these protocols.
• Matter over Thread – This is the new hot home automation standard, but the first lock supporting it was only released at CES 2024, so stay tuned. Like Zigbee and Z-Wave, it would require a hub/gateway.
• Wi-Fi – Wi-Fi smart devices are problematic, because wi-fi can be rather battery intensive and smart locks are usually battery powered. The other negative for Wi-Fi is proprietary software.

You might note that a recurring issue for bluetooth and Wi-Fi locks, which you might initially prefer because you don’t have to add a gateway or a hub to connect it to your existing devices. The problem is support. You are relying on those manufacturers and their app. It could be argued you are relying on them anyway, because they made the device, but the biggest risk of smart devices in general is, if they rely wholly on a manufacturer app or a manufacturer cloud service, that it will eventually be discontinued, making your device useless. The local control options have issues of their own. Some manufacturers don’t implement the Zigbee or Z-Wave protocol consistently, which could create some issues depending on your hub/gateway’s support. We will write a bit about these protocols and gateways in future.

 

Disney’s introduction of MagicBand technology was a massive change for the theme park. The overall system began development in 2008, with the idea of reducing friction in the park, and the over $1 billion dollar project to integrate technology at Disney parks culminated with a rollout a decade ago in 2013.

I remember the first experience with the MagicBands, and an experience with family members where the Disney staff just couldn’t fix the problems and kept giving old school paper documents. But, most of those sorts of issues were resolved.

 

Until the

beginning of 2021, MagicBands were free to all Disney Resort guests….they’d even send you one with your name on it with advance reservations. But, in 2023, we have cell phones that can perform the same function and Disney added NFC support so you could use your phone in lieu. So, MagicBand became more of a collector’s item, or for children or other people without phone. Other guests can receive an RFID-enabled Key to the World card free of charge, and some people just put this in a lanyard in order to get the same utility of scanning as a MagicBand.

So, this brings us to MagicBand+, launched in 2022. It supports bluetooth pairing to your phone, software updates, and a bunch of ‘smart’ features. Disney compares MagicBand+ to MagicBand and to their MagicMobile Service(the phone apps). It’s waterproof, rechargeable, and unique to this device it ‘unlocks enchanting interactions’, in addition to what all of the choices do….unlock your room(if you have one), act as your ticket, check-in for virtual queues and lightning lanes, charge items to your account on file, link photos at rides.

So, I charged the thing up, linked it to the phone app via bluetooth, updated it, wore it for a whole day at Disneyland, and…well, it lit up once for five seconds. So…I was not enchanted. And I was not enchanted for $34.99. Reviews were equally mixed from others at both Disneyland and Disney World. You can’t seem to get original MagicBand anymore. So, the only use for this is so you don’t have to pull your phone out of your pocket to access things.

There are two types of scanners in a Disney park. The built-in ones you just run your hand over, and the mobile ones that ticket takers and others were using for other things, where they actually had to fiddle with it to put it into scan mode…so not much faster.

The MagicBand+ supports NFC, RFID, and BLE(for interactive experiences). It has 5 RGB LEDs as well as vibration ability. So, it is a nice little notification device. So, if you want, you could use an NFC/RFID scanner and use it to trigger events at home. There are some people trying to figure out how to connect to it over BLE and trigger the vibration and lighting system. I hope someone does the work on this, because it would allow me to recoup my investment more fully.

In researching this, the only device outside a theme park that can pair with it is an Amazon echo device, probably because of a partnership with Disney to allow certain experiences. People reported that they could pair the band and it would vibrate and light up in response to notifications. So, whatever custom pairing that requires a Disney app installed on your phone should be reproduceable. Other people reported that once paired, they were able to resend commands they monitored to trigger the device.

If not, there are other options for this that would be less expensive…the home options.

The idea Disney offered was interesting, but after all the money they spent on linking their experiences together, the band didn’t allow them to send me captured ride photos as promised, it didn’t present custom experiences, change screens in the park once it knew who I was…so, as a way of Disney customizing its experience..it was useless. But, now that I own it, I probably will reuse it just for the ability to wave myself into things over fumbling and unlocking my devices.