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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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Kindle Thoughts: A Day Later

SANTA MONICA, CA - SEPTEMBER 6: Amazon CEO Je...

Yesterday, we quickly wrote up a few stories reporting the important details of the Amazon Kindle announcement. A day later, it is time to reflect.

Amazon has said it is about content. And they are. They started out as a bookseller, and despite being very technically adept, they’ve always used hardware as a way to move along their various content ecosystems. But we don’t quite believe them they aren’t being shrewd about the hardware too.

  • The base Kindle is now $69 with offers. We had thought it might go as low between $30 and $50, but at $69 it is still in the impulse buying range. It is almost disposable.
  • The Kindle Paperwhite is $119 with offers. It incorporates Amazon’s latest screen improvements, including a new lit design that allows for night reading as well as better contrast during the day, and still with amazing battery life. (8 hours). The 3G version is $179 with offers.
  • In the case of all three, to disable the offers is an additional $20.

So, let’s talk about a few things in the e-reader family before moving on to the Fires. Text to speech, a formerly touted feature, is gone on all Kindles(the Keyboard is still being sold, but that is legacy).

This appears to be because they will be offering Audible/Kindle book bundles in the future. To be honest, an e-reader really doesn’t need audio capability, and few people wanted to hear a book read using text to speech. More would prefer a human. So we’d imagine there wasn’t much interest in the feature, although vision impaired individuals are likely trying to figure out what they will do.

The Kindle DX is dead. No surprise there. A larger e-ink screen has its place, but there wasn’t sufficient interest.

Moving on to the Fire Line.

  • Kindle Fire(2nd generation) – $159. This is basically the same as the old Fire, but boosts the performance, memory, and battery life, also adds stereo speakers.
  • Kindle Fire HD – $199/(16GB), $249(32GB) 1280×800 resolution compared to the Fires 1024×600, Dolby Audio Speakers, dual-band/antenna wi-fi, bigger battery and more sensitive touchscreen.
  • Kindle Fire HD 8.9 – $299(16GB), $369 (32GB) – 1920×1200 display with anti-glare technology, faster processor
  • Kindle Fire HD 8.9 4G – $499(32GB), $599(64GB), adds 4G LTE and the option of a $50 a year 250MB data plan.

Some interesting facts about the new Fires.

  • Cloud Drive Storage included
  • Ads on the Lockscreen
  • Bing is the default search engine
  • Based on Android 4.0. Original Fire based on 2.3

A lot of the features that Amazon focused on were improvements to their content.

  • Whispersync for Voice, and between Audible books and Kindle books…this is just smart marketing. You can sell people the book twice by bundling them together and allowing them to switch back and forth.
  • X-Ray for Movies – They do own IMDB, and this allows them to use that data to make it easy for people to find more content…which they can now sell to you.
  • Kindle Serials – a serialized model for selling stories. A good move for a different product they can offer individuals as part of the book market.
  • Kindle FreeTime – Custom Profiles for users to restrict usage…an upgraded parental control
  • Whispersync for Games – Allowing you to sync your game data across platforms. Developers will have to build this in, but an API is likely out or will be.

There’s a lot there, but we can’t believe Amazon’s insistence that they want to be everywhere. The Kindle Fire has been out for a year, and yet there is still no native Android app for Amazon Video, and the Amazon Mobile app is not even tablet compatible. If Amazon wants hardware to advance content, they also have to release their software. The Kindle app, in varying qualities, is on everything. They should innovate features so that every device has access to the full range as soon as possible.

Then, they can truly be the indispensable source for content.

More on this in the future…but…who is going to order one of these?

 

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Published on September 7, 2012
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Bezos Surprises With Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE At $499, Data Plan Just $49.99 per YEAR

Just when we thought Jeff Bezos and Amazon were done rolling out products, they announced another. Saying that the most popular price point for tablets was $499, Bezos said they decided to see what they could provide at that price. The answer? A Kindle Fire HD with an 8.9 inch screen, 32GB of storage and 4G LTE cellular data. They will also offer a basic data plan which will give 250MB per month ,20GB of cloud storage and a $10 app store credit  for $49.99/year. This is not a lot of data, so presumably there will be other plans available, or the thought is the extra access is just intended to tide people over between wifi spots.
Published on September 6, 2012
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Kindle Fire HD- Amazon Moves Up The Tablet Chain, Still Starts at $199, Ships September 14

Ever since Amazon rolled out the budget Kindle Fire tablet last year, critics have complained about how underpowered the device is, about its small screen, and about it’s underwhelming features. Today, Amazon is moving up the tablet chain.

The company announced 2 new Kindle Fire HD tablets. The tablets, which will feature an OMAP 4470 processor from Texas Instruments, also is the first tablet to include dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus.. Amazon also brags that the device has dual antennas and the best Wifi support available. This technology, known as MIMO has higher speeds and longer range. Amazon claims the Wifi on the Kindle Fire HD is 41% faster than that on the iPad 3, 57% faster than Nexus 7. The device will start with 16GB of storage.  With better sound, wifi and storage, Amazon is clearly taking a big step in positioning this as the best media consumption device available.

Integrating their vast services together, Amazon is introducing WhisperSync for Voice which will synchronize your place in an audiobook with the accompanying ebook, and X-Ray For Movies will allow you to touch an actor on a screen in a movie to find out more about him. The device features improved email with Exchange support, a front facing HD camera, and integration with Skype. Amazon is also heavily promoting the device for gaming.

Kindle FreeTime feature allows parents to set limits on how much time their children can spend on various types of activities on the Fire HD.

There will be two versions of the device a 7 inch($199) and an 8.9 inch($299). The 7 inch version will ship September 14, the 8.9 inch will ship November 20.

How are they so cheap? Bezos says “We want to make money when people USE our devices, not when they BUY our devices”

 

 

 

Published on September 6, 2012
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