Author: davehamby

A modern Merlin, hell bent for glory, he shot the works and nothing worked.

Moose’s Sight-hound Trust

Post author By davehamby
Post date September 26, 2018

Moose, one of my Twitter buddies, is a disgustingly cute Italian Greyhound (I believe) who has attracted an unseemly number of Twitter followers. Somewhere along the way his minions had the notion to start a Sighthound Welfare Charity in the UK. Being in the UK and (for the moment in the EU) my peeps are well aware of the plight of the Spanish Glagos (a field bred coursing hound) and the UK is awash in lurchers (deliberate greyhound crossbreeds bred as field dogs). Strong regulation and a strong network of adoption charities support the UK racing greyhound population but the hunting bred dogs are not well regulated and don’t have the industry assisted adoption network enjoyed by the racing dogs. It is with the field bred Galgos and Lurchers where I see Moose’s Trust filling a need.

Transferring CDs to FLAC on MacOS moocher style

Post author By davehamby
Post date September 18, 2018

The Moocher is a music collector with a growing CD and record collection. In this article, the moocher describes how he transfers CD to FLAC to play using Roon Labs Roon Player. We’ll look at the motivation behind FLAC, the tools used to turn a CD into FLAC encoded tracks, and how to get the tools.

Audio

Furman Power Elite 15 PFi Listening Impressions

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 28, 2018

Featured image courtesy of Furman Power. This is the Elite series over-voltage protection board.

The Furman Power Elite series of power conditioners features a modular design that easily allows Furman to offer products with differing capabilities. Furman Power offers 3 versions of the Elite 15i

The Elite 15i is the base version with series over-voltage protection, extreme voltage protection, and linear filtering of line noise. This device includes an AC voltmeter showing line voltage.
The Elite 15 DMi provides the same power conditioning but adds a second meter showing the current being drawn. This is of interest if the outlet or the Elite 15 is heavily loaded. You can identify the straw breaking the camel’s back
The Elite 15 PFi removes the meters and adds power factor correction to the standard protection functions.

Audio Technology

Furman Power Elite 15i Impressions

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 18, 2018

Background

Although the house has full-house surge protection in the panel, I elect to use a second line of defense for the computers, network electronics, and audio and video systems. In the past, I had used APC power conditioners for this task but another 5 years had passed and it was time for battery replacement. Being tired of messing with lead acid gel cell batteries, I looked around and settled on Furman Power conditioners. After all, something robust enough to protect a $40,000 church PA should be good enough for home, right? Turns out, it was more than good enough. Product impressions and listening impressions follow plus a bit of EE tech.

Home automation Personal Computing Technology

GDS3710 Part 4: Opening the door

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 2, 2018

This is the 4th post in a series chronicling a small church’s experience with the Grandstream GDS3710 Door System. We like the product but the deployment has been like solving Rubik’s Cube. We found we had to do a lot of tinkering to get things working, something that shouldn’t happen with such a sophisticated product.

This article summarizes some of our lessons learned, particularly with regard to use of the keypad to enter PINS, the interpretation of the virtual number field and the various way the doors can be opened using the GDS3710.

Home automation Personal Computing Technology Web hacking

Further thoughts on the GDS3710

Post author By davehamby
Post date July 10, 2018

The Grandstream 3710 Door System provides a video intercom, security camera (its recordable using compatible NVRS), RFID reader, and door unlock control relay. The device has a contact input that can be used for an inside exit demand input and a second that can be used as a door status sensor input. And all of this for the price of a door controller from HID or AXIS.

This is a new device so it has a few rough edges. This post talks about the rough edges.

Personal Computing

If something can’t go wrong, it will anyway

Post author By davehamby
Post date July 4, 2018

About a year ago, the retired moocher decided it was time to retire a couple of elderly Drobo Gen 2 direct attached storage devices. After much research, the moocher undertook an orgie of parts ordering, skinned knuckles, and arcane incantations to produce a FreeNAS storage server with collateral duties for networking and media service. Then there was thunder. It wasn’t bad but freenas wouldn’t run. This post describes the recovery actions and reminds all to take a key precaution.

Technology

Small, Simple Access Control

Post author By davehamby
Post date May 24, 2018

My church is completing the remodel of its new building. Being a retired moocher having nothing better to do, I got sucked into the design sub-committees working on Audio, Lighting, and Networking (including phones). In our current building, we issued keys to trusted congregants that allowed them to open the building to support scheduled activities like choir rehearsal, meetings, and the Sunday program. We kept a key under a rock (well, a figurative rock) having a button lock. Over the years members had come and gone but the key combination remained unchanged. In our new home, we wanted to avoid physical keys and their management so we opted for an access control system. This article describes what we found and did.

Photography

The Moocher’s new camera

Post author By davehamby
Post date April 28, 2018

After several years of life with the Sony Alpha 65, the moocher felt it was time for a new lens. So off to Imaging Resource to see what was happening in the digital imaging world. As I was shopping for the Alpha 65, Sony had just introduced its NEX line of cameras. The Alpha series featured a semi-transparent fixed mirror with an electronic finder. The NEX series eliminated the mirror and penta-prism. The main sensor was also the finder sensor.After reading several reviews, I concluded that the mirror-less camera had grown up and was a good choice for me. Many working pros are coming to the same conclusion, especially those shooting travel and street photography where compactness is an asset.

Technology

HomePod is a Speaker Phone!

Post author By davehamby
Post date April 14, 2018

I made an interesting discovery when I called out from home on my mobile. It showed a new Blue Tooth audio device which happened to be my HomePod. On a lark, I moved the HomePod into my study for the quarterly check-in call with my broker. In my study, the phone (iPhone 6+) speaker phone has a pretty bad echo setting my expectations to switch to headphones after the caller reported hideous call quality.

The first go

When the call came in on my iPhone, I switched it to HomePod expecting that I’d have to switch to ear buds to have the echo tolerable. My advisor calls my Google Voice number which rings both my iPhone and my OOMA Telo VoIP land line. I have the choice of which to use and normally take his call on the iPhone using some Sennheiser headphones made for iPhone calling.

Surprisingly, my advisor reported clean audio on his end free of echo. He sounded well also calling from a 212 area code phone, probably VoIP likely on a local PBX but possibly a cloud PBX. At any rate, HomePod works well as an audio endpoint for a 2 way phone call.

Siri can’t dial

“Hey Siri, call aunt nancy at home”

“Sorry, I can’t help you with that here”

HomePod Siri can’t chat with iPhone Siri to make the call for you.