IoT - Something Something Something....

Have been involved with technical stuff for decades, and have seen the hype not match up to reality so may times......    

Internet Of Things, IoT is one such thing being hyped at the moment.  It will probably be become a thing, but don't see anything more than  suburb wide meter reading as a business any time soon, and that isn't something I'm involved with.

One of the touted approaches is a propriety  radio technology called LoRa.  That stands for Long Range. Now I have been developing electronics and firmware using this for over 12 months now and have working devices being deployed.  Have very detailed low level implementation experience in C and circuit design with the SX1276 radio chip in use with Arm processors making very low power (a few uA in standby) Remote devices, Repeaters and Gateways.   Others designed the Antenna and matching network though!

The application isn't what I would call IoT, and so far it has been absolutely amazing in our application compared to the existing technology radios.

We aren't currently using LoRaWan, and have rolled our own much simpler protocol closer to what the existing application and market actually needs.  Has worked very well so afar.

May move to LoRaWAN though for newer applications in our market. Do have  LoRaWAN gateway modules and have done some investigations, and read through lots of the C source code.  It is a question of overhead vs return.  Cool, but we need newer applications in our market to get a benefit for 8x the code and complexity...... something we are putting lots of thought into.  

Still would not call what we are doing  IoT though.   That seems too much like Multimedia, which was hyped as it was Something Something Something ..... which Steve Jobs described as a Zero Billion Dollar Business.

We can be contacted at Art & Technology.

Learning Freehand Airbrushing

Been learning freehand airbrushing over the last few months.  Have many more to go, as it is very much like learning to play the guitar, where you have to commit actions to muscle memory to be able to achieve what you want.  Here are some samples of our original Megacurve music, if your interested.  Usually listening to music while I practice.  Dagger lines, dots, lines and all those basic things are far from easy, even if using stencils and masking is.

So what can you do with it?   Custom T-Shirts using Createx Airbrush Color...

You spend almost as much time cleaning the airbrush as you do practicing.  And as we are using Createx paint, we have to thin it to not clog and working how much to thin with what affect also takes time.

Over 12 months ago we did a series of watercolors, but the reality of that is, that was very much like the illustration work I already do.

Airbrush isn't, even though I do a lot of airbrush in Photoshop, it is not the same and not as critical to do as the real thing.

And you have Undo with Photoshop and the airbrush will not spit if the nozzle gets blocked!

We can be contact at Art & Technology

HiFi - Vinyl, care and cleaning and the MP3

In the last few weeks we have been playing our old records and converting them to 320kbps MP3s. Portable MP3 players and large SD Cards just have so many advantages, and having the collection online is good too. In most cases I'm making a single MP3 per album side, not cutting up the individual tracks as separate files.

Our vinyl record collecting stopped in 1983 when CDs came out. I just loved that CDs have NO clicks and pops.  Still do. But I also didn't go out and rebuy my collection on CDs so now, some 30 years later, I want to hear most of the stuff I haven't heard in a long time.  I am recording them into Reaper, doing some mild mastering, writing 24bit files, then convert with dbpoweramp.

I really looked after my records. Most albums have vinyl covers, and were always stored vertically. I never touch the vinyl track surfaces, and all that, but now, some still have clicks and pops. I can edit out the big ones in Audacity, but it is tedious. Some records I was gifted years ago don't even have their internal vinyl record sleeve and are noisey and disgusting.

I have the usual record cleaning brush, even a dust bug that I'm not using, and found these received records need more.  Much more. A solution of distilled water, Isopropyl Alcohol and a surface tension reducer (that doesn't seem to be readily available) is what is in the commercial cleaning solutions.  It looks like vacuuming the surface is required too, and you need a record label covering device to keep the solution off it.

All a bit tedious. I don't have a problem with the sound of CDs, but it seems CD prices are now rising, so replacing an old vinyl album that is still available with a CD isn't as attractive as it was.

The DIY Cleaning Solution and a DIY Cleaning Machine for reference.

I would think making a vacuum cleaner attachment with velvet and some tubing and doing it manually would suffice for the number of records I need to do.  We will see.

It is the Vinyl Album Artwork and sleeves that I miss, nothing to do with the sound quality.

..... a bit later....

We have tried just using  demineralized water and 10% Isopropyl mixture with a velvet pad without a vacuum, and found the result better than dirty, but a long way to go before good.  So probably need to try the vacuum next....


We can be contacted at Art & Technology.

Recent Car Concept Design

Recent Concepts for a yet to be built race car

Some of the recent Concept Design work we have done.  We do the line work and Decals in CorelDraw then bring that into Photoshop to do the actual painting.  In this case we needed Goldleaf and Metalflake paint options and working in Photoshop is the way to go for this type of work. It also allows easier color variations and other things.

But just because I'm using a computer doesn't mean there is a button somewhere that allows me to move the camera and get another view.  This work is effectively all airbrushed, and I have actually drawn it all, based on the photographic reference I've been given to combine the different parts.

So it isn't a computer making this.

We can be contacted at Art & Technology.

A NAD CD Player VS FiiO X1... or X5

A couple of weeks ago I was asked if I could look at a NAD CD player the guy had someone else look at and could not fix. 3 hours had already been spent on it, getting a new NAD drive for it, and it still wasn't right.

Simple answer was no, as it just isn't worth the time to fix something like that. He said it was a good one, meaning Hi-Fi. I still said no. 

I almost never play a CD I own. I play the mp3 I've ripped from it using AudioGrabber and the Lame codec. 320kps sounds exactly the same. Playback from a computer using Winamp  and a hires USB 24bit 44.1/48/96kHz Audio Interface. Most would use iTunes to do the same and not care about the details.

Now if you actually wanted a "Hi-Fi" player, and not a computer/laptop I suggest you still do the CD rip or download files, then use a quality thing like this FiiO x1 for like $139 + SD card. They have more expensive models too. It does MP3, but also the FLAC and 24bit/192kHz thing if you image you can hear a difference and and want "real Hi-Fi". Plugs into amps and speakers for that Hi-Fi thing, and not just headphones.

Anyway, $139 is no time at all in repairing something unknown.

Review of the FiiO X1 unit.

And here is our article on getting your Technics Belt Drive Turntable going.

But the type of thing I mostly use is a small MP3 player that runs on a single AAA battery ....