MacBook Air

WTF – the MacBook Air’s default memory configuration on the highest end model is 4gb, is not user upgradable (soldered to the board, no slots), and even the max custom configuration is only 8gb (and that takes about a week to build and ship!). These machines are super popular and they should have revised the memory spec to 8gb (8gb, 16gb configurable) at least a year ago!

Come on, Apple!

I’ve waited a week. Where is my lollipop!?

Google announced at their last great press conference that we would see Android 5.0 Lollipop on nexus devices on 11/3/2014.  Here it is now a week later, 11/10, and my Nexus 10 is still running 4.4.4.  Nexus 5 and 7 owners have no official builds (the last Android L preview images were updated not long ago), but it still isn’t an official release.  If it’s not ready, fine.  That’s cool, just set a public deadline and stick to it.  if it’s late December, OK whatever, just tell people when to expect it, so we’re not constantly trying to figure out where we’re at.

Nexus Storage Woes

Dear nexus 6 designers,

If you’re going to include 4k video support, people are going to need more than 64gb of storage. With h.264 high encoding, that’s about 350MB/min Then, assuming that the OS and other apps you have installed take up about 4gb, (Which is conservative if you want to use other apps as well), then on a 64gb device, you’re left with 60gb of actual storage (round numbers), which means you’ll get less than 3 hours of record time (assuming you don’t do much else in terms of storage)… that’s horrible.

There are 2 ways to solve this. removable storage (micro sd cards are just fine so long as you get reasonably fast ones), or more in line with the Nexus design philosophy, include a 128gb option! – People WILL buy it, charge another $60ish, give us the 128gb model, and be done. 6 hours of video recording is enough for most folks I’d think. then the only problem you have to solve is how quickly you can transfer it to the computer, but with 802.11ac and usb3 things should be just fine if the flash is fast enough… get on that, Motorola!

P.S. While you’re at it, stop making carrier locks and boot loader locks an option to big cellular (but that’s a harder battle).

Failed Cellular on Galaxy Note 3

While I still believe that this is nothing short of the best phone I’ve ever used (and I’ve played with a ton of them that friends and family have shown me (sometimes for hours at a time if they are really nice), my Samsung Galaxy Note 3, one day a few months ago, just up and decided that it wasn’t going to connect to cellular networks anymore. Read More >>

RTL-SDR

I just picked up a Realtek based DVB-T (European) TV tuner for use as a wide band general coverage receiver of radio stations thanks to the awesomeness of software defined radio.

So far, I’ve been using SDR# for standard radio listening (so far tested successful listening of FM Stereo transmissions (local standard radio stations), a local 2 meter ham radio repeater (at least the ident transponder), CB radio, and some local business band radios.

SDR# also comes with an ADS-B decoder for listening to and decoding the public transponder transmissions from commercial aircraft which include GPS data, registration information, and flight plan number information (all of which can be looked up online to see more information), but the coolest part is there’s another application called ADSBScope which will take that data and plot the vectors for the transponders the radio is actually listening to, in effect giving you a transponder “radar” view of where all the planes are in the area, and their flight information.

I’m just sitting here marveling at what can be done with a software driven USB wide-coverage receiver dongle that cost me $15 shipped and a bunch of free software.

I’m sure I’ll have more to come (maybe I’ll build some guides to how I got it all set up). I’ll certainly be posting as I learn more about various radio modes, how to find and analyse different signals, and any other fun I find along the way. I think my biggest obstacles with this hardware setup are:

1. front end selectivity / gain control / filtering / rejection. When I experimented with picking up the signals from my CB handheld I found that even at only 4 watts, being in the same room with the antenna completely over-drove the inputs to the point where no amount of filtering or gain control that I tried (please note that I’m particularly inexperienced) did any good (though I don’t discount that I very easily could have been doing it wrong).
2. Dinky antenna. it came with a ~7″ mag-mount antenna with an MCX connector and about 3′ of cable, which means that everything I’ve done has been inside, and fairly close to a computer (which tend to be a bit RF noisy). I suspect that with a proper wide-band receive antenna, I should get better quality signals that I can work a bit better with.
3. My own inexperience. This is certainly a huge experience booster. I really don’t know that much about the basis of radio technology (I’m learning), and how it all applies. I’m still learning what all these knobs, switches, buttons, and dials do, and for the most part, I make it worse instead of better, but I’m learning.