Earlier this year, I visited CeBIT where I stopped by the Fing stand and had a chat about their app and Fingbox device. The Fingbox was pitched as a network security and troubleshooting device which worked with the Fing app,...

Every year, the festival of light, music and ideas comes to Sydney, transforming the harbour and surrounding areas into a vibrant bustling work-of-art. This year, Vivid Sydney celebrates its 10th anniversary and as with previous years, I just had to...

Inspired by my previous post made merely an hour ago, I set to work seeing if I could acquire a recording of a K56flex dial-up modem connection before it is too late. After all, both X2 and K56flex are more...

Throughout the long history of dial-up modems, higher connection speeds were always desired, but limitations in signal processing techniques and the phone lines themselves meant that achievable rates were always going to be limited. At various stages in time, the...

As society has moved towards ever smaller and more mobile devices, Wi-Fi has become an essential connectivity standard which we rely upon in our daily lives. It was initially made popular in the home by the availability of affordable, standardised...

As I’ve been quite busy lately with work and job hunting, I really haven’t had much time to watch TV or look at the signals on the air. In fact, I’ve not had enough time even to look at Twitter,...

A week ago, a friend approached me about sending off a fax. Despite the march of technology, this particular form had to either be mailed back (taking a few days and costing a decent amount of money) or faxed. My...

A little more than two weeks ago, I was sitting at home in front of my computer going about my business as usual, when suddenly … the lights flicker, everything around me made an intermittent 50Hz buzz like morse code...

A number of people had expressed interest in the past in examining satellite signals from broadcast satellites using SDRs. While my normal advice is to use a regular satellite card to power the LNB and do the DiSEqC selection duties...

Recently, I embarked on an adventure to scan the C-band satellites in the sky. Unfortunately for me, my TBS 6925 tuners are both rather unwell and my Prof Revolution S2 8000’s are not doing much better by showing similar “bursts”...

It doesn’t happen very often, but once in a while, I need a new USB flash drive. This time around, I was looking for something cheap, of reputable make and 128Gb capacity. Interestingly, looking around my local computer shop, the...

It’s become a ritual – every year, around this time, CeBIT comes to Sydney and I pay them a visit. It’s always a privilege to be able to walk around the expo to see who’s around, what’s new and catch-up...

I couldn’t help myself, so once I finish one kit, it’s often straight onto another. This kit was sold as an electronic LED hourglass and was a little more expensive at AU$3.07 including postage. Compared to local suppliers, this is...

Another day, another classic kit. It seems that LED heart-shaped displays are a timeless novelty, so after building a multi-coloured chasing heart and a breathing heart, why not a flashing one? For just AU$1.68 including postage, I managed to score...

For a lot of modern networked devices, Power over Ethernet (PoE) is a big convenience, allowing the one cable to power a remote device (be it an access point, camera, etc.) and supply the data connectivity to it. While there...

I had a little time this evening, so I thought, why not crack open a kit? After all, I did buy a stack of cheap eBay kits to keep me amused and give me something to write about … so...

Not very long ago, I salvaged a pair of eX-power laptop power banks, but it didn’t come with any output cables. As a result, I was only able to test the USB power output on them, which was underwhelming in...

I just can’t help myself, so I grabbed another kit off the pile and decided to build it. This is yet another “cheap” kit from eBay intended for educational use. This particular kit is an EQKit HBL-22 “breathing” LED heart...

Trawling eBay listings for some more cheap kits to build resulted in some rather interesting discoveries. The kit in question was a 38 LED do-it-yourself LED lamp kit for AU$1.47. At that price, I thought I’d jump on it despite...

I’ve always been someone to enjoy constructing electronics kits from a young age. Even though I’ve become more experienced at soldering and more knowledgeable about electronics, I still find constructing new kits therapeutic and enjoyable for a bit of weekend...

I bought my Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 back at the beginning of 2016 and it’s served as both my data-phone (browsing, data SIM) for a year and as a phone-phone (calls, SMS) for the remainder. It was good value when...

In the final installment, I look at the three easternmost satellites with signals receivable in Sydney, namely Eutelsat 172B, Intelsat 18 and NSS9. Owing to their positioning and the markets which they serve, the latter two are circularly polarized and...

By now, we’re at the satellites which are pretty much at the highest elevation in Sydney. Owing to the fact that satellites aren’t covering the entire belt, even though we’ve only looked through about 50% of the arc, it covers...

The last post ended on a semi mystery at around 140°E which I believed to be Express AM5. A look at the Lyngsat satellite chart shows that there aren’t any known C-band satellites between 138°E Telstar 18 and 166°E Intelsat...

The satellite-hunting story continues (thanks to a little more free time), this time looking at Apstar 6, Telstar 18 and what I believe to be Express AM5. These spectrums were taken during the period of 24th-26th March, but I’ve only...