Towards my later high-school years, in the mid-2000s, armed with a small amount of money, I picked up the hobby of radio scanning. As a person who was curious by nature and had built a number of FM radio microphone...

Being someone who has used consumer gear for a long time, I’ve always been rather frustrated at their inconsistent or general lack of support for VLANs. Long used in corporate networks, the VLAN concept can be extremely useful for realising...

In my quest for more wireless throughput, my hAP ac with three-stream 802.11ac wireless seemed to be the right choice. The problem was that I had absolutely no three-stream capable equipment to use with it – so I wasn’t seeing...

After bathing in nostalgia looking over my old switch and hub, it’s time to come clean – there’s a place for Fast Ethernet and that was a number of years ago. While some of the old equipment might still be...

In the last post, I documented the haul of gear donated by a generous reader. In this post, I take the time to see if I can make things better, do some experiments on the Zip ecosystem and report on...

Blogging seems to be like playing a game of catch-up … I’m always behind on posts. Around a month ago, a very generous reader happened to have some Zip 250 equipment that they were done with and wanted to send...

While looking around for some cheap environmental sensors, I came across the seemingly ideal and relatively popular Bosch Sensortec BME280. This is a digital I2C sensor that can operate at 1.8 or 3.3V, providing temperature, humidity and barometric pressure measurements...

A long time ago during a clean-up salvage, I stumbled across some GU10 LED lamps which were thrown out. I wasn’t sure exactly why, but it’s rare to come across such lamps. As I don’t have a GU10-compatible fixture, I...

After my house move earlier this year, I was in a bit of a networking dilemma. As every self-confessed nerd knows – internet access is critical. I recently upgraded to a TP-Link Archer C7 AC1750 access point at the other...

As a young kid, my parents had told me about how great NiCad rechargeable batteries are for reducing waste and saving money. While we did have some alkaline cells around, we used rechargeable batteries whenever possible. Because these were quite...

Batteries have always been an interesting subject for me and after the test of disposable Alkaline cells, I felt there was another unanswered question. To help answer it, I dug up my old Grandcell Rechargeable Alkaline Manganese Battery Charger (GBTL208MB)...

Ethernet has been around for so many years that we hardly ever take the time to stop and think about it. We take it for granted that most desktop PCs come with Ethernet ports integrated on-board, Ethernet switches are cheap...

Over the past (nearly) two months, I’ve been kept quite busy in my spare time. What was it that was so exciting? The Rohde & Schwarz RTM3004 oscilloscope with all options (except RTM-K18) included – that’s the answer! This is...

For anyone who travels frequently on public transport or is out and about quite often, having a decent set of headphones is indispensable. Besides allowing you to enjoy your own music and videos on the go, it can really help...

As mentioned in my earlier Canton-Power buck-boost module review, voltages from batteries are rarely exactly the voltages you need to safely and reliably power your electronic creations. While that converter was rather acceptable, the efficiency wasn’t exactly stellar. In the...

Access to the internet is so important nowadays that we rarely stop and think of the consequences of not having access to the internet until it stops working. Because of my recent relocation, getting access to the internet was an...

If you like to experiment with electronics, sooner-or-later you’re going to build something you’d like to use in a portable way, perhaps running off batteries. While things that run off 5V are easy to cater for, as USB is ubiquitous,...

Once a year, the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences holds a free museum weekend. This year, it was held over the weekend of 23rd – 24th June 2018 with free tickets that could be booked online to visit the...

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...