Category: gadgets


Day two interview sharing my perspective on the Sprint HTC EVO 4G

Filed Under: gadgets
Jun.05, 2010

Mike was curious about how I felt about my new HTC Sprint Evo.  Little did he know that I would later post our conversation on my blog as an interview to share my perspective on this new phone.  I picked up my phone from Radio Shack on June 4th, 2010 at 10am.  Right away, I put in my gmail account info and was pleasantly surpised that all my contacts showed up.  I had gone to a bit of effort the other day to consolidate my contacts into the Mac address book and sync it with Google so it wasn’t exactly a shock that it worked but I tend to expect the worst lately.  Anyway, on with the interview(with links injected):

Mike says: (11:47:30 AM)
Got your new fangled phone yet?

Geordy says: (11:47:41 AM)
Yep

Mike says: (11:48:05 AM)
How is it?

Geordy says: (11:50:06 AM)
I don't really know how to use it
Geordy says: (11:50:29 AM)
I hate to say it but the iPod/iPhone is a hell of a lot easier to just pick up and use out of the box.
Geordy says: (11:50:38 AM)
I'll need some time to figure this one out
Geordy says: (11:51:05 AM)
They already sent out an OTA update to "fix" the rooting hole

Mike says: (11:53:09 AM)
Maybe the new iPhone will go on Sprint.....there's some rumors.

Geordy says: (11:53:34 AM)
I really doubt that
Geordy says: (11:54:05 AM)
Besides, I've heard the iPhone is AT&T only until at least 2011

Mike says: (11:55:08 AM)
You get 4G coverage in Kirkland?

Geordy says: (11:55:13 AM)
nope
Geordy says: (11:55:24 AM)
I've not seen it flip to 4G even once
Geordy says: (11:55:33 AM)
which pisses me off a bit
Geordy says: (11:55:41 AM)
since I pay an extra $10/mo for it now

Mike says: (11:55:54 AM)
I figured as much........what's your 3G speed like?

Geordy says: (11:56:05 AM)
I haven't done a speed test yet
Geordy says: (11:56:27 AM)
but web pages aren't exactly loading at breakneck speeds I'm sorry to say

Mike says: (11:56:35 AM)
How you like the overall size, screen etc

Geordy says: (11:57:03 AM)
The screen is totally awesome.  It absolutely blows away the screen on my iPod touch.

Mike says: (11:57:32 AM)
wow, not like ipod touch screens are that bad either


Geordy says: (11:58:19 AM)
Calling this phone a candy-bar style is kind of funny though.  I have to laugh when I imagine holding a candy bar that huge to the side of my head
Geordy says: (11:59:00 AM)
oddly though it's no bigger than my iPod touch is with the iBand case on it.
Geordy says: (12:01:04 PM)
I'll have to figure out how to get some applications on here.  Starting with that barcode reader that you have on yours

Mike says: (12:01:30 PM)
just open market, search barcode scanner

Geordy says: (12:03:13 PM)
One problem I had was when I posted a Twitter update, I didn't see the predictive text change words on me until it was too late.  My Twitter account then updates my Facebook but it there appears to be no way to delete Twitter or Facebook postings from this phone.

Mike says: (12:04:16 PM)
Took me a while to get used to that also, once used to it it's great though.

Geordy says: (12:04:17 PM)
I finally figured it out on Twitter by going to the site in the browser but on Facebook, it takes you to a special mobile Facebook site that also doesn't seem to have a way to delete erroneous posts.

Mike says: (12:05:02 PM)
In browser, go settings and uncheck 'mobile' sites
Mike says: (12:05:57 PM)
It'll take you a week to get used to that beast.....if it doesn't grow on you, you could always go back to your Palm WinMo phone, ha ha

Geordy says: (12:15:34 PM)
ugh.  no way.  I know I'll like it.  It's just like getting used to any new device.  I'm just saying I felt WAY more comfortable with the iPod Touch on day one.
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Eagerly anticipating my new Sprint EVO (HTC Supersonic)

Filed Under: gadgets
Jun.02, 2010

Goodbye old phone, I'm not sorry to see you go.

June 3rd could not come soon enough.  I have been stuck on a Palm Treo 800w for what seems like over 2 years.  Sure, the Palm Treo 800w is better than the PPC6700 that it replaced but the battery life sucks, it has a terrible camera and has gotten extremely flaky lately.  As I’m talking on the phone, it opens up random applications for instance.  When i get off the phone, I generally have to close about 4-6 programs that are running.  I only originally chose the Palm 800w because it was the only phone available with irda.  I needed irda because I’m also a Realtor and the key boxes open up with Infrared.

I pre ordered my phone from Radio Shack.  I did this for several reasons.  First off, Sprint would not promise me a phone.  They said they would put my name on a waiting list but on the first day of release, the phone would be given out on a first come first serve basis.  Their previous popular phone, the Palm Pre, sold out in an hour.  Additionally, Sprint offered the phone with a $100 rebate so it ended up costing $299 at the point of sale and then they keep your money for 6-8 weeks while they decide if you’ve met their rebate criteria or not.

Radio Shack on the other hand was totally cool about it.  They said the phone is definitely mine.  All I had to do was purchase a $50 gift card at the time of reservation.  If I didn’t show up to pick up the phone on the first or second day, I would lose my reservation but still have my gift card available to use on any other purchase that I would like.  On top of that, they said I would receive a $20 credit towards any accessory purchase at the time of sale but the topper is that there is no manufacture’s rebate.  The only complaint I have overall about the process is that I was not able to opt for a 1-year contract.  I was forced into a 2 year contract.  Otherwise I had to pay $700-$800 for the phone.  I really hate to be stuck with any device for over a year but this one looks good enough to take my chances with.

I’ve had to do a bit of preparation to get ready to move to my new EVO.  First off, I needed to consolidate my contacts since I moved from Windows XP to a Mac in early 2009 so I still had things stuck in Outlook Express.  I consolidated them all to the Address Book on the Mac side now.  I also took it a step further and sync’d up address book to Google.  My hope is now that I will bring my new phone home, put in my Gmail account info and it will magically all just work.  I’ll report more on that in a few days.

It appears that the rooting community has even figured out how to root the EVO before it’s even released.  Overall, there seems to be an enormous amount of excitement over this phone.  Personally I can’t wait for the 3rd.  Amazon already has four pages of accessories available even.  Personally I have my eye on this Rubberized Hard Case for HTC EVO 4G.  It’s not quite an iBand but it looks like it’s the best available so far.

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Testing out the Parallax #28140 Serial RFID reader module

Filed Under: electronics, gadgets
Jun.01, 2010

Thanks to a hot tip from Hack a Day, I became the proud owner of a RFID reader for $10.  It is a Parallax branded part.  If you go to Radio Shack, you’ll probably find that it’s not marked down in the drawer but when you take it up to the cashier, it should ring up at $10. In the past, I’ve always disregarded the Parallax branded parts because I associated them with BASIC stamps which I am not to interested in since I feel like they are excessively priced considering an AVR can do all of the same stuff and more with a little fiddling.  Taking a closer look however, I see now that most of the accessories could be interfaced with any project.

On the front of the package, it has the RS part number which is 276-0032.  It is labeled “RFID Reader with tags”.  Below that it says:

  • 2400-baud serial output
  • Easy prototyping and integration
  • Includes two passive ransponder tags (yes it there is a typo on my package)

On the back side of the package it says:

  • Ideal for payment systems, inventory tracking and similar applications
  • 2400-baud serial output to a PC or other processor
  • 0.100 pin spacing for easy prototyping and integration
  • Includes 2 different passive transponder tags
  • Dual-color LEDs

Whatever the case, I opened up the package and found the reader and the two different RFID tags.  One is a donut-shaped ring that says “World Tag Unique RFID – Logistic and Industrial Transponder“.  The other tag is unmarked but appears to be a blank ID card that is ready to be printed.  I couldn’t find much info on that World Tag and there is even less on the blank card since it’s not labeled.  The only sensible thing to day here is to test it out and see what happens!

With a little help from the RFID Reader #28140 datasheet, I found that the ENABLE pin needed to be grounded to activate the antenna.  When you apply power, the LED turns green, then you ground the ENABLE pin and the light turns red.  This means the unit is ready to scan RFIDs.  I used a prolific USB-Serial adapter and booted hyperterm in a VM to capture the output of the device. I plugged a null modem cable into my serial converter so it would be easier to jumper down to my breadboard.  I wired pin 3 on the null modem cable to SOUT and pin 5 to GND.

The “numbers” that the device spits out seem to be a 12-byte ascii string of somewhat odd characters so what I get in HyperTerminal isn’t especially readable.  I did copy and paste the output into a hex editor though and it became a bit more coherent.  Reading the datasheet mentions that the first and last byte are start and stop bytes so that leaves you with 10 actual bytes of unique identifier string.  This works out to a WAY larger number of possibilities than I can comprehend(1.16252367 × 10 to the 24th to be precise).  A couple of interesting facts…  As long as I hold the card near the reader, it continues to spit out it’s string over and over.  When I pulled the tag away quickly, sometimes I’d only get a partial read but then it would usually start again at the beginning when I would put it back again.  Putting two tags near the reader at the same time seems to confuse it as I would expect.  It does fairly well in that regard though.

One thing to note is that I ran into some serious reliability issues as the voltage of my dying batteries dropped.  When they got down to three volts, the reader failed to function even though the indicator light was still bright as ever.  Plugging it into a wallwart did the trick though.

This is a bare bones reader.  What I mean is that ALL it does is read the tag and spit out the number over and over again.  It is up to whatever you plug it into to give the user tactical feedback of some nature that the card has properly been read.  IE, this reader doesn’t beep, blink, buzz etc, so they leave that part up to you.  There is also no inherent security in this device to speak of.  If someone could tap the serial line, they could obviously spoof whatever number can be read.  As far as cloning the tags, I’m not sure how it could be done but I’m sure it’s possible.  I DID try to scan various different tags I could find in my house with no success.  First one was an HID card.  I didn’t expect anything but it was worth a shot.  Also tried the rest of the cards in my wallet with no success (thankfully) and a few various inventory control tags.

Personally, for my own projects, this is a solution without a problem but these RFID tags are everywhere so it is an interesting study to see how they operate on some level.  If you want more information on this RFID reader, the datasheet is an excellent resource.  Extra RFID tags are available in low quantities from the Parallax store

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Free Stuff!

Filed Under: gadgets
May.23, 2010

Hunter Davis is cleaning out his closets again.  He is running a contest for 7 days or 5000 entries and giving away all of the items in the picture up above in bundles.  I don’t envy having to manually parse through 5000 emails… beats having a garage sale I guess.  I shamelessly entered but I couldn’t really make up my mind which bundle I would most like to acquire.  The half-an-eee and diji look pretty cool but beggars can’t be choosers.

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Tech21 iPod Touch 2g/3g iBand protective case review

Filed Under: gadgets, reviews
May.18, 2010

I’ve owned and iPod Touch for several months now.  I spent the first couple of weeks I owned it searching for the perfect case for it.  I saw the thin skins that ripple every time you touch them and I saw the clunky hard sided plastic cases.  The whole appeal to the iPod Touch for me was the fact that it is so small and sleek.  Yes, I want to protect it but no, I don’t want it to feel twice as bulky as it really is.  Then I found the Tech21 iBand.  At first, it looks like just a rubber ring.  It’s not the cheapest case at $25 but I have to say it’s well worth the price.  When you put this on your iPod touch 2nd or 3rd gen, it feels well protected.  It’s molded perfectly to the dimensions of the iPod Touch so it fits well and does not feel like it will ever come loose on it’s own.  If you set it on the table facing up or down, the iPod itself doesn’t touch the table.  If you happen to drop it on a flat surface, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be protected.

The case itself doesn’t add much weight to the ipod.  It only weighs 15.5 grams which is nearly nothing considering the iPod itself weighs 108 grams.  Over the time I’ve had the case, I have found it to be very durable.  It has one edge that has a bit of wear on it but that wear hasn’t spread or spiraled out of control like it would with other materials.

While I can’t think of any ways to improve the case, I do have a couple of gripes about it.  First off, it makes the power and volume buttons fairly hard to use.  The converse of that is that you won’t be pressing them by accident any time soon.  Secondly, some headphones may not fit through the hole as it sits.  The Apple ones work flawlessly though so it’s not a big deal to me.  Third, when I plug in my sync cable, a small part of the front rubber near the brand name sometimes catches on the connector.  Again, not really a big deal to me.  Last one that might be a deal killer for many folks…  It won’t dock while in the case with ANY docks that I have seen available.  This has been a little disappointing to me but I’ve learned to live with it.  If you were REALLY concerned, you could always roll your own cheaptastic iPod Touch dock.  The bottom line is that the Tech21 iBand is the best iPod case I could find.

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How to install DD-WRT on the WRT54G-TM

Filed Under: gadgets, networking
May.12, 2010

It seems that all of the Linksys WRT54G’s that I’ve come across for a good price lately are the WRT54G-TM variant.  The TM stands for T-Mobile.  In all honesty I’m not sure how the T-Mobile hot spot functionality works.  I don’t really care either.  What I know is that this router is actually an excellent candidate for a DD-WRT installation.  In fact, I’d argue that it’s even better than the WRT54GL because this one has 32MB of ram opposed to the 16MB on the GL version.  The only small downside on the WRT54G-TM is that you’ll have to jump through a couple more obstacles to make it run DD-WRT.  Don’t let this put you off at all!  There are excellent instructions out there and I’m going to give you a short overview as well.  First off, here are the official instructions for putting DD-WRT on the WRT54G-TM.

If you plan to load this firmware on your WRT54G-TM, I highly recommend using Internet Explorer on Windows.  Everything seems to go the smoothest using this configuration.  When I’ve tried Firefox on my Mac I’ve had trouble and the same goes for Safari.  Just save some pain and use IE if you have access to it.  Now for the fun stuff:

  1. Download the latest version of DD-WRT for the WRT54G-TM.  Run a quick search on this page to find it.  http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database.  While you are there, grab the tftp program and the CFE updater binary.
  2. Set your Windows machine to the static ip 192.168.0.2.  While you are in there, click advanced and add a second ip 192.168.1.2.
  3. Pick a port 1-4 and plug it into your computer’s ethernet port.
  4. Do a hard reset on your WRT54G-TM to put it back to factory settings by unplugging the router, holding the reset switch on the back of the router, plugging it in and keeping holding the switch for 30 seconds.
  5. Log into your router at 192.168.0.1.  No username, password is admin.
  6. Click administration, then update firmware.  Update the firmware with the CFE binary file.  That should go pretty quick and say something like “Upgrade succeeded”.
  7. Wait….  While you are waiting, bring up a command prompt and ping -t 192.168.1.1.  When you get a response to your pings, you can quit waiting and move to the next step.
  8. Fire up the TFTP client and type in 192.168.1.1 for the server IP and for the file put in the location of the ddwrt.v????  firmware file.  Hit upgrade and wait.
  9. Now go to 192.168.1.1 in your web browser.  You should see a screen prompting a user password change.  Now is a great time to set your root password.

That’s it!  It sounds a lot harder than it actually is.  Post some comments on your own experiences with the WRT54G-TM.

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USB Flash drive fail

Filed Under: gadgets
May.08, 2010

So a guy I know finds this usb stick at his place of work.  It has no markings at all, no size, brand or anything.  It was sitting on the side of someone’s desk because it wasn’t recognizing so it got set aside.  He gave it to my friend who cracked it open to see what was inside of it:

Um… anyone else notice something missing?  Buyer beware of the generic, unmarked USB memory stick.  When you can get a HP 8 GB USB Flash Drive for $16.99, why would you even bother with this crap anyways?

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Sewell Minideck SW-22857 review for MacBook Pro

Filed Under: gadgets, mac, reviews
May.06, 2010

I’ve owned a Mac now since late 2008.  Soon after I bought it, I discovered how cool multi-monitor support is.  Oddly, this discovery didn’t quench more thirst for more screen real estate, it simply made me want more and more.  On my MacBook Pro, there is only one monitor output.  I would have assumed that was that and there would be no way to add more screens but then I found the Sewell Minideck SW-22857.

This ingenious device allows you to hook up to 5 extra monitors to a computer even as underpowered as a Atom-based netbook.  That is a testament to the fact that it doesn’t consume a lot of overhead.  On my system which is a 2.53GHz dual core, it seems to only take 1.2-2.2% of one of the CPU’s at idle and it spikes to 2.6% when I’m pushing it with window scrolling, etc. Works for me.

Now personally I would have assumed that a USB-based graphics card would be kind of a gimmick.  Surprisingly enough though, I think this adapter will work well enough to be useful.  I did try full motion video on it and it sucks.  Totally useless and choppy.  I would estimate I’m getting 15-20fps on it.  To me, this is pretty much unacceptable, YMMV.

I did a lot of research before I bought this device.  One thing surprised me.  It’s smaller than it looks in the picture.  Probably half the size of a standard external 2.5″ drive but a touch thicker.  Another thing worth mentioning is that you should just go to the website to get the latest driver.  From my understanding, the bundled one doesn’t work too well.

Supposedly this is one of the only USB-VGA/DVI/HDMI adapters that actually works properly with the Mac.  I’d believe that.  The bummer is that they know it and charge dearly for it.  I tried and tried to wait them out but the price never dropped.  I could not find this device ANYWHERE legitimately cheaper than $100.

The only problem I could find with the whole setup is that my monitor does not seem to properly sleep with this adapter.  The screen goes black but the back light stays on.  If I figure out what is going on with this, I’ll post an update.

Update 6/30/2010 – Still haven’t figured out the sleep mode on the screen but I have found that you cannot take a screenshot of anything running on USB-connected screen under Mac OS X

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iTouched an iPad

Filed Under: gadgets, reviews
Apr.17, 2010

I was out shopping with the family at the mall today and quickly ducked into the Mac Store (not the same as the Apple Store). There were only three people in the whole store and they were all clustered at the three iPads that were displayed in the middle of the store. There was an older woman, a store employee and an off-duty cop. About as diverse as it gets. The employee backed off and I picked up the one in the middle.

I was surprised at how heavy it was. I was expecting it to be much lighter. I noticed they were set atop these custom stands. My first act with the iPad was to set it flat on the table. To my surprise, the wifi signal didn’t even flinch. From all I’ve heard, I expected just looking at it to kill the signal strength. I’m guessing this is another over-sensationalized problem that isn’t quite as bad as it was made out to be.

Next I picked it back up and started thumbing around with the apps. I don’t care for how much space is wasted by the icons on the screen. It seems that you have the same amount of icon space as you would for an iPod Touch. I’m not sure if this is a setting or if there is some other reason but my initial though is that it looks stupid to have tiny little icons with tons of space around them.

After the initial shock of the tiny icons, I decided to press one of them. To my surprise a tiny-sized app popped up. Don’t ask me what I was expecting for apps that have not been updated for the iPad but this was certainly not it. I’ll be damned if I’m going to run around with a gigantic iPod Touch with a beautiful screen that can only display most of the apps I care about at the same size as my current iPod Touch. What about the 2x button you say? What a joke. I haven’t seen pixelation that bad since my Atari 2600. Sorry, until all the app providers are on board, that’s a major show stopper for me. I’m really surprised that so many people can overlook this issue.

When the iPad was first announced, I was ready to buy it immediately. It looked like the perfect little computer to have around the living room and kitchen. Now that I have seen it however, I still think it has a lot of potential but more so as a niche device. Maybe it would be perfect for a professional photographer proofing with his clients or for an elderly person who’s eyesight isn’t good enough for an iPod Touch. It will be interesting to see what niches the iPad carves for itself but at the current price, it’s going to be a hard sell for a lot of potential buyers. The bottom model is more expensive than most netbooks and the top model is nearly $1,000 if you have to pay tax or shipping.

When the price drops and Tech21 releases an iBand shock absorbing frame for it, I’ll take another look at it.

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