Electronics Engineering Video Blog

Good on you Dave, let me be the first to congratulate you. I enjoyed it, and at the same time, learnt quite a bit.

Notice your eye contact with the camera was spot on, a mistake many newcomers make is being unable to keep that personal touch, by always referring back to a feed back monitor.

See how your Australian accent goes for global consumption. :-)

I can see this building up, as it sure beats reading about any new product, or concept. Easy as falling off a log for dinosaurs like me.

I'll be telling a few friends about it.

Good luck with your projects,

(sorry it wasn't negative. :-) )

Cheers Don...

--
Don McKenzie

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http://www.dontronics-shop.com/super4-usb-relay-module.html

No negative response from me, I enjoyed it.

I'm off to look up the scope and the voltage regulator.

Thanks,

Ian

Good stuff Dave, what would be interesting would be if others would conduct virtual tours of their work benches & TEQ - be it at work or home.

"David L. Jones"

** Amusing - it is indeed.

You look a bit younger than I previously believed and also now speak with a distinct west coast Yank accent and manner too - compared to a few years ago when we last spoke on the phone.

Spend a lot of time consorting with Septics these days - eh ??

** In the video, you ask for ideas like a name for your proposed blog.

IMO - it just has to be " Davy Jones Locker " - sub tilted: " Bits and Pieces of Eight from the Binary Depths"

You need to decorate your currently totally bare environment with a few coiled ropes and rusty anchors and such - plus have a colourful stuffed parrot sitting on your left shoulder. Wearing an eye patch is essential.

Loose that damn awful Yank accent totally.

Not one, single person will take you seriously of course - but that IS your fate no matter what.

Dare to be great, Dave - have fun with the whole darn thing.

Remember, even your hero " The Woz " had the nerve to appear last month on the US version of " Dancing with the Stars".

..... Phil

FWIW I enjoyed watching ! A little rough round the edges, but so what.

--
Best Regards:
                     Baron.

Dave, I know a good idea when I see one.

I would also like to be the first to offer you products for review, if you wish to travel along this path.

As you may be aware I run a small family business from Tullamarine Australia, and am now well past my used by date, but keep plugging away regardless.

I don't wish to push any specific items on you for review, I would want you to pick something that is of personal interest.

Please contact me at: support2009 AT dontronics.com if you wish to chat further on this subject.

Basically I like Phil's concept, but can't see you with a parrot and an eye patch all the way though the video blog, so you may have to settle for a photo blowup behind you. :-)

Good luck with it in any case.

Cheers Don...

--
Don McKenzie

Site Map:            http://www.dontronics.com/sitemap
E-Mail Contact Page: http://www.dontronics.com/email
Web Camera Page:     http://www.dontronics.com/webcam
No More Damn Spam:   http://www.wizard-of-oz.com

http://www.dontronics-shop.com/super4-usb-relay-module.html

Thanks for the support guys. I've now set up a proper Blog page here:

So you can now subscribe to the RSS feed (top right corner) and have new videos automatically announced on your iGoogle page or whatever. Still trying to figure out how the whole WordPress and blog thing works, so there may be a few hiccups.

Yes, the first one was pretty rough'n'ready, just dug out my old webcam and started talking. No script, no notes, no planning etc. So there is certainly room for improvement! Some editing was done on the Rigol review to fit the whole video into the 10 minute YouTube limit, so I've now posted the full review video on the Blog site.

I almost like Phil's suggestion of Davey Jones' Locker :->

But I'll stick with EEVblog until something better comes up.

A background of some sort would help, perhaps my work bench. Might have to see if my old notebook is up to the task so I can record somewhere other than my drab office wall.

Dave.

All in all it was pretty good, nothing that further practise and vids won't knock any rough edges off. Possibly a powerpoint presentation on a projector to the background would come in handy for each topic and to display diagrams that are visible to you and can be pointed at when discussing a topic. You could even have multiple cameras for close ups and for the work area to avoid having a camera operator.

Personally I think it's a good idea to also parallel post to YouTube as well as your own site so you can reach a wider audience.

Very good !

Keep at it. That regulator sounds very interesting :)

Good stuff! Can you please crank the sound up, on my laptop speakers I can hardly hear you but other Youtube films sound ok.

Thanks again and don't stop please!

Tom

Yes, the sound was pretty ordinary on this one. Zero effort put in to post production this time around, just encoded and uploaded as a quick trial. I also had an issue with my studio mic with several of the segments, so there is a funny stereo echo thing happening in the intro and some other segments. Fixed in later ones when I switched to mono mode.

The next one should be a better effort I hope.

Dave.

All in good time if it gets popular enough. My current camera operator is a whisky bottle box that props the crusty old $10 ebay webcam up in front of my monitor on my cluttered desk. Lighting is whatever comes in through the window at the time. The only resemblence of a professional staging setup is my studio USB podcasting mic on a desk stand. Not the best for capturing distant audio from though I suspect, it's designed more for close-up voice podcasting. But still seems to work well enough.

I have a better (but old) DV camcorder, but that's more hassle to use and import the video files from than the webcam.

I'm still hosting on YouTube, and I've set up a new dedicated channel:

The videos on my blog site are not hosted locally, they are just using embedded links direct to YouTube. So better to go to the Blog site: Easy to leave comments, subscribe the RSS feed, and will eventually be better to sort through the archives etc.

Dave.

Good stuff David, you came across pretty well. I didn't notice much 'yanki' accent but I was a 'bit' annoyed by the up-tone of your voice at the end of much of what you said.(there's ya neg. feedback!)

This could well be the start of something really good, with regards to electronics here in Oz.

You could include special input from people like Mr Parker or Allison etc. (bow tie and all ha ha)

APET you could call it, an Australian Perspective on Electronics Today... everone loves a pet.

Mark Kelepouris

Don't know how Phil is hearing a Yanky accent... Maybe I have been watching too much American TV?

I don't want it be Australian specific in any way, so will probably try and avoid Australian references were possible. But ultimately, with the accent and the occasional reference, it will have an unavoidable Aussie flavour. That will either scare off or intrigue the Yanks :->

Dave.

David L. Jones wrote:it will have an unavoidable Aussie flavour.

Pull up a billabong and whack the diddly-o down cobber!!

Have you seen those cheap $15 webcams at the import shops? it may be worth grabbing a couple for the "Studio"

I'm using an "ancient" 2 y/o webcam. Just discovered that that frame rate appears to vary with the image brightness! When I useed it the other day to shoot it was working fine at 30fps, but I was playing with it this morning and it was only 10fps. Point it toward a bright light source like the window and it climbs up to near 30fps again. A linear type increase with brightness. Weird. Just realised too that my digital camera has a 640x480 30fps video mode and can also be used as webcam. The webcam mode only seems to work at around

10fps (no brightnes issue), but the standalone video mode works great. Only limitation is the internal mic is a bit noisy and is only sampled at 8 bits. So unless I upgrade my gear, the choice at the moment is either higher res and clearer video with so-so audio, or 320x240 webcam quality with good audio...

Perhaps a new $15 webcam is in order!

Dave.

Not that weird, it obviously slows down to gather enough photons for the exposure, you could try fitting a larger diameter lens than the tiny one it usually has, or even try a telescope eyepiece to obtain the extra photon gathering power needed. Frame rate and image noise should improve accordingly.

So when does the watch calculator kit hit the market?. I want to add an IR LED so it can be programmed with the 400 odd TV remote turn off and turn on codes like that guy's invention.

Cheers, Mark

I'm been selling them for over a year now! The 4th batch of kits has been and gone. Although I do have a few more I'm going to release for sale again soon, but that will be it I think as the project no longer holds as much interest for me as it once did.

Dave.

I think most of it would have worked well as a podcast, with no video at all.