Tag: usb

On the hunt for new headphones (Help?)

Bose Soundlink on ear headphones

I have been trying to replace my Bose Soundlink headphones for a long while. I bought them in Tokyo for a good price back in 2014 and although they are great the battery on them has given up completely; plus there seems to be no real way to replace it?

Its frustrating having full functioning headphones except battery life is zero. But its even more frustrating knowing how much I paid for them, even with the exchange rate discount. But then add the fact my phone doesn’t actually have a headphone port anymore!

So I have been looking for headphones to replace what I currently have but I realise there are things which I really need in headphones.

  • Standard audio jack – Not just for when the battery is low/dead, so I can also connect to my Pacemaker on the go.
  • Foldable – I usually carry everything in a laptop bag and most things are flat. If it doesn’t fold in some way its going to be a pain to carry around. My Bose fold on the band but the type where speakers fold in are still good for me too.
  • On ear – The only headphones I can live with day in day out. The ones you put over your ears make my ears hot and sweaty. The ones you put in your ears are awful and always end up coated in wax after use (keeping it real).
  • Multipoint support – I finally found out what this was called when a bluetooth device can connect to 2 or more devices at once. Its pretty essential for me to be honest.
  • Micro USB or USB C charging – I’m kind of done with proprietary chargers. When going on holiday for work or pleasure I take my USB power hub which charges everything including phones, laptop, watch, ring, etc. USB is a must and I know most do of course.
  • Replaceable battery – I add this after my experience of the Bose’s but its wish more than essential. I’d at least like some ability to take it apart. This is why the Pacemaker device is still going over 10 years later.
  • Good price – I won’t lie, I’d be happy with a price under £100 but I am asking for a lot. I certainly won’t be paying about £200 again.

So far I have bought two headphones from Amazon…

Protein Earmuff,Hi-Fi Stereo Headset f

This was seriously awful, cheap and tacky. Multipoint was pretty bad. On top of this the band was so tight, you could only really wear it for a short while before you felt the life being squeezed out of your head.

Phiaton BT 390 Black Wireless On-ear Headphones with Mic

I liked these and price was pretty great however the micro-USB cable for analogue audio was a bit crappy. It didn’t seem easily changeable and meant carrying it around all the time. But I liked the design and fit. However while in London, they just died. They had to go back…

I considered the BT350 instead of the BT390 but I can’t see much advantage over it except its not all plastic and noise cancelling (which I don’t care about).

So this is where I am now… Any suggestions are welcomed if it fits with the above list.

Beds with USB and Bluetooth

https://www.flickr.com/photos/39908901@N06/8355672587

Theres an advert on UK TV these holidays about a bed with USB ports. Of course this isn’t anything too exciting as there have been beds with Bluetooth for a while. But it got me thinking about a quote (which I can’t find now) but roughly goes…

“The aim of smartphone apps like facebook is to be the first thing you look at when waking up. Levels of success are measured by how long you spend in bed not moving just consuming.” – Power phrased….

Wish I could find the original quote because its sounded even more scary than what I could remember. Ideal ways to never deal with your smartphone addiction.

 

The broken promise of one power supply

laptop-xps-13-9350-pdp-polaris-03

I recently got a Dell XPS 13 to replace my slightly aging Lenovo thinkpad X230, which has been giving me a lot of head aches recently. Its a very attractive machine, being super thin and mainly metal instead of plastic. I thought about it long and hard before ordering it because of the lack of ports and extendable battery. In actual fact its got a similar battery to those seen in phones and tablets, aka non-removable. I guess Mac users will say “so what?” but no laptop I’ve ever had, has had nonremovable batteries.

The thing which nudged me about the Dell XPS 13 was a USB C port. USB C I’ve had ups and downs with since my Nexus 5X, but a year later I like the technology and want everything with USB C. I had imagined charging my laptop & phone with my new portable battery pack with Solar Power. But plugging my Nexus 5X into the laptop with my nice new USB C to USB C cable, selecting reverse charge; expecting something to happen but nothing. I thought it might supply a tiny current at least. I wrote it off as not enough current and waited till I got home.

At home I tried my solar battery charger with USB C, once again thinking this would supply enough charge to power the laptop even for a short while. Once again I was disappointed to find it not charging.

What gives! My dream collapsing, I hot the web and found a reddit thread and the PC World piece which made it crystal clear.

usb_c_laptop_charting-100649896-large

Seems the dream isn’t dead but its not looking good for portable batteries packs. Maybe it might work with some of the wall chargers however, will have to try my Nexus 5X wall charger later.

Pacemaker hard drive problems

Pacemaker fixing

It was always going to happen…

A portable dj device which I tend to walk around with while mixing to myself. I accidentally dropped while in the middle of recording a mix. Ever since its been acting a little weird and worst still crashing mid mix.

The song which seems to trigger the hard drive to start clicking happens to be JS16’s Rosegarden 2.0 ironically.

Anyway after 6+ years of use I think its about time I made some upgrades. The great thing about the pacemaker is its pretty much a Linux PC. So a lot of the upgrades should be pretty simple. Of course the pacemaker community can help with everything…

First the hard drive, going with my wired, tired, expired. Its time to move to a solid state drive. I only tend to use about 30gigs of my 120gigs of pacemaker storage. So I’m thinking about getting a 64gigs or even 32gigs… The drive as you can imagine is needs to be a 1.8inch drive, and needs to be ZIF/PATA rather than SATA. According to the post there are two different ZIF connections 0.2 mm and 0.3 mm, although its not clear which one I actually should get.

While I’m doing that I might as well do a replacement on the battery which lasts about a hour right now. Although I discovered I could charge the pacemaker over USB while using it if the USB is pure power and not a computer. Of course I also have the AC adapter but nothing beats having lots of battery power.

This looks to be better done in a workshop?

Thanks goodness the Pacemaker isn’t made up of custom hardware bits…

I bricked my windows mobile phone

Mobile data?

Mobile laptop data has always been a pain, in my mind it started when the phone companies started making those PCMCIA adapters where you could stick in a GSM/GPRS card. Before that you use to have to dialup via the infrared port or a serial cable. The GSM/GPRS cards would allow you to put in a sim card into the PC card and dialup on your laptop from anywhere. Then Vodafone came out with a 3G data card, others followed suit adding Wireless and even HSDPA (3.5g) to the mix.

But there was a few problems. Each card came with some propitery software, the card themselves were expensive and the data plans attached only suitable for business users. In America on the otherhand all you could get all you can eat data plans based on that weird standard called EVDO for a reasonable rate. Because of this Laptop makers started adding EVDO and other Mobile data options, which made the PC cards a little less important. But the huge break through (in the UK) came when Tmobile (to there credit) dropped there data plan to a all you can eat model. Vodafone and Orange followed soon afterwards. 3 the mobile operator in the UK started offering a cheap usb dongle to there users of mobile data. 10 pounds buys you the dongle and the data for a month. Well I thought this was a good idea and I know a few people are tempted with the offer but I think I found better.

Ok enough history – I bricked my new phone, no not actually killed it so it no long works but more like bricked it so it operates as a wireless modem. I was doing this over bluetooth at the start but for some reason while using the windows mobile internet sharing option the phone wants to be in bluetooth discovery mode too. This quickly kills the battery, so I started plugging it in over USB. Because the phone also charges over USB too, it might as well be like the USB dongle. My Data plan currently is 5 pounds for weekend and evening unlimited data (unlimited meaning 1gig fair use data a month). Orange offer for another 3 pounds a all day everyday option but limited to 30meg a month. This doesn't work for me, as I'm usually around a wireless or wired connection during the daytime. Anyway the point is that mobile laptop data is become cheap and easy. If I can get a windows mobile phone to talk to a linux laptop, then anyone running windows or mac must be able to get theres up and running in minutes. But like before the data rates are better that ever. HSDPA (3.5g) is also pretty impressive, I was getting 400k down and 200k up in a starbucks in central Bristol. I expect in London I might get even more. This makes it a serious contender to the rip off wireless hotspots you find in some hotels and cafes up and down the country. Now if only the mobile operators would sort out international roaming data charges!

Ah I forgot to mention one thing.The bricked nature also comes from WMstorage, which basiclly turns your phone into a mass storage device or usb memory stick. Because I can't use activesync on linux this has been perfect for dragging files back and forth. However its never been reliable till now. So my phone sits there as a mini flashdrive and bluetooth modem but can still receive calls and texts if needed. Next step really is to pass some of that functionality on to my laptop instead.

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