Unboxing « William Goodall's Blog

July 5, 2014

BL-MP01

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 15:15

I got this to provide WiFi downstairs. It plugs into the router attached to the wired ethernet and provides a WiFi point for mobile devices like iPod Touch or iPad.

The pocket travel bit wasn’t relevant to my needs – it was just the cheapest suitable device I could find at £8.95. It does need a spare USB power supply though as it doesn’t come with one. It does have a USB cable and an ethernet cable.

I telneted into it and saw Busybox. It didn’t seem to be configurable that way though, I had to get the web interface working on 192.168.16.254 which meant temporarily setting up one Mac on 192.168.16.xxx so I could connect it to the ethernet port and do the settings. It needed a reboot between every setting to get them to stick but it is a once-off. Now it has an SSID and a password of my choosing.

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June 25, 2014

New Boots

Filed under: Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 14:33

Got these in advance of the current pair wearing out.

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New external HDD

Filed under: Apple,IT,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 14:31

4TB USB 3 drive to reorganise and back up stuff from my 3TB Firewire 800 drive which is nearly full.

Used to be Hitachi Global Storage Technologies now part of Western Digital. The very similar TOURO DX3 uses the greener 5400 RPM drive.

TOURO Desk PRO.

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Optical Splitter

Filed under: Music,Television,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 14:28

I got this optical splitter to take the single digital optical audio out from my TV and split it two ways, one for the 5.1 home theatre amplifier and one for the headphones. I also got a D/A converter and a headphone amplifier.

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New Headphone Amplifier

Filed under: Music,Television,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 14:25

Because my TV only has optical out and I didn’t want to plug/unplug the headphones from the front of my Yamaha 5.1 receiver all the time. So I got an optical splitter, a D/A converter and this.

Package from Singapore.

SMSL sApII

UK plug for the 24V PSU.

S.M.S.L sAp II Headphone amplifier. (SMSL sApII)

Swiss Army Knife for comparison. The volume knob has some tasteful blue LED lighting behind it. Wired up and working. The sound seems good – a nice tight bass.

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June 5, 2014

New Home Theatre

Filed under: DIY,Music,Television,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 15:13

The DVD player in my old HTIB packed in again and since spares are no longer available it was time to upgrade. New 5.1 speakers with an active subwoofer, an amplifier with four hdmi in and one hdmi out and two optical digital in (my SKY box doesn’t do Dolby over HDMI so I need an optical link for that. And my TV doesn’t do ARC over HDMI so I need an optical link for that too.) And a blu-ray player. And 50 metres of speaker cable, fourteen banana plugs and a subwoofer cable. It all finally arrived by yesterday and I spent some hours unpacking and assembling it.

Three boxes of speakers making HTS201 system.

Some stands for the rear speakers.

100W active subwoofer. 8” down firing ported variety.

Two front towers with spike feet.

Center and two rear speakers.

Rears on stands. The connectors take banana plugs.

Front speaker with cover off and on.

Sub with dog hairs. That’s a Tannoy HTS201 speaker system.

Sub cable and some banana plugs. Both by Fisual.

Amplifier. Yamaha RX-V375.

Blu-ray player. LG BP325.

Set up. I actually tidied up all the wiring before I began but I ended up with another mess. The TV, the SKY box and the blu-ray have wired internet connections so it was handy the switch I bought ages ago had enough ports. The blu-ray promptly downloaded a software update as soon as it was wired up.

The system self-calibrated with the included microphone with the sub at -10dB which might be a little low for my liking. I’ll see about tweaking it all after it’s run in a little.

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May 19, 2014

LED bulbs

Filed under: Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 13:55

Having gotten thoroughly fed up of CFL bulbs lasting nowhere near the advertised life I decided to replace the kitchen bulbs with LED bulbs when one of them died a couple of days ago.

So far so good.

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Call Saint call blocker

Filed under: Food & Drink,IT,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 13:52

An Amazon parcel of mixed stuff arrived.

Two boxes of Indian ready meals, four new Sonicare toothbrush heads and a call blocker.

The protective film on the screen required duct tape to remove.

Wiring it up proved surprisingly baffling since I hadn’t had any coffee yet. Blocked WITHHELD and ’00’ prefix (most international) and the last three nuisance numbers still on my caller display memory. I shall add more as they appear.

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