First thing I did as usual was going on eBay and search there, and quickly I found the TSN420 from skypix. Decided to look around more and saw some pictures of a black version but could not find anywhere where I could get one, so I decided to just let it go and order that one.

First impressions of the scanner is that it feels rather well-built and scans in reasonably good quality. It's a feeding scanner so you feed the documents in on one side and it scans it. It automatically crops the images so you can easily scan receipts and smaller images. It comes with a sheet used to scan photos too (not that it is required). Only thing that is a bit weird with it is that you got to feed the documents upside down for it to scan them, but as long as you remember that you won't get blank scans. It runs of 4 AA batteries, and saves its images as JPEG files on to a micro SD card.

One little thing I have noticed with it is that sometimes it crops off a bit too much when scanning, but it mostly crops perfectly.

As of battery time and such I have not measured how many scans you get per battery-change but it seems to hold battery reasonably well.

So if you need a light scanner to scan documents or receipts I would recommend the skypix TSN420

The camera itself is pretty light and has a nice 2-inch screen to do the settings and stuff like that on. I Have mine set up so as soon as I plug it in the 12v, the camera starts up and starts recording, and makes 5-minute clips. There's no gap at all between clips, which I have seen on some cameras. I have heard that there's some "clones" of this camera out there with bad firmware and poor components that has a big gap between clips.

The menu is fairly easy to use. The camera has a flip function to turn the image upside down, when you mount the camera upside down, and I have seen that on some cameras the menu doesn't flip, but on this one the menu flipped around and the controls even "flipped", so it is pretty easy to use it.

The camera's menu is pretty decent. Can read road signs and licence plates pretty easily. Nice with the 1080p resolution, even pretty usable in darkness. Here's some sample clips of driving during the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L20q9LLQ9pQ .

Have had the camera for a couple of months now and I'm pretty happy with it. Luckily haven't used it for accident documentation yet though, and hopefully it will stay that way.

Will probably add more to this review later.

I was tired of the slow scanning speed on my Baofeng UV-3R. The scanning speed on the UV-3R was way too slow. So I wanted to get myself a cheap scanner that had a lot more bands than the UV-3R. So I went looking on where I usually look for gadgets, eBay! Found a used one relatively cheap there and decided to try to get that one. Won the auction and it arrived in a weeks time.

The first thing I noticed about it was that it was a bit larger than my UV-3R, but still comfortable to hold. Feels really solid too!
Had read a lot on the net that people had issues with programming it and such, and I can say that at first I didn't understand anything about how I would program it or anything. So the manual is really handy. Programming it is really easy once you get the hold of it.

First you can go to the empty spot you want to program by pushing Hold, then the channel number, and hold again.
Then you press Func, and E, for program. Now you enter your frequency and press E to store it. Now you can go to the next frequency by pushing E again, and enter your frequency there. If you want to "Scroll" trough frequencies, you press Func, then 2 for up, or 8 for down.
It has some preprogrammed stuff for Air, Marine, HAM, Weather, Police, and Fire that you can get access to by pressing Func and 3. Would be nice if you could reprogram those banks though, as lots of those frequencies don't work in Norway.

The radio reception is great, and the audio quality from the radio is good. Could need a bit more treble though, but other than that it sounds good. When I use it with a headset I can hear a faint static sound when it's not receiving anything, but it's nothing major.

The scanning speed on it is lightning fast compared to the UV-3R. I Shouldn't really compare the two, since the UV-3R isn't a scanner, but a radio. But still, the speed is impressive. The "Close Call" feature is also really nice, picking up nearby repeaters and such. It makes the audio skip every 3rd second or so, but it's not that bad.

Only got two things to complain about this radio, the first thing is the viewing angle of the screen, I don't know if this is just an issue with my unit, but it's almost impossible to look at the screen from the top and down. The display is best when you tilt the radio away from you.
The second thing is that it eats trough batteries, so get lots of rechargeable ones!

Recently discovered this has a built in frequency counter function. With the radio off, press and hold the keys: Hold key + 3 + 0 + On key (All at the same time) and the frequency counter pops up. A bit hidden/secret function there.

So, here's some pictures:

It all started when we took over responsibility of filling the printers with paper ourself, because the teachers always did something wrong when they tried to fill the printers with paper. Students had no access to printer paper either. The daily routine was to go check all printers once or twice a day to see if there was enough printers.
Demand changed all the time, so sometimes if we even had filled up the printers with paper earlier that day, they were empty some time after.
So when we got the new set of printers here I decided to poke the printers with the SNMP protocol to see if they tossed out something useful. I was lucky and they tossed loads of info at me, including how much paper was left in each drawer.

So I started to write a tiny PHP script that used "progress bars" to show how much paper was left in the printers.
Not very good at PHP and such, it took about a day or so of work, including reading up on the SNMP protocol, and the SNMP library for PHP. It was easier than expected to write the script!
I also was a bit lazy and took a few corners, so the script isn't exactly beautiful, but it works perfectly for my purpose.

(click for larger image)

The code can be found on GitHub at: https://github.com/BinaryPaws/Printer-paper-status
I would also appreciate comments on how I should improve the script, and how to write better code. :3

When I received it, I was surprised with the quality of the box and such. Was waiting a poorly packaged camera in a bubble wrap bag or something like that, but the camera itself came in a box with styrofoam cutouts or something like that, that held the camera and the accessories nicely in place for the transport.

What I received was the camera, user manual, a wall mount, and power adapter. Even got a little adapter that changed it from US to EU plug.

I started to look in the user manual, but the text was tiny! very difficult to read, but hey! I don't need a manual! So I started it up and ran the application on the CD so it could connect to the camera, and I could configure it.

I got the camera in white, but wish i got a black one instead, the white one doesn't quite fit in my black room.
Easily enough, it was just to run the application that came on the CD, and I was up and running within minutes. The quality of the camera was pretty OK for a cheap camera like this, but one thing surprised me though, it was really good in the dark, in small rooms. The IR led's around the lens makes the room really viewable while it's pitch dark.

Example of outside view: 

As you can see, the green trees get a bit red-ish in color, but that is because of the lack of IR-filter in the camera. The FPS is great, with around constant 25-30 FPS.

The camera also has some alarm output-input, but I have not yet tried them, as I don't know how they work yet.

Other than that, it's a great camera for the price. The pan/tilt function is quiet and nice, and the camera does have two-way audio, but it only works in internet explorer.

So I started right away with soldering it together. The first thing I figured was that I need a new soldering iron, and that lead free solder is difficult to solder with compared to 60/40 solder.
Would like one of the nice weller bases.

Overall the soldering took about 3 hours. The instructions were easy to follow, and had nice describing pictures.
Only drawback is that the plug that comes with it is US socket. But used a plug adapter and it worked here!

Overall I was more than pleased with the result! See attached pictures for the result! The clock even shows the date when you click a button on the back.

[Show as slideshow]

The first thought that crossed my mind was that it was smaller than I expected. I have never seen an arduino so this was a first for me. The build and solder quality of the board was great, and it worked nicely when I plugged it in the first time. I only ordered a plain arduino, so I got no software or anything with it. But it was easy enough to download from the arduino site.
I got some nice stickers with the arduino though. Pictures is in the slideshow.

The shipping from farnell went really fast, and arrived safely and in working condition.

I had some plans about what to do with it, since I had a HD44780 20x4 LCD display lying around, wondering if I could connect that to the arduino.
After some quick browsing around in the arduino examples, I found the wiring scheme for the HD44780. I didn't have a breadboard when I played with this, or proper cables to test with, so I found some old CAT-5 cable that I just used the pairs of. Worked great for my testing, and no need for a breadboard with just a couple of wires needing to be connected to the display.

Then I started the coding of the arduino. First of all I tried out the basic examples that followed the kit and it worked pretty good. The coding language of it is pretty readable for anyone that has done any coding before.

Then I started experimenting on my own. First I tried to get a PHP script to send text to the display, but that failed because of something wrong with the serial connection on my server, so I just tried to get it to display text and such, and that worked. :3

Added some pictures here of the arduino with the display connected. Planning to use it to make a cool clock or something like that, going to get an Ethernet shield and connect it to the internet! Probably going to make it show the time and such in binary and Unix time.

So I haven't nearly unleashed the arduino's full power, and it is a powerful little micro-controller that I will have a lot of fun with it.

[Show as slideshow]

Read more after the break!

First of all, was only bidding on this on eBay because it was very cheap, and didn't think I would win with the minimum bid. But I did! and it arrived in about 2-3 weeks from Hong-Kong in a paper envelope lined with bubble wrap. The device itself was in a plastic casing, with a small USB extension cord and the driver cd for windows.

the USB unit itself

Had some ideas with this in the first place when I first looked at it, that I could measure temperatures inside my room or outside, but obviously this device will not last long outside, so got to figure out something else on that part.

When I opened the package, and tested it, the first thing I did was test it on my windows computer. That required installation of some software on the CD that i got with it, pretty basic and bad software that followed it, but worked as it should. Then I connected it to my Linux server and started the search on the internet for some drivers or scripts that would get the temperature out of it. I quickly found some scripts that worked great! I decided to graph it with Munin, since I already had a running install of it.

I used the temper_mon.pl from this post here, and the script below to get the graph separated, since I didn't want it to mix up with the other graph like the other script on this site.

#!/bin/sh
 
if [ "$1" = "config" ]; then
 
        echo 'graph_title Room temperature'
        echo 'graph_args --base 1000 -l 0'
        echo 'graph_vlabel Room temperature in Celsius'
        echo 'temp.label temperature'
        echo 'graph_category sensors'
        exit 0
fi
echo -n "temp.value "
/usr/bin/temper_mon.pl

And it worked great! I now have a working graphing of the temperature in my room. The image you see below is the live image from Munin.

room temperature graphed with munin

Then i had to find a placement for the sensor more away from the computer and away from stuff that generated heat that could make the readings wrong. I did not have a long USB cable available, so i used the USB to CAT-5 adapter I got off dealextreme. Worked great and got to use it, other than leaving it lying around.

USB cable to cat-5. (lack of long USB-cables)

And I found a good spot to put the device! Right under a shelf I have hanging. The tape on the picture did not last that long, so got some more heavy-duty tape there now, holding it in place.

Temperature sensor taped away from stuff generating heat.

The conclusion is that it is a great device for the price. Might be a bit tricky to set up at first, but not too hard either. Looking at getting more devices now, hoping that they will work with my current scripts after a few alterations. Maybe getting one for outdoor use too.

Don't hesitate on asking me any questions about the device and my setup, both in the comments, or use the contact form.

Read more after the break

Tested it with Winrad. Added here is a recording file in winrad. (you need winrad to play it off) HERE

Going to get a better antenna for it later when I get the money for it. Probably going to make one myself or something like that. Please share your antenna tips and such down in the comment field!

Should get an enclosure for the radio too now, to make it look a bit better. Should have sockets and such for the crystals and filters, and a place to keep the ones that is not in use, or just keep it all in the case. Not entirely sure of that yet.

Also added an image from winrad.

Also been browsing eBay (again) on cheap antennas if im not gonna build one myself. But I have found a lot of cool stuff on eBay though. I recently purchased a OBD bluetooth reader for my car, just to test it out with Torque on my phone. As you might have seen, I love gadgets! :3

I also recently made a FM receiver in class, worked pretty well. Runs on a 9 volt battery, and uses the headset wire as an antenna I think.