A tiny, hand held drone, with blinkenlights, and SELFIE MODE! The 720p camera can record video as it flies, or turn around and snap a photo of you. It also has a range of SnapChat-style filters. Not bad for something costing £40.

The motors and propellers fold away into the body of the drone - making it less prone to damage in transit.

Black Box

It all comes wrapped up in a portable padded box.

Bundled in with the drone, you get:

• Wii style remote - with joystick and motion detection.
• USB cable (proprietary, unfortunately).
• Repair kit - screwdriver, four replacement propellers, and some foam pads.
• Instruction manual - for once, this is well translated and comprehensive.

The Power of Love

The big issue with drones is how power hungry they are. This is one is no different. There are no LEDs on the battery, so it is impossible to tell when it has fully charged. The flight time is about 5 minutes. Not bad for a small drone - but you'll probably want to get a couple of spare batteries.

One cool thing - there's a charging LED in the USB end of the cable:

A few other power niggles:

• Uses a non-standard USB cable. If you lose it, you'll need to find another one with a barrel connector.
• The remote uses AA batteries. Might have been helpful if it was also rechargeable. But it isn't a big deal

Control

The controller remote looks - and functions - like a Nintendo Wii remote. It has motion controllers built in to it - so you can fly the drone by moving your hand.

The joystick can also be used to control it. The four buttons are unlabelled, and activate various functions. You'll want to keep the manual close at hand while you learn what they do.

App

sigh The Android app isn't great. That's similar to most drones on the market. It is poorly translated and tricky to use.

For forty-quid I don't expect a perfect app, but this is barely capable. The reviews make very clear that it doesn't work for a lot of people.

It didn't work for me. I tried a couple of Android phones and tablets, but I couldn't get it to connect. That meant I wasn't able to use the camera, or test the other features.

Flight Tests

Like all drones, it takes practice to fly. The motion controller makes things fairly easy - once you've worked out how to make it take off!

Verdict

It is ridiculous how cheap these drones are now. You get around 5 - 7 minutes flight time and then need a recharge, that's a little disappointing. The app is woeful - which is a real shame. I was looking forward to taking selfies and seeing where it was flying.

The physical remote is great for controlling the drone's flight. It responds really quickly to the accelerometer and is easy to learn.

Buy it

You can buy this drone - and many, many variants - direct from RC Moment

Discount! Readers of this blog get a US$10 discount with coupon code GOOL.

Straight up, it looks like a plastic toast rack. It's a chunky beast, but surprisingly lightweight. You won't have trouble lifting it, but it stays firmly in place.

Round the other side are 10 USB ports. Well spaced out, not too cramped.

It might be nice if they lined up with the rack, but that's a minor quibble.

There's a fan inside the unit, although I never got it to switch on.

Good airflow all round. It takes a standard "kettle" lead. I was happy to see a UK plug - complete with earthing - came with the unit.

Wired up competently, and with a 13 amp fuse. OK. Let's test drive this thing!

I thought I'd try and tip the unit over by placing a 10 inch Android tablet at one end. But the unit's centre of gravity is just right. Let's pile on the tech!

MOAR TECH!

The slots are just about wide enough for a MacBook Air to fit in.

EVAN MOOOORE TECHHHH!!!

2.4 amps is sufficient to power a Raspberry Pi. Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those!

BUCKAROO!

Yup, the Nintendo Switch also fits.

OK, let's press the big button at the back and see if it explodes...

All the devices switched on. Those that support fast charging were able to draw the maximum current from it.

There is a fan inside the unit - to prevent overheating - but I wasn't able to get it to come on, even with all 10 devices charging.

Downsides

There's a lot to love about this mega-charger, but it isn't without flaws.

Firstly, it costs seventy quid. I guess £7 per charger isn't too bad - especially for a high power one. You also only need one plug socket.

USB-C devices are supported, but there's no USB-C specific slots. You won't get the advantage of USB-C fast charging. You can charge your new gadgets - but at slower speeds than with a dedicated charger.

Cable management is a bit horrific with 10 things plugged in. That's inevitable unless all 10 devices have a charging port in exactly the same place.

If I was going to be nit-picky, I'd prefer the USB slots to be spaced out in line with the "toast rack". It might be good to have individual LEDs for each slot.

Conclusion

If you've got 10 devices that you need charged simultaneously... This is probably as good as it gets.

You can buy the Ntonpower 10 port USB charger on Amazon.

It looks a little like a Microsoft Kinect - a single bar with two embedded cameras. The camera resolution is 720p on each lens.

It clips on easily to a phone via a padded screw clamp. You need to install a dedicate 3D camera app in order to make it work. In the box you get the camera, two USB-OTG cables, a tripod and clamp, and a carrying pouch.

Let's take it for a spin!

Sample shots

Video

As you can see, the 3D effect is prominent.

Video quality is 2560x720. Framerate is variable depending on how fast your phone is. My Nexus 6 managed just 16fps, my S6 got to the slightly better 25fps.

Because the cameras are independent, their exposure and white balance aren't linked. This also means that occasionally one camera may drop a frame or exhibit tearing - while the other side remains unaffected.

The cameras work best in bright light. Too much motion and the JPEG encoding can't keep up. You can stream raw YUYV video off the device - but you need to either lower the framerate or resolution if you want the USB bandwidth to be sufficient.

Audio is aac, 44100 Hz, mono, fltp, 67 kb/s You don't get stereo sound, which is a little bit of a disappointment. There are no microphones in the unit - audio comes from your phone's mic. I've removed the audio from the above videos

3D metadata isn't embedded - this is needed for sites like YouTube to recognise them as 3D videos.

TV Playback

I uploaded a sample video to YouTube - which has native 3D support. I was able to stream the video to my smart TV and watch it using 3D glasses.

Photo

The Svpro app doesn't let you take photos! A bizarre omission. I cheated and used the phone's screenshot tool to capture these. Click for full size.

App

Android doesn't natively support external cameras - so you need to download the Svpro app. It's basic - you can record video and play video. That's it!

No photo capabilities, no resolution or quality settings, no framerate control, no video editing or upload to YouTube.

Worse, the app in the Google Play Store doesn't support Android 7.0 - you need to download it directly from http://www.svpro.cc/app/.

I found that the app would not keep the screen on while I was recording. You may need to adjust your phone's display settings if you want to keep the screen active.

On the positive side, it doesn't ask for crazy permissions - although you will need to grant it USB access.

There are other apps on the play store which you can use, which show how good the Svpro app could be. For example, this is USB Dual Camera:

That's not a perfect app, but it gives you an idea of the potential.

The Svpro app also seems quite slow - which sometimes leads to disappointing video results.

Raspberry Pi Linux support

Although this camera isn't advertised as working on Linux, it is a USB camera - and it works brilliantly!

Running lsusb gives us:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1a40:0101 Terminus Technology Inc. 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0ac8:9902 Z-Star Microelectronics Corp.
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0ac8:9901 Z-Star Microelectronics Corp.

So this is a USB hub with two cameras attached to it! It shows up as /dev/video0 and /dev/video1 - and both cameras work perfectly!

It supports YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV) and MJPG for video capture and, pleasingly, each camera is 1280*720 native. No interpolation!

The Raspberry Pi website has a quick tutorial on capturing images.

You can capture the MJPG directly from the camera. This is the quickest and most efficient way to get 25fps video out of the device - although the filesize is rather large (5MB per second).

avconv -f video4linux2 -input_format mjpeg -i /dev/video0 -t 00:00:05 -c:v copy output.mkv

That will only capture from one of the twin cameras. How do we get both? Here's a lazy way to capture dual USB cameras simultaneously.

avconv -f video4linux2 -input_format mjpeg -i /dev/video0 -t 00:00:05 -c:v copy outputL.mkv & avconv -f video4linux2 -input_format mjpeg -i /dev/video1 -t 00:00:05 -c:v copy outputR.mkv

That worked on my Pi 2 Model B - I'll write a blog post soon explaining other ways to do this.

Technology

At the start of the decade, my mate Ket was building his own 3D cameras. Literally two cameras wired together and mounted next to each other.

It's incredible to think how quickly technology has progressed. For £65 you get a lightweight (50g) and tiny (92mm * 20mm * 20mm) camera pairing. The distance between the cameras is almost identical to the distance between my pupils. The view angle on each lens is 100°. Perfect for stereoscopic viewing.

But pushing all that video over a USB cable is tough. A more practical design may be to place the video processing within the unit - rather than relying on the USB bandwidth and phone speed being sufficient.

Downsides

There are a few little niggles with the Svpro.

• For phones, it is Android only. At the moment the USB OTG functionality only works with Android. So you iPhone users are out of luck.
• Dedicated Android app needed. An app like this needs to be polished, professional, and a joy to use. It isn't.
• 720p is fine for a cheap camera - and matches the resolution of most 3D displays - but a bigger resolution would be welcome.
• Framerate should be higher - although this is partially a limitation of the speed of the USB transfer and of your phone.
• No binaural sound. Audio is recorded from your phone's microphone, so there's no stereo effect.

Those are minor problems. The only other issue I found was that on some devices, it would capture BGR video - the red and blue channels swapped around. Which gave this weird effect: No idea why - I reported it to Svpro and they're looking into it.

To correct it using Linux requires ffmpeg's filter colorchannelmixer

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf colorchannelmixer=rr=0:rb=1:br=1:bb=0 -acodec copy out.mp4

Recording from the Pi didn't exhibit these problems.

Buy it

If you want to get started with a 3D VR Camera - for playback on a Google Cardboard or other VR headset - this is a pretty good device. The app is basic, but the video quality is satisfactory if your phone is fast enough. The 3D effect is perfect. It's also a handy way to add stereo-vision to a Raspberry Pi robotics project.

• The 3D camera is available on Amazon UK for £65.
• You can also get it direct from the manufacturer for around $80.

You can also view the unboxing on YouTube

This is a card-holder with space for 6 cards - wrapped up in a protective bundle, secured with strong magnets.

Let's get the price out of the way first, this wallet costs £80. That's not Gucci levels of extravagance, but it is more expensive than any wallet I've had so far. What makes it so pricey? It is build out of woven carbon fibre - that makes it lightweight and incredibly strong.

Gorgeous

The woven fibre design is sleek and subtle. It feels great in the hand, just the right amount of texture. The case catches the light and makes for a pleasant change from dull leather.

The edges are ridged - which helps it feel secure in your hand. This isn't as slippery as it looks.

As you can see in the video, the action of the mechanism is superb. It takes a little effort to open but snap when it does is perfect. Those strong magnets keep everything in place, with no worries that the cards will fall out.

Strong

I haven't tested the device to destruction, but there's no flex when pressure is applied to it. It won't crush, deform, bend, or break.

It appears to be fairly scratch resistant as well. It spent a day in my pocket with a couple of keys and some coins. This is what it looked like afterwards:

Unblemished!

Modular

It's about the same size as a pack of cards. But you can change that! The individual card holders are secured by some reasonably strong magnets.

The price for extra inserts is US$30 each - again, a bit pricey - but they're durable and double sided. Two cards fit in every one.

Personally, I've removed one of the inserts from mine so I can have an ultra-slim card holder.

Shielded

Tap-to-pay cards are a great convenience, but they're fairly easy for a fraudster to read them. The PITAKA is RFID shielded. With my test equipment I can usually read an Oyster Card through a leather wallet - once it was in this case it became invisible to my scans.

Disadvantages

It's not all good though. This is a card only wallet. There's no space for notes, coins, or pictures of your sweetheart. I'm (mostly) cashless now - but it may not be suitable for everyone. Extra layers are available which can hold paper money and coins - but they're a further expense.

The shell is extremely tough, that also makes it completely rigid. It won't deform to fit in your pockets. It is a hard surface and, if you fall on it, you'll feel it. It only weighs 80 grammes - so it isn't excessively noticeable.

The magic magnets which keep everything together will wipe your cards' magstrips. Thankfully most cards today use Chip & Pin - or are contactless - but you'll need to find somewhere else for your older cards.

Onto that shielding. The last RFID blocking wallet I purchased had a special pouch which wasn't shielded. Handy for Oyster Cards. With the PITAKA, it is all or nothing. Handy if you're paranoid.

Finally, you will need to take a bit of time to learn how to use this wallet. Opening one-handed is pretty easy to get used to - but you'll need to memorise where your cards are. On any other wallet, I open it then pick out the card I want. With this one, I have to remember which insert I want before I open it.

With all that said, it is a cracking bit of kit. It looks cool, feels brilliant, and is pretty damned secure. The cost is high, but you get a lot of high tech kit for the price.

Learn more

You can read more about the wallet on PITAKA's blog

• International readers can buy the wallet direct from PITAKA.
• UK readers can buy the wallet on Amazon UK
• PITAKA also have a range of ultra-tough phone cases available on Amazon.

Let's get one thing out of the way first, this is not the Amazon Echo! It's about the same size, shape, and design - but it has a very different purpose

What's it for?

This is a big Bluetooth speaker with integrated LEDs and microphone.

At a basic level, you pair your phone with it and the Realsound acts as a speaker and microphone - so you can hold telephone conversations with it.

But that's only the half of it. Dotted all around the speakers are a variety of multicolour LEDs.

When you play music through it, you get your own little disco show!

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Hashtag This Is Not The Amazon Echo!

Rather enjoying this review unit I've been sent.
amzn.to/2dp2nwl pic.x.com/8p7wqfuooq

---

Let's see it in action!

There are six different LED patterns you can choose from. Here we go!

Music by the inimitable SoloBassSteve (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Walkthrough

At the top of the unit are some touch sensitive buttons. Play/Pause, Next, Previous, Volume Up and Down, and the LED pattern select. The buttons don't seem to have any switches behind them, no clicking involved, just a quick tap and they react.

At the bottom of the unit, around the back, there's a micro USB socket. This is only used for power - you can't route audio through it. There is, however, a 3.5mm headphone jack - so you can plug in an aux cord and play directly from your phone.

There's a power toggle, and a small LED to tell you if the unit is charging. In the box you get a USB lead - but no plug - and a 3.5mm audio cable.

Quality

Let's be honest, this isn't going to replace your surround sound system. But it will comfortably fill a room with music. Take it outside and it performs beautifully. The sound emanates from all around, so you can leave it in the middle of a group of people and all enjoy the music.

Bluetooth range was acceptable. Obviously that will depend on your environment but I was able to wander around the house without any severe interuptions.

Audio quality was great - even at full volume I didn't experience any clipping. Voices were clear and stereo separation was good - the left speaker is at the bottom and the right at the top, phasing was also correct. Bass gave a good impression considering the size. Overall, a very competent speaker.

Playback Time

I fully charged the speakers - which only took a couple of hours - then set it to work. After 5 hours of music playback - and a couple of conference calls - the speaker was still going strong.

That's pretty damned impressive! It's thanks to its 3600mAh battery - that's larger than most modern smartphones'.

Phone Calls

For voice the performance is mixed. Sound quality is great. As a speaker phone the volume is great with no distortion. It's a little weird watching the LEDs bouncing around while people talk, but makes boring conference calls a bit more entertaining.

A few people said that the microphone volume was a little low, others didn't seem to notice it. Much like with an speakerphone, you'll need a fairly quiet environment to get the most out of it.

Teardown!

It wouldn't be an @edent review without ripping it open! Well, despite the dire warnings, where do we start? This is a splashproof unit with no obvious seams. Aha! The screws are under the rubber feet.

The glue is reasonably strong, so you'll need a good grip in order to peel it away. The screws are recessed, but not too deeply.

You can also see some test points which are exposed.

The top is a little tight to take off, underneath is the Bluetooth control unit.

The flipside of the controller shows us the BT antenna and other gubbins.

I'm not terribly happy about how well soldered the speaker wires are. Look a little fragile to me - but it's unlikely they'll come to any damage in a sealed unit.

The microphone is at the top. It's a standard condenser unit, I suspect the muffled sound is caused primarily by being behind a slightly too small aperture.

The next step is to remove the plastic backing strip. Do not peel this off or you will break it. Instead, slide it up gently.

This reveals three more screws for us to play with.

With the screws undone, we can begin to lift up the covering and see the LEDs on the inside:

And that's about as far as it is possible to go without removing some of the wiring. In order to get at the guts, you'd need to either unsolder or cut some wires. Not the sort of surgery I'm happy performing on a demo unit!

I'm sure with a little hardware hacking, it would be possible to make those LEDs play pong - but let's leave that for another day!

Buy It!

The Oittm Realsound Bluetooth Speaker is £50 from Amazon UK. It's an excellent kitchen speaker. Leave it plugged in, on a shelf somewhere, and enjoy music whenever you're in the room.

If you're interested in sponsoring my blog, please see my rate card.

I've been asked by eBay to put together a series of collections. As an international trend-setter*, it is my sincere pleasure to gather up the best that eBay has to offer.

For example, here is a collection dedicated to the Galaxy Note 3. It's a mixture of kit I've bought, or stuff that I really want.

You can see all of my collections on eBay.

*Well...

I think I'm turning into a Luddite. I see all these shiny tablets and... I just don't want one!

Don't get me wrong, I drove myself crazy trying to get an HP TouchPad because a) Massive discount and b) under a hundred quid.

You see, everyone I know with a tablet has one of two accessories.

1. A bluetooth keyboard. Because it's really hard to do any sustained typing on a touch-screen.
2. A dock. Because it's really hard to do any sustained typing on a touch-screen.

You see, I like to use my computer. Tablets are perfect for a consumer who wants to see pretty lights and occasionally prod at a large target with their fat, sweaty thumb. But that's not me. I want to type, to blog, to code, to comment, to design. I want a laptop. And, indeed, that's what I have.

If I want to do something passive, I'll watch TV. Or my laptop screen. Or my phone. If I want to read, I'll use an e-ink screen. My Kindle is lighter and has better readability than any tablet.

Why do I need another expensive device? Especially one I can't create on?

Oh, and don't tell me about the camera on these devices - does this look anything other than ridiculous?

So, Samsung have released the Galaxy Tab 10.1 - see Samsung's YouTube Channel to see it in action - and once again I have gadget lust. It's big, shiny, runs Android (and will run even better when Cyanogen is ported to it).

But once more, I shall have to turn it down. It's lovely, I'm sure, but just not for me.

To help me justify my descision to forgoe this beautiful fondleslab, here are the top three worst things about the Galaxy Tab.

1. Non-standard charger. It uses some awful "media port" rather than micro-USB. (Note: it's not even PDMI
2. No USB OTG - so I can't use a keyboard, mouse, or external drive with it. Well, I can, but I have to shell out for a dongle that I'll invariably lose.
3. No external storage - so if I want to take a bunch of movies and music with me on a trip, I'm limited to internal storage.

You can gaze at Samsung's FaceBook page but it won't improve things.

Am I crazy? Is there any reason to own a tab if I've already got a (great) Samsung Android phone and an (awesome) ThinkPad running Ubuntu?

What on Earth do you people do with a tablet that I'm missing out on?

This is a sponsored post from ebuzzing

I've been pleasantly surprised by ebuzzing. They're part of the Wikio Group, who are focussed on getting bloggers to post about about brands that they like - and get paid for it.

Despite running a backwater blog on obscure mobile phone related nonsense, I often get emailed by companies wanting to promote themselves here. Sometimes they offer review goods to keep, sometimes cash, sometime they don't want anyone to know they're paying for the post.

As a blogger, I've no real way of assessing my market worth - nor how to deal with the tax implications of being sent free "stuff". I've got a pretty clear idea of the ethics - always reveal if you've been paid to blog - but I'm slightly unsure of the legals.

That's why I think ebuzzing is a great idea. A fixed payment for blog posts and a clear set of ethical guidelines.

Payments are either per post - this one is netting me £30 - or pay per view - usually around 2p-5p.

Posts have to be approved by moderators. This could be a bit tricky - do you want someone telling you what you can and can't write on your blog? I've found them to be very fair. Despite my less than fulsome praise for the Dell Duo the only changes ebuzzing wanted were to ensure that I'd correctly included the links to the client's content and that I'd spelt their name correctly. No heavy-handedness at all.

Posts have a minimum word-count and have to feature links to the client and any marketing collateral they want. Usually an embedded image or video.

I must confess that I've found some of the campaigns a little lacklustre. Sometimes they're little more than "embed this video and ask your readers to discuss why they like cheese." To me, that's an advertorial rather than a genuine discussion. Of course, if you don't run the cheese campaign, you don't have to.

My Perfect ebuzzing Campaign

This campaign is also an opportunity to imagine your perfect campaign: who are the brands you’d love to work with? What would be the best way, in your opinion, to create an original experience between your community and those brands? We’d love to hear your ideas!

I think any successful campaign has to focus on two things.

1. What the blogger can - or would - do with the product.
2. What the reader can get out of the promotion.

I'd love to see more exclusive content, more competitions, and more blog-focused promotions. Sending people off to join a Facebook group feels a little 2009 to me. Pick winners from the best blog comments - similar to the Ping Pong competition on Vikki Chowney's blog.

I could also imagine a phone manufacturer posting photos of landmarks taken with their hot new phone. Then get bloggers and their commenters to post photos of the same landmarks taken with their crappy old camera-phone.

Sign Up

If you're interested in signing your blog up, you can find out more on ebuzzing.co.uk. There are no joining fees and you're free to pick and choose what you'd like to blog about.