This isn't entirely a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely interested. A few weeks ago, I bought an electric screwdriver. One of the key selling points, for me, was that it charged via micro-USB. My last electric screwdriver had some weird proprietary connector which broke. I've hundreds of USB cables - of various lengths - and dozens…
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Here's a weird market gap. Most modern phones use USB-C to charge. Increasingly, they forego a headphone jack in favour of using Bluetooth. Peachy! But all of the Bluetooth headphones that I can find are charged via Micro USB. Which is bloody annoying! I want to charge my phone, laptop, camera, games console, and headphones…
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The good folk at Ailipu Technology have sent me a fist-sized USB camera to review. This is a cheap and simple way to get external video into a home server like a Raspberry Pi. This is the, slightly cumbersomely named, elp-usb100w05mt-dl36. What's in the box? The USB cable is around 5 metres long, and is…
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The good folks at Ntonpower have sent me this utterly ridiculous, and fantastically over-powered USB charger. It has ten frickin' ports each one capable of delivering 2.4 amps. So, what's it like? 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…
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My solar panels deliver pure Direct Current electricity into my house. All my house has Alternating Current circuits. Therefore, I need an inverter to change the DC to AC. This is inefficient. Most of the electronic devices I own are powered by DC. So I plug little wall-warts into the AC sockets to convert back…
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As much as I love my MacBook, 2 USB ports just isn't enough! Between phone charging, memory sticks and a keyboard and mouse, I'm sick of swapping cables in and out of ports. I wanted a USB hub which didn't have a trailing wire (one more thing to get tangled or lost) and would fit…
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I'm a big fan of the EU. For all its flaws, it has kept the peace for decades. Not only does it prevent physical wars - but it reduces the harm caused by companies warring against each other. Like most legislatures, it works on glacial timelines. Not only tackling the problems of the past, but…
Continue reading →What does the design of cables tell us about the men who invented them? Computer designers often strictly gender the components they create. The most obvious example is the motherboard - the central hub of the computer from which all electronic life descends. As well as circuit boards (often called daughter-boards) - cables are also…
Continue reading →I recently got a MakeyMakey. It's a sort of ersatz USB keyboard that can be plugged into anything electrically conductive. I blogged about using it to control my Raspberry Pi using fruit and veg. I also blogged about controlling Android using a USB keyboard and mouse via a USB OTG cable. Hang on... the MakeyMakey…
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After posting about using the Galaxy Note II for a full day of work, someone asked me why I didn't just plug in a proper keyboard and mouse to it. To be honest, I'd never even considered that as a possibility! In order to plug in USB peripherals to an Android device, you'll need a…
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