Piss Off batteriser

when doing the admin part of this site,nothing infuriates me more than having a company trying to advertise their snakeoil products in the comments section.
I often get comments where someone has copied a bit of the text from my blog post and then shoved a link to some crappy product after it and usually I just delete it but given the fact that Batteriser has been so underhanded and dishonest about everything they do and claim - I thought I would call this one out.

Dave Jones from the EEVblog has debunked their product in just about every way imaginable and they've done some hilarious reply videos to him where some "engineer" is sat at a table with an oscilloscope hooked up to its own 1Khz reference/cal signal (with very badly compensated probes), some wires and boards and a suspiciously new and cheap looking soldering iron; explaining why Dave is wrong. then, when that failed they just paid people to downvote his videos.

so Batteriser, do not advertise your shitty, useless products on my site.

Daves Videos

My Apple iPod Rant

So no one can accuse me of just being an Apple hater I have posted a picture of the 2 iPod classics I own - why do I own 2? cause I have shitloads of music.
I don't give much of a shit about the physical design of these things - they look like little rectangle pods and there's not much more you can say about that.

being into electronics and also having owned a lot of these things - I have taken these apart, made frankenstein iPods from bits of lots of broken ones and so on, electronically I do love the circuitry involved in them and the engineers who designed them are obviously extremely talented.
   
With that said certain things really annoy the hell out of me and it's more to do with the operating system on these devices - first of all there was a really idiotic decision to limit the output volume in retaliation to lawsuits filed by morons who didn't realize that if you listen to sound too loud it could damage your hearing.DICKHEAD

"so why is this a problem then?" I hear you ask, "surely you don't want to damage your hearing" no, I don't but there are quite a few genres that play music very quietly - I'm a big fan of sigur ros for example and when the sound of a car in the distance completely drowns out the entirety of the music you are listening to then what is the use of even having an iPod in the first place?

I don't get why putting a disclaimer on the box saying something to the tune of "if you listen to loud music for  too long you will damage your hearing and you are also a moron - we are not liable" isn't enough, it's enough for smoking and everything else.

This is precisely why I hate people who file lawsuits, they don't realize that their short term ambition to extract money for nothing because they were injured by their own idiocy will be paid in some form by someone and in this case the people footing the bill is people like me who now have had the option of being able to hear what we are listening to taken away from us.

so I know that the limit wasn't initially Apples fault but they backed down to prevent further law suits, they put in that limit which makes me think that Steve Jobs' vision of not having sniveling lawyer types running his company has been betrayed.
   
my second issue is the equalizer on the iPod, this is basically a list of selectable presets with no user definable option which is just bullshit, I would guess that not bothering with the presets and just having the ability to make your own presets and save them would have taken a lot less time to code than the current method.

the nearest preset that makes the sound how I want is the "bass booster" preset and that is by no means anywhere near what I want, it distorts the low end too much which just suggests that the people coding these presets didn't take into account that music is mastered at different levels. If there was a user definable EQ I could compensate for this oversight, you know - like every single other digital music player has - even a lot of the old analogue portable music players had this feature, only one hung low shit things had presets minus the user definable EQ.

I think my main gripe concluded is that I want to at least have the illusion of control in what I do, I want to be able to turn my music up so I can hear it and I want to be able to change the EQ abit.

Apple are the ones most guilty of trying to make everything completely idiot proof and I really don't think we should allow anyone to do that because there are too many idiots on this planet. I just don't think they should be rewarded by being given things that were technologically more advanced than a space shuttle that even they can figure out how to use by engaging just 2 brain cells.

DC 0-19.99V Blue LCD Digital Volt Panel Meter Voltmeter Review

Originally this had a glowing report, it worked well and was accurate - the original one was broken and so they sent me a new one HOWEVER
once I got the new one, I did this review and put it in a box for use at a later date.
After someone got in touch with me asking me for the connections (they don't provide them) I thought I would get it out so I could let them know.

The LED backlight lit up, then nothing else happened - I triple checked everything and still nothing.
so about 7 months stuck in a box waiting to be used has some way made it stop working.
the box was not thrown,dropped or mistreated - it was an ESD safe container. So I am going to contact the seller (who I linked below this) let them know it's shit and give them opportunity to explain - 2 failing through no fault of my own is completely unacceptable.  
 HERE

iTeadstudio Review

iTeadstudio 
I came across this website when trying to source a cheap way in which to get small quantity of PCBs (Printed Circuit Board) manufactured for the purpose of prototyping new designs. I heard about iStore which has the subsidiary "iTeadStudio" who advertise the manufacture of PCBs at an extremely low cost.10$ for 10 2 x 2" boards. 25$ for 10 5 x 5" boards and so on.

I wanted to really put them through their paces as a company by acting as though I didn't know what I was doing, the reason being that I would primarily recommend a service like this to hobbyists and people new to the field of PCB design who may have difficulty in just getting a design to manufacture. 
      To start the ball rolling I purchased 10 5 x 5" boards which came to about 30$ and as per instruction I then emailed my Gerber files in a .zip to the email address they provide on the itead website. I submitted a Gerber that I knew to be in the wrong format and missing the drill files. *
I few days later I received an email from iTead to explain that I hadn't sent all the files needed for the components specified by the CAD program ie the drill files were missing.
       I then exported the drill files but this time I changed the unit of measurement so that it wouldn't line up correctly with the board they already had the Gerbers for and resubmitted that to iTead.
A few more days passed when I got an email from them to say there was a further problem and at no extra cost, if I sent them the source files they would sort it out for me so I sent them the source files.
5 days later my boards arrived in the post - they had even given me 2 extra boards.

so after all this great customer relations and willingness to help me, you might say, "were the PCB's any good?" well the short answer is Yes. tThe traces/pads/ground planes all matched up to my design perfectly. the 0.01mm traces were also perfect, no shorts between close proximity component pins which is often a worry I have personally.
Once the actual circuit was built up, it worked as expected.

conclusion
I can certainly recommend this company to people starting out in PCB design and indeed professionals needing a small run of PCBs to test out a design because it is so cheap and the boards are such high quality (they have since added a red option if you want a red PCB)  the staff were courteous and extremely patient with me unlike some much higher priced US/UK manufacturers have been in the past. If you still etch PCBs when there is an option like iTeadStudio out there then honestly, you need your head examining. 

I'd also like to mention that they have a fantastic additional service in which you can agree to open-source the hardware you've submitted and you receive 2 PCBs at random that other people have designed. Specifically they will make 12 PCB's of your design, send 10 of them to you and send the other 2 at random to other people who opt in for the same open-source service which for me is just a brilliant idea.
Keep up the good work iTead.


* Back when I started out I did this accidentally, I wanted to mimic my first errors as someone who was once new to the field-I would also like to add, that was a US manufacturer and they just manufactured the boards with no holes for the through-hole components which rendered the boards useless as they relied on 2 active sides using vias