7 May 2023

Making an Infrared Remote Interface for the Pioneer PD-Z83M

Making an Infrared Remote Interface for the Pioneer PD-Z83M

I made a little black box over the Bank Holiday break. I’ve had a Pioneer PD-Z83M multi-changer CD player since I was a kid, and it was how I listened to a lot of the music of my formative years. I remember listening to Fields of the Nephilim’s sprawling masterpiece Elizium on it at university, […]

3 Oct 2020

Improving the Home Working Setup

Improving the Home Working Setup

I’ve made a couple of improvements to the home working setup recently. The first was upgrading my monitor, helped along by a generous donation from my parents (thanks!) I went from an elderly-but-OK AOC display that I happened to find lying around the house in March, when the first lockdown started, to a 29″ LG […]

5 Jun 2020

Long-form Lockdown Project: Wired and Boxed

Long-form Lockdown Project: Wired and Boxed

That silly thing I was working on? Well, my extra buttons and LED holders and a step drill bit and a cheap box arrived (thanks, RS and eBay, especially RS for having a vast range of boxes that you can filter by dimensions) and so I got out my soldering iron and wired it all […]

9 Oct 2016

First Impressions of the UK Amazon Echo

First Impressions of the UK Amazon Echo

Gosh, but isn’t the Amazon Echo bloody brilliant? I mean! The speech recognition, the voice of Alexa herself (we’ve come a long way since I were a lad), the way it can pick your voice out from across a noisy room and home in on exactly what you’re saying… What? You already know? What do […]

5 Oct 2016

Review Corner: The 1byone Folding Bluetooth Keyboard

Review Corner: The 1byone Folding Bluetooth Keyboard

A review of the 1byone Foldable Bluetooth Keyboard.