Archive for April 2021

Friday Fun: Speaker to mains power disaster adapters

This is an old recipe for a disaster from 1990′s. This converts NEMA mains connector to 1/4″ plug. Offers a nice set of possibilities for unexpected show disasters like electrocution or over kilowatt of constant 60 Hz bass line without an amplifier. It seems that some company really tried yo push this potentially extremely dangerous

XLR mic cable tester

I saw presentation of Sound Tools XLR Sniffer/Sender at https://www.ratsoundsales.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=soundtools-xlr-snifsend It was described: “Quickly troubleshoot faulty mic lines and cables with this set of remote end cable testers. The XLR Sniffers can also utilize phantom power to test snake lines and cables in live environments, making it simple to diagnose issues and get your show

XLR over CAT 5/6/7

An audio multicore cable (often colloquially referred to as a multicore, snake cable or snake) is a thick cable which usually contains 4–64 individual audio cables inside a common, sturdy outer jacket. Audio multicore cables are used to convey many audio signals between two locations, such as in audio recording, sound reinforcement, PA systems and

Some locks are picked too easily

“As an engineer I’ve always laughed when actors bypass locks like that in movies. I never imagined anybody could design something that wrong.” Here is a collection of videos from LockPickingLawyer that show clearly how bad many locks are: [1045] Swiss Army Knife Bypass of Keypad Lock [1064] First No Touch Open! (Retekess Keypad) [1060]

Wooden satellite from Finland

World’s first wooden satellite slated for launch in Finland. UPM Plywood, Arctic Astronautics and Huld announce today a joint mission to launch the first ever wooden satellite, WISA Woodsat, into Earth’s orbit by the end of 2021. The satellite electronics is mostly based on Kitsat that is a fully functional one unit CubeSat (roughly 10

tinySA RF spectrum analyzer

TinySA is an amazing gizmo! I have already posted some video link on TinySA and here is some mode material on it. RF testing is getting quite popular these days, with many devices featuring wireless capabilities. However, RF test devices are quite expensive, or at least have been, as on few recent years many affordable