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The company I work for had these on sale for christmas 2005: http://www.maplin.co.uk/StoresRoboV2.asp.

How has this made it to the front page almost 9 months later?

Why not have spent the money passing this bill on educating the populace about turning off unused equipment. How many offices have the monitors turned on 24/7 along with the photocopiers and fax machines. Electrical equipment in standby mode uses almost the same amount of power as when on but the perception is that they are "off". I've have an Intelligent Mains Extension Lead six sockets, one is black into which you plug your PC power cable. All my peripherals are plugged into the remaining sockets. When the PC powers up the extension lead detects the power consumption and allows power to the additional sockets used for the peripherals in time for them to be available when the PC boots. When you power down the PC, power is cut off to the other sockets automatically switching off the peripherals.

Not as fancy as the one in the review, but how about this? Its got a UK plug/socket but should be fine for use in FR (from the specs on that page it should work with 240v 50/60hz but not 120v).
I have one, seems to do the job!

Maplin (http://maplin.co.uk/ still has a pretty good range I think.

Rich

the flag of england

http://www.maplin.co.uk/images/Full/32731i0.jpg

Get yourself a plug-in power meter, Maplin have them (http://www.maplin.co.uk/ product id is L61AQ.

And these people have LED bulbs: http://www.yourwelcome.co.uk/lightbulbs.html

Man, you should consider upgrading to one of these puppies

Actually, mini-TOSlink jacks are the same size as 1/8" headphone jacks. You get an adapter to fit to a standard optical cable (see link). My iRiver IHP-120 mp3 player has a single jack that does quadruple duty as optical in/out and line in/out.

A lot of the commodity WiFi APs with external antenna connections use RP-TNC connectors. Oh, TNC. Looks about right for the Netgear AP I'm using (I knew the connector looked familiar). You can get them from Maplins in the UK - they even sell a TNC to BNC adapter. In any case, if the parent is right, it's definitely not proprietary or hard to get hold of.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=10438 &doy=15m7

2 sets of AA rechargeables should easily be sufficient (assuming decent sunshine - in West Africa - and from my experience of a Garmin ETrex)

That filter's a little pricey for me, and I'm on the wrong side of the Atlantic. This is a lot cheaper. A nice big fan sucks air into the case through a filter, while the power supply blows out... I have half a dozen spare filter pads in a drawer. Whenever I remember (like 6 month intervals), I swap the filter and put the old one in the washing machine. The filters get filthy, but the interior, and the CPU heatsink, stay pretty clean.

hear hear,

That book was our univeristy text, great stuff. I sat and read it cover to cover rather than wait for the the course to set the pace.

I would also rettpcommdn one of these kits. The 300 in one kit and it's ilk are particularly neat: a load of bits and bobs and solderless joints, they have springs that you put the connecting wires into. Good fun to get you going.

for those not too up on what computer parts this is what he means by jumpers.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=34146 &doy=6m5

so they work out at about 7p each and they are certainly used inside pcs ;)

It look like this. A little box with an RJ-45 socket on each end.

For a related challenge, Maplin.co.uk is displaying a big sign labelled "Hacker safe, tested daily" on their front page. Netcraft lists it as running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000, its IP address is 195.92.224.143, and the only TCP access is through HTTP and HTTPS ports.

This would be entirely possible thanks to modern power electronics, if you really want to. Honestly I'm not sure it's worth the bother, but here you go:

Get a normal DC power supply that will supply the largest voltage you need and more current than you need. Or build one. Whatever.

Go to some electronics shop (If you're in the UK, Maplin are good) and get some Voltage Regulators. These are basically integrated circuits that can take in a wide range of voltages and output a fixed voltage.

Connect the voltage regulators' inputs to the output of the main power supply.

Connect the voltage regulators' outputs to your devices.

NOTE: Lots of external computer bits ask for unusual voltages. That might be a bother.

NOTE 2: There will be lots of books availiable on this topic. Look for 'Power Electronics' on Amazon - or in a local university's library (since textbooks are expensive). Don't get a book that's too old - some of this stuff is pretty recent technology.

NOTE 3: I am no expert. While I believe my design would work (and be pretty efficent), I can't promise anything.

Michael

This would be entirely possible thanks to modern power electronics, if you really want to. Honestly I'm not sure it's worth the bother, but here you go:

Get a normal DC power supply that will supply the largest voltage you need and more current than you need. Or build one. Whatever.

Go to some electronics shop (If you're in the UK, Maplin are good) and get some Voltage Regulators. These are basically integrated circuits that can take in a wide range of voltages and output a fixed voltage.

Connect the voltage regulators' inputs to the output of the main power supply.

Connect the voltage regulators' outputs to your devices.

NOTE: Lots of external computer bits ask for unusual voltages. That might be a bother.

NOTE 2: There will be lots of books availiable on this topic. Look for 'Power Electronics' on Amazon - or in a local university's library (since textbooks are expensive). Don't get a book that's too old - some of this stuff is pretty recent technology.

NOTE 3: I am no expert. While I believe my design would work (and be pretty efficent), I can't promise anything.

Michael

I've put a mains power meter inline with my main desktop PC (350W PSU, P4 2.4, Radeon 7500, 512M RAM, 2x80G 7200 RPM discs, 1x DVD-ROM drive, 1x CD-RW drive, TV card) and whilst the meter shows it drawing about 100-110W at boot, at idle it only draws about 70-80W.

Just use of of these - two PS/2 devices into one USB port. You can probably find them at a computer fair for much less than Maplin sell them for, too.

I use an IDE CD burner (and DVD burner) through an external USB to IDE adaptor - item A25AT at www.maplin.co.uk. It works an absolute treat, and as far as cdrecord (I use the Mandrake patches) is concerned, it's a SCSI drive since USB Mass Storage is implemented as SCSI over USB, no messing around with the varying ATA mechanisms.

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maplin in the UK have something similar on special at the moment. No serial port but I was going to get one and hack with it.
has anyone had one in pieces yet?
Still its 50 ($100) but tha's sucking for being in the UK aint it.

A cheap headphone splitter comes in quite handy. I've got one headphone out with my pc to tv lead and one with my headphones. The ultimate solution in laziness!

Maplin are good. here

I tool started off with one of those "discrete components on springs" sets.

Very much like this I imagine.

Desperately trying (and failing) to remember the name of something else that turned up while at school (198x, in the UK). It was a series of interconnecting small PCBs which were all open - not cased in or anything. (Low voltages only - this was educational!) You connected them together to make longer and longer chains, and had wires to jump across boards if needed.

The big advantage (educationally) was that being open you could see how it was put together physically as well as logically. The big disadvantage was the size - with each little PCB having the components, connectors and a little schematic for that part, it was easy to construct something that was longer than the table.

I have no connections with Maplin, I'm just a satisfied customer.

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- One 10-Watt halogen light with a lead-acid battery. It's lasted me for several years, but is starting to loose it's charge.
- 2-3 blinking lights which take any old AA & AAA batteries.

My version of the 10W lights you have died after about 6 months. The newer versions have proper batteries, but are about twice as expensive, or more.

For the smaller lights, NiMH cells work just fine, and have a reaonable lifespan and charge. You might want to buy a couple of sets, both for using while the other is being charged, and for carrying as backup.

AAA rechargeable batteries used to be harder to find, but I just noticed them here

The local Maplin already do a Bluetooth dongle with a 100m range, add a pringles cans etc and you could probably get a respectable range.

I don't think spammers are going to go for this in a big way, the cost per message is too high, as well as shops I can see loonies with a message wandering up and down the city streets sending "Repent" and "Romans 10:9" bluejacks

For anybody wanting a loud clicky action keyboard there's one available at Maplin suitably called the "CLICK Keyboard".

They're quite cheap and they have a great action. The first one I had met with an unfortunate end so I've now got two more because I hate typing on spongy keyboards.

BTW don't take the back off unless you want to fiddle with the hundreds of bits of copper that make the clicks.

Maplin has blue LED Xmas lights. They're £29.99 and that gets you 120 blue LEDs. Thats 25p each! They say theyre discontinued but a friend has seen them still in stock.

I have just checked around some of the well known UK suppliers (Maplin Electronics and RS Electronics) to find these ultra bright LED's in blue, but I will be damned if I can find em.

The very brightest I saw was 2000MCD - and that was being sold as the highest brightness at nearly $7US for a single LED.

Suggestions on where to buy from please?

Thanks!

The potting compound will ooze around all components and then harden in 24 hours, making your PCB into an instant black box. Also makes it *very* hard for a competitor to reverse-engineer your electronics. Heh, I knew that joint major Comp-EE would come in handy :-)

More effective cooling - install a reservoir in the laptop, and fill it with freezer spray (freely available). This will cool the CPU/heatsink to -50 Celsius, just target the spray at the CPU.

I started with a Forrest Mims book. The Babani range are also quite useful. They've tended to cross the line into computing these days and those aren't so good, but the electronics ones are handy enough.

Furthermore, I _would_ talk to guys at Radio Shack, but you need to find the experienced ones. usually a manager or someone older who's worked in the store for a long time, and is really interested in electronics. These guys often who a lot more than you would guess. Of course, the majority of them, especially the younger ones wouldn't know which way to put the batteries in.

For UK hardware geeks, Radio Shack is dead and gone (Carphone Warehouse turned 'em all into cellphone shops) but Maplin was, and still is, better than UK Radio Shacks ever were.

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can I just say, I have a iPod LC, and it's great. I proudly showed it off at work, and had the entire office looked on in wonder. Its use of a mix of normal batterys and solar power is a god send, well it would be if I did not work nights, which combinned with the solar recharger from maplin I can safly ignore the red letters from ePower. And I can duel boot from it! Its masive 500Mb harddisk is partitioned with both MacOS and PPCLinux! And I don't need any fancy-paints connector like USB or Firewire, plugs right into my Mac's IDE chain! Mlk

If you mounted the cells on hinged plastic or whatever you could just fold out your array whenever you needed it.

For the lazier geeks out there- Eyefo sell a neat frisbee that will display any message you like.
I've got one. It's bright enough for broad daylight in the middle east (unlike some of the "propeller" clocks in the pictures) and seems to be indestructable.
I got mine at a Maplin store, geek heaven in its own right.

In terms of writing to one, I'm currently in the process of investigating how. The biggest problem is the 50us (I think it's microseconds, not sure off-hand though) pulse to the PGM (I'm working from memory here) line. This is the "timing critical" part of programming. One way to do it would be to use a monostable, or other timing circuit to provide just one pulse. Using that in conjunction with the 24 bit IO card to set the address/data lines, programming should be easy.

Caveats:
24 IO lines are all used up for address (16 bits) and data (8 bits). You'd have to use another IO thingummy to get it to work (I'm going to try using the serial port). Then I just set the data/address lines, pulse the appropriate serial line and a 50us pulse will be sent to the chip. I can wait a millisecond (say) before programming the next byte. Ok, it'd take a minute to program a chip fully - how often are you programming chips though, given it takes 20 minutes to erase one?

-- Maz
Varying the mileage you get in direct proportion to the number of MP3 related posts on freshmeat.net