My Smart TV has a problem with JPEGs

It will load & display some, but not all images.

Which is not great when we are trying to show-off our holiday snaps!

The Hacker RP33 "Autocrat": refurb time

The Hacker brothers were great engineers.

But along the way, they built great equipment, and lost 2 companies.

Seems like the best route to success is to sell rubbish!

Radio Caroline North: using the Manx Radio stream

Most of the time I listen to the Radio Caroline album channel.

 

But once a month, Radio Caroline North transmits from the Ross Revenge.

How can you receive these broadcasts if you are not within a reasonable distance of the transmitters?

FreeviewPlay on a Manhattan set top box

I thought our Sony smart TV was suffering from early onset dementia.

It seems to have forgotten how to provide any kind of catch-up tv.

So I've had to look around for alternatives.

Insomniacs Bedside Radio: signal to noise ratio

Raspberry Pi audio projects can be prone to noise issues.

I don't use our bedside radio very often, but when I do, I notice background noise.

I've finally got around to doing something about it.

Remote Control KitchenPi: playing with NodeJS

I wanted to change channels via a phone or iPad on our internet radio.

This looked like a good excuse to try out something new.

So I settled on getting my head around NodeJS, which looks ideal for headless Pi projects, including internet radios and birdbox camera systems.

Broken Boombox? ...just Bodgit!

I was recently given a Bluetooth speaker with an unusual fault.

It worked fine, so long as you held down one of its buttons.

I couldn't open the box, so what to do?

Bluetooth Audio Transmitter Repair

We recently had a problem with our Insomniacs Bedside Radio.

The Bluetooth pairing button seemed to have shifted position within the box, causing it to be jammed on.

So time to open it up and reposition it, or so I thought.

BBC Radio iPlayer: download & convert to MP3

If I'm going on a long drive, I like to be able to listen to radio "plays" to ease the journey.

As BBC PodCasts give way to iPlayer Radio, this is becoming increasing difficult.

So now I have to use get_iplayer to download a programme, and ffmpeg to convert it to MP3.

Radio Caroline on 648kHz: great coverage with just 1kW

When I first heard about Caroline's plans to transmit on the Medium Wave, I was skeptical.

I couldn't see the point in running a community type radio station on just 1kW of power to cover a limited coastal region of East Anglia.

But I've changed my mind   ...Now I get it!

Putting Radio Caroline back on 199 metres

Having refurbished our Bush VHF 54 valve wireless to a point where it is now a working radio, I have discovered that the Medium Wave band is a bit of an electromagnetic desert.

The strongest station in our area is something called Talk Sport, which mostly features two guys talking utter cobblers.

So if this old wireless is going to be more than just a piece of furniture, I need to establish my own radio station.

Bush VHF 54 refurb: some new valves

A few spare parts arrived this week, so I made some progress with refurbishing this wireless.

Its now a working set, although there is a lack of sensitivity on all wavebands.

However, I can tune in stations on all three wavebands and the tuning scale is now nicely illuminated.

Bush VHF 54: thermionic valve primer

The next step in refurbishing my Bush VHF 54 wireless is to have a sniff around the valves.

I guess that anyone starting a career in electronics after about 1970 has never had to study (or work with) valves.

So here is a quick and simple primer.

Bush VHF54: rewiring

Some of the rubber coated wiring in our family wireless was so badly perished that it just snapped and dropped off the wire when moved.

There was a real danger that one of these bare wires would come into contact with one of its naked neighbours, possibly causing damage to the set.

Therefore I just had to remove and rewire the main wiring loom to make our wireless safe.

Bush VHF54: replacing the drive cord

After being on my to-do list for the last 4 years, I've finally started work on my vintage family wireless.

This 1950s valve wireless was still working at the end of 2013, although the tuning mechanism had failed.

I bought 2 metres of cord from and eBay supplier, and set about getting it running.

BlissFlixx: Pi HDMI config.txt settings

I recently set up another Raspberry Pi as a BlissFlixx set-top box using an earlier post.

Although the system worked, I quickly realised that I'd missed a couple of config settings from my original post.

So this update includes those important settings.

Caroline on Pirate BBC Essex?

On the 14th August 1967 the UK government introduced the Marine Offences Act in a desperate attempt to stop offshore "Pirate" radio stations.

It was pretty successful as, one-by-one, the stations turned off their transmitters and their staff headed for home.

But Caroline didn't stop, and now on the 50th anniversary of this legislation, Caroline is not only transmitting via the web, but also on the Medium Wave radio band!

Hello 4G, goodbye Freeview

Quite by chance, I spent a few hours last Saturday, lifting carpets and floor boards.

The signal on one of our TVs had been a bit iffy for some time, with a tendency for the picture to pixellate on some of the weaker channels.

I put this down to the ancient, brown, co-ax cable running down from the distribution amplifier at the top of the house, to the Sony in our ground floor middle room.

KitchenPi: an internet radio for my kitchen

We needed a radio in the kitchen to replace our Bush DAB/FM portable which has put in good service, although DAB reception in our area has never been great.

As space is at a premium, I wanted the new radio to take up as little space as possible.

So I came up with the idea of building something that would fit under the eye-level kitchen cabinets, behind the decorative molding.

BlissFlixx: wifi config & user information

I was thinking recently about how I might send a configured BlissFlixx SD card or complete system to a friend.

How easy is it for someone to configure and use?

This led to a bit of Python coding, as I attempted to make wifi configuration just a little bit easier.