Headworx

Several months ago I pulled a trigger on a 2004 2005 Subaru Impreza Outback. Yes, such car exists, despite the confusing name. It was more popular in North America, with under 1000 made for the European market. It was always a head turner for me - as compact as the Impreza, with Outback-style higher clearance and bodywork. It is in a good shape and financially costed less than a pair of brake discs for a BMW (that is what the mechanic in a BMW service shop told me). And it is a dream to drive.  It was missing a radio and I have gone full-in, soundproofing the cabin and installing a 2-DIN head unit (Alpine iLX-705D) combined with the Audiotec Fisher Match UP 6DSP amplifier. The DSP makes the real difference, the clarity of the music scene is unbelievable. Especially when a high resolution audio is played - the Alpine unit supports up to 24-bit/192 kHz FLAC files. The head unit also has several modern convenience features, wireless CarPlay being one of them. I have wireless Car...

The Starlink WiFi network is not that easy and straightforward as it may seem to be. Afterall you would think - WiFi is a 20+ year old technology and should be mature enough o be just plug-and-forget. But it is not. The first issue I encountered was very unstable connection when I powered the Starlink antenna with a (dedicated) 3rd party USB-C cable. The network was repeatedly on and off. After some experiments I narrowed the issue down to the power supply . Not that the adapter I used was not powerful enough. It was a 100W brick I used regularly to charge my 16" MacBook. But there must have been something different. Either some voltage noise or incorrect selection of voltage (via the USB-PD protocol). Nevertheless switching to another adapter solved this problem. Then at one location I could not find a good location for the Starlink antenna to have a decent view of the sky. Remember - this is a line-of-sight satellite-based system. It will not work through a window - must see the...

I've had a chance to test Starlink (the "mini" variant) over the last week during the trip to Cabo Verde - a remote archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This was originally planned as a remote work week (no, AI does not make us less busy). And for that, Internet connectivity is fundamental. Before the trip we checked various internet forums for the quality of WiFi (and cellular) services there, and the opinions were very mixed. The first location we stayed at (close to Porto Novo) actually had upgraded to their own Starlink, and in our hut there was even the Starlink Mini Router Node installed. In the other location (the Paul valley) there was LTE coverage (not very fast), and the house had WiFi at around 4Mb down / 0.5Mb up - fine for basic browsing but not for video conferencing. I ordered the Starlink Mini dish via the Starlink.com site before the trip. It comes with a 30-day return policy. Probably I will keep it though, as generally it worked and it may j...

Finally. Digital cryptography has been applied to a civil satellite positioning system. Satellite positioning is one of the technologies that deeply influence our daily lives. Thousands of services rely on the fact that a mobile phone can instantly figure out where on Earth it is. Mobile maps are the first obvious example.  But there are other less obvious. Time stamping voltage and current samples in power distribution grids to synchronize them. Arbitrage of high frequency trading on stock exchanges. Maintaining microsecond time slots in 5G networks. Weather forecasting. Seismic monitoring. Tracking and recovery of items that broadcast Bluetooth signals. Photo tagging. Drones. City rentals of electric scooters and bikes. And many more... Then of course we have aircraft navigation, ship navigation, and many high value services. Disruption of satellite signals has been an easy target. There are several methods to do this. Brute-force jamming is the most straightforward. But there ar...

The shoemaker's children go barefoot. And so they do in the AI era. I plan to spend a week on Cabo Verde, most of the days working remotely from there. Quick survey of internet forums and cellular coverage maps hint at poor internet access there, so it seemed like a good excuse to try Starlink. Especially as the prices have fallen and the Starlink Mini Kit sells now for under $200. And then you can suspend the subscription at any time (so they say). There is also the 30-day free return period in case I don't like it. So I tried to more or less precisely time ordering the kit, so it arrives about a week before my trip.  The Starlink website was saying that I needed 1 to 2 weeks for the kit to be delivered. So I pulled the trigger on September 15. Then they sent me an email with the "updated" delivery estimate, which was between September 28 and October 6. So rather 2-3 weeks, not 1-2. Which would be a bummer as we leave for Cabo Verde on October 3. But there was nothin...

I used to use the iPad a lot in the past. But over the last year I've found myself using it less often. I think there have been three reasons for this decline and I have been able to get rid of at least two of them. Reason number one (and this one is still there) is the small "phone" form-factor apps have been getting increasingly better. Getting things done with just a phone is not only possible today but often it is the most effective way. App UX designers target the largest audience and these are phone users. I even find it quite convenient to watch (offline) YouTube videos on the phone ( the battery drain bug is still there - so be careful! ). Not movies but blog-type videos, where the audio track is really where the content is. Reason number two was the battery in my iPad was discharging quickly. It is a 3rd party battery. Apple does not replace the battery, replacing the whole device instead. I did not want to go through the iPad erase/restore process ( it is tediou...

The Karlsson Nixie clock (by Peter van der Jagt 1997) is very stylish. One of the first of the kind and definitely setting the trend. Unfortunately it does not hold the time after a power outage. For quite some time I was thinking of adding a time synchronization module. Initially the idea was to use the long wave radio receiving the DCF77 signal. DCF77 is increasingly more problematic as the 77kHz frequency is impacted by the totality of high frequency digital power supplies that generate lots of radio noise. The alternative is of course fully digital, relying on an Internet time source, based on the NTP protocol. Surprisingly (or not) the NTP-based module has proven to be super easy to build these days (...with the help of AI). Actually I wanted to kill two birds with one stone: have the bloody clock display the right time and also test Claude's capabilities as a junior embedded software / electronics coworker. Both goals have been achieved. I found it entertaining, educating, ...