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...