Rob Pomeroy

29 October 2013

Review: JOYO JA-03 Guitar Headphone Amplifier

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up an ESP LTD F-155DX 5 string electric bass guitar. It was slightly bashed, but otherwise in great condition – in short, at only £200, a bargain. I love bargains.

There’s one small problem with electric instruments: they need amplification. And amplification can sometimes be a little… antisocial. In order to keep relations with Mrs Geek reasonably harmonious, I started looking around for a solution.

One of the problems was that I didn’t know exactly what I needed. In the past, I’ve come across micro amps, which have a built-in speaker but I wanted something even more compact, that could just drive a pair of headphones.

Eventually I stumbled across the well-reviewed Vox AmPlugs. Plug the device into the guitar, put your headphones into that, simple. At £32 though, I wondered if there might be something a bit cheaper. Since this was just going to be for quick practice sessions, I didn’t need the best that money can buy.

Casting my net slightly wider, I came across the JOYO JA-03 series of headphone amps. They look suspiciously like a clone of the AmPlug, but who knows, perhaps they’re made under licence. Anyway, the important point: they’re just a tenner. Sold!

There are a few different amps in the range, with different sounds – tube, metal and so on (see the full range on JOYO’s website). I plumped for “Acoustic“. I’d read good things about the sound of the ESP bass, so I wanted to hear it as clean as possible – and this better suits the style of music I’m going to be playing, anyway (i.e. not heavy metal).

The amp arrived very quickly, well packaged in its blister pack. Happily this was the type of blister pack that is not sealed shut, so you can open it without having to cut the pack. Fewer blister-pack-related injuries – yay!

The JA-03 is powered by a pair of AAA batteries. Happily, the amp came with fresh batteries in the pack, so you’re good to go straight away.

There’s not a lot to the device. The standard quarter inch jack is built in (no need for a separate lead – you plug it straight into your guitar). It has a 3.5mm socket for headphones and another 3.5mm socket for an auxiliary/line input. In this way, you can feed music through the amp and play along.

You get four controls: gain, tone, volume and power. The volume control affects the level of the input from your instrument. I expected the gain control would alter the volume of the auxiliary input, but not so. It’s hard to describe what this does – it doesn’t change the overall volume of any input; instead it makes it sound more like you’re playing through an amplifier. If you crank the gain control all the way up, you hear that characteristic hiss and the sound from your instrument is more like it is being played through a compressor – a little “thin”. I found I had the cleanest sound with gain turned right down.

The volume of the auxiliary input is not controlled by the JA-03. I plugged in my phone using a 3.5mm cable and then set the volume of the music on my phone. Using my phone’s volume control and the the volume mixer on the amp, I was able to find a perfect balance between the music I was playing and the output of the bass, very easily.

Skipping over the power control (which I trust requires no further comment!) the remaining control is the tone dial. This is a pretty low grade adjustment. I didn’t like the effect it had on the sound of my bass, so I left it in the neutral centre position.

With the mix right and all the tone adjustment coming from the excellent active pickup set on the ESP bass, I was frankly blown away. Not by my playing, I hasten to add, but by the convenience of the set up and the great sound I achieved through some fairly cheap and nasty in-ear headphones. For practice purposes, this is all you need.

I went one step further though, and connected the output of the JA-03 to my humble home stereo. With tunes coming from my phone, it was a joy to play along in my living room and Mrs Geek didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact the 9 year old twin junior Geeks loved the show (I know, the “hero worship” bubble will burst soon enough – let me have my moment of glory).

If you’re very fussy about the quality of your audio, you might want to look for something built with more expensive circuitry, but honestly at this price, you cannot beat this. Highly recommended. Pick one up from Amazon (or somewhere else if you prefer), today!

At the time of writing, the JA-03 can be yours for just £9.49.

[easyreview title=”Geek rating” icon=”geek” cat1title=”Ease of use” cat1detail=”Very, very straightforward.” cat1rating=”5″ cat2title=”Features” cat2detail=”It’s hard to think of anything else I’d add – maybe a distortion effect? But that’s just me being greedy.” cat2rating=”4.5″ cat3title=”Value for money” cat3detail=”Can’t be beaten. Full stop.” cat3rating=”5″ cat4title=”Build Quality” cat4detail=”Feels like it’s made from slightly brittle plastic. Not sure how well it would survive a serious bash in a soft case. Made from cheap materials as you’d expect at this price point. Otherwise it’s assembled well enough and feels solid.” cat4rating=”3.5″ summary=”I can’t tell you how delighted I am with this purchase – and the price delights most of all!”]

25 October 2013

How-to: Overcome “critical temperature” problem with CloneZilla

In case you don’t know, Clonezilla is an excellent (and free) disk/partition imaging tool. It’s essentially a customised Linux distribution. You boot from a CD and then follow a text-mode wizard to backup or restore images of hard drives or other storage devices. You can see the process in action in my Raspberry Pi SD card backup/restore article.

The process can be quite intensive for hard drives and processors. One of the things Clonezilla does is compresses the image of the drive to save space wherever you’re storing the image. Compressing a 2GB file is a big job for an older processor. I was finding with one of my older laptops that the processor was working so hard, it caused the temperature to rise at a point where it triggered a Linux “panic”. The system immediately halted with an error message about “critical temperature”, half way through making an image. So of course that image is not usable.

What’s supposed to happen in normal usage is that when the temperature rises dangerously, the operating system slows down the processor. This allows the machine to cool down (at the obvious expense of a performance penalty). I’m not sure if this is fixed in later versions of Clonezilla – there’s some talk of it in the mailing lists. I’m indebted to those mailing lists for some parts of workaround that follows.

One thing you can try is using the i486 version of Clonezilla. This assumes older processor hardware and so (I suspect) doesn’t make full use of your processor’s theoretical potential. Just select i486 architecture from the download page for the latest stable version.

As a belt-and-braces approach (and this is the method I’ve adopted), you can also issue commands that tell the Linux kernel to run the processor at a particular frequency. In my case, I’m telling an Intel Core i3-330M to run at 1.6GHz instead of the usual 2.13GHz.

You can do this as follows:

Once you’re in the Clonezilla wizard, press Alt-F2, to access a login shell.
Issue the command cpufreq-info. In my case, I saw the following, as well as some other information:
analyzing CPU 0: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 933 MHz - 2.13 GHz available frequency steps: 2.13 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.87 GHz, 1.73 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.47GHz, 1.33GHz, 1.20 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 933 MHz ...
You may see more than one CPU listed – mine shows just the one (single CPU, dual core). Most importantly, this lists the frequencies to which you can set your processor clock.
Pick a frequency from the list that’s lower than the maximum. E.g., if the list shows that the processor can run at a lower speed of 1.60 GHz, set the clock speed as follows:
sudo cpufreq-set -c 0 -f 1.60GHz
The -c 0 parameter refers to the CPU number, starting from 0. Repeat the command, changing this number, for each CPU.
Press Alt-F1 to return to the Clonezilla wizard and continue with the cloning process.

This approach sets the clock speed just for this particular session, so normal service will be resumed upon reboot.

If this all sounds like too much hard work, you could try one of the good commercial solutions instead, such as Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image.

16 October 2013

Review: Sony HDRAS15 Sports Action Camcorder with Full HD and Wi-Fi

I am constantly on the look out for good action cameras. The action I shoot is quite specific in that I attach cameras to off-road vehicles and I insist on them being robust, easy to use but obviously able to capture quality images in all weathers. Audio is important to me to the extent that there must be sufficient sound quality to capture an old Land Rover engine.

The market leading GoPro range can be found wanting in many of these areas: the moment the sun goes in or you drive down an enclosed lane, the picture quality plummets. That and thinking of the extra case needed to make it waterproof and the poor sound, well it’s fair to say I’m not a GoPro fan.

So I read about this Sony Sport Camera and the fact it was running a Carl Zeiss lens and I was excited about the prospect of some high quality images. Perhaps I’d found a competitor to my current camera of choice the Drift Ghost HD?

Out of the box I was immediately a little disappointed. Everything felt flimsy and light. The access panel to the camera’s inner workings is a really shoddy-feeling click-off panel. I was willing to forgive it this because after all, it did come with a snazzy looking waterproof case. The battery compartment was similarly fiddly and cumbersome and this camera was starting to me more like one of those cheap Chinese ones you pick up from eBay. I couldn’t help but hold it up to the HD Drift Ghost and wonder if I had paid a lot of money for a dead duck!

It uses what is now the standard (MicroSD memory cards) and can handle up to 32GB.

From some quick research, it had everything I expected from an action camera in this price range other than, weirdly, a colour screen. Instead Sony assumes the wireless connection to your mobile phone will be all you will ever need. I think that’s a big mistake. Action cameras should trade on simplicity and image quality and I’m not a fan of unnecessary bells and whistles that do little other than push up the prices.

So I read ‘Carl Zeiss’ on the side of the camera by the lens. Surely the pictures at least will be high quality?

Okay then, time for a short video demonstrating the footage this camera takes.

What can I say after that? To be honest I cut my review short. It’s quite simply unfit for purpose and I returned it to Amazon for a refund. I really could not find one redeeming feature in this camera and apart from the poor case design, average sound, average visuals it simply didn’t work. The on/off switch through the case was rubbish and often wouldn’t toggle the power without some serious force. It was just a really bad user experience and something that I recommend you avoid. You would be much better off spending a little more for a Drift Ghost HD or even a little less and getting the Kodak PlaySport Zx5, both of which are superior in every single way.

I had high hopes for this camera and it’s not often I buy something that so bitterly disappoints. I’ve watched and read quite a few reviews that seem to make some lofty claims and I can only guess they are sockpuppet reviews from retailers because this camera is nothing short of useless. In fact since buying it and writing this review I notice the price is plummeting which tells you all you need to know really!

[easyreview title=”Dummy rating” icon=”dummy” cat1title=”Ease of use” cat1detail=”No screen to align the camera; on off button is hopeless.” cat1rating=”0.5″ cat2title=”Features” cat2detail=”I’ll credit it a 2 because of the features it claims it has. I didn’t get that far.” cat2rating=”2″ cat3title=”Value for money” cat3detail=”I found it unfit for purpose. Certainly expected a lot more for the money.” cat3rating=”1″ cat4title=”Build quality” cat4detail=”Everything about it felt cheap and shoddy” cat4rating=”0.5″ summary=”I’d spend a quarter of the price of this on an eBay special and get better quality .”]

10 October 2013

How-to: Raspberry Pi tutorial part 3: Web & file hosting with Webmin & Virtualmin

[easyreview title=”Complexity rating” icon=”geek” cat1title=”Level of experience required, to follow this how-to.” cat1detail=”You’ll need to keep your wits about you!” cat1rating=”4″ overall=”false”]

Part 1: Getting started with the Raspberry Pi
Part 2: Creating/restoring an image of the Pi’s SD card
Part 3: Using the Raspbery Pi to host multiple web sites and as a file server
Coming up – Part 4: Creating a Dropbox replacement from a Raspberry Pi
Coming up – Part 5: Using a Raspberry Pi as a thin (or remote desktop) client

Right, so our basic Raspberry Pi is set up and ready to go. You’ve got the Pi, you’ve got the case and you’ve got a decent SD card. What next? How about turning it into a low-powered file server and web host?

To do this, we’re going to install Webmin (a web-based server management application) and Virtualmin (a virtual hosting platform that sits on Webmin). This will leave us with a convenient graphical interface for managing the Pi and a full blown web hosting environment.

Prepare the Pi

I’ll assume for the purposes of this exercise, that we’re picking up from where we left off, from tutorials 1 and 2. That is, you have the Rasbian operating system installed on your Pi, and a backup to revert to if it all goes horribly wrong.

Next step: we need to install a few packages that Webmin and Virtualmin depend on, plus the services we’ll be managing. From a root SSH shell, issue the following commands:

apt-get update apt-get -y upgrade apt-get -y install apache2 apache2-suexec-custom libnet-ssleay-perl libauthen-pam-perl libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions samba bind9 webalizer locate mysql-server

Due to the Pi’s limited power, you may find these operations take a while. I’m installing locate for my own convenience – it’s handy for tracking down obscure files on your system. You can install PostgreSQL instead of MySQL if you prefer.

Install Webmin

According to the official site:

Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. Webmin removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files like /etc/passwd, and lets you manage a system from the console or remotely…

When I install packages that I’ve downloaded (rather than directly through a package manager), I like to keep them in one place, so I can keep track of what’s installed. I’ve formed the habit of keeping these packages in a directory belonging to root. So, to get Webmin, whilst logged in as root:

cd mkdir installed-packages cd installed-packages wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.660_all.deb

That last command downloads Webmin’s package. The version number will inevitably change – you can make sure you have the latest version by browsing to the official Webmin website and looking for the “Debian Package” link on the left hand side of the page.

Install Webmin with:

dpkg -i webmin_1.660_all.deb

Again, this is fairly intense for the Pi, so be patient! Once complete, you should be rewarded with a response like:

Webmin install complete. You can now login to https://my-pi:10000/ as root with your root password, or as any user who can use sudo to run commands as root.

Connect to the relevant page with a web browser, accept the SSL certificate warning and you should see something like the following:

For some reason when I logged in, it wouldn’t accept the root password. Webmin actually tracks the root password separately from the Linux password database. If like me you find you can’t log on as root, you can fix this by running the following command:

/usr/share/webmin/changepass.pl /etc/webmin root [new password]

Configure Apache

Earlier, we installed the apache2-suexec-custom module. This allows us to run Apache websites securely for multiple users, under a directory other than /var/www. Using your favourite text editor, load up the file /etc/apache2/suexec/www-data. Change the first line from /var/www to /home.

Enable some modules that Virtualmin will need, and restart Apache:

a2enmod suexec a2enmod actions service apache2 restart

If you see an error message “Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName”, you can safely ignore this. It doesn’t matter, for the correct functioning of Virtualmin.

Install Virtualmin

At the official site, you’ll read:

It is a Webmin module for managing multiple virtual hosts through a single interface, like Plesk or Cpanel. It supports the creation and management of Apache virtual hosts, BIND DNS domains, MySQL databases, and mailboxes and aliases with Sendmail or Postfix. It makes use of the existing Webmin modules for these servers, and so should work with any existing system configuration, rather than needing it’s [sic] own mail server, web server and so on.

You can install Virtualmin from within Webmin. Proceed like this:

Log in to Webmin
From the Virtualmin download page, find the link entitled “Virtualmin module in Webmin format”. Copy the link (it will end in “.wbm.gz”).
In Webmin, go to Webmin–>Webmin Configuration–>Webmin Modules. Select the radio button next to “From ftp or http URL” and paste the link you copied into the field. Then click “Install Module”.
Do the same for the link for the “Virtualmin theme in Webmin format”. You’ll find the necessary link on the Webmin site, called “Virtualmin theme in Webmin format (for FreeBSD, MacOS and Solaris)”. The link will end in “.wbt.gz”, this time.
To activate this theme, go to Webmin–>Webmin Configuration–>Webmin Themes. From the drop-down box, choose “Virtualmin Framed Theme” and click “Change”. Ignore the “Post-Installation Wizard” for now, and hit F5 to refresh your browser and use the Virtualmin theme for Webmin. You should arrive at a screen like this:
Click Next, to arrive at the “Memory Use” screen. My guess is that for most cases, it would be best to answer “No” here (don’t pre-load Virtualmin). Click Next.
The next choice is database servers. This is up to you, but I switch MySQL on and PostgreSQL off. Click Next.
You’ll see a message “MySQL has been enabled, but cannot be used by Virtualmin. Use the MySQL Database module to fix the problem.”. Click the “MySQL Database” link.
Enter your root username/password combination for MySQL (you will have been asked this when you installed MySQL via apt). After saving this, hit F5 to refresh and return to the Post Installation Wizard.
Proceed through the wizard up to where we left off (just after database server selection).
Leave the MySQL password unchanged and click Next.
I would suggest setting MySQL memory usage to 256M and clicking Next.
In the DNS config screen, check the box “Skip check for resolvability” and click Next.
Set password storage mode to “Store plain-text passwords” and click Next.
At the “All done” screen, click Next. We’re not all done, by the way!
You’re now at the main Virtualmin screen. Click the “Re-check and refresh configuration” button.
You’ll see a complaint about DNS. Click the link “list of DNS servers”. Enter 127.0.0.1 as the first DNS server, make sure the hostname is a fully qualified domain name and click Save. Then hit F5 to go back to Virtualmin.
Click the “Re-check and refresh configuration” button again.
The next complaint is about email. I’m not planning to use the Pi as an email server, so we can just disable that Virtualmin module. Go to Virtualmin->Systems Settings->Features and Plugins. Uncheck the “Mail for domain” module, slick Save, then hit F5.
If your screen now looks basically like this, you’re good to start hosting websites (using the “Create Virtual Server” link).

Setting up virtual hosting is a big subject and beyond the scope of this tutorial, but that’s the basic platform in place. Have a read of the official Virtualmin documentation for pointers. If you happen to browse to your Raspberry Pi’s IP address or DNS name, you’ll be rewarded with a very simple test page:

Running a file server

With Webmin and Virtualmin up and running, you can now start creating file shares. How you approach this depends a bit on how you want to use the server. Probably (!) this will be a personal/hobby server. In that case, I would suggest creating a new virtual server for each user first. That creates all the initial Virtualmin linkage for hosting websites and databases. Then having done that, you can create a fileshare for the user(s) by browsing to Webmin->Servers->Samba Windows File Sharing.

Again, the specific details are best not discussed here, because there are so many possible different configurations. You are however ready to start customising your file/web server to your heart’s content. So now would be a perfect time to take a snapshot of your Pi, so you have a good restore point.

Happy hosting!

4 October 2013

Review: Drift HD Ghost Action Camera

SEE THE UPDATE REVIEW OF THIS CAMERA AFTER 3 MONTHS OF USE

I’m going to start this review in an unusual place for me, with the packaging! Have you ever looked at a review and it starts with someone taking the product out of the box and you just think ‘Why? Not interested!” and then you fast forward? Yes, yes I know, I do the same. So at at the risk of boring you guys…

I picked this one up from Action Cameras UK and what a cool little box the Drift HD Ghost comes in. It’s designed so well to display the product and also to be used as for ongoing storage that I thought it merited a mention.

The Ghost is the updated incarnation of the Drift HD, which was already a pretty successful action camera in its own right. The big draw of the HD Ghost for me was the remote control unit.

Both the remote and the camera have a durable rubberised coating. If you’ve experimented with one of the cheap and cheerful ‘Chinese’ eBay action cameras, the jump in quality to the Ghost is very evident indeed, as is the price of course. It feels satisfyingly heavy giving me the impression of quality but perhaps it would be a little too weighty to be used as a helmet cam. Since I plan to mount this on a 4×4 and give it some abuse, that’s not an issue for me.

Now as is my Dummy remit, reading the manual before using the camera is not my style. My first test was to jump straight in. I mounted the HD Ghost on one of my VacMounts Pro series suction mounts (after all it’s more expensive than my usual cameras and I didn’t want to lose it) and went for a day’s green-laning in the Oldham and Holmfirth area. The weather was horrible, so perfect as a first test for something claiming to be an action camera.

Camera Mounting

One issue that irritated me about the HD Ghost was the way it mounted. The standard camera screw thread is located on what is in fact its side. To me it appeared to be the base so when I mounted it for the first section of testing, a laning day in Oldham, all the footage was on its side and I had to flip it in post-processing, which lost the effect of the 170 degree lens. The thread seems poorly located to me and I expect everyone to make a similar mistake the first time they use the camera. Okay, you can spin the lens around but the more you have to mess about with an action camera to set it up, the less I see it as an action camera.

Camera Lens and Waterproofing

The weather during this testing was horrible: driving rain and a dark brooding day. When I started watching my footage back the first thing I noticed was that all of my cameras with a traditional flat lens had collected beads of rain and a lot of the footage from them was useless. The Ghost HD has that fish eye lens in a glass dome and whilst rain did hit it and stick for a short while, the shape encouraged the rain to run off. The first gust of wind or bit of speed and the lens would clear again. Definitely score one for the Ghost. As for being waterproof, the weather was simply horrible all day long and short of being submerged I couldn’t have tested it any more thoroughly. The Drift Ghost came out with flying colours.

Battery life was comparable with any other camera I’ve used in the action area. I started with a fully charged battery and with frequent activation via the remote, the camera battery lasted about 3 hours. The remote unit lasted all day without any issues.

Whilst we are on the subject of the remote, wow, what a feature that is! It flashes in different colours to indicate to the operator what mode the camera is operating in and what the camera is currently doing. The camera options to take single pictures or bursts of pictures (which you might use for stop motion photography?). I stuck with it in standard video mode because that works best for my kind of action photography. However I did test both modes and they worked perfectly and the images were of a good quality. I loved the fact that when the camera was recording, the remote flashed red and it gave me great control of the footage I was shooting and saved me hours in the editing room.

Sound Quality

When I did start editing the footage I noticed that the sound recorded by the Ghost was very subtle and of low amplitude. Within the sound recording options I found I was 2 clicks off the maximum setting but even cranking it up to full, the volume level was pretty low. It did however eliminate wind noise like no other camera I’ve used to date so the low volume can be fixed during editing.

To start my testing of the video quality I took the Ghost HD on a Green Lane day with my local Land Rover club during which I also filmed with some of my favourite Kodak Playsport ZX3 cameras (review here). The lens on the Kodak is superior to anything else I’ve used so straight away it had a lot to live up to. I also took some side-by-side sample shots so you could see how the cameras transitioned between light and dark conditions. I did also include my expensive Panasonic Bridge Camera in this test, which I would never mount on my bonnet for anything other than a test, but I thought it would set a bench mark for everything else!

Everything was testing using VacMounts’ professional quality mounting systems, which I have already reviewed and found to be quality kit at the right price.

I’d suggest you watch this short video because the results could come down very much to personal taste. The colours and quality from the Drift Ghost are what I would demand from a camera costing £250. That coupled with the genius remote system make it a major contender and something I am considering buying for myself (I had a demo unit for this review). My only issue is the way it handles anything other than perfect lighting situations. For use in woodland and overgrown lanes therefore the camera can be found lacking – in fact not as good my cheap and cheerful Kodak Playsports.

[easyreview title=”Dummy rating” icon=”dummy” cat1title=”Ease of use” cat1detail=”Its okay. Not too complex but the mounting angle is just plain weird.” cat1rating=”4″ cat2title=”Features” cat2detail=”Honestly can’t think what else it could have. Remote is genius, low light filming average.” cat2rating=”4″ cat3title=”Value for money” cat3detail=”Quite simply, it needs a better lens. for this money it should work in low light.” cat3rating=”2.5″ cat4title=”Build quality” cat4detail=”Its solid and robust and oozes quality.” cat4rating=”4.5″ summary=”It’s a cheaper more flexible Go-Pro with the same frailties but some nice bells & whistles.”]

25 September 2013

Review: Car & Action Camera Mounts from VacMounts – Single Base Mount & Triple Mount

When I first started using action cameras to film 4×4 trips, I struggled for a long time trying to find a mount. My two main considerations were that the cars were bouncing around significantly and I was using expensive camera kit. A mount then had to be reliable and able to absorb some of the shock.

There were a number of offerings on the market but these fell into two categories. 1: made in plastic with rubbish suction clamps or 2: very professional and large but costing 3 times the value of my cameras. I bought a few of the plastic versions; some of these were quite expensive devices, but in my opinion, if it’s plastic, it’s junk. I have a drawer in the garage stuffed with broken bits of plastic clamps, suckers and brackets. I didn’t even start down the pro mount route as I run 6 cameras on some days out and quite simply that was out of my budget.

So hunting around eBay for something that might do the job, quite by chance I stumbled on VacMounts.

The first thing to note is that they are made of anodised aluminium and come either in a triple or a single ‘super’ suction configuration. I was immediately drawn to the triple mount because it looked like it would give a good firm base for the kind of phone style cameras I use.

The suction pads are each 8cm in diameter and operate via a simple 90° lever mechanism, which seems incredibly robust – certainly compared to the plastic offerings I have used so far.

I always try to position my cameras so you can just see part of the bonnet or bodywork because it better orientates the viewer. I tested the suction on a variety of car bonnets and windscreens with finishes ranging from perfectly polished paint to vinyl covered bonnets, right through to poorly brush-painted panels.

An interesting feature of the triple mount is that the support arms are slightly pliable. This has two effects. Firstly, it lets you alter the angle of each cup to suit the surface. Secondly and most importantly for me, they absorb vibration and shock to help keep my images smooth and stable.

Just a few small pointers to ensure this mount works faultlessly. Always keep the suction cup and the surface clean. The only failure I had with the triple suction mount was when I put it on a mud covered bonnet without giving it a quick rub first. Also, make sure you moisten the cup before applying.

At the camera connection end of the mount there is a similar quality feel. A triple jointed standard 1/4″ thread ensures you can mount the camera at any angle. With metal lock nuts and joints everything feels high quality and reliable. Certainly for the smaller action cameras I use, I feel like I’ve found the perfect mount.

Moving onto the single suction mount: it’s an interesting mount and at first the fact it was a single sucker made me think it would be less reliable. This uses a chuck key and a larger sucker that is 10cm in diameter. The fact it uses a removable key rather than an attached clamp means you are unlikely to unlatch the camp inadvertently, something that has happened to me occasionally when I’ve pushed my Land Rover through dense vegetation. Also the chuck key adapter allows you to activate a 180 degree turn, providing a far increased level of suction. The 1/4″ thread with double jointed fastenings is then the same as the triple mount.

In tests I’ve found that both mounts produce nearly identical results. They both seem to grip incredibly well on any half-decent surface. The triple mount suction cups have failed me once completely on a badly painted bonnet and a number of times just a single cup has come loose. The single suction cup always seems to be locked very securely indeed and although I don’t get quite the shock absorbing properties, I have to say I feel a little more confident of it.

As a budget camera mount for vehicles, both these VacMounts are way ahead of the curve. They both offer unparalleled features with the highest level of build quality I have seen in this area. Combine that with a good action camera and you have an unbeatable combination.

The triple suction mount can be found on eBay for £29.95 and the single suction cup for £13.95. Both a bargain for what they offer.

You can also visit the VacMounts website.

Visit the VacMounts store on eBay to find out more.

[easyreview title=”Dummy rating” icon=”dummy” cat1title=”Ease of use” cat1detail=”Pretty obvious stuff once you understand the surface must be clean.” cat1rating=”4.5″ cat2title=”Features” cat2detail=”Perfect for purpose. Triple mount has let me down once. Fortunately no damage to my camera.” cat2rating=”4″ cat3title=”Value for money” cat3detail=”You will be paying considerably more anywhere else for mounts of this quality.” cat3rating=”5″ cat4title=”Build quality” cat4detail=”Infinitely better quality than anything else in its price range.” cat4rating=”5″ summary=”If you want a reliable action camera mount, seriously, I wouldn’t look any further.”]

20 September 2013

How-to: Resolve Problems with the iOS 7 upgrade

So I assume you are like every other iPhone fanboy and girl and have been eagerly awaiting the iOS 7 update… Are you also like me and have watched and heard your friends merrily upgrading? Okay, complaining about slow downloads, having to free up memory before starting the upgrade and general niggles but on the whole, after persevering, the upgrade goes ahead?

Are you? Is that you? Or are you like me and your iPhone 5 refuses to even see the upgrade let alone download it.

Okay, let’s see if we can help!

Let’s start with what I’ve tried to get past this problem. First though, before you start tinkering it’s vital that you back up your iPhone so you at least have somewhere to go back to if it all goes horribly wrong!

Back to my problem. After waiting for an hour, my phone was still not able to find the update. I made the assumption that there was some software fault in the phone so a hard reset might clear it. Hold down the home button and the lock button for 10 seconds and your iPhone will do a hard reset. When your iPhone powers back up – can you now see the update waiting to download? Nope, neither could I.

So, what do we do next? I’ve got my backup so let’s try the reset options. First Reset All Settings. In theory this should just reset your phone settings and not touch your data and media. Very straightforward; it removes all my little customisations (booo!!!) and unfortunately when I go back to the Software Update screen, still no update!

Right time to get serious, Erase All Content and Settings and then upgrade to iOS 7 before restoring my backup – can’t fail, right?

I select this option and it gives me the impression that it is doing the upgrade but then appears to ‘freeze’ when powering back up. I say “freeze”. I gave it an hour and the flamin’ thing stubbornly refused to switch back on and continually displayed the swirling symbol. I assumed it had frozen and did another hard reset and the phone came back on, obviously not having deleted the content.

Right, it’s time to consult with Geek, who after laughing at the iPhone fanboy, suggested I connect to iTunes via my PC and try the reset or direct upgrade options via iTunes. Sounds like a plan.

On connecting to my PC and clicking on the iPhone icon everything starts happening and iTunes immediately prompts me to upgrade to iOS 7. Brilliant, easy peasy……………….

So after 10 minutes of Apple jiggery-pokery my iPhone comes back to life running iOS 7 – minus all of my data, apps and everything else I loved!!! Arrgghhhh!!!!

Okay, don’t panic, I did my backup before, right? Navigate to the backup section in iTunes and hey presto………………… Oops! no sign of it. In fact a message saying I have never backed up to the cloud! Now you can imagine my panic. That’s 2 years of customization and info. Sack iOS 7 now, that was the least of my worries.

But then it occurred to me, maybe because it was still attached to my PC it wasn’t even looking at the cloud. Back to basics then. Unplug the iPhone; in Settings–>General, select the option Erase All Content and Settings then wait nervously. 7 agonizing minutes later, the iPhone powers back up and prompts me that it is a new phone and would I like restore my last saved backup from this morning? Oh thank goodness!!!!

So in a nutshell, if you are having the kind of problems I have had here you need to make a backup to iCloud, connect your iPhone to a PC to get access to it and update it but then disconnect and Erase all data before restoring from your original backup. Brilliant, thanks a lot Apple, that#s 6 hours of my life I’m never getting back!

I’m still struggling to understand exactly what the issue might have been with my iPhone 5. The only thing I can think of is that it was a specific batch from a specific provider. Mine was one of the very first to be released and was on the O2 network. Ah well, all’s well that ends well.

19 September 2013

How-to: Raspberry Pi tutorial part 2: SD card backup/restore

[easyreview title=”Complexity rating” icon=”geek” cat1title=”Level of experience required, to follow this how-to.” cat1detail=”This is wizard-driven. Very simple. You’ll need to be able to burn a CD, nothing more taxing than that.” cat1rating=”1″ overall=”false”]

Part 1: Getting started with the Raspberry Pi
Part 2: Creating/restoring an image of the Pi’s SD card
Coming up – Part 3: Using the Raspbery Pi to host multiple web sites and as a file server
Coming up – Part 4: Creating a Dropbox replacement from a Raspberry Pi
Coming up – Part 5: Using a Raspberry Pi as a thin (or remote desktop) client

In my last Raspberry Pi tutorial (the first in this series), I mentioned that we can take a snapshot of the Raspberry Pi’s SD card at any time. This will give us a “restore point”, so we can skip a few installation steps if we want to wipe the Pi and start again. Quite a few Raspberry Pi projects will require that we start with a working installation of Raspbian so that’s the snapshot I’m going to take. You can of course take a snapshot whenever you like. If you’ve honed and polished your Rasbmc box, it would make sense to take a snapshot in case it becomes horribly corrupted at some point or melts.

There are many different ways of skinning this cat (or squashing this ‘berry), but my preferred method is the tried and tested customised Linux distribution, Clonezilla. I’ve been using CloneZilla personally and professionally for years and persuaded many colleagues of its merits (besides the obvious, that it’s free). It can be a bit intimidating with all the options it presents. If this is your first experience of CloneZilla, following this tutorial will also give you a gentle introduction to this powerful toolkit.

What you’ll need

A copy of Clonezilla, burned to disc.
A computer (desktop or laptop) configured to boot from CD.
An external hard drive, with enough space to store the image (you’ll only need a few gigabytes spare).
A USB reader for your SD card. You can buy one here.

Take a snapshot

Power down your Pi, with the command halt, shutdown or poweroff.
Boot your PC from the Clonezilla disc. You will arrive at a simple menu/boot screen. It will boot automatically within 30 seconds – you can hit enter at any time, to proceed.
You’ll be treated to rows and rows of gibberish while Clonezilla boots up.
Choose your language and keyboard setting.
Hit enter to start Clonezilla (yeah, you thought it had already started, didn’t you).
Insert your Raspberry Pi’s card, in its reader.
Choose “local_dev”.
A screen prompt will tell you to insert your external hard drive.
Insert the external drive and then wait for 5 seconds or so.
A few lines will indicate that Clonezilla has registered the presence of the drive.
Hit enter and Clonezilla will mount the various partitions now available to it.
Select the external hard drive as the drive to which we’re copying the snapshot (in my case, the largest partition on the list).
Hit enter. If the drive wasn’t cleanly dismounted before (oopsie), Clonezilla will check and fix as required.
Choose a directory to store the SD card image and hit enter.
Clonezilla will spit some more gibberish at you. Ignore it and hit enter.
Though it makes me feel a little silly, choose Beginner mode.
Choose “savedisk”.
Give your disk image a meaningful name.
Select the SD card, to save the image. You use cursor keys and the space bar here.
Select Ok to continue.
If you’re confident your SD card is in good shape, you can skip checking it.
I’d recommend checking the saved image though. It doesn’t take long and gives you peace of mind that you should be able to restore from this image.
Clonezilla will helpfully point out that you can do all this from the command line (yeah, right).
Press Y and enter to continue.
Shouldn’t take too long.
When it’s all done, it’ll report progress. Press enter.
Enter 0 to power off (or whatever you prefer) followed by enter.
Clonezilla will eject the disc. Hit enter to carry on.

You should now have an image (consisting of several files) on your external hard drive, which you can later use for restoration. Job done.

Restore a snapshot

In this scenario, we’re starting with everything powered off, ready to begin.

Boot your PC from the Clonezilla disc. You will arrive at a simple menu/boot screen. It will boot automatically within 30 seconds – you can hit enter at any time, to proceed.
I’ve got to say, this screen full of strange foreign characters is pretty unnerving. But don’t worry. It’ll pass.
Choose your language.
I’ve never found I’ve had keyboard problems, even though I use a UK keyboard…
Hit enter to begin.
Insert the SD card/reader. Some nonsense will appear on screen. Don’t worry – just hit enter.
Select “local_dev” and hit enter.
Insert your external hard drive and wait 5 seconds or so for it to be recognised.
It’ll detect the drive – hit enter.
Next, it will mount your various partitions.
You may have a few…
Choose the external drive from the list then hit enter.
Clonezilla will check the drive.
Choose the directory where your saved image is stored and hit enter.
Clonezilla will give you an overview of its file systems. You will be thrilled. Hit enter.
Choose “Beginner”, no matter how patronised you may feel.
Choose “restoredisk”.
Select the previously saved image.
Choose the SD card. Hit enter.
Clonezilla reckons you really want to do this at the command line. Hit enter.
This is a destructive operation and will wipe your SD card. Press Y then enter.
Clonezilla doesn’t trust your judgment. Hit Y and enter again.
There are two partitions to restore to this card. You’ll get a progress report for each restoration.
Clonezilla will let you know once it’s done.
Press enter to continue.
Choose 1 to reboot (or whatever you prefer) then hit enter.
Once the CD is ejected, you can also disconnect the SD card and hard drive. Hit enter.
Witness the majesty of the Linux death rattle.

If all went well, you can now install this SD card back in your Pi, boot up and continue.

13 September 2013

Review: Underwater Video Photography with the Kodak Playsport ZX3

I’ve long been a fan of the Kodak Playsport ZX3. It’s been my mainstay action camera for a few years because of its excellent balance of value, quality and durability. It’s also got one of the better external microphone systems and brilliant image stabilization.

If you’ve ever seen any of my action films you’ll know that I feature 4×4 vehicles and the reason I’d selected a waterproof camera is because they are usually required to splash through rivers or more typically survive the rain of Welsh mountains!!!

Well, here at Geek & Dummy we have taken delivery of some very promising new action cameras (reviews to follow) that may well be ending my love affair with the Playsport. I thought it was time to see what it could do underwater. If the claims made by Kodak prove to be bunkum and this kills one of my beloved Playsports, maybe I can live with that now replacements are at hand!

Before I start the review in detail, I always feel the need to qualify the ZX3. It’s pretty much end of life and is an action camera that has been on the market for 5 years+. Before I first reviewed them they were selling

for about £45. Unfortunately they now go for £60+, which may well be my fault for shining the spotlight on them. Amazon does have the successor ZX5 listed for £156 and whilst I wouldn’t pay that because of the abuse I give them, I’d still say that offered some value.

What we have then is essentially quite old tech at a bargain price.

The Zx3 is ready to go straight into the water as it is without the need for a secondary case. As I’ve described in a previous review all its compartments are sealed and water tight. What you do need to do is alter the camera’s software to cope with being underwater.

Anyway, enough chatting from me. This is just one of those reviews where you need to see the results. I’ve used PowerDirector 10
to edit the clips but other than slowing a few frames down or reversing it for fun, this is unadulterated and straight from the camera.

As I have already reviewed the main camera this review is purely covering the underwater usability.

9 September 2013

How-to: Raspberry Pi tutorial part 1: Getting started

[easyreview title=”Complexity rating” icon=”geek” cat1title=”Level of experience required, to follow this how-to.” cat1detail=”The geek factor is quite high here, but this process is not particularly taxing.” cat1rating=”2.5″ overall=”false”]

Part 1: Getting started with the Raspberry Pi
Part 2: Creating/restoring an image of the Pi’s SD card
Part 3: Using the Raspbery Pi to host multiple web sites and as a file server
Coming up – Part 4: Creating a Dropbox replacement from a Raspberry Pi
Coming up – Part 5: Using a Raspberry Pi as a thin (or remote desktop) client

In the line of my work, I’ve recently had cause to become better acquainted with every geek’s favourite cheap computer, the Raspberry Pi. At the time of writing, you can pick up a Pi for an extremely reasonable £30, but the first thing I discovered was that this is only half the story. For a workable system, you need all the necessary cables, some storage and a case. Here’s my shopping list:

The Pi plus extra bits, in all their glory

The latest model B Raspberry Pi: £29.99.
A decent case. The case I chose has received good reviews, (to which I would add my own). The Pi fits snugly inside and the case comes with status indicators plus a VESA mounting kit if you want to attach it to the back of a monitor. £8.99.
A branded, 32GB Class 10 Micro SD card with full-size adapter (it’s a full size slot on the Pi). This seemed to be the best trade-off of price vs. capacity at £16.85.
A 1m HDMI cable. It probably goes without saying, but make sure your monitor/TV has an HDMI input – otherwise choose whichever cable is most appropriate. £2.44.
A generic 1A USB power supply with a reasonably long cable. For sure there are lots of other ways of powering your Pi, but this was a simple, self-contained (easily replaced) option. £4.75.
SanDisk Cruzer Blade 16GB thumb drive, in case I needed extra storage. £6.93.

So my total is £69.95 – over twice the price of buying just the Pi. But still pretty cheap, considering. You’ll also need a USB mouse/keyboard for initial input. I’m going to run my Pi headless (no screen or input devices needed, just a network connection), so I’m borrowing my Microsoft Natural wireless desktop for this purpose, which the Pi detected without issue.

Hardware installation

This may well be the easiest hardware installation you ever perform. The case has a couple of punch outs that you need to remove for the model B Pi. I forgot to photograph them I’m afraid, but it will be obvious – when you try and put the Pi in the case, it won’t fit without these pieces removed (e.g. for the ethernet port).

Put the Pi in the case.

Put the case together and fasten the screws. Make sure you put the VESA mount between the screws and the case, if you’re going to monitor-mount the Pi.

That’s it.

What to do, what to do…

There are lots of potential uses for your Pi. It has limited processing power and memory but apart from that, the only real limit is your imagination. I have no imagination to speak of, so I’m going to do what I do with every other gadget: put Linux on it and set it up as a home web/file server. I’ll cover the web/file server setup in a subsequent tutorial.

Here’s the plan:

Install Rasbian (a Pi-centric version of the venerable Debian GNU/Linux distribution).
Set up Webmin/Virtualmin for management of the server/web sites.
Install OwnCloud and create my own Dropbox replacement.
Experiment with using the Pi as a remote desktop client or thin/fat terminal.

In the process, I’m looking for any major issues or gotchas – things you might want to be aware of if you’re thinking of getting into Pis in a big way.

Prepare the SD card

For this step, you’ll need an SD card reader. If you don’t have a laptop/computer with a built-in reader, you can buy an external reader here. Note: my laptop’s built-in card reader was not supported by the SD Formatter program (see below) so I used an external reader.

From the SD Association’s official website, download and install the SD Formatter.
Format the SD card using SD Formatter:
Download NOOBS (“New Out of Box Software” – chortle) from the official Raspberry Pi website. This file is currently over 1GB. I tried the direct download and it was pretty slow, so I’d recommend using the torrent if you’re so equipped. NOOBS gives us a choice of different operating systems to install on the Pi.
Extract the contents of the NOOBS zip file onto the newly formatted SD card.

Whack the SD card into the Pi and connect everything up (power last of all, since there’s no power switch). If at this point you don’t see any output, the chances are that your SD card has not been recognised. I’m using a Class 10, but I’ve read that some people have had problems with Class 10 cards and better results with Class 6. If your card is recognised, you should be rewarded with a few pretty lights when powered up.

Install and configure Raspbian

At the NOOBS screen, choose Rasbian and click Install OS, then Yes. Go grab yourself a quick coffee.

The install will take a few minutes (the speed of your SD card is a factor here). Once it’s done, you’ll see a message “Image applied successfully”. Click Okay to reboot the Pi with your new OS.

raspi-config will launch with some initial setup options. I’ll work through them one by one.

Expand the filesystem: You can skip this, because this option isn’t needed for NOOBS-based installations. Otherwise, this ensures you’re using the whole of the SD card.
Change the password for the “pi” user. The default password is “raspberry”. Improve on that.
Enable/disable boot to desktop: I’m not planning to use a desktop system with this Pi. X Windows is such a resource hog that we definitely want to set this to “No”. Of course if you want to use the Pi as a desktop system, you’ll select “Yes” here.
Internationalization options: I’m in the UK, with a UK keyboard layout. It’s not a huge problem since generally I’ll be accessing the Pi via a web interface or service, but I am fussy, so I set everything up to be UK-centric. My correct locale was already selected. In these dialogue boxes, use the spacebar to select/deselect options, tab to move between fields, up and down cursors keys to navigate and enter to select.
Enable camera: do this if you’ve bought the optional camera module (I haven’t).
Add to Rastrack: this puts you on the Rastrack map of Pi installations. Not for me, but you might be interested.
Overclock: if you need to squeeze more juice out of your Raspberry, you can force it into a more frantic mode of operation. I’m not going to do this, at this stage.
Advanced options: Here, I’m going to set the hostname of the Pi and reduce the Pi’s use of GPU memory to 16MB (since we’re not running a graphical desktop). I’m also going to ensure that SSH is enabled (for later remote logon purposes).
Finish and reboot to an ordinary logon prompt.
For demo/proof of concept servers where security is less of a concern, I like to be able to log on as root. You can give the root user a password by logging in, then entering sudo passwd root and following the prompts.

Configure networking

I need this Pi to have a static IP address. You can use a DHCP reservation for this purpose if you like, but I prefer to create a fixed IP address on boot. Like this:

Log in.
If you didn’t log on as root, give yourself an elevated shell: sudo su
Install your favourite console-based text editor. For me this is vim: apt-get --force-yes -y install vim
Use the editor to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file. Replace the line iface eth0 inet dhcp with iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.11 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1
adjusting the values to match your network as appropriate.
My DNS was already correctly configured, but you may need to check the contents of your /etc/resolv.conf file to ensure DNS is set up. If in doubt, this configuration should work:
nameserver 8.8.8.8
Save the files then back at the command prompt, enter reboot to restart the Pi with the new network configuration.

Once the Pi is up and running you’ll be able to connect via SSH using your favourite terminal emulation program (mine’s PuTTY).

As you’ll see from the Contents section above, I have a few ideas for things to do next. It’s a good plan to take a snapshot of the Pi in its current state, so we can hit the ground running any time we want to try something different, with a Raspbian base, so this will be the subject of my next how-to. In the meantime, if you have any questions about what we’ve done so far, or if you have any ideas for later tutorials, let us know in the comments!

Until next time. 🙂

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Contents

Prepare the Pi

Install Webmin

Configure Apache

Install Virtualmin

Running a file server

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Contents

What you’ll need

Take a snapshot

Restore a snapshot

Share this:

Share this:

Contents

Hardware installation

What to do, what to do…

Prepare the SD card

Install and configure Raspbian

Configure networking

Share this: