Posts about hardware
HikVision HWP-N2404IH-DE3 PTZ controls
Recently I came into the possession of a HikVision HWP-N2404IH-DE3 mini PTZ camera. It has POE, RTSP, ONVIF, can pan/tilt/zoom remotely, has optical zoom etc.. Hardware wise the camera is great. Proper build quality, nothing to complain about here. But the IT part looks better on paper than IRL. Worst thing is that I could not use the PTZ controls in the webinterface, because they require some Windows .exe to be installed to get that working. But I have a workaround.
Thinkpad T420 - CMOS battery replacement
A long time ago I bought several Lenovo Thinkpad T420 laptops (used of course). But my wife's laptop gave her the dreaded error (after power loss):
Real Time Clock Error - Check Date and Time settings. Press Esc to continue or F1 to enter Setup.
Finally I got fed up with it, so I swapped out her old CMOS backup battery with a new one. Then I also did the same for my other T420's.
Evoluent Vertical Mouse 4 - Disable blue LED light
For a while I've been using the Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 Right. At first I had to get used to this type of mouse, but after a day or so, I already got used to it. The strain on your wrist/arm is much less with a vertical mouse, so I can really recommend it.
But I cannot recommend the blue LED light at the front of the mouse (facing the user). It's a very bright LED with no added value to the user. I'm used to working at different times of the day and also in low lighting conditions, so I use redshift for my monitors. But the bright blue LED on the mouse is really a PITA, since it's brighter than my screen...
Since I'm repairing (or modding) more and more devices, I wanted to disable the LED (in hardware) by opening the mouse. Drobilla.net had the same idea a few years ago so this should easily be doable. The blogpost got updated in 2020 with the news that Evoluent has a software/firmware fix for the blue LED light. So I went for the quick win and it worked like a charm. Just press and hold the "-" of the "pointer speed" button, while plugging in the mouse and the blue logo LED will be turned off.
UPS power distribution soldering
At home I have an APC Back-UPS CS500 UPS (BK500) to ensure my systems have just enough time to power down gracefully when a poweroutage occurs (or keep working until the battery runs out). It includes a USB cable which you can connect to a machine (works perfectly with apcupsd) so the Operating System knows that the power is gone and you are running on battery power.
Sansa Clip Sport
A while ago I bought a Sansa Clip Sport to replace my old portable music player. It is not the cheapest around, but I wanted one with a display so I can see and select specific files (since I also listen to audiobooks, as well as music). With 8GB of storage, MP3/WMA/AAC/Ogg/WAV/FLAC support, micro USB connectivity, a microSDHC port to add more storage space, pretty decent battery life and at a price just below 50 euro's, it seemed to to be the perfect match for me. The computers also recognized the device as a normal USB Mass Storage device (as it should be), which meant I could easily transfer files on to and off the device. But the fairytale did not last.