Notices by vxo (vxo@digipres.club)

@skinnylatte look at this beautiful user interface

just look at it

*chef's kiss*

@skinnylatte it's STUFFED FULL of little cellular radios for T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon, as well as having a wifi and two ethernet interfaces, and it builds a bonded connection out of whatever it's got... on a good day you can crank the buffer down so the round trip delay is about 1.2 seconds from camera to receiver output. (the receiver is just a boring old dell server with a Blackmagic SDI output card and the right special sauce software from LiveU, running on Ubuntu.)

@skinnylatte That's what you're seeing on top of the pneumatic masts with the funky springy cable conduit going up and a parabolic dish (usually accompanied by other things, possibly including a handy little mast cam).

Satellite has sadly faded from use a lot in the last couple years; it's mad reliable, but seems to mostly be reserved for big events nowadays. It makes me sad when I look at the spectrum analyzer on what was once a mad busy bird full of feeds and seeing it cold and quiet :(

@skinnylatte I hope you don't mind my silly broadcast tech info dump, I've been tempted to make an iceberg video about all this stuff for casual curiosity :3

The absolute S-tier for live shots, the reliable stuff that will never fail, are microwave shots and satellite. both pretty much require a truck on scene, though sometimes small portable microwave TX's can be used. The corresponding receivers for the microwave shots are usually on buildings and mountaintops. Line it up and you're good.

@skinnylatte to be fair that looks a lot to me like what you get when a LiveU pack suffers an impaired connection (this happens a LOT when you use them in crowded areas or where cellular just isn't great)

they either glitch pretty much like that as the system tries to determine whether to downgrade the video encoding rate and try again or just push onward, or you see the resolution suddenly drop as it stumbles and recovers.

the amount of sheer magic they do in those things is incredible

@skinnylatte
I saw some mention on a Facebook thread about how there are certain trucks here in the US that no one wants to work on because with trucking companies screwing their drivers out of breaks and holding them to impossible schedules, some of the owner-operator slaves have resorted to cutting a hole in the cab floor to use as a squat toilet, with the substances landing all over the transmission and suspension below.

@skinnylatte
Is said toilet basically a hole in the floor? I'd read stories about that and how you had to try to avoid blowback if the train was at high speed

Has anyone gotten their hands on an ESP32-C5 based board yet? This is notable as the -C5 has 5.8 ghz and WiFi 6 support in addition to 2.4 ghz wifi and Bluetooth.

Yes, the idea of making a Simple Wireless Fuckery Detector led me to ponder this thing

@lain ohhhhh they were just straight up aesthetic goals to me for years

@skinnylatte
I know the sample size is kinda limited for this observation but I swear torties are just extra cuddly

@256 I feel like that's a REALLY compact and unobtrusive VR headset for the time... although the Sony Glasstron displays were around back then and those were pretty svelte.

@kaia oh noooo. I feel like that farm could use an animal health and wellness check...

@StillIRise1963 especially with it being a one-way trip into indefinite detention. what the fuck is that

TRI-COLOR FOAMING WAX

if you can't tell that's being typed on the Ross keyboard and I love the feel of this thing. yes. After blowing through an embarassing number of RJ45 plugs (well only four) I got the pinout!

3. VBUS
4. GND
6. D+
7. D-

I guess if you use an STP plug you can ground the drain at both ends - I just left it open at the keyboard end and am allowing it to get grounded at the host end. Works fine.

Hey wait a gosh dang minute what is going on in here
The two holes are buttons and it looks as if two of the traces from the RJ-45 go into a transformer! There's also an unused header.

Interestingly, it comes up with a different model number.
[1637511.148933] usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=173e, idProduct=0038, bcdDevice= 0.06
[1637511.148943] usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[1637511.148947] usb 2-2: Product: KMX-143-750-583
[1637511.148950] usb 2-2: Manufacturer: DEVLIN Electronics
[1637511.148953] usb 2-2: SerialNumber: KMX-143-750-583

Yeah, potato, po-tah-to

that model number brings this up, which mentions more of the OEM customizable features - also explains why I saw a bunch of unused pads on the switch pcb that looked like they were for some kind of LED drivers (maybe just shift registers?).

this mentions stock trading terminals as an application, which makes me wonder... if you do an image search for a Bloomberg terminal keyboard you'll find a few different versions.

Did Devlin also make at least one version of that?

There's one that does look kinda look the same keycaps but it's a Maxi Switch product.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adafruit_the-bloomberg-keyboard-classic-1996-https-activity-6901563827666661376-KTBG

https://www.devlin.co.uk/storage/site/pdfs/devlin-KMX-143-KMX-144-rapid-access-%20v2.pdf

Found this beautiful unused keyboard in storage at work. Switches are all Cherry Brown and I really like the feel of them. Only gotcha: the interface may be an oddball.