Handy Tech Under $100 Episode 8 - Just Plain Cool Stuff
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,302 words · ~6 min read
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welcome to Handy Tech under 100 episode 8 where just about anything can happen
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as long as it happens for under $100 and also isn't lame we never let anything
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lame on this show which oh you're going to go there you you want to go there all
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right all right that's it I'll throw down here are three unsalable Arguments
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for why socks and sandals are the world's most optimal Footwear one it
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the corser HX 1200i power supply delivers 80 plus Platinum efficiency for
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quiet efficient power and Corsair link digital for advanced monitoring and
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control click now to learn more right
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about here so our first handy item of the day is one that would have come in
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handy uh many times at the office when we've resorted to Hanging cables out the
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sides of our systems using the Frankenstein remains of ripped apart
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external hard drive enclosures or crossing our fingers and hoping one of
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those USB DEA adapters will manage to supply enough power to the drive we
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happen to be trying to read from this is
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the thermal take black checks I honestly
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have no idea how to pronounce it so I'm going to go ahead and call it the blacks
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uh the concept is simple but quite frankly most of the options on the
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market are just not very good and my personal BLS has served me so well that
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we reached out to Thermal about equipping each of our editing stations
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with one of them for quick ingesting of footage shot directly to an SSD we
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actually have a few cameras that do this but the application of these bad boys
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goes Way Beyond pulling files off of cameras they're great for
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troubleshooting borked PCS so you can try to fix issues or pull important data
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off with outer working OS they're great for archiving data if you use hard
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drives kind of like VHS tapes and if you
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pay a bit extra for the duet then it's even more flexible because you can use
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it as like a you know external drive enclosure with two mounts instead of one
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for your usual nightly backups or whatever else the case may be Drive
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compatibility is a strong point for the blacks with only our native 4K sector
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Seagate Enterprise Drive stumping it and
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if I had to complain about any anything else it would be that the Dual drive one
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doesn't feature separate power switches for each Bay so adding or removing a
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single Drive will momentarily disconnect the other bay although I've yet to see a
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dock that handles this any differently item number two today is a totally fun
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one from Tech keys and it's actually kind of a variety of items we have here
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with a common theme Ultra small driverless programmable keys for your PC
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or for your Mac now the original concept was kind of a unique PCB business card
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with a microcontroller on it where each of the keys spits out some information
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about the manufacturer when you press it then from there came the tech Keys
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programmable card which unlike the business card and thanks to the 7x 24
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LED array built right into the board can be easily reprogrammed by holding down
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program for 2 seconds selecting the key you want to program then using the arrow
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keys to select which characters you want cool right not as cool as the Tetris
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game Easter egg that I'd be lying if I said I didn't waste a bunch of time
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tinkering with at my desk while I was supposed to be writing this review
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anyway neither of those are really finished products intended for end users
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although you can buy them along with cool key caps on their site exposed pcbs
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are not a safety hazard with low amperage 5volt power to them but they're
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certainly not durable so let's take a look at the One keyboard and the three
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keyboard that these earlier experiments inspired the concept is simple it's a
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sweet little aluminum housing from nude CNC with a PCB mounted to the bottom
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that gives you either one or three fully programmable keys that can be used for
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anything your heart desires from single inputs to frequently used passwords not
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that I'd recommend that particular use to Windows or program specific shortcuts
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to Long macro chains with modifiers like control and shift just hold down any one
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of the buttons for 4 seconds with a text editor like notepad open on your
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computer and watch as the instructions for programming the device up here
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magically which leads us to the magical
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device that allowed us to take the following footage walking up and down
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stairs with an iPhone check out how steady that looks isn't walking footage
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with phones usually total crap how's he doing oh all right there's nothing
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magical there's nothing magical about a gimbal but this particular one is
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Affordable easy to stuff in a bag and just a downright cool little mobile
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accessory it's called the stable Cam and it's about the size of a folded umbrella
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and works a little something like this you slide your phone into the smaller or
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the larger of the surprisingly slip resistant slots depending on your
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device's thickness then you decide if you want to film at body level or down
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low or up high then you hold the device
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horizontally by the grippy ring and pull the weighted end out until it balances
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you put the whole thing up right and then you nud your phone left or right
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till it pretty much holds still then holding it like this and supporting the
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bottom shaft with your little fingers it is Off to the Races the whole process
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does take a minute or two every time you want to balance it but considering the
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difference in the results it's pretty safe to say it's worth the extra effort
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if you're into not having your phone video footage look like total rubbish
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the footage you're looking at right now was actually shot on the Galaxy S6 Edge
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at 1080p 60 FPS then that was slowed
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down to 30 for even better stability pretty cool hey so closing out this
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video the last thing is the full disclosure part that I like to include
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with handy Tech the black actually a
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number of them for our new office was provided by thermal but I already owned
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one that I'd picked up for myself a couple of years ago and the stable Cam
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and Tech keys were both provided by the manufacturer without any obligation to
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review them if I didn't like them but I did so here they are guys thanks for
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watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it sucked leave a comment preferably on our Forum
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to one with our affiliate code so whenever you buy any of this stuff on Amazon not that all of it necessarily is
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available on Amazon not really the point whenever you buy stuff on Amazon we get
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a small Kickback thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to
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subscribe and follow and all that good stuff
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he