welcome to the coffee break for august
23rd everybody nice to see you i see
reid is joining us today and he's got
both audio and video
hi reed hi there and bp9 at the bottom
there as well
oh he may be having the same morning oh
there he is hey
bp9 sorry
oh okay there seems to be like uh one of
those zoom
issue mornings where it kind of freezes
up here and there i froze up and
reed froze up now bp9 froze up so
i don't think it's me but hey guys
everybody having a
good weekend so far got your cup of joe
i see vpn i do
yes sir absolutely same thing so is this
it i only have to go cups
oh yeah i can't give sophie a hard time
where'd he go ah
what are we going to do for a coffee
break if we could try no hard time
well i was just catching up i was just
catching up on your kickstarter blog
oh good yeah so what do you what do you
think so far how things are well
i'm about halfway through so i haven't
i haven't um uh seen the rest of it yet
right so yeah i see i see becker's doing
her usual job of bossing you around good
job you know
yeah she's what she does yeah that's
what she does there's peter joining us
as well hi peter
morning yeah no it was good um
so uh becca and i came here to the
studio
on uh on saturday and we were here
um she was here for several hours and
then i stayed a couple hours extra
after she had left so um
got a lot done so studio e is pretty
much done i've got
i've got a jib crane set up with the
overhead shot i've got the cameras and
lights all kind of
set up gonna do some wiring and things
but
that works there we go good morning nice
to see you
yes you're back now all right hey guys
sorry
okay it keeps doing that um so i was
saying i've got a
uh i've got a couple of led lights and
and some
soft boxes up on the mounted on the roof
yeah the video was great
i picked up oh cheers i picked up one of
these guys
oh that's interesting it came with xlr
ends as well
so i can connect my own cables that's
cool
um so this is a dmx decoder
so what this does is it receives the dmx
wireless signal from the light mixer
so the thing that i use to control the
lights in the studio
this receives that and then it has like
a
uh breakout for power
up to 24 volts so it's relay it's a
relay then or
does it switch actually no it's 24 volts
um but it's actually it's not a relay
it's a it's a remote control
it's a remote controlled um rgb
receiver okay
have i frozen again you have but i can
still hear you
but i can see all right um so it's rgb
receiver so
white i can use the red green blue
channels for
two different uh for three different um
light channels
so basically i can have this must be for
some super secret squirrel video stuff
because i'm not quite sure that i
understand
what it's for oh okay so we have all
those uh
the fancy lights um like the led lights
in the studio which you can change the
color of right
oh no no no i'm thinking i'm thinking of
the highlights the
shining not the upline no i'm talking
about i'm talking about the ones that
illuminate
them got it okay so this is to
to be able to control those from in here
so basically basically be able to turn
on and off the lights that are mounted
on the ceiling
without um without having to actually
like climb up and flip switches in the
ceiling to turn them on and off
but i would have thought you'd just need
one one connector for each light
is that not how it's supposed to well
then i'd have to
if i did each light then it would be uh
it would be 15 volts times
six so i'd have 15 15 volt
uh bricks up in the ceiling so what i'm
doing instead is i'm i'm
putting all of the lights through this
in a in a parallel circuit and
each of the lights are going to be
powered from this unit but this unit
receives
the signal from the console here
so that if i want to turn on the lights
in the studio all i have to do is just
flip the light switch here
it's more than a signal though right
because
think of it as a really fancy light
switch i get it i
i get that part but are you still using
the 15 volt bricks that come with this
no no i'm gonna be creating my own power
circuit because i need three amps per
light
so which that thing provides no this is
just a receiver
this provides nothing it input and
output right if you have that input
right there so that's switching 15 volts
then
i'll be sending it 15 volts but maybe
like 10 amps
that's a 1900 that's 15
watts i don't know
i gotta work out the math but you know
what i mean yeah
anyway so that's that's kind of
interesting i mean it sounds great i'm
still
not sure i think i've figured out that
what you're trying to do is just
um enabling the switching of it from
your brain right yeah oh and you were
asking about a relay so i'll take one of
those channels and put it to a
12 uh like a 12 volt um
by 120 volt relay right
and then that then i'll be able to trip
the 110 volt
lamps as well okay okay so those will be
on a relay
yeah okay i'll figure it out
yeah okay it's complicated but not
complicated
this is just it's just a receiver
so it sends a signal a voltage so when i
flip a switch here it'll either trigger
turn on or off the voltage here
yeah how fun hey yeah
it does look like fun you're actually
getting into electronics without
soldering
yeah well there will be some soldering
um but mostly just to
um to connect although i did get t
connectors for the
for the wiring so so i won't be
soldering that
but uh it should should work pretty nice
so i'm going to put one single circuit
to
a 15 volt light and then along that
along that circuit i'm going to be
branching out some parallel circuits
from that using t
connectors so i think that should work
peter does it sound like it'll work am i
going to blow up everything
yeah yeah i'm good okay
yeah yeah no one ever yet nine amps okay
so i gotta find a 15 volt nine amp or
probably what i'll end up doing is
getting like a 19 volt
power supply from a laptop or something
and
uh down downstepping it to 15 volts most
likely so i get the amperage but
most likely eh yeah yeah all right
peter's like i just i would just build
my own power supply out of spare parts
yeah and put it in oh exactly
i'm not i'm not doing that but yeah
should be a fun project so
reid what are you up to reid is joining
us he's
you've been here a few times before but
it's been uh a problem trying to get
your
your one or the other but you're you
look like you're
you're here with us today well finally i
had to use a different laptop
uh windows has been doing its job every
time it updates
yeah not surprised
doing that i had to switch to
i had to to boot up windows on my
desktop machine
earlier this week for a small project i
was doing
and it just made me feel dirty i
switched it right back to linux i wasn't
happy
[Laughter]
so is this windows that you're on read
that's working or is it yeah it is
windows it's working you're on windows
10 my
i don't just don't like it but i need it
for when i go out on the road
right yeah my media server is
is unrate and i've got a uh hardware
pass-through
on it and then switched over to linux
now
it's working quite nicely
excellent yeah i have an unraid server
at home as well
and i've really really liked it but the
problem that i've run into reed
is that the hardware is now
so it because it's it's just old
faithfully like unread just runs and
runs and runs
but um because it's been running for
how many years boy oh boy if we search
the category 5 site and looked at when i
first started talking about unraid you'd
know how long ago i built that
that would have been in like studio b so
um it's been running forever but now i'm
running into this case where it still
works it's still holding all my files
but um h.265 didn't exist back then
so the hardware is i don't have an h.265
decoder and the cpu is not powerful
enough
so my videos stutter if i'm trying to
watch h.265
so i have to either convert everything
to h.264
or load it locally on the computer so so
i'm looking at qnap
because qnap have some really
interesting
raid devices and nas units that have tv
connectivity and plex media server and
all that
yeah um and synology does too
synology as well yeah the thing i like
about okay so qnap versus synology
synology is like a closed box qnap
is like a linux computer with a really
cool back end
and really nice uh back plane so
cue the reason i'm more interested in
qnap versus synology is
synology is like you're locked to their
platform qnap
if i wanted to i could boot a debian
distro on it and run it myself without
so the only question i have about qnab
since i think i'm not sure
but um synology has this awesome
app called moments that what it will do
is if you just
load your pictures into a pictures
folder you know whatever pictures you
you get from your camera and it will
just sync up to the
um to moments it will categorize it will
find
faces in every single photo in your
library
and it will figure out who they are
or at least it will figure out that
they're the same person and ask you who
is this
and if you say this person is
this person once it will go and
categorize everywhere that that person
appears
and link that photo in that's the
primary reason i went with synology
i could not find that same app
in in qnap otherwise i would have done
qnap as well
but ai is just just one of that stuff
yeah and it's done locally if they don't
send wow
they don't send the pictures off to the
internet to get to categorize them
it's done locally and that means it
takes a while to run
read i'm sorry i did not mean to to
interrupt you there sir it's
uh as soon as you just read that reid
said unraid and then boom i'm like okay
let's talk because
like and i'm like are you guys following
cobalt at all
is anyone here following cobalt cobalt
i'm a cobalt programmer uh but i mean
like
a uh the math units oh i thought you
were talking about
c-o-b-o-l programming language
oh cobalt helio 64
is um an open source
um sbc kind of soc powered
nas unit and they've been they
introduced this thing
several months ago but then the pandemic
hit and it affected manufacturing and
distribution and qc
and uh so you know things are behind
schedule but they just sent out an email
today i think
uh might have been last night but today
i received it anyways
um saying that they're getting back on
track and they're starting to ship so
these are like
open source math units read it would be
amazing
for unraid because this is like a
self-contained now
okay this is a self-contained mass unit
that looks like a qnap or a synology or
something like that
but it's entirely open source and you
can just install linux on it so
i would imagine if it runs linux it's
going to be able to run slack
if it can run slack it can run unraid so
it would be a nice little unit for that
see how i circled back and got right
back to your conversation
well unraid's pretty easy to swap from
uh
you know cpu or something like that you
just
yeah i've upgraded my server completely
like put it in new motherboard new
server everything
are you doing anything with the vms no
because my
my hardware was i just i put it in old
hardware
that was part of my purpose with unraid
was to repurpose old stuff
that's what i'm now i'm feeling the
effects of that because it's not
powerful enough
because the unraid has evolved to be
able to support vms and docker and
things like that
so i do run plugins because i've got
like plex media server on there but i'm
using the old plug-in architecture
because the virtualization platform is
just too too much for
my server so although i might
can like i could even install i'll bet
you you can install unraid on a qnap
don't know because they are they're
linux machines they're just like a
the one that i'm looking at is a pbs
something and it's uh
it's an i3 so at its heart it's just an
i3
pc but it you know how qnap has made it
into a really nice looking
uh nas unit so with all the proper
raid hardware right with raid hardware
and with
uh like 4k video accelerating
uh chips and four gigs of ram out of the
box upgradeable
uh m.2 compatibility if you want to put
m.2 drives into it
so the idea is that you plug it directly
into your tv
if you want to uh if you want to watch
although having that h.165 decoding
capability means that
even if you like with you with unraid
with
any of your devices and the the device
would be able to handle the h.265
okay okay with the uh the uh
ability to take and uh
pass hardware and whatnot you if you
have an extra video card you can use
that to do the
decoding hmm
that's an interest oh you know what yes
that's an interesting point
however in my old server
guess what's taking up all the pcie
lanes yeah of course
raid controllers yeah yeah yeah
so yeah i gotta i gotta do something
with that that bad boy
i imported a couple of a couple more
episodes of one of the shows we're
watching last night
and you hear it's a dual cpu
uh uh xeon
3.0 gigahertz like old gen so when
when you load files into it and plex
starts transcoding those on the cpu
you're trying to watch your show and
it's like oh you imported videos again
didn't you
as soon as plex starts transcoding it
just it takes off
so what's your hardware look like reed
like you're running it on an old pc as
well or you've got a little bit more of
i want to take and get something pretty
serious one of these days i really want
get crazy with it i'm passing uh the
video card
so my unrate is also my media center
perfect yeah uh what are you using for
the media center are you using like
something like i
am with plex or yeah well i'm using plex
is my
you know my backbone but uh yeah okay
running uh
i was running windows i was running
windows media center
but i've uh i've been playing around
with a couple of different linux
distributions
they all seem to work pretty well it's
the one thing i got right now
uh because there's been some changes and
i moved some hardware around
if i uh if i shut down the vm
a lot of times i got a reboot to get the
the the hardware back i didn't have that
happening before but i moved some stuff
around and
i got to look into that a little bit
more are you talking like your config
gets
monkeyed up or no no the configs don't
get
when when you uh reboot the vm
you lose contact to the the actual
physical hardware i'm doing
doing actual pass-through of the
oh okay see where i've done things
differently is i'm using the mount
points
at slash mnt slash user
so that way i take advantage of all the
redundancy that unraid gives me because
if i drop any files
um to that it's going to span across the
array well everything works the only
problem is it like i say if
if i reboot the vm you know
whatever it is especially with linux i
didn't have the problem with windows
but uh you you get a blank screen
everything else works uh you've got the
presence on the net and everything but
you just don't have the video showing up
the only way of getting it back
is to uh reboot the whole unit oh i see
okay interesting yeah my on rate server
runs completely headless
so everything is done through either the
web browser like
plex is at port 32400
so you just access it through your web
browser and i do that from any of my
devices
or i have the plex app on my phone and
tablets and things like that
that's what i do other than the fast
group of the media center the media
center is just like another computer
right yeah so i use samba shares for
that
so accessing them through samba i just
run clicks
on my roku box and it just it just
connects to the
to the now you're using you're using it
as a client versus a
server then it's kind of like two ways
to use plex the roku is the client
which is which is what's plugged up to
the tv i have
two or three rokus and the server
is the uh synology box right so click
servers running on that and of course
that's where all the that's where all
the
you know the videos are stored there as
well
and the transcoding would be taking
place on the synology
so you're absolutely sure it doesn't it
doesn't spin up like my bad boy
so does the synology have you have you
like done any experimenting with various
like hebc formats and
to be able to know if it's able to play
them i haven't really really
that much attention to that um i have
found that
um you know i can play in p4 videos
i can play now yeah i say that but i
don't know what the internal structure
of it is
yeah it takes 264 but i don't know that
for sure
and p4 is just a container right so
right
where where the difference is is h.264
is is very very lightweight on the cpu
h.265 sacrifices cpu
cycles for lower uh file size
okay so so you get a smaller file with
h.265
but it takes a lo decided whether i want
to sign up for the flip for the plex um
uh account yet i've been running it just
locally and just
literally ah there he is he's back and
i've just been
ripping dvds et cetera
i mean live tv i'm talking about you
know over the air or cable
you've got the uh capability of doing
that with plex
yeah i need an external tuner for that
well you have a
you can use something like an hd home
run which i have one of those
right got two servers one of them's got
over-the-air equipment and uh
then the the the main unraid units got
uh a quad uh hot pog tuner in it and
that's okay
hooked up to the game
qam i have not had much luck
getting free over-the-air um
tv stations in yeah receiving into
a powered you know antenna that i
plugged directly into the tv
but i literally hang it on the wall um
i've tried um hanging it on the wall
i've tried putting it near the um
near the window with very little luck
and i'm afraid i'm going to need a
either an external antenna or an antenna
that i'm going to have to put up in the
attic or so
to make it work i've not explored either
one of those possibilities
primarily because whenever i do get to
tune in and i must admit i do like the
old
one of the old science fiction channels
that we can get um
but i tend to find that i get one i get
tired of ads
um and there's really not
there's really not much to watch anymore
online
is there any advantage to over-the-air
tv anymore
completely disconnected yeah i i cut the
cable to
to my tv provider years ago and i've
never looked back
never looked back i have plex and use
plex like almost
in movies i have um netflix
i have amazon prime video which comes
with my prime
account which i pay for yeah yeah
and so i get most of my shows come from
those
and then anything that i can't get like
movies and things like that i have
cineplex store and that's what's like
store
uh cineplex store on the roku so
oh yeah um because we because the
question arose
well if we've cut the cable and we no
longer have access to digital cable
how do we rent movies because
blockbuster's gone
um you know you don't have you can't
walk into a store and rent a dvd anymore
so um so then i set out to find it and
the answer is the cineplex store
so it's an app it's an app on your roku
or you can access it through your
browser
and you can rent new release movies and
it just streams them to your device you
48 hours a while with amazon you can
rent
yeah i don't know if you can rent a new
release ah okay
these are i'm talking like you know how
new release movies used to come out on
dvd and you would you would drive to the
store and you would rent it
yeah like these are like the new release
movies so
okay okay yeah that's the difference i
see peter uh
trying to try and speak there peter i'm
gonna unmute you um
and i saw him speaking when as soon as
he said antenna he's like
i gotta tell you about my antenna but i
i
so i saw you trying to talk there but i
had you muted because there's a lot of
wrestling noise today on your microphone
so
peter go ahead i would say it's not a
good idea to put the antenna in the
attic because
i told you
you're not going to get the best
reception up in the attic there bp now
you're going to get to about
10 to 12 tb
if you've got weeks it will make it
worse what uh what are you basing that
on i mean my
my roof is um is a wooden
wooden um uh planks and then
um shingles uh tar
tar shingles so there's no metal in the
roof at all
but when it goes together by the actual
roof itself you need to put it outside
on a boat
and basically uh if you're allowed to do
yeah i think so yeah i don't think i'd
have any problem doing that
so yeah yeah yeah because uh you just
fighting it all the time
even in in yeah in your house anywhere
it probably got a weak
well as you know with um with hf
frequencies night time is usually
better when you can hear stations
yeah all i was all i was going to say
was that i do have better luck
um receiving uh free over-the-air
even on the internal antenna that i hang
up on the wall
at night it just seems to it just seems
um are radio waves affected by heat
no they're affected by the by the um
ionosphere whether the signal is
bouncing off
well that's true that'll go right
through but um
the i don't know i'd have to go check
the um
the frequencies of the tv channels that
i'm receiving because i'm not sure if
they're uh
i do make sure something no
okay yeah that'd be uh for sure
away from you yeah i'm i'm trying to
come up with the answer for that i want
to say
20 miles in one direction and probably
30 miles in a different direction so at
a minimum i would need two antennas one
point this direction
up and down or they're flat uh it's up
and down
you my problem oh i understand oh
oh yeah i get it i get it i may not be
able to get a a tower tall enough to
peek over the hill
the where the uh uh transmitter is i
absolutely get that
i've i've used i've used software peter
for determining the footprint of a
repeater
a ham radio repeater to figure out where
it would be visible based on the
on the terrain so yeah i get that i get
you would have to be even worse yeah
yeah that's true
and then you got to uh uh it's over
12 12 96 even better yeah
so you know that's that's why i'm not
really
into into my receipt into my tv
and then find that there's very little
to watch anyway
so i'm happy
i'm happy to cut the cord
as you guys are chatting i'm getting an
alert on zoom that
says uh your internet is unstable
and you've seen me freeze up a couple of
times reid was asking
just before uh just before we started
chatting
you know how come there wasn't a show
this week we have been in a nightmare
situation with our internet connectivity
and i've been dealing i've been dealing
with the
isp so we spent about two or three days
this week with no
internet and and that was right up until
wednesday so wednesday morning
i actually had to make the call to
cancel the show
in light of the fact that uh it was a an
absolute nightmare
well if you've got no internet it's
pretty hard to if you've
it on that uh on that stuff with the tv
it's uh you
you gotta play with it it's it's really
funny when i
apprenticed uh as a tv technician i
remember
uh talking to one of the customers and
they had done without
tv in their neighborhood uh for
years because they were right behind a
cliff
that was you know higher than they were
and they said there's no way we're going
to get tv
yeah and they had somebody move in next
door and they were laughing up their
sleeve
because these people were putting an
antenna up spending all this money well
guess what they got tv
yeah the other people that had waited
years
decided that they should put an antenna
up and they got tv
well peter will tell you peter will tell
you this as well but
with uhf you only have to move a few
inches one direction or another
and you you that could be the difference
between no signal
and full strength and just because you
go higher doesn't mean it's better
sometimes you go up and you lose a
signal entirely sure
yep yep yep i know that there's a chance
that i can get
i can get at least one station from from
that one direction
um just because there's nothing in the
way i guess but because i've had success
getting that signal indoors on my
powered antenna so
i'm pretty sure i'll be able to get at
least that direction
uh high vhf or uhf more of them are uhf
than anything i got one that i'm
interested in getting
and unfortunately it's down on channel
three v h
low vhf okay and i can't even find any
antenna for that i'm thinking about
building one
okay that'll work yeah but again
i'm still not sure i'm still not sure i
want to invest all that time and
money or whatever but i'd rather go play
you know spend money on other good fun
stuff but um
given that the outcome is probably going
to be
lots of ads and not much to watch i'm
not sure i want to spend the time on it
to be perfectly honest
so anyway boy
but i'm sure you can all you can all
relate to that right
so i haven't seen a commercial in very
many years
i have i've been watching i've been
watching youtube
i don't know if any of you guys are flat
earthers but i've been
i've been sucked
but watching people debunk them it's so
much fun to watch
you got down that rabbit trail did you
know it's so easy to do
youtube though i mean because you watch
a video and then it says hey you ought
to watch this because
if you'd like this you would love this
and i do oh dear it just goes on
and on and on oh dear have you seen the
clive
i i've seen oh i've seen all kinds
of of crazy videos and it's just fun to
watch and i really don't need to be
watching these i need to be
category 5 is off the air for a week
what else is on yeah
you just didn't want the episode number
like we talked about last week to fall
on the end of the season did you
no the ir the ironic
irony there is that um now i'm concerned
that the first episode
of season 14 is gonna be six six yes
like okay we're going to call it season
14 episode one
yeah let's go with that all right guys
well i gotta get i gotta get running i
got some things to do
and uh before i can leave here today and
uh it's been nice chatting with you
and uh we'll see you i really do hope
that things are kind of
back to we're gonna find some sense of
normalcy for wednesday i can't totally
be able to do the show
it's not quite there yet about my
experience of the hospital again
i had my belt changed by the way and i
think a very nasty uh experience
everything go okay though peter no he
didn't oh dear
uh she was a bit violent and she choked
me
and uh she was deaf who did it
was this mary no this is this uh
supposed to be a professional allegedly
oh okay so they screwed up
while they were doing this during the
valve change yeah they were doing screw
up really
joking and i was joking badly
and uh i couldn't say anything because
you told the valve and she could near me
anyway
i know i know it's funny i could do that
but i could see that
at the hospital like is this did you
find like a white van that does valve
changes for you
no this is young this is the one that
they normally get the english one
okay so not available and then she tried
for a gel cap and she called [ __ ] up
and uh and
went to a bit blue and uh that's scary
dude
well i'm glad you're i'm glad you're
okay she obviously got you up and
running before
before too much time had passed so and
you look like you're full of energy
today so that's good
well i regret it because of it as well
anyway well you found your shirt too so
that's yeah i'm
gonna say thanks for keeping your shirt
on people
must be a cooler day today
uh uh
and now he's making me think now it's
just making me think how does peter wear
a mask
oh he has to put one around his throat
as well that's what i wonder yeah
yeah i do but you've already got it
you've already got
like a cravat don't you that goes over
you yeah yeah yeah
over your plugger oh yeah i don't like
to wear too much
well common sense is smart you know you
already know you have to wear the
the cravat and the mask so i did that
but it would
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for a very long time because it killed
me did whatever they did to me
never again she would should never touch
me again
yeah find somebody else yeah yeah
anyone but her yeah
yeah yeah i'm glad you're glad
everything worked out peter and
reed it's great to see you bp9 great to
see you as well
and nice to see you as well peter guys i
gotta run so have a wonderful week uh i
do hope to see you wednesday
there are some things that are still
lingering some issues that i'm i've got
to work through
today and and hopefully be ready for for
wednesday um
and in the meantime again there's gonna
be a coffee break again next sunday so
then if not before take care all right
sounds good
bye everybody enjoyed it good to see you
reed
cbp9 yep no worries take care
you too