Shola's Home Gadgets

We recently had a 24hr electricity power cut here in Mill Hill, London and I only realised how highly dependent the mordern world has become on this source of energy.



The power cut occured around 2am, but the effects were felt immediately. Obviously the street lights went out, but near to us, was the bedside electric clock radio which we use to tell the time. While we didn't feel the effect immediately because we were in bed, the home central heating system also shut down, which meant no heating and in the morning no hot water from the taps, and this being winter is a MAJOR problem.

Luckly for us, the cooker is gas, so once we found matches, we were able to boil water, heat milk for breakfast and later cook food that was defrosting from the fridge and freezers.

My neigbours could not make outgoing phone calls because their phone relied on electricity (we have an old phone to plug in when power fails), but computers were out, laptop batteries can only last so long, even mobile phone batteries were running dangerously low, so no unnecessary calls.

The house was very quiet, as even the radio did not have batteries in it, obviously everyone was cold and all huddled up in the sitting room.

4pm the house was dark, we had candles but it was really cold, noone was thinking of the gadgets, games consoles they got for christmas, all we wanted was light and some warmth.

While the electricity power cut was due to an underground cable fault, and the utility engineers from EDF Energy had been working round the clock to rectify the fault, by the time power was restored almost 24hrs later, it had really been a tough day, and I can't imagine being homeless in winter out on the streets!

If you are thinking of get the Hitachi HV565E HD pocket camcorder as a gift for a family member or a friend, then here is some christmas snow HD footage that might persuade you to do so. This was edited on my Apple MacBook Pro using final cut.



I have really been having a lot of fun with this little Hitachi HD hybrid camera, the battery life is quite very good, allowing me to record almost 2 hours of a driving lessons in HD, the limiting factor being that the camcorder runs out of storage space since I only got a cheap 4GB SD card from Amazon which the Hitachi camcorder has not had any problems reading.

Most of my recordings have not required sound, but it performed well during my daughther's christmas school play, for me to be happy. The other thing is I think I might have a resolution to the HV565E auto focus issue, and will be posting about it later, after I have done some more tests.

Following my recent article about my simple home automation media solution using an IPod, I have come to notice that HP wants to capture more of the HA and Home media entertainment market by launching the Smartmedia server.



Did you notice the strategic placement of the 17TB server next to XBox 360 media extender console in the video above? They are obviuosly trying to show how easy it integrates with microsoft's product.

The HP smartmedia server will perform the function of centralising your music, videos, pictures and will mean that you can show off all those family photos and home videos made over the years, and is compatible with iPhones as well.



While I'm still thinking of my options as I reconfigure my home automation system, I've got enough storage space already, so don't think I will be buying one of these media streaming devices.

I'm currently reconfiguring my home automation system, and for that reason, my HTPC is down, but it still wanted to have some of my whole house audio still available to distribute relaxing music while I work from home during the day.

At first I thought of using my apple macbook pro as a temp solution, but then I remembered I had an Ipod which was not being used lying around.

So all I did was copy a couple of hundred of my favorite songs to the 80GB hard drive of the Apple Ipod, create a few playlists, plug the MP3 player into my audio distribution amplifier which is already wired to the rooms and corridor of the house, and now I can continue to enjoy music around the house.

If you are living in a small flat or appartment, you can implemet this simple home automation idea using an Ipod shuffle which has no moving parts (less likley to breakdown), a cheap doking station (there are many cheap ones available now, not just Bose).

To prevent my Ipod from running out of power, I ordered a cheap usb power adaptor for £1, and use the Apple supplied cable to permanently connect it to the MP3 player. This also means in the even of a short power cut, I don't have to reset the playlists or press the play button.

The other part of my home automation system the XBox 360 media extender continues to work okay, providing stunning pictures on my 3 year old LG HD LCD TV.