Shola's Home Gadgets

Poundland stores in the UK are currently offering a £1 payg SIM for either Vectone or Delight mobile networks with £10 credit on them!

This is a promotional offer, and will not be available for long. The £10 credit can only be used to make Calls, send texts or access the internet in the UK, and does not work on premium calls or texts.

I bough 2 of these recently at their Kilburn High road store to use in my home burgular alarm system (texts me intruder alarm and status messages) and the other one in my android phone vehicle tracker app (internet use), so if you can find a use for a disposable number, then these are ideal.



Please note that because these SIMS were made before november 2013, they do not offer the free vectone/delight calls without topping up. Also make a note of the date on the pack, as the SIM MUST be activated within 15 months of the date for the £10 to be credited.

Calls cost 10p a minute to UK mobile, 5p to Landlines and texts to UK mobiles are 10p each. Internet data is charged at 16p per MB.

Let me know if you get any, and what you plan on using them for.

The cheapest mobile network to call Nigeria from the UK is Vectone with an astonishingly low rate of 3p per min (which includes VAT).

On the 21st of November 2013, Vectone UK announced some new low international rates with the new rate for calling Nigerian mobile numbers now only 3p/min down from 8p. This deal now makes it cheaper than Delight mobile which is a favorite for Nigerians, and also beats LycaMobile as well.



There are other good offers currently available from the website, like 1GB of data for £1, and 0.5p calls to international countries using the Vectonecloud, and their PAYG rates are not bad if you are a light user or you can get free calls to other members of the network without having to topup.

So if you are looking for an affordable way of calling international countries including Nigeria, then this might be the deal you have been looking for.

Ovivo Mobile the MNVO that uses the Vodafone Network today increased it free Text allowance to 300 texts a month on the Freedom phone plan.

So for a one off fee of £20, you get £15 back as credit, you can now have 150 minutes, 300 texts and 500MB for no monthly charge! An idea package for students or low mobile phone users.

The network is advertising supported, but if you have a phone that only supports calls and sending texts, you will never see an advert, and your service will continue as usual.

For more details visit the Ovivo website.



Please note the screenshot above shows a Nov 2013 promotion which is offering double data

Need a mobile phone for Incoming calls only?

If you are looking for a mobile phone provider in the UK that would support using a mobile phone SIM account for incoming calls only without a contract, then you should consider GiffGaff which is a subsidiary of O2.

Most UK PAYG SIM only packages will allow you to use your account for incoming calls only for a limited time of anything between 3 to 6 months but require you to either topup or make a chargeable call/text once every 90 or 120 days to keep your account active, however with GiffGaff as long you have incoming calls your account will remain active.

If you have never heard of GiffGaff, you mght be wondering is this a con? The reason why GiffGaff doesn't demand you topup every 3 or 6 months is that every mobile network owner gets paid a fee for terminating a call, so as long as people call the mobile phone the network is making money, but the bigger networks are greedy, and make more money by getting people to topup and force them to make calls.

GiffGaff even has a monthly bundle especially designed for people who get a lot for incoming calls, for a fee of £5 you get 60 mins and 300 texts and for every complete minute of incoming call you get, they add an extra minute to your call allowance.

So if you have an unlocked mobile phone or an O2 iphone, then for a one off SIM activation fee £10 (you get £5 extra credit if you use this link), you can have an incoming calls only mobile phone package. As an added bonus, you can call freephone numbers (0800 or 0500) free from your mobile phone on this network, great for car breakdowns while out and about. No other network in the UK offers this!

If you have a locked mobile phone from a UK network provider, check out the free GiffGaff Guide to phone unlocking.

My Hitachi DZ HV565 Camera which I bought from Argos as a birthday present for myself has misteriously been broken, and will not function as normal anymore after having it for just over 2 years.

This pocket HD camcorder was a favorite gadget of mine as it was used for both personal and work related video recordings and photo taking. The daylight quality was absolutely stunning, and because it recorded unto popular SDHC cards (upto 32GB), I could easily transfer the files unto a computer and post on Youtube or email them within minutes.

My church video post production was also simplified especially when I needed to quickly shoot and edit a video announcement on a sunday morning.
All that is now disrupted as while the camera will switch on as normal, none of the buttons are functioning, sometimes it starts recording automatically which you can't stop, you can not change modes.

RIP Broken Hitachi Hybrid SD Camcorder DZHV565E

The warranty on this Hitachi HD camcorder has run out, and I do not think it will be economical to repair, so I have to start looking for a replacement. Maybe this time I will save some money and buy a proper SLR camera with video recording.

If you have a Sky HD box and need to programme the remote control to operate your LG HD RZ37LZ55 TV, then the code you need is 0206.

The process for entering the code into your SKY HD+ remote control for the LG HD TV is as follows, make sure you are not near the LCD when doing this:

1. Press the TV button.
2. Press and hold the Select and Red buttons down until the red light above the SKY button flashes twice, then let go.
3. Enter the code 0206 and press select.
4. Press the SKY button once, this completes the programming sequence.

Your Sky HD+ remote should now be able to control the basic features of your LG RZ37LZ55 tv, such as volume, standby, and channel selection or mode.

Do you need a cheap PAYG no contract SIM?
Setting up email on your sony ericsson mobile phone.

One of the cheapest Pay as you go SIM only no contract mobile network providers in the UK at the moment is GiffGaff. They currently charge only 8p per minutes for mobile or landline calls (ASDA mobile is same rate), but in addition don't charge you for calling freephone numbers from your mobile phone! Text messages cost 4p each. This is a vitual network run on O2 infrastructure, so solid partners behind them.

If you are interested in monthly bundles, they have unlimited texts for £5, 250mins, unlimited texts and unlimited mobile internet for £10 (this is a special offer that expires 31st March 2011, 150mins after that date). Other bundles available, and unlimited text/internet are standard above £5, they also offer free unlimited calls/text to other GiffGaff numbers (topup required every 90 days) so an ideal package for teenagers to use amongst themselves without running up huge bills. You can see their full call charges here.

If you have a second unlocked mobile phone or O2 tied handset and are interested in trying them out order a free Sim card with £5 credit (affliate link) or non affliate order page but not free credit and see for yourself.

They have a very helpful community, and no matter what version of handset you have, they will be able to get you up and running.



And by the way talking about mobile phones, did you know that by the end of 2011 all phones manufactured in the EU will have the same charger? Check this info video.

My old Xperia Sony Ericsson phone has broken, so I urgently had to get a replacement Samsung Omnia lite Windows mobile handset in order to continue running my business because all my appointments, contacts and client details were held in text messages that I had luckly backed up using microsoft's myphone service.

I did lose some data, but nothing that affected the running of my daily London driving lessons operation, even though it took me a while to get used to the Samsung interface as well as Windows Mobile 6.5 way of organising things. I now make it a duty to sync and backup my mobile phone everyday via my home WiFi network, and try to be extra care when out and about not to drop my phone (this was partly to blame on the one year old Sony Experia).

I'm not as hung up on the latest gadgets nowadays, especially when money is tight, so the new Iphone 4 was not on the tables since I'm a light mobile call user and don't need the large bundle of minutes offered to get these latest android and IPhones off the shelf. Hopefully my Samsung Omnia will last at least a year before developing a fault.

The HV565E spare battery I bought recently lasted over 2 hours while recording a driving lesson in my car, though it was not capturing in HD mode, as I only had a 2GB SD card, and needed to film continuously for 120mins.



I don't know if I had a larger capacity SD card if the battery in the Hitachi DZ-HV565E HD camcorder would have lasted the 2 hours in the HD mode, but I do know it lasts over 1 hour.

So far I'm happy with the performance of my Hitachi pocket HD camcorder and the batteries.

More Reading
My new Hitachi DZ-HV565E HD camcorder.

I have just bought a spare replacement battery for my Hitachi HV565E HD camcorder, it is the energiser FLNP60 3.7 1100maH Litium rechargable battery, because I needed to record longer driving lessons videos, and the orginal cell only lasted about 1hrs and 10minutes when recording in full HD mode.



It is much cheaper and affordable than the original Hitachi HV565E battery, and also lasts a little longer.

So if you want an extra battery or need a replacement, then why not order yours today.

The VHS tape recorder is not dead in my house at least.

In a recent house cleanup, we found some old children's VHS tapes which we hadn't watched for years, and since I have a five and 4 year old boy and girl, we decidec that they might want to watch these Veggie Tales videos which while available on DVD, we wanted to see if our Sony SLV-E720 VCR would still play them since it had been sitting on our consumer electronics shelf for years.

Well plugging in the Sony SLV-E720 into the mains, connecting the SCART cable to the TV and popping the video tape cassette in produced an excellent picture on our CRT TV, so we've been watching some of these old VHS tapes.

It was back in 2005 that Dixons announced they would stop selling VCRs and 35mm film cameras and it is now virtually impossible to buy a Video Tape recorder anywhere.

So the VHS recorder has followed in the steps of the sony betamax, 8 track car music players, vinyl, and the siclair ZX81 to the history books. I will be keeping my Sony VCR for as long as it works, hopefully my electronics background will deal with any minor repairs like cleaning the video heads, though lack of spares will probably mean one day I'll have to give it up totally.

I remember the days when we used to have cassette tape duplicators to produce copies of audio sermons at V2V church, now it is Podcasts and MP3s!

I have just got an email from Vodaphone saying that they will no longer be selling the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 on their network through their shop outlets anymore.



I had pre-registered with the vodaphone shop to know when the newer version of my current Sony mobile phone would be available, put it looks like the X2 will now not be officially sold through any of the 4 UK cell phone networks.

The email does not give any reasons for dropping the Xperia X2 from its portfolio in the UK, but it did mention that it will be stocking the X10 after it is released in Febuary 2010.

I think O2 has also planned to sell the Xperia X2, but has since shelved those plans.

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.

It is christmas time, and if you are looking for a gift that you could give to a gaming console addict, then maybe you might be thinking of getting a Playstation.

Having used an XBox 360 as a media entertainment centre for over 3 years, Sony has decided to launch a playstation video store to offer easy access to HD quality entertainment on their console, in addition to the blu ray dvd playback features.



Movies, games etc, all downloaded directly and ready to view in minutes.

I have just acquired a new gadget, it is the Sony Ericsson Xperia mobile phone.

The windows mobile 6.1 phone is on a O2 contract, and is a worthy replacement of my old and trusted SE-K750i that I've had for a very long time.



The reason I chose the Sony Ericsson Xperia is that I'm looking for a gadget/device that will act as a mini mobile office as I'm out and about alot, so need to keep track of appointments, email, contacts, surf the net, create simple word documents and the Xperia fits the bill.

I have only had the Sony X1 for a short time, but it is living up to its expectations. I'm yet to buy an external memory card for it, but that will be ordered soon.

I have been using an Apple MacBook Laptop recently (last year or so) to do a lot of my work having used PCs for most of my adult computing life (right from Windows Version 3.1) and computers had 286 processors 16MB of ram and 40MB hard drives.

My Apple Mac is currently not available to me, so I've had to move back to working with PCs, and it has just dawned on me how I have become used to the Mac.
Simple keyboard shortcuts are different, and some characters are in diffrent positions, in particular the '@' symbol which I use a lot.

One of the things that you don't miss from being on the PC, is the lack of viruses when it comes to the MAC, I don't have any antivirus software running on the laptop, and don't have to worry about adware, spyware or malware. What a world of peace. I'm trully missing my Apple Mac.

While I don't think the PC will be ever threathen by Steve Jobs creation, they are getting more popular, and while still more expensive than a windows PC, they are getting more affordable, and with generous discounts available to students, a lot are being bought.

More Reading
Connecting Apple Macs to TV.
BoinxTV Mac video production software.

I took my recently acquired Hitachi DZ-HV565E camera on a family holiday, and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of photos the camcorder took in addition to the already mentioned good HD video footage.

While the DZ-HV565E takes very good pictures in the outdoor daylight conditions, I was disappointed by the results produced indoors at night especially since it doesn't have a flash for taking photos, the inbuilt light no being of much use.

I have posted samples of the pictures taken by this wonderful Hitachi HD camcorder below of some steam raliway locomotives if any of you are into small guage engines.





So far I've been very impressed with this cheap Hitachi HD camcorder, and while it is not the perfect gadget for taking both video and photos, for a portable handheld device it is perfect in my humble reviwing opinion.

Hitachi DZ-HV565E Auto Focus problems
Sanyo Xacti C40 pocket hybrid digital camcorder.