Blog | mechdrew

Make posted a tutorial last January for building your own digital TV antnna but somehow I missed it until last week. Tonight I tried it out, and it works! It took about an hour and required a few salvaged parts (an old board, six wire hangers, some screws and washers, and a TV transformer) but I couldn’t pass up free after seeing the performance of the $20 craptactular specials that were available at the store. I decided to omit the base/stand since I was just putting it behind the TV anyway. Compared to the horrible bunny ears we were using before (we have a large antenna in our attic but have never bothered to adjust it) we get perfect reception on all channels. If you have spare time and feel like saving a few bucks, make sure to check it out at the link above, there is a PDF schematic and a video of the process.

Have you ever wondered what happens to that broken piece of tech that you send back to the manufacturer for a replacement? What about fully functional, returned units? Certainly they don’t just toss it away in a landfill! No, of course not.

For items that are returned to a manufacturer, those items are inspected, any problems fixed, and put back out on the market. But don’t expect to find these returned units back on store shelves, at least not in the same place and in the same spot. See, it’s against the law for a retailer to sell an item that has been returned as new, since it isn’t, well, new anymore. Continue reading

Ah, the personal data (or digital) assistant. They were all the rage back in the 90’s. You were high tech with that 160×160 monochrome screen and 1MB of memory. And at those boring meetings you were always the one who looked busy, when in fact all you were doing was playing solitaire.

Okay, so that was a long time ago, but since then we have seen the evolution through color, connectivity, PDA phones, and now smart phones are the personal data assistants of this age.

Odds are that somewhere along the road you have acquired a few of these devices that fit into this category. But it is also likely that you do not use more than one or two at a time. Here’s a few ideas for that aging PDA that’s just dying to be used again.

1. Alarm Clock
A modern cellphone works great for an alarm clock, but sometimes you want something more reliable. Something… bigger. Most dedicated PDAs had decently large, backlit screens that work great in the dark. It may be a waste of horsepower, but I’ve found old PDAs to be very useful alarm clocks that don’t glow obsessively in the dark. Continue reading

So here goes my attempt at a recurring feature, Tech-on-the-Cheap. Either save money or get more bang for you buck out of today’s (and yesterday’s) technology.

One of my recent passions has been the most low-tech innovation of the past three years: netbooks. In theory, netbooks should never have been successful: paying close to the same price as a normal laptop for inferior hardware? The old me would have said, “No way, Jose,” but after actually owning one for a year and becoming immersed in the the Mac netbook scene I have a whole new understanding and appreciation of function-over-specs.

One huge problem with netbooks is that they really are limited in their modern capabilities. For example: Adobe’s Flash Player software, commonly used on YouTube and online games, is just barely functional on most netbooks. Soon newer models with new processors and video technologies will lure a lot of current netbooks to ditch their old model for an upgrade.

So what’s a person to do with an underused netbook? Here’s a few ideas to keep you netbook in practical use beyond just the normal e-mail and web browsing.

1. Portable Video Player
You know those little portable DVD players that you can buy at most retailers? They are usually junk unless you start getting into the $150+ range. By that point you can almost pay for a decently-discounted netbook! So why not make your netbook a non-DVD video player? Continue reading