And what did we buy today?

PRR · 2017-11-18 12:02 am

Supermarket has a odds/ends table, stuff that wasn't selling at price asked, generally now offered at 50% off.

There were two of those dinguses that turn cigar-socket into USB to charge your cellphone.

I know the store up the street has them at the register for $9. RiteAid probably charges $17. If I hunt around I can find them at $5.

Hannaford marked one at $2.28, this one at $1.14. I do not know how they arrived at these prices. Half of half of....?

However it rang-up at $0.57!

I'm a little afraid to plug it in. However I am sure it is the usual low-price asian goods, not some extra-crappy goods.

And even if it is defective, I can't buy a cigar-lighter plug shell for 57 cents.

VenusFly · 2017-11-18 1:22 am

leadbelly said:
@#$%^&* trickle chargers!!!!!!!

VenusFly · 2017-11-18 1:23 am

This might be of use to someone where snow/cold weather is common, a glass-wire electric windscreen heater kit for those days when it takes forever for the water heater/engine to defrost the front windscreen:
Windscreen demister defogger heater 12V Complete Kit | eBay

leadbelly · 2017-11-18 2:29 am

PRR said:
I'm a little afraid to plug it in. However I am sure it is the usual low-price asian goods, not some extra-crappy goods.

And even if it is defective, I can't buy a cigar-lighter plug shell for 57 cents.

Not that special, over here the older cheaper single USB socket chargers are sometimes given away as promotional material.

That being said, you might want to check it's rating. I needed to find one that had the lowest possible current draw for one of my projects. I went through all the ones we had and found one that was 600mA. I've looked and it's irreplaceable: every new one in store or online is 1A minimum and often 2A. I opened it up and it is different, I think it uses a 5.1V zener for voltage regulation and a chip for the rest. If you open up a 1A or 2A model you will see a chip as the only active device.

Jim the Oldbie · 2017-11-18 3:44 am

PRR said:
I'm a little afraid to plug it in. However I am sure it is the usual low-price asian goods, not some extra-crappy goods.

All these little gizmos do seem to cover a spectrum, quality-wise. My last car USB charger did an OK job of charging, but it sure screwed up the AM radio reception when it was plugged in. I had planned to experiment with shielding it, but it was stolen from my car a couple of weeks ago along with the rest of the contents of my work bag (and the bag itself).

VenusFly · 2017-11-18 4:15 am

Beware of crash cameras doing the same thing. The amount of RFI that I got out of one would literally wipe out the entire AM/FM bands. Atrocious behaviour.

soundbrigade · 2017-11-18 8:19 am

Paid for my ESTA registration as I am going to USA next week. Old one had expired.
To call it "to buy" is a bit difficult, but anyway, it cost med 14 bucks.

Jim the Oldbie · 2017-11-18 9:51 am

I hope you enjoy your stay here. Please forgive us if we seem a bit distracted and/or irritable these days.

soundbrigade · 2017-11-18 10:01 am

We've been to the USA 10-someting times and made thousands of miles on roads all over the country and so far I have only met 2 1/2 somewhat irritated and annoyed citizens.
One was a trooper in Yellowstone NP that stopped me for speeding. He was upset BUT very correct.
The other one was a deputee that pulled over our daughter when she was speeding (94mph on 70 mph Interstate). He as upset too, but referred to a bunch of paper he handed over to our daughter: "It's written on the papers!", was his only answers.
The half guy was a very nice Navaho man that got something mean in his eyes when, as he toured us in Canyon de Chelly and I asked him about Kit Carson. But he was a really good and gave good answers and info, but the betrayals of Carson weren't forgotten.

leadbelly · 2017-11-19 5:05 pm

Cheap small air filter: 3 Types of 3 Kinds of Color Diameter 12MM Large Flow Of Air Filter Cheaper | eBay

Cheap ball valve: 12mm Hose Barb Inline Brass Water/Air Gas Fuel Line Shut-off Ball Valve EO | eBay

Cheap tubing: 1M Fuel Gas Line Fit Victa LawnMowers Motorcycle ID 3mm 4mm 5mm 6mm 8mm 10/12mm | eBay

All to rebuild/upgrade the crankcase breather system in my old dirt bike. The desire to upgrade such a non-critical item shows my OCD and the idea of replacing a duckbill valve with a ball valve shows my sledgehammer approach.

PH104 · 2017-11-19 6:33 pm

I ordered a Metcal PS-900 - should be here tomorrow. I've been waiting to start Jan Didden's Autoranger project until it arrives.

TheGimp · 2017-11-19 7:11 pm

New kitchen stove, Samsung NE59M4320SB.

It won't be delivered until Dec 24th though. I may need to change the delivery date it I go to my daughter's for Christmas.

phase · 2017-11-19 8:35 pm

An 11’ ponytail palm for my wife, actually was free...

VenusFly · 2017-11-19 9:18 pm

Jim the Oldbie · 2017-11-19 9:45 pm

Oh, good heavens. My home stereo has never sounded better than it does with DSP, and my next car stereo will have it as well. Join us in the new world, man!

VenusFly · 2017-11-19 9:48 pm

Jim the Oldbie said:
Oh, good heavens. My home stereo has never sounded better than it does with DSP, and my next car stereo will have it as well. Join us in the new world, man!

Somehow I doubt that. However I have considered putting a DSP on the digital side of the spdif optical output coming from my phone via the bluetooth receiver.

Mainly for speaker time alignment and equalization.

I was going to go with the MiniDSP but it doesn't have both optical in and out so am considering getting something different, but the whole DAC -> ADC - > DSP -> DAC -> AMP feels dirty to me.

To give you an example I was just sitting down in the car moments ago listening to a speech taken by someone talking outside of a parliament building in sydney and I could hear the people talking in the background and could pick out (quite easily) a stereo image of the road surrounding him from the Fujitsu Ten, over FM radio...

Through stock paper cone speakers without tweeters. The high end was amazingly clear and detailed. Easily equalling and maybe even surpassing my frugalhorn setup in the home.

The stock FM receiver and amp in the Fujitsu Ten is amazing. Power supply is zener rectified and the amp is a TDA7388 Class AB IC with a 0.03% THD at 1KHz. http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resou...df/jcr:content/translations/en.CD00179160.pdf

I couldn't best that even if I plunked down $500-$1000 in an aftermarket head unit.

And you might be thinking that the audio coming from the bluetooth receiver and external headphone dac is going through the fujitsu ten, no. I'm routing around it.

= Should sound AMAZING.

Jim the Oldbie · 2017-11-19 10:18 pm

Well I certainly agree that aftermarket head units can be frustrating - I've a Pioneer that I'd like to set on a fence post and remotely perforate - but my problem with it is more about ergonomics than sound quality. Its FM section is actually quite good (is still says "Supertuner" on it - they've certainly squeezed a lot of miles out of that moniker!).

My car build (which I've only just begun, in the other car) is going to be as autonomous as possible, completely bypassing the head unit for music listening. But this is a challenge these days, since all the warning ding-dings are of course now routed through the factory head unit, so I don't want to disconnect it completely. Gonna have to draw a picture or two before I go much further.

VenusFly · 2017-11-19 11:43 pm

Jim the Oldbie said:
Its FM section is actually quite good (is still says "Supertuner" on it - they've certainly squeezed a lot of miles out of that moniker!).

To give you an idea on comparing the Pioneers. I had a cd deck from 2003 (A Pioneer DEH-1550) that had Supertuner III D on it and its nothing compared to this Fujitsu Ten.

Pioneer DEH-1550 Operation Manual (Page 17 of 84)

And the pioneer's FM tuner section is quite impressive, 75dB SNR with 0.3% distortion. Goodness knows what the Fujitsu is, maybe when I get the number off the receiver IC I can find out. The Pioneer had a sort of grainy sound to the CD quality too, common in most early-00's stuff. Not like low grit sandpaper more like 1,000 grit. It was still annoying though at loud volumes and the equalizer in it just made things worse. This is probably attributable more to the amp IC than anything but I did use the RCA outputs and that did improve things slightly but not entirely which ticked me off so out it went. But before I stumbled upon the Fujitsu in my mums car that I nicked off the Pioneer was my benchmark.

While comparing them to something rubbish, yes the Pioneer was better but only slightly. A sony that I had several years ago sounded great which suprised me as I thought Sony was rubbish.

Between the Pioneer and the Fujitsu Ten the difference is night and day.

The Fujitsu Ten had a Sanyo FM tuner chip in it. didn't write down the number unfortunatley but I will in a week or so. Other differences are that the Fujitsu Ten radio IF section that stands up on its side is considerably larger than other units that I've seen by about 1cm or so in length. It also has no "Toyota" brand name on it anywhere on the front panel so you could conceivably go to a wreckers and pop one out of a 98-01 camry. I'll provide the exact model number of the radio later on.

I'll take some pics of its innards and put them up in a week or two. Depending on how fast the post goes as I'm waiting on some ISO cables.

VenusFly · 2017-11-20 1:40 am

Shiitake mushrooms Dried Whole 1Kg | eBay

I like shrooms.

AndrewT · 2017-11-20 11:20 am

Tissot chronometer

And what did we buy today?

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