14 August 2018 | How Does it Work?, Networking, Video |
Your average home WiFi router or access point often has a setting so that you can reduce its transmit power level.
This is pretty handy to know given what I talked about in my earlier video, Are WiFi, Bluetooth, 4G, and 5G bad for you?
The typical range for 2.4GHz WiFi is 150ft (46m) indoors, and 300ft (92m) outdoors. For 5GHz Wifi, it’s more like 50ft (15m) and 100ft (30m). The lower you set the power, the shorter the range – but the less you are blasted by the WiFi signal!
There’s no reason to leave the transmit power at maximum if you don’t need the range… As an added bonus, lower range means increased security since it’s less likely someone else will “see” your WiFi network.
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17 July 2018 | Gizmos, How Does it Work?, Video |
5G is coming, and people are worried. Well, should we be?
To answer that question, we need to know what studies have been done on the safety of microwave-frequency digital radio transmissions.
We need to look at WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G, and 4G studies, as well!
After all, much of the concern about 5G is based on the results of those studies.
It turns out that there ARE a ton of studies out there that indicate that yes, it looks bad.
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19 June 2018 | Computers, Do-It-Yourself, How Does it Work?, Video |
Much ado has been made about certain brands and types of puter displays and how this kind or that kind looks so much better than the average LCD screen…
It turns out that much of this hoopla is quite often mostly just marketing.
In fact, some displays from certain fruity computer manufacturers in the past were actually technically inferior, yet they still looked really good!
How did they do it?
Easy! The displays were fine-tuned – calibrated, if you will.
Lucky for you, it’s a piece of cake to calibrate your puter’s display yourself.
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5 June 2018 | Spare Me!, Video |
Well, it’s that time again.
Some recent news items – and people’s reactions to them – have once again compelled me to foam at the mouth about Big Brother.
Every time one of these “revelations” like the Facebook data breach occurs, everyone gets all fired up…
And then many people usually do exactly the wrong thing in response!
Sure, the privacy thing is a problem. It’s prolly going to get worse before it gets better.
But here’s the thing: YOU help to decide how and when that happens.
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22 May 2018 | How Does it Work?, Video |
You’ve probably noticed those strange cylinders at the end of your puter cables.
It looks a bit like the cable was slightly overzealous at dinnertime and swallowed something a bit too large…
As it happens, those strange meals are actually ferrite cores.
Ferrite is a totally magical material!
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8 May 2018 | Energy, How Does it Work?, Video |
Most of us have “surge protector” power strips. They are supposed to protect against power line surges due to lightning and certain power line faults.
But do they?
Well, yes… To a small degree.
But if you want some serious protection, you need a whole-house surge protector.
From a brief intro to lightning, to how surge protectors work and how to install them safely, this episode has everything you really need to know…
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24 April 2018 | Do-It-Yourself, Video |
Now, I know that everyone is pretty attached to their favorite stripper.
The trouble is, sometimes this attachment is not terribly healthy…
I’m talking about wire and cable strippers, of course!
After decades of searching – across scorching deserts and over frosty mountaintops – I have come to the conclusion that these strippers really are the best.
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10 April 2018 | EEK!, Energy, How Does it Work?, Video |
You probably do this all the time, but you don’t even know it.
I’m talking about AC power calculations with P = V x I.
Technically, it works. But when you think about it, it shouldn’t. AC has constantly changing voltage and current over time – unlike DC.
So how on earth does it work?
Well, the short version is: RMS, or root mean square!
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27 March 2018 | Computers, Gizmos, How Does it Work?, Video |
In the olden days, our gizmos had electro-mechanical power buttons. When the thing was turned off, no power was sent to it.
Nowadays, things have changed with the advent of electronically-controlled everything – including things like washing machines.
You can even look at the specs of most gizmos these days, and you’ll see two power ratings: Max power consumption, and “Sleep” power consumption.
Puters haven’t been off-off for a long time now. Smartphones are also never really off in many cases, and neither are smart TVs.
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13 March 2018 | Gizmos, How Does it Work?, Video |
I recently had some fun with HDMI cables – specifically, how best to connect a 4K UltraHD Blu-ray player to a 4K TV?
As a follow-up to my Display Cable Madness vid, I dive a bit deeper into the different flavors of HDMI cable: 1.4, 2.0, and 2.1.
Obviously, the latest and greatest cable is always recommended for new components. But what about existing setups?
Would your upscaled Blu-ray to 4K setup benefit from a newer HDMI connection?
It’s not just about resolutions and refresh rates, but also stuff like UltraHD Deep Color and High Dynamic Range (HDR)…
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Your average home WiFi router or access point often has a setting so that you can reduce its transmit power level.
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