Hello Visitor!
My name is Dr. Gough Lui, 34 years of age (as of 2023), single. I am fully fluent in English, and know a small amount of Cantonese. Currently, I reside mainly at Quakers Hill, in the west of Sydney, Australia with my father.
Presently, I am a full-time Research Support Program Fellow at Western Sydney University, focusing on Healthy Ageing, Digital Health and Smart Sensing Technologies. I am also a biomedical engineer-in-residence at Liverpool Hospital in a collaboration between Western Sydney University’s MARCS Institute and The Ingham Institute’s South-West Sydney Institute for Robotics and Automation in Health.
I also work part-time as a Research Associate with the University of New South Wales where I am working on UV-C LED-based water disinfection technology through the REACH program (in collaboration with Oxford University) and help to support the legacy IT infrastructure within the Water Research Center.
In 2016, I graduated from UNSW with a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering. The research topic was Photovoltaic-powered light-emitting diode based disinfection of water for point of use application under APA, ERA and ASI/ARENA scholarships.
In 2012, I graduated from UNSW with a Bachelors of Engineering in Photovoltaics and Solar Energy with First Class Honours. During my undergraduate career, I had authored two conference papers, one of which received a highly commended award for the Wal Read Memorial Prize titled Comparison of Bypass Diode Technologies published in the AuSES Solar 2011 Conference Proceedings.
I was a Taste of Research Scholarship recipient undertaking a project with the School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems on Wi-Fi localization, authoring several posters, one of which was award winning. This summer scholarship resulted in my first conference paper titled Differences in RSSI readings made by different Wi-Fi chipsets: A limitation of WLAN localization published in the ICL-GNSS 2011 Conference Proceedings which is available to IEEE Xplore members here.
During the period of 2009 to 2012, I was involved as a lab demonstrator for UNSW Electrical Engineering and Telecommunication’s ELEC2141 (Digital Circuit Design) and ELEC2142 (Embedded Systems Design) courses. In doing so, I was responsible for assessing students, as well as facilitating their learning through programming and circuit construction exercises. A certain level of debugging ability is required, and new challenges always present themselves along the way. It was very enjoyable and refreshing to see different ways of solving a problem, as well as challenging to debug code in Verilog, C and ARM-Assembly that was written by someone else. I was also engaged as a lab manual author and editor for ELEC2141, having developed several exercises and refined the content of the manual over several years.
I was also mentioned in the UNSW Engineering Dean’s Honour List for high achievement in 2008, recognising my academic achievements in 2007. I had also represented UNSW Electrical Engineering on their open days in 2007 and 2009. I was also a member of BlueSAT, a student run organization at UNSW to build and launch a student-built amateur radio packet satellite (which still hasn’t happened yet). I was responsible for several teams and was involved in maintenance of their antennas (you can see some photos here if you scroll down).
I was a Co-Op scholarship recipient, having entered UNSW in an Electrical Engineering program. As part of the program, I had undertaken leadership camp (quite an enjoyable experience) and undergone industrial training at the NSW Department of Commerce in the Building Engineering Services department where I was responsible for drawings of the photovoltaics system on the NSW Parliament House for the development application and was involved in the tender process, as well as performing lighting modelling, circuit breaker sizing and cost estimations. My final presentation for my industrial training experience is here.
I was schooled in Australia and attended Cabramatta West Public School, Harrington Street Public School, Hambledon Primary School and Sefton High School. I was a selective school student at Sefton High, as well as being a prefect, peer mediator and yearbook editor. I received a double premier award (the highest merit system award), as well as the Deputy Principal’s award for technical services to the school. I was also involved in school representation in the Australian Science Olympiad, as well as the Great Engineering Challenge having ranked highly in science subjects. I was also involved in leading the Electronics Club and developing a CNC-milling pattern for their electronics courses.
From a very young age, I have been interested in electronics and computing no doubt thanks to the teachers who have schooled me along the way (especially Mr. Mitchell Thomas, Mr. Brian Cawley and Mr. George Frangos), and my Dad who taught me how to use the computer. Over time, this has expanded to other technical hobbies including photography, satellite TV, amateur radio, scanning and short-wave listening/monitoring. I enjoy building computers, and overclocking. I am proficient at soldering and like to build circuits and work with embedded systems/microcontrollers.
For a period of time, I was a writer for Australian Personal Computing (APC) Magazine (some contributions I wrote here, here, here, here and here) but that eventually became problematic due to organizational problems.
Lately, I have been involved with element14’s community, especially in producing RoadTest reviews and featuring in instructional webinars. I was the recipient of the Best RoadTest Review of 2018, with fifteen completed RoadTests and more in progress.
I currently am a licensed foundation level radio amateur licensee (VK2FGYL) and possess a full unrestricted driver’s license.
I also enjoy TV shows such as Community, The Big Bang Theory, Mythbusters, Top Gear and The Grand Tour. In fact, sometimes I find it hard not to associate myself with Sheldon and the group. I also enjoy numerous Korean TV shows such as Running Man, One Night Two Days, I Live Alone, Law of the Jungle, We Got Married, The Great Escape, Thrifter’s Guide to Luxurious Travel, Welcome First Time in Korea, Love Naggers and more. In my spare time, I sometimes watch more technical YouTube videos as well.
This blog represents a work of passion – which I hope will come in useful or handy for those who read it. I don’t earn anything from it – in fact, I pay for it to be hosted, and I write what I feel like, and make no bones about it. There is fact, and there will be experience and opinion – I try to present it the way I feel makes most sense and covers an area in a complete holistic manner. It is built from the spare time and energy that I have, and sometimes “distracts” me from work I should be doing because I enjoy writing for you – the reader.
For a full list of publications and appearances, please see this page.
Loved your posts about SDR! I’m currently getting into it myself
Absolutely remarkable (in a good way) posts about Vintage Computer Diskette Hardware … Kryoflux et al. We are so very impressed and we’ll definitely be adding you to our RSS feeds. regards Marcus and Agata.
Dear Marcus,
Thanks very much for your positive remarks. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed some of my posts – I know not all of them are interesting to everyone, but I try to cover a variety of different topics.
I have taken a look at your blog – you haven’t enabled commenting, although for your post about IBM’s IP address, the reason is due to a service called CDN (Content Distribution/Delivery Network). They have contracted with Akamai Technologies to “bring their website closer to their end users” for a better experience (speed-wise). As a result, depending on where you do a DNS lookup for http://www.ibm.com, you will be returned the result for your nearest Akamai Technologies cache which contains IBM’s website – this way, the data travels through less hops, the main site is protected against large volumes of data “clogging the pipes”, it’s protected against some attacks (e.g. DDoS), ISPs may be happier because they can use peering bandwidth instead of expensive transit to deliver the website and the end user sees faster load times.
You will find many major sites are using Akamai Technologies CDN technology to deliver their websites – e.g. Apple, Facebook. There are other CDN providers which you may notice while surfing the internet – e.g. CloudFlare, CloudFront, Edgecast, Limelight just to name a few popular ones.
I hope that answers your question 🙂 If I could leave a comment on your post, I would have!
– Gough
Thank you for interesting reading on such a wide variety of subjects. Every day that passes without learning something new is a wasted day. Your articles are comprehensive and very enlightening. Great work. Thank you. DM.
Dear DM,
Many thanks for your comment and encouragement. It’s just part of what keeps me going :). I hope you enjoy further posts to come, although I realize not all posts will be to everyone’s liking.
– Gough
Hi Lui Gough – sorry to bother you but because you are so smart I would like to ask you a question / problem that I have with my Twinhan Magic Box 2 model 7046 which I resently installed on my windows 7 lap top – when I try to launch the program I get a pop-up that says “can not support the card or driver – please check them” – everything else appears to be correctly installed and connected ?:-)
thanks regards John
First check if you are running Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 7 32-bit through your Control Panel -> System and Security -> System. If you’re running 32-bit, then it’s as simple as running the PC-TV application using administrative privileges (configure via Properties, Compatibility).
If you are running Windows 7 64-bit, the default Twinhan application will not work regardless of setting as it doesn’t seem to like its own 64-bit drivers however, the BDA drivers still install and function. It’s a matter of trying alternate TV tuning programs to see if they will work with the card. You might want to try ProgDVB, and configure it for a BDA Source, which should pick up your Twinhan card. There are other tuning programs out there, like AltDVB or even VLC via Open Capture Device. Others have used the tuner via Windows Media Center with no trouble.
It’s definitely not a plug-and-play operation and stability is not guaranteed, but I typically run the tuners on Linux nowadays and use mumudvb to serve them through the network. The tuners are about 10 years old (I would know since I own four of them) … and the company has been bought out and no longer develops TV tuners, so if anything, it’s overdue for retirement (from the technological sense). New tuners are cheap, so if you don’t feel like wading through a sea of BDA driver technicalities, you might as well just buy a new one that is supported. Some (e.g. the RTL2832 based DVB-T tuners from eBay) start from as low as US$12. Because of this, it’s really not worth my time to walk you through and troubleshoot every issue.
– Gough
Hi Gough
Thanks for your advice (I know you have a few of the Twinhans Magic Box/s thats why I asked you) I did as you said – I configured user privileges on my 32 bit pc but still it did not work? I know that I should get rid of it but I just want to see it work (it has been in the box unopened brand new for years and now that I eventually took it out it will not launch? it is very frustrating when you are defeated by something so simple!?:-)
thamks again I will keep on trying –
best regards John
Hi Gough, I’m hoping you might know how I can find information on a 3.7/8400mah powerbank I have & am having trouble using. It’s labelled WE.COM model M9 with a micro usb input of 5v 1A and 2 5voutputs, one is 1A and the other2A.I’d appreciate any input you might have. Thanks, Andy
Unfortunately, the information you have provided doesn’t seem to match up with any unit I can see online by searching. Most power banks share similar characteristics in terms of having two outputs.
The operation of a power bank should be fairly straightforward. Start by charging the unit by attaching the unit to a USB charger with supplied cable. Once charged up, it should be as simple as connecting a device to be charged to the USB A-F port. If charging doesn’t automatically commence, you may need to press a physical power button to activate the output. Try both short-presses, long-presses and or double-presses. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
If it still doesn’t operate, please check your cables and whether it’s been plugged in correctly. Otherwise, try a different end device as it may be a compatibility problem (e.g. power bank is designed for Apple charging, device expects to see something different).
– Gough
I am trying to get the PI B+ to work with the Xtrinsic sense board, but it won’t boot with the image from Element 14, the PI just shows no activity. I got the B+ to boot with Raspbian but I don’t know much so I can’t figure how to load the software for the sensor board. I also got the Xtrinsic image to work fine on and old B model? I am not a Linux or Pi guy so my knowledge is very limited. Any Ideas
It should work with the latest Raspbian image, provided you download the necessary supporting software using git as per my post here: http://goughlui.com/2014/06/30/getting-started-freescale-xtrinisic-sense-board-on-rpi-kl-25z/
– Gough
Hi Lui, I liked your review about Fiio x1 player( I read it twice),very interesting and full, it’s very hard to add something else, thank you.
Yuriy.
Hello Gough, I read many of your great article about power banks. Do you know why many people who uses unbranded (cheap) power banks got their battery swollen in months ? What’s the most reasons ? (e.g. overcharging, overvoltage, overcurrent, noise and ripple, etc.)
Swelling normally is more visible with Li-Polymer cells more than Li-Ion cells, as Li-Poly cells have normally a “soft” plastic outer jacket, whereas Li-Ion have metal outer casings. However, since both chemistries are virtually identical, both chemistries have been observed to swell.
Swelling can occur when the cell is overcharged/overdischarged or left at a high state of charge for a very long time. Another cause is poor manufacturing – i.e. too much moisture in the battery, or storage at high temperatures. The cause is likely related to impurities in the components that make up the cell, which cause chemical reactions that produce gas, causing the cell to balloon.
Better quality cells, treated properly, should not be observed to swell in their useful lifetime of 3 years or thereabouts.
I’m sure a Li-Ion expert somewhere has a better explanation – e.g. http://barnson.org/node/1842
– Gough
Thanks Gough, keep posting !!!
I forgot something, what’s the meaning of overcharging ? If it’s mean to leave the phone at charged after reached 100%, but if I use charger doctor, it will turned 0.00A after 100% charged. Is it still bad to the battery even it shows 0.00A ?
Technically, for Li-Ion and Li-Polymer, overcharging means a case of where the internal circuitry to the phone or power-bank doesn’t stop charging at the right voltage (which changes due to temperature) and instead continues to charge beyond the cell’s recommended maximum. This might increase capacity slightly, but it will also increase the voltage stress on the separator, increase the rate of internal chemical corrosion of the cell and can also be dangerous with extreme overcharging leading to explosion or venting with flame. In Li-Ion and Li-Poly, no continuous trickle charging is possible!
A user should not be able to induce this condition in properly designed products regardless of how long they leave it on the charger. Only products with poor design or component failures will allow the battery to be overcharged, although slight overcharging isn’t immediately dangerous, repeated overcharging may be a contributor in the swelling battery problem.
If the Charger Doctor reports 0.00A, then the device is operating as intended and has terminated the charging process because it thinks the battery is full. But if its internal circuitry is flawed, then it still may have caused damage to the battery.
– Gough
Thanks for the explanations, I thought it’s only about amperage. As you test a lot of power banks, I suggest you do test only famous power banks like you did with Xiaomi brand. Because if you test unknown (aka cheap) brands, not many people can utilize your reviews. You did great with revealing noise and ripple values, as not many reviewers did that. Keep reviewing…….
Dear Victor,
I think it’s important to realize that I do the reviews because I feel like doing them – unfortunately, while reviewing more popular famous branded products are perceived as being more useful, such products are often more expensive and unless I buy them myself because I feel like owning it, there isn’t many chances to test or review such products. The supply of money is, of course, limited as a student as is the need to accumulate many devices of a single type.
Ironically, the cheap unknown brands are often where there are no reviews at all and they turn up the most educationally interesting characteristics which makes the article very worthwhile in the sense of contributing something new that nobody else has thought to do.
– Gough
Yes, I understood about the cost reason of the branded power banks such as Sony, Energizer, Panasonic, etc. But if you tested the cheap unknown brands, even the result was good, we couldn’t find it easily in the market. As most are OEM, so they use different brand on different markets.
I wish you test the Anker brand (#1 in U.S.) but unfortunately you’re not eligible to joint their Power User Program as you’re not reside in the chosen country.
So, next cheap branded power bank should be OnePlus $15…..let’s wait….
My best of luck for you…you are such a gem..i liked all that i read here…plz carry on you passion..
Its worth doing …
HI Gough, found your site while looking for Xiaomi powerbank reviews. Your articles are very informative and I just kept reading. I learned many technical stuff, and now I’m not going to buy cheap unbranded powerbanks to save my life! A quick question though, I am going to buy this new phone with “fast-charging” feature. Is this supported by a scientifically possible fact or just a marketing thing? And are non-removable batteries on phones a bad thing? I read about your samsung replacement battery post, and I fear that the battery-fattening is possible on non-removable ones and render the phone unusable in a few years. I hope you’d reply. Thanks alot!
Fast charging is indeed a real “thing”. The technology deviates from regular USB charging by “negotiating” using a special protocol between the charger and the phone to allow the charger to supply a higher voltage (9v, 12v, etc) which improves power transfer by reducing cable and connector resistive losses. This is how the Qualcomm fast charge technology, used in most flagship Android phones today, achieves this feat.
Previously fast-charging involved using a special “signalling” on the D+ and D- pins to inform the device that the charger is capable of higher currents (up to 2.4A at 5v for example). This was accomplished at the same fixed USB standard 5v, and thus, was just a matter of increasing the supply capability. Sadly, this is problematic mainly due to the energy lost in the cable in the form of voltage drop (I have an article about that here: http://goughlui.com/2014/10/01/usb-cable-resistance-why-your-phonetablet-might-be-charging-slow/)
Sadly, the number of power banks that support such fast charging is very limited and I haven’t had my hands on one nor a device that could actually utilize it. As a result, I can’t comment on the reliability or quality of the fast-charging-capable power banks. However, fast charging in general, while convenient for end users, can be harmful to the cycle life of the battery if not carefully controlled. As a result, most of the advertisements typically claim a fast charge for a range (i.e. 1 hour to 60%), as the fast charge can only really occur when the battery is towards the low-end of its state of charge. Towards the high end, the risk of overcharging/overvoltage is too high, thus the charge current tapers off to a regular charge when it reaches near full (i.e. above 80%). At the fully-depleted end, the lithium-ion battery isn’t capable of receiving fast charging, so normally it is trickled until a minimum pre-set level, and then fast charging kicks in.
Non-removable batteries in phones can be a bad thing, but it might not be as bad as it seems. This highly depends on the quality of the cell used and the quality of the charging protection/control provided. With proper design and quality parts, it is reasonable to expect most users will upgrade their phones before the battery has too much capacity depletion (many are on 2 year upgrade cycles, so at one cycle a day, is about 800 cycles – most Li-Ion/Poly cells claim 300-500 cycles to 80% of original capacity, however, as some of my testing shows, they can handily exceed this).
However, if the cells are poorly made and somehow contain moisture and impurities, or the circuitry is incorrectly overcharging the cells, then an early cell death is indeed possible and this is definitely a concern. Despite the cells being non-removable, some of them can still be replaced if you have the adequate tools and dexterity to attempt it at home, or you can find a cell phone repair shop to do it at a reasonable cost. Thus, it might not be too big of a problem. You don’t, however, have the flexibility to carry spare batteries around with you, but I suppose the proliferation of USB power banks have mitigated this issue to some degree.
Hope this answers your questions.
– Gough
Thanks a lot for the really complete answer! I appreciate it very much. I guess I will not have a problem on non-removable battery if I purchase a good brand like apple or samsung. By the way, the email subscription for the comments didn’t seem to work. I wasn’t notified when you replied. Thanks again!
Hello Gough,
If it wasn’t for the over inflated shipping cost to ship an item from the USA to Australia, you would have a world of pagers to choose from.. I have been in the paging industry since 1985. I still sell mainly Motorola products but do sell an off brand occasionally. My eBay ID is thumper696969 if you can’t find something in your country. The USA ran VHF mostly in the 151-165 range, but since
the late 90’s many synthesized units sill cover your 148 MHz tinkering needs.
Glenn
Highly agreed! Getting something from the USA is a bit of a double-whammy with both the shipping cost, and before, our exchange rates were not favourable either. I am aware you guys seem to also run VHF 450Mhz or so, as well as UHF 900Mhz as well. If anything, pager penetration in the US was much higher than it was in Australia – I don’t think we ever had a two-way pager service either for that matter, and Flex was not highly popular here with only one provider offering Flex from memory. The rest were all old-fashioned POCSAG/Super-POCSAG.
– Gough
I came across this blog on searching for information regarding the Sydney Trains API. Super interesting Gough! Great work!
I love your blog. I am so glad I found it. The information here is so well presented and complete. Thank you!
Thank you for your kind words.
Sincerely,
Gough.
Mr. Gough
I read aout you as well as some of your work. I am 65 years of age and went back to school.
Thank You
You are Gold Gough!
The best type of reviewer, organized and unbiased!
Please continue your work and appraisals.
Straight to my favourites.
Thank you for your post titled ‘Review: Avantree Bluetooth 4.0 Micro USB Dongle’. Helped me resolve the issue with my CSR8510 bluetooth USB dongle and bluetooth headset.
thanks Mr.Gough, you article about the electronic-ballast was so interesting and informative
Abdulsslam
Hi Dr Gough,
I just wanted to thank you for your excellent review of the Kela 8mm and Tokina 11-16mm. Your comparison of the Kelda with your Samyang was particularly helpful to me and I appreciate the effort you went to.
Regards
Mat
Hello sir I need the change cid number on sd card.I have many more sd card of Japanese navigation map.if I copy normally it not work 100% because serial number is not match.plz plz give me some instructions than I do it.plz sir
Technically, you know, unless it says “Dr.” on your birth certificate, your name is Gough Luis. You could say “I am Dr. Gough Lui” without having to change too much text.
I read your interesting… well, I was going to say back-and-forth, except there wasn’t enough “back”, just mostly “forth”… with Netflix. I hope for your sake that resolution is both speedy and satisfactory to you!
Also, much luck with your job search. I remember those days when I was looking! I don’t know how much longer it will be common (and perhaps even now it no longer is), but I found a position that allowed me to stay at the same employer for just over 30 years. (I’ve just recently retired.)
Interesting blog you have here. I’m looking forward to digging into it more!
Cheers!
Bruce
Thanks for the comment – no problems, uncommon names cause problems the world-over.
What is not apparent (as I normally only blog to a small audience of my peers) is that I chose to spend this year rewarding myself for nine years spent continuously studying at university. I opted to be unemployed: to travel, to broaden my cultural horizons, to relax. This year, I spent 174 days overseas, and I achieved a lot more than I expected to. There’s a lot of stuff that still needs to be “unpacked” – hence my little note in the header-image.
That being said, the university does have a few employment opportunities for me which I am in the process of assessing, but that will probably for next year so I can finish off the year in the way I intended to – relaxing!
Sincerely,
Gough
Drafted auto-correct changed your last name on me Sorry about that!
Great Stuff
Hi,
for mp3 SSQ QSO example “http://goughlui.com/legacy/soundsofhf/ama-ukn.mp3”, language is italian ….
Amazing that you find time to respond to so many comments. I came unto your (now old) article about putting an SSD in a USB 3 enclosure. I was amazed at how much detail you provided. Had to read your bio, so here I am. I bricked an old Dell laptop while (trying to) update it’s BIOS. It wasn’t worth my while to much to try to rescue it, so I took out the memory and the Samsung 850 EVO SSD I had put in there a year earlier and trashed the rest of the old laptop. Then I tried to put the SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure made by SIIG, connected it to one of my other laptops, and it wouldn’t work. System wouldn’t see the SSD. I could put a regular drive in the enclosure and it would work. I could put the SSD in an older USB 2 enclosure and that would also work. This was surprising to me. Is there a known compatibility issue? Why would an good SSD not work in a good USB 3.0 enclosure?
It’s hard to reply to all comments and some comments don’t necessarily deserve a reply either, but I try my best :).
I’ve had a similar experience before with certain SSDs and USB bridge chips not playing nice. Sometimes it boils down to a timing issue – some SSD firmware updates which claim to “improve compatibility” often do address some of these issues which also happen to plague certain RAID card and SSD combinations. I suspect it’s because of the amount of time an SSD needs when powered up to check the internal flash table mapping and recover from an improper shutdown. When using with external cases, improper shutdown is very often the case which will result in the power-on-recovery routine needing to execute – you can see how often this occurs based on SMART attribute 0xEB POR Recovery Count. On occasion, this can take even a few seconds, and the bridge chip may incorrectly conclude that a drive is not present, and short of a firmware fix on the SSD or the bridge board itself, there’s not much you can do about it.
I’ve had some luck sometimes with powered docks and unplugging/replugging USB when power is still applied but this won’t apply to bus-powered enclosures. Other times it’s a bit of a toss-up as to which chipset/firmware combination works best. For reference, my 840 PRO (the closest thing I have in an enclosure now) works happily in both the Transcend StoreJet 25S3 (Asmedia-based) and the Seatay SBOX (Jmicron-based) enclosures that I have, but even then, I can’t guarantee that the products you can buy today have the same chipset or firmware revision.
Finally, it could just be a slight connector contact issue or insufficient power due to a low-quality USB cable – maybe try plugging it in all the way and pulling it out half a millimeter or trying a different cable as well … While SSDs are supposed to be more power efficient, the larger capacity units sometimes have fairly high peak-current demands (1.5A is not unheard of).
Best of luck with your problem.
– Gough
Hi, Gough
I have read your post and it’s really helpful. It’s feel great to have some good techie in Australia because most off them are in the USA.
Keep up the good work.
-Fah-
Hi, Gough
I was looking to fix my HP monitor and found your blog, really great to read into your teardowns. Keep up the great work.
Ish
London
Excellent webpage. Just did a YouTube video on your site. My YouTube channel is hamrad88. Thanks
Dear Tom,
Greetings from Australia and thanks for dropping me a message and mentioning me on your channel. I’m glad that you were able to find some things that interested you on my site – it’s a bit of a mix of random content, but I try my best to do stuff that isn’t quite ordinary.
It’s a bit unfortunate that I’ve been quite strapped for time recently, as last year in my tour of South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, I had a chance to receive Kyodo much more reliably using the Sony AN-LP1 (as that’s the best I could easily unpack in a hotel room) with my BladeRF x40 with HF transverter board. The fact it is still running is a historically significant service as being the last news by HF radiofax in the world to my knowledge – just as many of the weather-fax-only stations are starting to consider winding down. They’re also the only station to operate in 60LPM mode, although there are one or two faxes in 120LPM mode each day. The English service seems to be sent every weekday, once in 120LPM and later on in 60LPM spaced by a few hours but I’d have to consult my travel logs to recall the exact times.
Thanks,
Gough.
you are a impressive young man. Keep up the good work. Everything you do will bring reward.
Dear Johan,
Thanks for the comment – I sure hope so!
Unfortunately, nobody knows where the road may lead in the future and what rewards may (or may not) lay ahead – whatever it may be, it’s probably going to be interesting :).
Sincerely,
Gough.
Great article. Have a very low level question for you. In oil and gas we still use every type of tape media, even old analog tapes from 60 years ago. I have a DLT tape where about 6 feet of tape has spooled out of the cartridge. The leader had rolled back into the cartridge and folded the tape back on itself. I was able to get this tape unfolded, but now about 6 feet of tape is outside of the cartridge. It doesn’t look too horribly damaged, so I want to spool it back in. How? No one can tell me. I’m guessing I just need to engage the TWO reel locking mechanisms which should free the spool to spin, but it’s not working. I imagine it is a balancing act of keeping the tape level, the spring engaged, and engaging the two lock mechanisms before turning the spool. Sound correct? Your article is the closest thing I’ve found describing my problem.
You should be able to retract the tape by pushing in the two reel locks and then turning the hub from the underside of the cartridge. Perhaps you may not have pushed the reel lock mechanisms sufficiently – perhaps try pushing a little further until it reaches its limit of travel. It should not be difficult to do.
If it is, there is a potential that the reel lock mechanism may have been damaged by a drop/shipping/etc causing a jam in which case you may wish to disassemble the cartridge for further investigations.
– Gough
How can I subscribe to your site
You could either subscribe with an RSS reader – the feed address is https://goughlui.com/feed/
If you would like to subscribe by e-mail, you can leave a comment, ticking the box that says “Notify me of new posts via email.” The sidebar subscription box was removed due to abuse.
– Gough
Hi Dr.
Wish you the best of success. Nice biography . Dr. do you know any company in china to make PCB for any type of kit in mass production?
Dear Imelda,
Unfortunately, I don’t deal with PCB design or manufacture, but there are plenty of companies if you just look around. Whether they can be trusted or give a competitive price is another thing – so perhaps it’s worth asking on a forum instead.
– Gough
Omg, I’m still remember those ram memories from my old 486 computer, another thing, the picture on the main page,(The Power supply) has at least two electrolytic capacitors damage or almost.
Jejeje 😉
Hi Doc,
I came across your site researching 5ghz DFS wifi in Australia. I want to thank you and express my appreciation for your thorough and informative writing. It is refreshing to know that someone like yourself can be so generous with and competent in sharing you knowledge. It is a pleasure to read such clear and accessible information and a truly impressive skill in itself the way you deliver it.
All the best with your current and future endeavours!!!
Thanks for your kind comment John. I try my best to share what I know and am happy to learn as I go along as well.
The whole 5GHz Wi-Fi band situation is a rather interesting one, especially with regards to 802.11ac Wave 2 deployments. The DFS situation was not one that was clearly understood either, at least by many consumers as only recently has consumer gear started to make it available for use by meeting the necessary TPC and radar detection requirements.
While DFS channels are entirely safe to use and “better” equipment will offer them up for selection, it seems that there has been some push-back from meteorological agencies in Europe who are finding some interference with their weather products and more stringent DFS detection requirements are being enacted in some products. This has unfortunately, resulted in some products falsely detecting radar and hopping to an alternate channel (while locking out the first channel for a predetermined amount of time). If the alternate channel is also DFS, this could result in a 2-minute communications black-out as the AP must perform radar detection on this alternate channel (unless, it has already been doing so using background scanning over a longer period of time, typically 24 hours).
I still recommend the use of DFS channels as a way to avoid the relatively overcrowded Ch 36-48 for indoors and Ch 149-165 outdoor band, but with the understanding that false radar detections could be an issue with certain equipment. That being said, there are poorly documented ways to disable radar detection on some of the more advanced gear, but this is not openly discussed for fear that these configuration mechanisms may be forcibly removed if they become too popular.
– Gough
Cool pages – especially the ones with the help for the am/fm radio kit.
Hi,
Saw your cowin E7 battery removal video, actually I dropped it and the battery wasn’t charging, and it was over warranty period, I’m using it for past 3 years and they are good. The battery light was blinking red while the charger was connected. There was no way to open the battery case, somehow I found that the cap is easily detachable and inside that are the screws, and battery was there 800mAH , I removed it and reinserted it. It started charging now.
Ok so this comment is about your very clear instructions for the fitting of a Fluidmaster Bottom Entry Toilet Inlet Valve. I haven’t actually done it yet, but I plan to following a period of mandatory quarantine!
So excited to tackle this myself instead of relying on others.
Thanks
Best of luck with your endeavours – it shouldn’t take long assuming you have the necessarily tools at the ready. A little bit of planning always helps. For the record, all of my Fluidmaster replacements are still doing well, but the Fix-a-Loo one seized up a year ago and was replaced with a Fluidmaster. The other option is to service the washer/seal in the current valve, assuming you can get it apart.
– Gough
Dear Lui,
I have just read your interesting post on using the old Telstra Fax Stream Professional. You provides useful info re the various settings however you didn’t comment on one warning. If it is reported that: “Fax machine 7.3 dB Under Equalised.”, could you explain what this means, given it can cause comms failure, and how to adjust the SPA 112 settings to correct this.
Thanks in advance.
My interpretation is that the high frequency signals are somehow being attenuated severely. It should show up in the frequency analysis graph as a noticeable slope or roll-off towards the high frequencies.
Are you sure the FXS port impedance is correctly set in the Regional Tab? Try changing it to the various options available and see what works best, but Australia should be 220+820||115nF. Otherwise perhaps your cable/connectors/attached device is somehow at fault or you have some strange issue upstream (e.g. VSP is terminating calls to analog lines which are then re-digitised with a frequency response or impedance mismatch there).
– Gough
Dear Lui,
My name is Steven Avonts and I live in Belgium. I also own a hp ipaq h5550 which still works but, it is so out of date and I don’t want to throw it away! I love the design of it and I was wondering if there is a way to bring it in to the 21st century. Could you or someone you know help me with this mission? I would really like to keep on using it, only with a better screen and more speed. Also the memory could use a boost. I hope you can help me with this mission as here in Belgium nobody seems capable to help me.
Thanks, Steven.
This looks like a Lui Gough article:
Expensive digital pregnancy testing sticks
https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/05/digital_pregnancy_testing/
Well, that doesn’t surprise me very much at all. I’d have to say that there’s a lot of people who automatically equate “digital” as being “better”. Marketing has learned to capitalise on this behaviour many decades ago.
The downside to all of this is an increase in price and an increase in needless electronic waste especially as competitors will try to “keep up” and release their own similar products. Disposable electronics just strikes me as an environmental disaster in the making.
– Gough
Hello,
I appreciated your work on RADIOFAX broadcasters, lately monitoring the transmissions on Asian SDRs I encountered two wefax transmissions, one from the coastal station of GUANGZHOU XSQ (marine faxes for south china) and the other from the NATIONAL METEREOLOGICAL CENTER station , CMA without identification.
The first with regular emissions, the second received on one occasion, both with three different emission frequencies.
Turning on the internet I have not found any kind of feedback, do you have any news about it?
If you are interested, I can provide you with some of the faxes received for feedback.
Best regards
Dear Fabrys,
I haven’t been following radiofaxes for a while now. The only CMA faxes I have received were from XSG:
https://goughlui.com/2019/03/07/radiofax-xsg-shanghai-china-national-meterological-centre-cma/
If you do have any information about frequencies/times for XSQ, I’d definitely appreciate it. I would also appreciate a comment if the faxes share the same characteristics (e.g. phasing bar which is distinct to transmissions from China to my knowledge).
Sincerely,
Gough
Hi Gough,
… send me an e-mail contact or rather you should see my e-mail contact in the published message, so that I can send you some documentation in my possession.
I anticipate that an issuer is XSQ, the other I was unable to figure out.
regards
Fabrys
Dear Lui Gough,
I read your tear down of the digital satellite finder with great interest. I have a GSF 9506 device which looks very similar inside.
I have found a fault with the device. The power supply is supposed to be 13v – 18v, but if you try to power it from a lower voltage supply, say 8 Volts, it cooks the two inductors on the circuit board – the two resistor looking items top right and top left in your photo.
The unit powers on okay when connected to 8v, however, if you then plug in the aerial lead, the unit starts to smoke.
My inductors suffered too much damage to be able to read them, and I have tried to expand your photo to see what the colours are on the inductors, but I can’t distinguish them.
Would it be possible for you to advise me of the value of the two inductors, or just the colours of the rings on the inductors ? I will then try to purchase them separately and solder new ones in.
My unit turns on still, but it won’t measure anything. A warning to other users of similar devices – DO NOT OPERATE IT AT BELOW THE STATED VOLTAGE, AND DEFINITELY DON’T PLUG THE AERIAL LEAD INTO THE SATELLITE INPUT IF POWERING BELOW 13V.
Kind Regards,
Colin.
Is it this one? https://goughlui.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/20150220-2209-3682.jpg
Is it the large inductors near the top of the board that you’re looking for? Green-Blue-Gold-Silver – 5.6uH 10% tolerance.
I would suspect powering below 11V is not a good idea in general, since there is a 78M09 regulator which produces 9V output for the internal circuitry and as it is a linear regulator, should require about 2V drop across it to provide a correct regulated output to ensure the unit operates correctly. However, it seems more likely that the reduced voltage caused the LNB circuitry to either oscillate or draw more current to compensate for the lower voltage. The increased current draw would have heated up the bypass inductors more than usual as it is the path by which the DC that powers the LNB and the satellite finder is fed.
– Gough
Thank you for your reply Gough. Yes, the link you posted is the right one. I noticed I could zoom in on your photo, and to me it looks like the inductor bands are, green, blue, gild, silver, which suggests 5.6 micro Henries.
Your explanation makes sense, but it seems poor design to me that the circuit would destruct when the input voltage falls below 13volts. If you were up on a roof testing an aerial or Sattelite position and the voltage of the battery powereing the unit dropped off, the unit would cook the inductors.
Anyway, I have ordered 6.8 micro Henry 0.5W inductors on eBay. I couldn’t find 5.6 micro Henry ones at a reasonable price. Hopefully it won’t make too much difference.
Regards, Colin
Dr. Gough, most glad to read your writing on voltage drop in USB cables for charging devices. Well written article. Very instructive. Thanks!
Hi Gough,
Thank you for posting about HDMI splitters that remove the HDCP 2.2. error. I just bought a new Tivo DVR to replace an older Tivo, and I’m dealing with the HDCP 2.2 error because my old plasma TV is non-HDCP compliant. Might you have any advice on current HDMI splitter that I could use to get around the HDCP 2.2 compliant error? I am not trying to view or copy any copyrighted material. I’ve tried a couple HDMI splitters that I bought on Amazon and neither removed the HDCP problem.
Thank you so much,
Regina
Dear Regina,
I have not needed to deal with this issue in quite a few years, but there are some dedicated devices which will remove HDCP although the legality is perhaps an issue. You might want to do some searches around that.
Otherwise, some of the splitters could be amenable to modification as sometimes the HDCP re-insertion relies on some data within their EEPROM on their circuit board which may be removed (perhaps with a hot air rework station) or reprogrammed using an EEPROM programmer and knowing the details of the chipset although I don’t have any such “modern” unit to investigate.
Finally, perhaps you might have to go the analog route by finding an HDMI to VGA converter that supports HDCP on the HDMI side. I know the older HDMI to VGA converters sometimes were able to circumvent HDCP this way at a potential image quality loss.
– Gough
Hi Gough, thanks very much for your reply. I will doing some more googling. Thanks again.
Thanks again for your help. I will do some more googling.
Keep up the good work, dude! I thoroughly enjoyed reading your IR Remote teardown report.
7:50 AM 04/17/2021
https://goughlui.com/about-me-a-short-bio/
Date AND time stamp EVERY article you pen, please.
Was reviewing your optical media information. Good stuff.
However, as an
IT pro (~37 years),
pro musician (~50+ years),
and pro sound/audio engineer (~45+ years),
tech information can be or is meaningless without relativity, ie, time (history) placement.
For instance,
we can discuss Taiyo Yuden versus Verbatim AZO ’til the cows come home,
but an understanding that original Taiyo Yuden manufacturing has been sunsetted and simply Taiyo Yuden recipe licensing to third party manufacturers is all that’s left,
rendering “Taiyo Yuden like” optical media less reputable than the original manufacturing years,
versus the slow denegration of applied AZO technology with Verbatim (the earlier days were better),
ie,
VerbAZO product today isn’t what it used to be,
and what does this say for archival life,
the most important aspect of optical media,
such discussions can become semi-meaningless unless put in to time (history) perspective.
Only time/date stamped resource information can help create current-time decision-making through due-diligence informed research.
The quality of optical media today is both better than AND worse than years past,
unlike, say, telephony,
wherein, over an ~80 to ~90 year life span of land lines,
tech and audio fidelity just kept getting better.
Knowing the date AND time of your research, conclusions, and opinions are, oh so important, espeically coming from a professional such as yourself, with a background and brain such aas yours.
Good stuff on the web site.
Date/time stamps on ALL articles are just metadata improvements that NEED to be make for relevance of information.
Hope you take the constructive observations positively.
Thanks for your work, site, and information therein.
Practically all articles posted to the WordPress section of the site are dated. You’ll see the date at the top and in the path for the articles themselves.
Articles in the legacy section of the site are just that – legacy data that has been “rolled” on from years back prior to using a CMS of any sort. Some of those will have telltales, some of them won’t, but because they are legacy, the relevance is likely to be diminished somewhat so I don’t feel it necessary to edit what was once was. Keep in mind, back in the legacy days, I was lucky to get seven visitors in a month and I was using modified writer firmwares to improve burn quality etc. Results would not necessarily be typical and arguments about the validity of error rate scanning were abundant. Unfortunately some of the forums where I posted a lot of that data are no longer – those would have been time/date stamped. This is mainly to document things for my own sanity (to clear mental clutter) – but when it comes to optical media, its relevance to society as a whole is diminishing and as players continue to exit the market, there will be fewer and fewer choices.
– Gough
10:33 AM CDT 04/17/2021
Which is REALLY sad ‘cuz people do not really realize the import of the decisions they make,
ie,
yes, DTV, streaming, NetFlix, etc may be the “in thing” (today anyways),
and stand-alone YET COMPLETELY PRIVATE optical, helical, etc may be old passé,
as long as one wants to be completely Orwellian-1984-surveilled.
Here in US, NSA is collecting EVERYTHING from EVERYBODY for intelligence to try and create a thought police state.
NSA/.gov/etc will take your viewing/listening habits and add them in to so much other intelligence about an individual and draw conclusions AND profiles,
mostly erroneous, not that they care,
to satisfy their wanton oligarchial plutocratic tyrannical lust for despotic control and, thus, power.
Same with the morons that run our corporations who know NOTHING about technology yet make decisions to “cloud-enable” everything instead of remaining PRIVATIZED and localized with stand-alone private-networked optical jukebox drives or digital DLT tape for backups, redundancy, and de-duplication(s).
When corporatocratic EVERYTHING is “in the cloud”, it IS being spied on by governments … make no mistake.
Why do you think the push in the first place?!
AND being shared by 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, 14 Eyes, etc government coalitions, etc.
The Human Race moves forward, or so they think, and, in doing so, ALWAYS simultaneously moves backwards.
Hi Lui Gough, Thanks for the diy radio construction tips for both AM FM CF210SP & AM only S66E, I could never have had successfully built both of these kits without your tips well I still had some hurdles but got them both working after far to many hours but ideal to fill in time with the current lockdown btw I also built the more expensive Tecsun 2P3 and it really performs excellent
Great site! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every ‘corner’ of the site as I ‘distracted’ myself from my own work, lol. 🙂 If you ever want more hard drives for your corner, let me know as at some point I will be letting all of mine go including an original Seagate ST157N and Maxtor LXT213S (although I may keep those as momentos–dunno yet as it seems to be terrible to do this without keeping the 486 that they lived in.)
Improving performance of USB and SD Cards in windows:
Hi. I’ve been reading your reviews teardowns of various SD cards etc. Interesting stuff! 🙂
I thought you (and everyone here) might be interested in 2 easy ways to improve the performance of USB flash drives and SD Cards in Windows.
USB-WriteCache V0.2:
For any FS except NTFS; Windows only pretends to enable write caching for removable devices.
Hence all the advice to format to NTFS before enabling write caching.
This buggers up OS compatibility.
Also exFAT and FAT32 are faster than NTFS (logging) when a write cache is enabled.
Editing the registry with a WriteCacheEnableOverride value enables write caching for any FS:
https://www.uwe-sieber.de/drivetools_e.html
MaximumTransferLength:
Normally Windows buffers USB transfers into 64KB blocks before sending them the the device.
These block sizes can be increased to 128KB, 256KB, 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, decreasing protocol overhead, resulting in an increase in transfer speed of up to around 30%.
NB that this MaximumTransferLength value should match the average file size for best performance.
ie: 2MB for movies etc, with the stock 64KB (cant go lower) for random I/O such as running an OS or Readyboost etc off of and external drive.
Also keep the erase block size of your external drive in mind if it happens to correspond with those numbers.
For external HDDs: 2MB seems to be best due to their built in DRAM buffers (Buffer Flushing Disabled) and inherently slow random I/O.
https://www.uwe-sieber.de/drivetools_e.html
Lastly; when it comes to running an OS (random I/O) off of an external drive, no speedup ‘How to’ is complete without mentioning the vastly improved BPLRU caching algorithm.
What it does can be read about here:
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast08/tech/full_papers/kim/kim_html/index.html
This has been beta tested in the form of downloadable freeware named FlashPoint, OpenFlashFire.
Source code:
https://github.com/Zero3K/OpenFlashFire
Further reading (settings) and different versions of OpenFlashFire (High & low filter drivers) and a 64 bit compiled version can be found here:
http://giragira.way-nifty.com/blog/flashpoint/index.html
Would love to see you test the wavelength and lumens of the plant lights on Amazon. Many make claims I highly doubt are true
Hey, do you have an opinion on the brand WST from China? It produces mainly power banks and batteries? Planning to purchase a few from that brand as I’ve been told its reputable..
FYI:
Hacking a weird TV censoring device
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EWIh2D1NQ
You sound a lot like me. I have posted a link your site on my blog:
https://launcestonradiospectrummonitor.blogspot.com/2023/02/link-techzone.html
Great write up on TTY in AU, super educational
Hi Dr Gough. Came across your site recently and although i am not exactly technically minded but found it very interesting reading. My particular interest was with comparing different brands of vhs tapes and explaining the inner workings of a vcr works in a way someone like my self understands.I always favoured the sharp brand and they are still working well some 30 odd years later. I always used reasonable quality tapes such as tdk, akai, sony, basf, teac with a few maxells, nec and scotch. I avoided supermarket brands except for palsonic which i found quite good and according to you were basically teac. I also have a panasonic dmr-ez48v vhs-dvd recorder which i am using to convert some tapes to dvd with very good results. Lastly i just wanted to mention i grew up in chester hill and also went to sefton high school although at an earlier period than you were there and before it became a selective school. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for your comment – great to hear of your still-working equipment and interesting geographical ties. Here’s hoping to at least a few more years of fun with electronics :).
– Gough