Hardware

Ultra-budget gaming PC

http://www.maximumpc.com/build-it-little-pc-on-the-prairie/

Mini ATX

• ASRock H97M-ITX/ac

Intel CPU

• • Atom: Bay trail, Cherry trail, ...
  • Haswell
  • Broadwell
  • Skylake (sixth-generation Core series of processors) and review
  • http://www.fanlesstech.com/

My own collection

Device	Family	Instruction	Clock & Memory
Pogoplug	ARM9	ARMv5	1.2GHz, 256MB
Raspberry Pi	ARM11	ARMv6	700MHz, 512MB
Beaglebone Black	Cortex A8	ARMv7	1GHz, 512MB
UDOO	Cortex A9	ARMv7	1GHz, 1GB

See wikipedia for a list of ARM cores. These SoC are 32-bit. The newest ARM architecture is ARMv8 which is 64-bit; see here.

Arduino Yun vs BBB vs Intel Galileo vs Raspberry Pi

from Adafruit. It includes spec comparison, performance test, power usage, ...

• Arduino motor spin
• Arduino Uno vs Beaglebone vs Raspberry Pi from Makezine.com.
• Arduino Uno vs Raspberry Pi vs Beaglebone black from lifehacker.com.

Samsung pico DLP projector sp-h03

LED, 30 ANSI lumen 854x480, 12V & 1A power. The manual is available at Samsung web site here. The input signal in D-Sub can be 1280x800, 1280x768, 1280x720 resolution although the manual also said "All resolutions higher or lower than 854 x 480 are converted to 854 x 480 by the scaler chip in the projector. To obtain an optimal picture, the resolution from the PC should be similar to the projector (854 x 480)".

Vivitek Qumi Q5 500

Lumen WXGA HD 720p 3D-Ready Pocket DLP (buydig.com, vivitekusa.com)

USB device speed comparison

See http://www.elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards#Performance for an objective way to get write/read speed by using command line tool 'dd'.

Device	Read	Write	FS
MicroCenter4G	Example	12.77MB/s	Ext3
MicroCenter4G	Example	5MB/s	vfat
Patriot XT 32G USB3.0	Example	50MB/s	vfat
Patriot XT 32G USB3.0	Example	115MB/s	fat16
Patriot XT 32G USB3.0	Example	113MB/s	fat32
Patriot XT 32G USB3.0	Example	24MB/s	ntfs
Patriot XT 32G USB3.0	Example	139MB/s	ext2
Patriot XT 32G USB3.0	Example	50~100MB/s	ext3
Patriot XT 32G USB3.0	Example	140MB/s	ext4
Example	Example	Example	vfat

When testing Patriot XT USB 3.0 drive, I partition it into ext2 (15GB)& ext3(15GB). The problem of unstability in Patriot XT's ext3 partition is not related to ext3 partition because if I switch the order of partitions of ext2 and ext3, then ext2 becomes unstable.

• A word about USB flash drive.
  • According to the Slo Bytes USB Flash Drives report from Brian K. Lewis, flash drives are capable of handling 10 thousand to 10 million write and erase operations during their lifetime, depending on the source as well as the specific USB drive. Regardless, a flash drive typically will outlast any standard hard drive. The main concerns about the life expectancy of a flash drive are damage from neglect and becoming lost or stolen.
  • The life expectancy of a USB Flash Drive can be measured by the number of write or erase cycles. USB flash drives can withstand between 10,000 to 100,000 write/erase cycles, depending on the memory technology used. When the limit is reached, some portion of the memory may not function properly, leading to lost of data and corruption.
  • Most experts would agree that around 10 years is about what you can expect to retain data on a flash drive without powering it up. That means you can lock away a USB drive for 10 years and return to still see your data. After 10 years of not being powered on, the electrical charges determining if bit of information is either a ‘1’ or a ‘0’ gets hazy. This is because like all electrically charged devices, they suffer from what is called electro/magnetic deterioration; or simply put, where devices will eventually lose their power.

• The copy-paste speed on my 7200rpm hard disk is about 160MB/s.
• Tested using Seagate portable drive SRD0SP0 500GB with USM((Universal Storage Module)/USB 3.0. When it is connected to USB 2.0/3.0, the writing (from an internal hd onto it) speed is at best 30MB/s. When it is connected to USB 3.0, the writing (from it to an internal hd) speed is at least 60MB/s.
• DIY USB on the go cables.

ATX 24pin power supply

and this. A simple test from wikihow.com.

How to silence your computer mouse

An easy way to take off the cape of the rectangle box is to use a pairs of long nose pliers instead of a knife. The method works on my Logitech M210 mouse. The trick is to shorten the click distance.

Cellular phone frequency list

North America & Worldwide. In particular, T-mobile uses 1700 (3G UMTS), 1900 (3.5G HSPA+), 2/4/12 (4G LTE) and Chunghwa telecom uses 2100 for 3G/3.5G.

Lenovo IdeaTab Lynx K3011

Intel® Atom™ Z2760, 2G ram, 64GB storage.

HP Stream 8

Intel® Atom™ Z3735G Quad Core (64-bit), 1G ram, 32GB storage. The C: drive shows the space is 23.5 GB. The free space is 20GB. After the first Windows update the storage space is reduced from 18.6 to 16.8. After running Disk cleanup utility, the storage now becomes 17.1 (still lose a lot). So the lesson is not to run Windows update if the disk space is very limited (eg tablet) & everything is working fine now.

ZenFone 2

from ASUS.

Vehicle camera recorder

1. night vision 2. can turn on/off manually 3. pictures stable (not flicker) 4. G-sensor 5. 3D turning on mount racket 6. no surprising things like auto turned off, (power, start) buttons not working, freeze 7. video space (640x480 takes 100MB for 1 min???). The Amazon website has a list of popular dash cams.

Amazon Fire TV

Navigation with the remote.

Laser Engraving Machine

• NEJE 300mW Mini DIY Laser Engraving Machine Picture Logo CNC Laser Printer and 500mW version.
• mdrawBot and 500mW laser engraver
• Laser cube 2.0 (100mw laser diodes). Laser engraver from makeblock.cc (500mw laser engraver).

Kobo ereader

I have a Kobo Aura HD. The pdf program is not quite useful for scientific papers.

Alternatively, we can try KOReader.

Flexible E-ink

http://liliputing.com/2015/10/wove-band-smartwatch-has-flexible-e-ink-touch-display.html