Gav's World

2020-01-10 : PowerWatch 2 (Luxe)

Woo hoo! Exactly a year and a day after backing the Matrix Power Watch 2 on Indiegogo it finally arrived. Initial impressions are that it's far from being a smart watch like my Pebble Time Steel is, but hopefully with several itterations of phone and watch software updates it'll get somewhere close.

Of course, the main reasons for backing this are the use of thermoelectric power to charge the watch (plus solar) and its built in GPS and heart rate monitor.

Impressions from the first few hours of use:

• Paired to phone and upgraded the embedded software with no issues, although had to re-pair afterwards.
• The up and down buttons will take a bit of getting used to as they're on the other side of the watch from my Pebble Time Steel!
• Step counter (as others have noted) is a bit pish to say the least.
• I definitely prefer the way that the Pebble does notifications - even the 10 seconds or so of displaying on screen as soon as they arrive.
• When this watch can give me weather / sunrise / sunset information (amongst other things), it will be getting on a par with Pebble... apps that I currently have on my Pebble Time Steel (for example, just to give an idea of what a smart watch should be capable of):
  • Several watchfaces, but I mainly use LCARS
  • Weather
  • Music control
  • Send Text
  • Alarms
  • Stopwatch & Countdown timer Timer+
  • Compass
  • Nav Me
  • Swim.com
  • Trip Advisor
  • pblCamera
  • Astronomy App
• Yes, I'm comparing it to Pebble: both were/are start-ups. Both have multiple crowd-funded products - both watches that I have are 2nd time around crowd-funded products. However, the Pebble OS / phone app / infrastructure / features were far more advanced than the PW2 appears to be - possibly because they had an SDK and app / watchface store at the first generation.
• Lastly... now I may not have the biggest of wrists, but this was the first time I've ever had to remove all links and put the strap as far into the clasp as it goes - what sort of wrist is this strap designed for?!?!

2020-01-04 : Website Template Updated : v2.22.0

Enhancements

1. Changed the method of page stat file locking: now uses flock to determine exclusive lock on the actual file instead of creating a lock file, which was causing issues while testing my cluster-pi web server.

New Setup Variables (see <setup-sample.php> for details)

None

Bug Fixes

None

2019-12-28 : Cluster Pi

After a few years of contemplation, I decided that I fancied experimenting with cluster computing, so ordered a Cluster HAT and a few more Raspberry Pi Zeros to make my Cluster Pi!

Perhaps this will end up as the Internet facing GavsWorld webserver?!

2019-12-14 : Argon One

I think that I may have found one of the best cases ever for a Raspberry Pi 4: the Argon One!

It has a aluminium case (with active cooling on demand) - ideal for cooling the Pi 4; it brings all connectors to the rear panel; it has a software controlled power switch; it even echos the IO header to the top of the unit, underneath a magnetically removeable panel. See it here!

2019-12-01 : Desktop PC Upgrade - NVMe SSD

Latest upgrade for my Decktop PC:

• Western Digital Black SN750 (500GByte NVMe SSD root file-system)

2019-11-18 : Kids PC 2

Time for another PC build: Alasdair will be getting his own PC in his room for Christmas!

2019-10-14 : Desktop PC Upgrade - More/Faster DDR3

Latest upgrade for my Decktop PC:

• Hyper-X Fury 16GiB Dual Channel DDR3 Kit HX318C10FRK2/16
  (2 kits, 32GiBytes total, 10-11-10-30 timings)

2019-05-04 : Kids PC

Time for another PC build: The boys will will be getting their own PC (in James' room, so you never know - Alasdair may get one of his own at some time!)

2019-03-23 : Desktop PC Upgrade - AMD Piledriver

Latest upgrade for my Decktop PC:

• AMD Piledriver FX-8350 (4.0GHz; 4.2GHz boost)

2018-12-30 : ShredMate

I stumbled upon a nice gadget for my new mountain bike: ShredMate which monitors your G-force through courners and on landing, and also monitors your air-time. Just for fun really... but at least it sync's to Strava!

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