Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "Technology Connections" channel.

  1. I think you need to be careful here. I worked for a charger company. There are two main elements of the Tesla plug that are desirable. The first is that it is a better engineering design. The second, and perhaps more important element is that Tesla is a plug and go standard. Ie, you roll up, plug in, and get charged to charge (pun intended) automatically. No screen, no card swipe, etc. The first part is not going to change with other makers adopting the plug. However, that second part could have happened at ANY TIME for the J1772 plug. Its true the J1772 plug was and is braindamaged in that it didn't have a digital communications port built in to the connector, and thus was inherntly incapable of "plug to charge" automatic debt payment. However, that got fixed with PLC or "power line communication" a means of high bandwidth communication with the car. The problem is that Tesla does and will own that automatic payment network. I expect the other car makers to sign on to that network *for a while*. However, for rthe NACS standard to go forward, eventually other networks besides Tesla will have to start up. This happens naturally as, say, chargepoint adapts the NACS standard. The point is, the networks f**ked up the current payment system, even though J1772 is well capable of an automatic payment system, and they *will f**k up the NACS system as well if they are not held accountable.
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  2. I'm gonna bet that FLIR cost more than the fridge.
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  3. I asked about ground source here in California. The answer was something like "a huge permitting process, followed by chunks of cash, and an act of god", ie., no ways no hows.
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  4. PS the other reason for having frame rates match the power line frequency was that early TVs had pretty bad power supplies, so some "bleed though" of the line frequency would cause a variation of the intensity on the screen. With the frame rate matching the power line frequency, the light and dark of the power line waveforms bleeding through were static, not moving continuously. Thus you would not notice them as much.
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  5. "rocket surgery" ?????
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  6. Photography this way was fun, but I don't miss it.
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  7. Its simple. Inkjet printers self destruct if you don't use them frequently enough. In fact, they are about the only product commonly sold that self destructs.
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  8. I agree that I like the warmer lights in my house, but I don't care if they use blueish light on the roads.
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  9. Women don't need pockets. That's why they have men.
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  10. The problem in Europe is that the amperage is woefully under supplied. This is a problem now that they are trying to put in car chargers.
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  11. Single mode fibre is not "smaller", but rather the actual core used to carry light is smaller, so getting the connector and the fibre end to align is more difficult.
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  12. Yea that "pattern LED failure" thing is annoying. Our city, San Jose, replaced most of the lights, and now most of them are failing with that weird "some leds are failing" thing. PS since the proper reaction to a light out is to come to a full stop, look every way and go only when there is no oncoming traffic, and be terrified of idiots, these accidents are voluntary and deserved. PSPS I LOVE countdown lights. They tell me if it is worth it to nail it and take the intersection at 100MPH before the light turns!
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  13. WRONG. All of the right angle plugs you buy are designed for the ground on the bottom. The USA electrical manufacturers should be working on insulating the first part of the hot lead so that we are not killing children instead of this nonsense.
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  14. isn't it nice to have a thermonuclear reactor parked out there at a convenient distance?
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  15. The name for the power line communications addition to J1772 is ISO 15118 aka "home plug". It was not originally designed for cars. It basically gives your car an Ethernet connection via the plug. It could theoretically cover all communications, plus give you video entertainment while you charge your car.
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  16. Thanks for that. In this age of all digital, its worth looking back at what a fantastic gift Edison gave us so long ago.
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  17. You are certainly the only one I know who is crazy enough to recreate mechanical television. The old mech TVs would have been termed low resolution slow scan today, because it had to be transmitted over a sound channel, as in radio channel, since high frequency radio had not taken off in that era. I suspect mechanical TV was quite valuable as a demonstration device before CRT based TV arrived. The basic principles were tested, and then the CRT and broadband, high frequency channels made real TV possible.
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  18. Hint: a lot of dishwashers fail because the electronics are in the door, and this consists of one or more control boards with lots of connectors. Those connectors are usually cheap, tinned connectors, not gold plated. As a result of that and the wet environment (humidity) in the door, the connections go intermittent. These can be fixed temporarily by removing and reseating the connectors. A more permanent fix is to find aluminium electrical connector gel at home depot or similar store, then apply to the connections and reinsert. The gel is designed to reduce corrosion and is non-conductive.
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  19. Hint: the national electrical code was written by the national fire protection association. Their concern is the wiring causing fires.
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  20. This is one of the rare connector applications where, even though they had microprocessors on each side of the connection, it was still done without any digital communications. This causes massive issues going forward. Chargers are unable to get any advanced information from the car, such as state of charge (percentage of charge on the battery), things like payment information, etc., without adding YET ANOTHER communications layer ontop of the analog one. IE., it was a massive foul up. And it is one reason Tesla quickly overtook J1772 as a better charging system.
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  21. Stalled motors make me run for the off switch.
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  22. A little disappointing in that you never mentioned why betamax was inherently superior to VHS technically, the a-b head azimuth method, which allowed tighter track spacing on the tape. This was sheer genius on Sony's part.
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  23. Congradulations on 1 million. Quite a milestone. Do you get a special trophy or something from YouTube?
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  24. You can never have too much computer power. If your desktop does not double as a space heater, you don't have enough.
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  25. Alec, you covered a lot of the uses of reflectors.One more: They add glass beads to movie screens to add so called "gain" to them. It means that the screen reflects the light back to the projector, and makes it so people sitting near the projector get a brighter picture. It has the disadvantage of making the picture dimmer if you are NOT near the projector, so it is not a universal good. The gain can be adjusted by the amount of beads on the screen.
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  26. In California, we have power that is just slightly less reliable than Pakistan. Thus, backup 4000kw generator, and I did the "PG&E" fix to the gas heater, which is to remove its connection to the wall power and replace with a regular 100v cord so it can plug in. I also got a 110v countertop range to replace the 240v electric range. Thus the only thing I can't backup is the clothes dryer (240v).
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  27. Orange you glad you saw this video?
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  28. Dude if you are going to do kids games, do Braun Lektron.
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  29. So I have a "mostly electric" house with electric range and dryer. I installed two (count em', two) car chargers, a regular j1772 and a Tesla, which went onto the second subpanel. Now I can use any amount of the house appliances, and I can charge both of my EV cars at once. We are also installing a heat pump this year.
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  30. This is a good overview. The basic underlying trick of color TV, or why they could stuff 3 colors into a black and white signal, was that still images (or slowly moving images) in TV don't really take the full bandwidth of a TV channel, but rather occupy a series of harmonics, or peaks in the signal spectrum at regular intervals. The color signal is fitted into the spaces between those peaks. What happens if the picture is moving? The color actually degrades quite a bit, which you can see if you hit stop during those times. The color becomes blotchy. They are taking advantage of the fact that you can't perceive color very well in any case in a fast moving image. The TV engineers effectively used signal compression, in analog, before digital TV made that standard. The system was pure genius at that time, but of course we are stuck with the re-recorded artifacts of old video to this day.
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  31. There was another, similar invention that appeared in popular science, which used a filter in front of a standard black and white TV to convert it to color. The difference was it used a film that continually moved in front of the tv to accomplish the same thing as a color wheel, ie., it was a mechanical system.
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  32. We (yes I make chargers for a living) actually put a lot of advanced electronics into these chargers. For example, we actually test the ground by putting some current into it to see if it will actually serve as a safety ground. One answer to "why are these chargers expensive" is, imagine you are standing in a puddle beside your car in the pouring rain and plugging it in to charge. Anybody for a discount charger in this case???
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  33. "can't put and LED lamp in an oven" Yes, with properly rated components you could.
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  34. I've always assumed the light was directly connected to the camera's enable logic, thanks for the heads up.
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  35. PS you picked one of the biggest, ugliest chargers on the market. There are many chargers way smaller than that.
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  36. They came out with a CHADEMO connector, which is what you are thinking of.
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  37. Automated headlights, automated parking brakes, and automatic stopping for what is clearly and unambiguously a car headed for your front end, would go a long way toward reducing the accident rates in the USA, and for little cost and effort.
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  38. Actually, garage fires are more than possible, its the leading cause of house fires. People store things like gasoline in garages, and there are lots of ignition sources like gas water heaters and space heaters. Many or most building codes require a wall that extends all the way to the roof between the garage and the house that can withstand a fire for 20 minutes or more.
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  39. You and I have the same scope. Love that Rigol 4 ch.
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  40. You dissed the on-keyboard interface for special functions, but you didn't try the bluetooth interface, where it could have all worked out.
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  41. We use one, it's called a Keurig! I use it for tea as well. Hint: don't put the Keurig capsule in the machine and out comes hot water! Amazing. PS we vote you get a 240/Euro outlet so you can demo European appliances as well.
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  42. So in response to "Tesla should join the existing standards" IE., j1772, no, sorry there is NOT in fact one standard outside of Tesla. For DC high power charging there are two in common use, CCS and Chademo, which with Tesla makes THREE different DC fast charge standards. And Tesla is the ONLY standard that integrated all forms of charging, slow, medium and fast, on a single connector. Thus, the better standard does not have to adapt to the crappy standard (the betamax/VHS is another story). And Tesla fast charging (at 100kW and better) is already higher level than the vast majority of DC fast chargers at 50kW. Should there be a single standard? Of course. But there is plenty of precedence that introducing standards on early, fast moving technology does not end well. Look at all of the iterations standard wall plugs went through, from light socket adapters, to blade plugs, to the modern three prong grounded (and in the USA it is still quite unsafe!). And keep in mind that I make my living off J1772 chargers and I am saying this!
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  43. That first sentence is a run on sentence...
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  44. Bite me and good luck finding a job after they invent the automatic burger flipper at Mcdonalds...
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  45. Ya now cover video CDs.
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  46. Que marks, or for fans of "fight club", cigarette burns.
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  47. 2 thousand views in only 4 minutes... amazing.
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  48. I found a percolator for use in camping, because it only needs a burner. Loaded with good quality ground coffee, its wonderful.
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  49. I have an OKI LED printer. Its discontinued now, but mine still works. It is color, prints on very large stock, and will practically print on a brick, it takes very thick paper known as "cover paper" because it is used to make covers of books. As you say, it is one pass, and so prints at a much better speed than a laser printer.
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  50. I bought that exact Kidde dual detector alarm because my understanding was it would only go off if BOTH detectors went off. It said as much on the box. I did it because I was tired of false alarms, and my new beautiful wife confuses the smoke alarm with a cooking timer.
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