KEYCHRON K8 UNBOXING & REVIEW

Posted on August 30, 2020August 30, 2020 by Simon

In this video I take a look at the Keychron K8 a wireless mechanical keyboard that I backed as a Kickstarter project.

I’ll walk you through an unbox and review of the Keychron K8 keyboard and show you what it’s like to receive products via projects that you can back on crowd funding websites.

The Keychron K8 Wireless Mechanical Keyboard is available from https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k8-tenkeyless-wireless-mechanical-keyboard

Watch the video now on my YouTube channel and join the discussion, oh and give me a LIKE if you thought the video was good. I do a lot of tech videos on my channel so don’t forget to subscribe to see my latest content!

CROWDFUNDING TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS IN 2020

Posted on June 9, 2020June 13, 2020 by Simon

Backing projects on crowdfunding websites can be a great deal of fun. I’ve previously backed two successful projects including the LattePanda so in this video I’m going to walk you through 5 technology products that I think are awesome and that are live right now that you can back, and at the end I’ll let you know which one I’m going to choose.

COOLING THE PANDA

Posted on March 24, 2017October 21, 2020 by Simon

I’ve had some requests to show what effect the changes I’ve made to the LattePanda have done in terms of cooling to prevent CPU throttling. So I put together a video on my YouTube channel for you guys so you can see there result. It’s a quick stress test with Prime95 and OBS recording at the same time which I think pushes the LattePanda quite hard but happy to hear your opinions on that.

If you enjoyed the video and found it informative then consider liking it and maybe even subscribe to my channel for my great tech (including LattePanda) related content!

LATTEPANDA, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Posted on February 23, 2017May 9, 2022 by Simon

I’ve been having a think about what to do with my LattePanda since I got it and a number of options were on the table. A mini server for development purposes, a media controller, you get the picture however I couldn’t really settle on anything.

In some ways I kind of put this down to spending so much time thinking about the case. As you my be aware, I got my LattePanda with the standard acrylic case and whilst it serves a purpose, for me it didn’t really float my boat and I reckon a number of users will have soon ditched that and gone down the custom route.

This is what I decided I was going to do and in the process I was going to do something about the cooling on the board. Whilst the LattePanda is great, it does have one flaw and a significant one at that. The thermals on this are a bit high probably due to the design and layout of certain components however when pushed it does cause the CPU to throttle and throttle it does all the way down to 400mhz!

Whilst deciding on my new case I noticed the LattePanda team had released via DFRobot a new slimline fan for the board and I thought that if I and applied this to the heat spreader of the cpu and added copper sinks to the other side of the board then this would solve the heat problems.

One fan duly ordered along with the touch screen overlay that I should have ordered when I backed the Kickstarter project. A few days passed and everything arrived from China, perfect service!

The fan and heat sinks have brought down the temps significantly and the touch screen works a treat except I still didn’t have the case I wanted.

Now it’s at this point in time I seriously started looking at buying a 3D printer – yes I was going to make a case from scratch, well one I’d found on Thingiverse at least. I’d pretty much got to the point of deciding which model to go for when for some strange reason I came across 3D Hubs (unfortunately is no more). I’d never heard of this before but basically it’s a group of people and/or companies that will effectively hire out their 3D printer to you and they will print your model for a reasonable fee.

3 days later and my new enclosure arrived, you can see it below in all it’s glory with the LattePanda fixed in place. I’ve used some brass standoffs to give the LattePanda a little room so that the fan does not catch the back of the case but as you can see, it works a treat.

You can see the full sized image by clicking on the thumbs but for a video tour of this then why not check out the video I posted on my Youtube channel and don’t forget to subscribe there so that you get notified when I post more LattePanda videos online.

LATTEPANDA LIVES

Posted on May 29, 2016February 1, 2021 by Simon

So I’ve dabbled in Kickstarter again, well it’s been a few months since I last backed something on the site and this time it was a small PC that could run Windows 10.

LattePanda small form factor windows 10 pc

LattePanda Windows 10 PC

Say hello to the LattePanda. This little board, that is smaller than an iPhone, packs a 1.8GHz Intel Cherry Trail processor and an Arduino chip. It comes in two flavours, the one I backed has 4GB ram and 64GB of eMMC disk space and came pre-loaded with Windows 10.

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TINY USB CHARGER

Posted on January 5, 2016October 21, 2020 by Simon

Good evening readers. I thought I’d start off 2016 talking about a recent purchase I made after I funded a project on Kick Starter back at the end of 2015. If you’ve never visited the tech section on Kick Starter you then you’re in for a bit of a treat, yes there are the ‘never going to make it’ projects but then there are some really good ones on there too and the inCharge Bolt cable was one of those.

This little cable is just 1.5 inches in length when closed over and is perfect for attaching to your keyring, personally I put mine on my lanyard for work so I’ve always got it with me around the office. The cable comes in both MicroUSB and Lightning varients, the one pictured here is the USB version. There is a good range of colours as well as a thick and thin connector version – my one is the standard thick version.
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