Don’tcha love how “maybe I’ll post that tutorial tomorrow” turns into a week later? Lol. I got sidetracked with a completely unrelated project, and the tutorial for the IR Filter of course ended up being a bigger project than originally anticipated (as is tradition), so here we are. But it’s done now, go check it out. I go through the entire process, removing the original filter, replacing it, and focusing the lens in agonizing detail.
If you pay close attention to eBay you may have found yourself disappointed the other day. Somebody posted a PXL Action Strap IN THE BOX for a really great price. It was posted, favorited by at least 2 people (and then myself), and then like 5 minutes later it disappeared. POOF! Then a few days later is showed up at my house. It’s here, I bought it. The box is a little worse for wear, but it’s all there, and the boxes for the accessories these days are going to be extremely hard to come by. The strap itself might actually be completely unused, it’s in great shape. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was actually NIB. I will go through and take a ton of proper, up close pictures of both the box and the action belt and post them here at a later date. For now, here’s a couple quick and dirty shots.
So what was I so preoccupied with for the past week? (This will actually be slightly PXL related towards the end FYI). I made a sort-of experimental instrument. See my buddy (and ambient musical cohort) was telling me about this thing called a “telephone pick-up”. It’s essentially a small coil that can sense and output electronic noise as an audio signal over a 3.5mm jack. (it’s a miniature guitar pickup essentially.) Back in the day they were marketed to people who wanted to snoop in on somebody else’s landline phone call, but obviously these days that’s not going to do you much good. But with the proliferation of electronics galore there’s all kinds of cool sounds that can be heard. So I picked up one up from “the store that’s named after one of the very things it’s helping to destroy”. $6. Not bad. Anyways…
I got it in last week and had a lot of fun waving it around at the electronics near my computer, because that’s the easiest place to use it these days. I found tons of cool sounds. I had it plugged into my scarlett interface going into Reaper, but I wanted freedom to move around. There’s tons of electronics all over. I thought about plugging it into my phone and started doing some reading about how I might go about that. Looks like that would’ve been easy enough with a USB-C converter and a mic adapter, and I had everything I needed to wire that up but I also decided that I didn’t just want to wave one of these around. I wanted to wave 2 of them around…in STEREO! One for the left channel one for the right. I never bothered attempting to use the mic in via a usb dongle.
I’ve been messing with tons of capture cards, cables, upscalers and such and recently and I discovered that you can just plug a usb capture card into a lot of android phones these days and that totally works! Not only that, android has some pretty decent software for both video recording, AND multitrack audio recording for not bad prices. But, the output from these telephone pickups is pretty low. Like really low, so some audio amplification would be nice. At this point I start looking around the shop and taking inventory, I’ve got a spare composite to usb capture cable (That I harvested the circuit board from), I’ve got a pile of little audio booster circuit boards that I never did anything with, I’ve got plenty of wire, 3.5mm jacks, 9v battery clip, AND I’ve even got a little project box that came with this big lot of PXL cameras that I bought from ebay a while ago. I think the guy was making buffer amps with them but I always install my buffer amps into the camera I don’t need an external box for that so this thing sat around for ages. Turns out, it was the PERFECT size for this project. I had JUST enough room to squeeze everything in there. I’ve got all the materials for a quick 1-2 day hacked together build right?
Well, as is tradition, that project took a bit longer than I had originally anticipated and I was focused quite a bit on it. But that’s done now. Now I’ve got a stereo, amplified analog audio input that connects directly to my phone that I can record and monitor portably, in stereo, in real time. Nice! Now I can walk all around the house and wave these telephone pickups around until I find cool sounds.
The other minor PXL connection comes into play when you consider that one of my longer term projects has been to get upscaled 1080p video via USB-C straight from the PXL camera, and doing this USB-C project has helped illuminate a lot of the weirdness of USB-C for me. It’s not quite straightforward like micro or mini USB. So, it’s helped me gain some experience for when I get back to the 1080p project. It’s doable, I’ve already more or less done it. I’ve got components small enough that I could shove into the PXL but I’m not happy with the image the upscaler produces so I’ve been looking for a better one. Once I find one I’m happy with I’ll shove it all inside and have a PXL with USB-C out. I still have quite a way to go with that project so stay tuned for updates.
Now Playing: Paradise Lost – In Requiem