hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1478.txt

Episode: 1478
Title: HPR1478: Batteries Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1478/hpr1478.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 03:52:31

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Okay, before we begin, I had a relisten to the podcast while I was putting it together
and realised that it was really a bit rambly, a bit waffly and I guess I'm just not very
good at talking off the cuff.
So it's just to be warning that if you do find this a bit boring or a bit rambly, feel
free to skip on and pick the next HPR, but hopefully it'll give you some interest.
Anyway, here we go.
Hello and welcome, hacker public radio audience.
My name is Mr X, welcome to my 6th HPR podcast, it's been a while and I must apologise
for the long interval that has passed as my last show.
And I just start with thanking the people at HPR for making all this possible.
I would never have pulled my first podcast together without them making this service available.
It's truly a wonderful and invaluable resource on these here intertubes.
If you have something interesting or some burst in passion, why not shake with the rest
of us?
It really isn't that hard, and even if you only manage one show, that's fine and great.
But who knows, you might even go on to enjoy the challenge and with just more shows.
If I can do it, anyone can.
This is part 2 of my battery's podcast.
This podcast will be a bit less scripted than part 1, and will cover how I got interested
in batteries.
In the process I will cover a few of the memorable battery up to the devices I've had over
the years, and cover some of the pitfalls encountered during their lifetime of use.
I must emphasise that having by no means an expert in batteries, some of the fine details
in this podcast may even be inaccurate.
I can backdo my best in the hope you find it interesting.
I'll start by introducing to you my memorable battery-operated devices.
See if you can identify any of them.
I'll introduce you to them properly later on in the show.
Okay, mystery object 1.
It doesn't make much noise, but the only noise I can make with it is this.
I don't suppose you will identify it from that.
Well, I'll talk about more about it later on.
Okay, mystery object 2, well that makes a good noise, I can maybe guess what, I don't
know.
Okay, that was mystery object 2, mystery object 3, turn it on.
It makes a few noises out, okay.
Mystery object 4, mystery object 4, mystery object 5, okay, see if you can work out this
one, there you go, mystery object 5, and mystery object 6, well it doesn't make much noise
either, apart from perhaps, you can hear that, not much clue in that one.
As a young boy, I remember watching an episode of Twilight Zone on a small black and white
portable TV, this being purred from a car battery under the seat of my granny's caravan.
The episode was just getting to the crucial bit when a black water started to creep around
the screen, at which point I immediately knew what this meant as I had experienced this
many times before.
This was the first signs that the battery voltage from the car battery was dropping, causing
the picture on our black and white CRT tele to slowly but surely collapse in on itself.
This was one of my all time favourite programmes and nothing was going to come between me watching
this episode.
While the battery voltage slowly but surely continued to drop, I carried on watching with
baited breath, as the picture gradually got smaller and smaller, till finally the TV could
no longer function and the TV lost horrors on to luck, as that is scrolling up the screen.
I rushed to the back of the TV set to find tune in the vertical hold controls, which
managed to stabilize a picture for a few more tantalising minutes, but eventually then
was nigh and the screen started scrolling again.
I knew we had a spare battery just next to the current one being used, but it wasn't
a bad shape too.
As quickly as possible I switched over to the spare battery, where I got a few extra
minutes and the same process started all over again.
I was desperate to see the end of my programme, I had a cunning plan.
The plan I knew was not without risk, which at the very least would continue the relentless
onslaught on the poor car battery tucked under the seat.
This was indeed bad for the batteries but I didn't realise it at the time.
One reflection, I don't suppose this would have stopped me as I knew what I was about
to do was risky for the TV set itself, but as I said before, nothing was going to come
between me and the last minutes of Twilight's own.
I wondered if you can guess what I did.
I propped up the seat cushion once again, turned one of the batteries 380 degrees and
using an old screwdriver linked to positive turn off one battery to negative turn off the
other battery.
Just like when you put two batteries in a flashlight, I was in fact connecting the batteries in series.
This combined the outweigh voltage of each battery, but I hope that because they were both
flat, the combined out boot voltage would be near enough to have volts.
As far as to say, to my amazement and to all other family members who knew nothing of
such cunning, it worked.
I got a few more minutes out of the poor batteries and thoroughly enjoyed the ending.
Pity, I probably knackered the batteries in the process.
I was an early adopter of rechargeable batteries.
My first set of rechargeable batteries was every day nickel cadmium batteries.
This wasn't what started me looking in more depth into rechargeable batteries though.
It all happened many years later when I required a rechargeable shaver.
The shaver in question was a particularly expensive shaver, one I would never have bought
myself, because as an engineer I thought buying an expensive razor was all a big con.
I owned a cheap electric razor which worked fine.
My reasoning went something like this, an electric razor consists of an electric motor which
spins the blade on the razor.
A cheap razor spins a blade just as well as a dear razor, though extra cost only adds
unnecessary rubbish, such as ultrasonic displays and clever charging circuits which will
probably provide no benefit to the actual shaver one gets.
While I'm here to say I was totally wrong.
This shaver gave an amazing shave, the shaver was much closer than on my cheap razor.
I still get a great shave with it today, many years later.
I still don't really understand why this should happen.
I guess they must either purposely build the cheap razor to a lower tolerance, or perhaps
even worse to the same tolerance, but purposely move the blade further from the guard so as to
produce an inferior shave.
My expensive fantastic shaver is a Phillips 5890.
I think I've now owned it for about eight or nine years, and the replacement battery
is still going strong.
The original battery failed not long after I got it, and I always thought I was doing
the right thing, making sure I ran the battery until it was flat, and then recharge it.
Isn't that what a manufacturer say you should do?
I didn't want to encounter the didded memory effect.
Also by this time I had given a few people in the past the same advice, and I also came
across similar advice on a shaver forum, yes honestly there seems to be a forum for
everything out there.
At the same time I was beginning to question this philosophy, as people I know who didn't
seem to care about their batteries seem to get more life from their batteries than I did.
This was the catalyst that sparked me to hunt down and find the real truth about batteries,
and what I found was fascinating, or at least I thought so at the time.
Just as a little reminder, remember from my previous podcast, the number one rule, never
ever drive your multi-cell batteries flat.
I've explained this to various people at various times, some times underquest when they
ask advice on batteries, and sometimes just because someone mentions batteries, I generally
find that as I tell people about rechargeable batteries, the rise tentacles is over.
I guess what one person find interesting, another finds utterly boring.
Hopefully I won't have this effect on the Hacker Public Radio audience, or at least not
to all of you I hope.
As I mentioned previously, I've brought along a few battery-powered devices I've acquired
over the years.
I'll introduce them to you now in chronological order, starting first with the oldest and
ending with the newest.
I don't work for any of these companies that made these products, or have any connections
with them, other than I've been particularly pleased with them over the years of their own
them.
Okay, the first item that I've brought along is a battery charger, and this battery
charger is over ten years old, though, I reckon.
It's made by a French company, I think, the name on the top says H-A-H-H-N-E-L power
station TC-MX, so the thing about it is it's a trickle charger, and it can charge up the
four batteries at once, and you can charge one battery, two batteries at a time, three
or four, all independently.
The noise that you heard in the beginning of the podcast was that there, actually there
that I can clip that folds up and down and changes the length of the battery compartment
area, so either you can fit AAAs in it or double A's, it's a very simple charger.
But excellent nonetheless, because it's a trickle charger, that's that's the main point.
A trickle charger is considered, when you charge a battery, less than a tenth of the
capacity for battery, that's considered a trickle charge, so for example if you've got
a battery, let's say, it's a 1,000 milliamp hour battery, and if you charge it at 100 milliamps
or less, then that's considered a trickle charge.
The thing about trickle charges is that it's safe to leave the battery charger on over
extended periods of time, now I wouldn't say it's a good idea to leave the battery charge
on indefinitely, but if you were to leave it on maybe for a day or something, it's not
desperate, you also get the maximum charge in your battery, because the battery is charging
slowly and it can build a good charge up, so there's a lot of good reasons for using
a slow charger, it's also gentler on the battery, and you're likely to get more charge,
discharge cycles using a trickle charger.
I remember when I used to be interested in electronics and stuff that used to get practical
electronics here in Britain, and there was numerous regular articles of charging circuits
that you could build to charge your rechargeable batteries, that to move in nickel, cadmium
batteries, I've seen people at work who've purchased some of these fast chargers and their
batteries have failed fairly quickly, perhaps they put them on charge before they were reasonably
done, maybe they topped them up, or maybe the circuitry inside it just overcharged them
or I don't know how that particularly happened, but it's not as good for your batteries anyway,
a slow charger's far better, and typically when you're charging a trickle charge, or if
you're charging a battery, you charge it 120% of the capacity, so for example, this charger
is a charge's doubly batteries at 200mAh, so if I have a set of batteries in the 2000mAh
batteries, 2000mAh means two amps, so if you've got 2000mAh batteries, these batteries
can theoretically store or produce 2000mAh for one hour when you're discharging them, then
if you charge them at 200mAh, that's one tenth of 2000, hope you're following this, I was
not too confusing, so one tenth of 2000 is 200mAh, and if you charge that for 12 hours,
then your battery's likely to be charged, so that's fully charged, so 200mAh times 12mAh
is 2400mAh, so it's about 120% of the capacity, and you can do that for any battery, any charge
circuit, but if you go, if you're charging a lot quicker than a tenth of the capacity,
then you need to be very careful, and you don't need circuits that watch for the battery
overheating, or pressure building up in the battery, all sorts of things, you're going
to be very careful if you're charging at a fast rate, really slow chargers are far better,
far safer, far better for the battery, I would really recommend a slow charge if you can
get hold of one, but they're about like hands teeth these days are really hard to get hold
of, okay, my next object is a power base electric drill, there you go, a butt, one of these,
short notice from my shop, here locally, this is about 10 years old as well, this drill,
if my home base shop, and what happened was that we had a rush job on, and we were going
to look for a drill, a quick, quick bit hold of a drill for a job we were doing, and
my colleague was going to buy a hand operated drill, and this hand operated drill was 12 pounds,
and then I noticed that just a longer bit there was a cordless battery drill for three pounds,
more that's 15 pounds, so it was exceptionally cheap, and I didn't necessarily expect very much
but it turned out to be an excellent drill, not only was it cheap, but unusually for that price at
the time, it was fully variable speed you can, as you can hear you can fully vary the speed,
and we used it for many hours, and drilled through large chunks of aluminium as well,
and really demanding jobs, and it worked superbly, and I ended up getting one of these from
myself, because I was so impressed, so a few years later I used to put the thing on charge
for long periods of time, and the battery would heat up, but I wouldn't think any of it,
maybe charge overnight sort of thing, and it was some time later I'd been charging it,
and I thought to myself, well over a few years later I realised I found it a bit more
bit better than I thought, I don't think I'm doing this thing any good really, because of course
once a battery starts to rise in temperature, that means it's now actually entered the overcharge,
and in fact it's a good indication that the thing's overcharged, and so I had to look at the
the charger that came with the device, and I had to look at the charge current,
and I've got that here, so the charge current was 17 volts at 400 milliamps,
and so I thought 400 milliamps, what's the capacity of the battery,
and I looked at the user manual for the drill, I found that the capacity of the battery was
1100 milliamps, and when I took the the charge current, which was 400 milliamps, and you multiply that
by 12 hours or so, which is what I was charging it for, it came out at 4800 milliamps, so that's
way more than the original battery, which was 1100, so I was obviously overcharging the battery,
probably damaging it in the process, I thought that's not very good, so I did a few calculations,
and the battery capacity was 1100 milliamps, and 120 percent of 1100 is 1320, so I was really looking
to charge it, 1320 was a figure I was looking for, so if you take 1320, and you divide it by
the charge current, which is 400, then that comes out at 3.3, so really I should have been charging
it for 3.3 hours, and I just only got up to 3.5, so I actually put a sticker on the battery itself,
that says charge time 3.5 hours maximum, so I guess really the way you're supposed to use this
thing is that you know you pop it on charge for, and I will show before you use it, do the
drilling you're going to do, and then maybe pop it on charge, but before you put it away again,
and that's what I've done, and as I say it's over, it's 9 or 10 years old, something like that,
and still got loads, it's really, really strong, loads and loads of charge, and it's still, and it's a
a nickel cadmium pack, so you can't get ni-cad badges anymore, of course the great thing about ni-cads
is they've got a really, really low internal resistance, so that means that because of that you can
pull a huge current from them, and of course in these demanding situations where you're trying to
drill through, got objectionable at the opposite, the electric motors are drawing a huge current
from a battery, many, many amps, so it's a great drill, really, really good, the chuck wobbles
we've got when you use it, so it's obviously not exactly a high precision, it's got various clutch
settings, so that it slips, and doesn't drive too hard if you're trying to put screws in and
out, because it's got a couple of screwdriver, and it can fit to the thing, and then there's obviously
a drill section where it doesn't slip at all, but yeah, X and drill homebases, it's actually got
no power base, it's called, power base, I presume that's the second I know, own brand for
home base, but yeah, it just keeps on going and going, I don't know how long it's going to
continue, but it's been a great drill, really, really good, can't believe what a great value it's
been, okay, Mr. the object 3, this is a Canon 80 digital camera, again this is about 10 years old as
well, it was particularly impressed with the Canon brand of cameras, and I could be wrong,
but I'll be able to remember, somebody telling me that Canon was started by a group of scientists
who were avid photographers, who vowed never to compromise in quality, always thought that
well, some camera manufacturers went for the G-Wiz feature set that may have compromised
the quality of the camera, but it's what people are looking for, sort of suckering the poor
consumers into, product disputes that look shiny or has this feature that's really of no benefit,
as far as taking photographs are concerned, so there's a few interesting things about this Canon
camera, it was slated for having a small screen at the time, but the reason it had a small screen
was that it had a flip out screen so that you could flip the back screen out and rotate it and
what not, now the thing about this is that what that meant was that if you wanted to take a photograph,
for example, over the head of a cloud, you could hold it up,
pull the flip out screen, rotate it around, and tip it down to look over the heads of clouds or
whatever, and you could see where the lens was pointing, so that was actually a very useful feature,
there's less other things you could use it for, just getting into all compositions,
if you wanted to take a selfie as they call it now, if you turn it through 180 degrees and the
screen then faces the same way as the lens, and it means you can see your own image on the screen,
it also flipped the image so that it wasn't the wrong way around when it was flipped
round when you could see yourself the right way around sort of thing, very clever,
so it was immensely useful in various situations, and this meant that by doing that, having this
flip out, it's quite a small camera, and by having this flip out screen it had to have a
quite a big border around the bed, which meant that the actual screen itself was small, but
it was far more useful to have a flip out screen than to have a large screen,
and the only real reason for using a screen is either for shooting these awkward
shots where you can't look through the viewfinder because it's above your head or whatever,
or the other reason you might use it is when you get in close to an object and
trying to frame an object, if you look through the viewfinder at the top,
and because the viewfinder doesn't look through the actual aperture where the
the lens is, then you get to Parlax error, and in the closer you get to the object, the more the
more that that keeps in, so for example, maybe taking a picture of a closer object, look at it
through the viewfinder and it looks perfectly and framed, take the shot, and then find it
it's off to one side, but if you're looking at taking a picture of an object there's a few feet
away or further off into the distance, then the Parlax error is almost null, so if you're taking
a shot you should really look through the viewfinder, and of course by holding up to your eye
it makes the camera steadier, so you see people all the time with digital cameras now within
and then they'll just hold it out in front themselves, and of course that tends to cause wobbling
shakes, not a steady hold of the camera, so it's far more preferable to use the
light piece when you can, and it also means you're saving battery power. The other good thing about
this screen was that it was a matte shade, not high gloss, and of course all the cameras now
have a gloss coating on them which show fingerprints and you get loads of reflection from the sun
and whatnot, so again not following the trend, but actually giving you a better product,
you see this on laptops as well nowadays where there are all these high gloss reflective screens
as well as what people want, but in reality the matte finish, the anti-reflective coatings far
far far superior, the other thing I got slated for was the fact that it takes standard
80 batteries, so 480 batteries, and you end up with this kind of lump sticking at the front slightly,
so it actually makes the camera easier to grip in the hand, and in fact really I see it nothing
with a positive because what it means, because it takes standard batches, it means that you're never
stuck, if you need to get a shot you can always go into a camera and a sharpened and buy ordinary
batteries, the other advantages that you can have, alkaline batches can sit in a camera for several
years, obviously watching it for leakage of course because it can't leak, but they can they can
sit in a camera for many years because they have a very slow discharge rate, standard batteries,
you can pick it up months later and the camera is still in operation, whereas if you've got a
a nickel cadmium pack or a nickel metal hydride pack, you come back a month later and it's self-disk
charge and it's flat, so useless, when you want to just for a quick picture, one or two pictures,
you know, be useful at all, the other thing I've decided for was for you know how long the
batteries actually last, but in fact the when you got a good set of nickel metal hydride batteries
and in this camera, you got and you work out the amp I'm rating in the wattage and one of the
batches lasted for hours and hours, as well as any of these many battery packs you got
and other cameras at the time, obviously now all the cameras are going to these these specialist
batches, of course I'm now using a lithium ion or a lithium polymer batteries which have a huge
capacity and I think the lithium polymer or lithium ion, I'm not quite sure, one of these two,
I've got a very very slow discharge, so you can leave them for quite a long, long time, they still
retain their charge, so obviously battery batteries have moved on in time, but of course they've
got to be carefully charged, you know, careful monitoring all the time because they can,
they can explode if they're not properly charged, correct, or safely, the camera gave many years of
faithful use, but you know many years later a fault developed and in fact it's now no longer
operational, when you took a picture you got a kind of purple mess on the screen and I couldn't
work out what we're going on in there, I thought well I've got nothing to lose, it's way outside
warranty and decided to take the camera to bits and it was quick and complex to take the bits and
I managed to take the bits and managed and I couldn't find anything I think what was wrong with it,
you know, these things are so devilishly complex inside and put it back together again and
did the, it was almost perfect but the zoom control doesn't quite feel right,
although it does work fine and it was shortly after I did that that I heard on a podcast,
somebody saying that Canon had admitted that there was a batch of faulty
CCDs produced, that's the charged couple device that's the chip behind the lens which
records the image and that was probably what was wrong with my camera and what they were saying was
that even cameras which were out of warranty they were apparently at free of charge and of course
this was very, if this was, if that's true then it's quite commendable but of course because
I'd opened mine up I thought well I can't really turn it now, so that was a bit of a shame but
it was a fine camera, I don't know whether modern canons are like, whether they've given
to popularism and now have shiny big screens and stopped using the flip out screens and touch
like, I don't know if everyone else is doing it, I suppose they have to do it or they catch
yellow cameras, I don't know, okay my next message object is a Phillips 5, 8, 9, 10 electric
shaver and it's now about, it's about nine years old now, I think it was at least 120 pounds when
you and as I says nine years old you can probably double that figure in today's money,
the battery failed very soon after I got it as I explained earlier and I opened the shaver up and
was amazed at the alternate complexity, there was two side, two double sided multi-layer
surface mounted boards, submerged into this thing, it's quite remarkable, it learns on average how
long you take it to shave and presumably monitors battery load and conditioning and reports on an
LCD screen how many shaves are left at the moment it's saying 31 shaves, it's alone, I think I
never go below 20 shaves now because I don't want to drive the battery flat and that's probably
why it's lasted for about nine years, it's this existing battery, it was a nickel, I think it was
originally a nickel cadmium battery but I couldn't get a replacement nickel cadmium which I think
is a nickel metal hydride battery that's in this, it was a very very slightly different dimensions as
well so I had to modify it slightly inside but it was a hig of a job to replace, I'm glad it's
lasted too long and it gives unmatched close shave, it's almost as good as a traditional razor
without the irritation, I tend to find it to a standard razor, it irritates my skin,
it's also a thanks superior to one of these foiled razors I've used in the past,
I've never been happy with that, so this is like one of these Philly shave rotary razors,
absolutely fantastic, I don't know how long it's going to continue to go in but we'll see, excellent
days, I've been very pleased with it, my next best to object is a Garmin Street Pilot i3 GPS,
this is a six years old, I think the original Street Pilot was called the i2 and it used a black
and white and LCD skin of the thing, it's it's very small, it's it's a let's see if I've got a
ruler here, the screen is in fact just under two inches and no diagonally it's
two and a quarter inches diagonally something like that and so the the device is two and a half inches
by yeah two and a half inches square sort of thing, yeah something like that it's pretty small,
a tennis ball size GPS unit, it was arrogant, it was way ahead of it's time at the time,
it was one of the first GPS's to have full UK post codes, full UK post code coverage and
making it to easy to enter a jess's, exact to jess's, it was very very good, very small screen
by today's standards, it gives exceptionally good battery life, it's good at a special LCD screen,
I don't know, it's quite amazing because it can't be washed out by bright light, I don't know how
they do it but although it can be bothered by reflection unfortunately it's kind of got a glossy
finished it, so you can get reflections from sun but bright light certainly can't wash out,
no matter how bright it gets, it can't be washed out, it's got super loud announcements,
so it doesn't matter how loud the interior of the car gets, how scabby you're old,
your car noisy it is, you can still hear the announcements nice and clear which is
five, oh it's a bit loud, so I was always very impressed with the announcements,
with very simple and cluttered clear display, giving only what's necessary, you basically got a
small image of the road ahead and on the right hand side it told you how many miles to your
next turning and on the left hand side your time of arrival and that's really all there was too,
very very basic and yeah it ran from two standard A batteries, the unit was actually supplied with
four batteries, so you got two spares, I just recently in last year maybe started using the
second set, I had only used the first set because these were at least started to fail,
partly because on a few occasions I'd let the battery be different flat, I was using it till
I've actually got a message saying low battery, obviously if you've got the thing on for a few hours
you can send this big cut out, but I think I got four or five hours of maybe even longer than that
on one charge, so you'd maybe do a bit of a journey, you'd use it at the next day, not charge
up and then you'd be get cut out and you get the message low battery and that was obviously damaged
the battery and it's now in a field, but I guess I did get I don't know, seven or eight years
at a one set of batteries, it's not too bad really, it also had a sensor at which look, check the
ambient light colours and inverted the colours at low level light so that you didn't get ice
dark blue images, just to make it nice and soft on the eye, it was very good,
not long after I got the thing, well a year or so after I got it, I inadvertently dropped it
and snapped the battery cover and I sent a letter to Garmin and said you know I've been very pleased
with the device, it's really an exceptional product, I don't suppose you could tell me how I
can get hold, how I could purchase a new battery compartment and you know a few days later
an envelope arrived in the post with a replacement battery cover so I was delighted you know I
was fully prepared to buy a replacement cover, but I got one for nothing so I was just delighted,
great service, really really good device, eventually what happened was that the
the clips broke in the battery compartment on the new battery compartment after many years of
use and because it's sprung, you know you couldn't hold it on, so I thought well I'm not
going to throw this thing away just because the battery compartments, the clips are filled,
so I took some drastic action and I opened the unit up and I drilled one hole in one
side of the cover on the actual main cover of the unit and two holes on the battery compartment
and so what I do now is when I load the batteries up I put the battery cover over the batteries
and a wrap a wire round and round between the three screws around the back of the unit and then
push it under the the the bind of wires and it seals it shut so it only takes a few seconds to
to do this you know and I only use the thing occasionally but basically you take it on a journey
and maybe towards the end of the journey you'll switch it on because it's usually the last bit
your journey which you don't know you know obviously you know when you're having your first set off
and you know the main route to where you're trying to get to but it's the last bit of the journey
which is usually unknown to you but I just say the battery life on this is extraordinary
I could go you know all the way from Scotland to Manchester and further and on one charge leaving
on all the time but you can switch it on at any time in it and it picks up where it left off and
just a really great wee divide really handy I know nowadays most people have obviously GPS on
their phones so it's a bit redundant but well a lot of these GPS devices the then car ones
the the have an internal battery and of course I'm inflated you switch it on and it's and it's flat
and the device itself may actually be drawing current from the battery to hold up a clock or
whatever inside the thing and so not only is it flat but it's continuing to to draw current from
the battery which really tends to just ruin the battery and a colleague of what he had a
when he's a smaller GPS unit with a internal sealed battery and it failed many years ago
and this one's still going strong so just excellent it um to give you some idea how things
have changed I've just tried it's got a wee SD card in it and uh what signs is it I'm trying to see
256 megabytes I think it is so that gives you some idea how I roll the thing is but
just a fantastic key wee portable GPS just brilliant really really good um who knows how long
I'll keep going but excellent finally my uh last mystery object I I sense a clip plus
and it's uh at least four years old um bed cheap uh light it's got a clear sharp led display so it's
it's just I've just seen it what colour is it it's uh kind of remember it's kind of blue and
blue and amber is it something like that kind of amber colours and blue yet it's uh intuitive
menus very easy to to navigate um great wee player really good I think it'll play Og and uh
I've also put rockbox in it so you can it can actually dual boot and run rockbox and a thing
although the screen's a bit small for for navigating on rockbox but um yeah great wee device uh
the downside is it's got one of these sealed internal batteries uh it can't be disconnected when
it's not in use uh but I can't really complain it's over four years old and uh if you look after it
the battery should last a long time and in fact it's lasted four years shows that it can
I never let it get driven flat uh remember current has drawn from it even when it's switched off
um so you know I I tend to listen to audio books and music and stuff on a regular basis so
I'm keeping an eye on it and if it if it drops below 40% charge something like that I'll put it back on
charge again um but uh the battery life is there's very long so you know I can go weeks without
charging a thing uh I say that's after four years of use uh I was speaking to a colleague who
I recommended uh a Santa Clip 2 and uh a Santa Clip Plus and I was speaking to him and he had the
had the thing about a year or something like that maybe even less than that uh I said to him how
you get on with any so uh uh I don't know about this but I tend to use my phone now anywhere these days
but uh the battery doesn't last very long so I tend to use it and I thought well you know if you
don't look after that's what tends to happen uh if you just if you just let the the battery go flat and
I get driven flat um then that's what happens and you can't if you can disconnect the battery then
it will okay you could you could leave it as long as you like but the fact that you can't disconnect
means it gets driven flat and and damages the thing you know that's the way the
things are made these days in this throwaway world um don't know the thing I've heard about it is
that they I think the power button on on on the on the top of it can be prone to uh to feeling so
I try and push it it's gently spotable when I'm turning it on and off and only turn it on and off
off I tend to turn it on and not turn it off unless I have to because it auto turns off anyway
so you can minimise the number of things you push it and also I never you I never remove the
or virtually never remove the uh the headphones from it these headphone jacks uh jack plugs
and sockets are renowned for becoming crackling and and troublesome so basically I put the headphones
and never take them out and that's a really half to of course and that means that uh I get no
problems on that either uh it's got a wee clip on the back which is what it's called a Santa
Clip and you can clip on your pocket or your shirt or whatever it's just great you almost forget
you've got it on when you're when you're using it greatly player Santa Clip made in America I believe
Santa uh highly recommended uh I guess most people use their phone these days
okay that's about it for this episode I hope you enjoyed the podcast remember as I said
earlier if you have an interesting story or passion why not share it with the rest of us
there's a vast community if you're out there get off your bums and give us a show I'm sure
we'd find it interesting I can be contacted at mrx at hpr at googlemail.com that's mrx
at hpr the art symbol googlemail.com so until next time thank you and goodbye
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