Certified Pre-Owned: Not just cars anymore

While shopping for a new phone yesterday, I came across Samsung‘s Certified Pre-Owned phones.

We do more than hit the reset button. Before any device gets labeled Samsung Certified Pre-Owned, it gets completely taken apart and rebuilt by the same engineers who build our new phones. They replace worn out pieces, and we include the same one-year warranty our new phones come with for extra peace of mind.

At the moment, the only model available is the Galaxy S7.  I also considered the Galaxy S8 at $499, but the S7 at $349.99 won out.  I like that the S7 has a MicroSD slot for extra storage.  It was a nice feature on my Galaxy S2 that I’ve missed having with the Nexus 5.  A Google Pixel 2 would have been a nice replacement, but it’s a pretty spendy device and I hear the Pixel 3 is just around the corner.

With 32GB on the S7, I’ll have plenty of room compared to the 16GB I had with the Nexus 5.  It was getting pretty crowded with all the apps I wanted to keep on my N5.

Hopefully S7 will be here by the end of the week or early next week.  Should be fun to play with.

Parts containers

We stopped by Lidl yesterday to do a bit of shopping, and I saw these organizer containers in the Middle Aisle Of Surprise, so I picked up a couple.

Organizer bins from Lidl
Organizer bins from Lidl

At $3.99, they’re pretty inexpensive and have a decent number of compartments.  Perfect for organizing the electronics components that I don’t already have in bins.  They stack nicely, the transparent lid makes it easy to see what’s in them, and the dividers provide lots of options for compartment sizes.

After stuffing the two I bought yesterday, I decided to go back and pick up four more today.  Should provide me with sufficient small parts storage for a little while.

Wifi-less Nexus 5

A couple days ago, some time between 6-9PM, the wifi on my Nexus 5 turned off, and wouldn’t turn back on again.

Rebooting the phone didn’t help.

Attempts to re-enable wifi (Settings/Wi-Fi) just ended up timing out with no results, and the wifi disabled itself again.

Bluetooth still works.  Cell service and data still works.  Just no wifi.

After doing a factory reset yesterday, my Nexus 5 started behaving even more strangely.  There were lots of random freezes and spontaneous reboots while using the phone.

Even more strangely, sometimes the wifi would come back on, but only for about 30 seconds or so.  Very intermittent and not at all reproducible.  Wifi would flash back on briefly after a reboot, but then get disabled again.  Most times wifi just stays disabled.

Time to think about getting a new phone I think.  If it was just the lack of wifi, I could probably deal with it.  The random freezes and reboots are more problematic though.  This one has lasted 4 years (a refurb I received when my original developed screen issues and then needed a repair for the infamous power button issue), which is pretty impressive for cell phones these days.

I suppose this might be a good opportunity to give LineageOS a whirl to see if that will help with the wifi issue.

Update: After a few more reboots, the phone stabilized and there weren’t any more random freezes or reboots.  Still no wifi though.  Installed LineageOS onto the phone, which went well.  Didn’t resolve the wifi issue though, so it’s probably hardware related.  On the plus side, the phone is now at Android 7.1.4 (Nougat).

Emacs-ing and Lisp-ing

Over my decades of using computers, I’ve made more than a few attempts at using Emacs, some more successful than others, but always ended up reverting back to something else like Geany or these days, Atom.  When I’m in the command line (which is fairly often), vi/vim is usually the editor I use, mostly because it’s quick and easy to start up.

A little while ago, got the bug to start using Emacs again when I got introduced to Spacemacs.  Although it also has vim keybindings, I’m mostly using Emacs keybindings.  I’m working hard to make Emacs my primary editor (mainly code editing at this point), and will try to work in some of the many other things Emacs can do later.  I’ve heard a lot of good things about org-mode, which is on my list of things to learn.

One thing that’s different about my attempt to immerse myself in Emacs this time around is that it also seems to have come with a desire to learn Lisp.  No idea why, or even what I’d do with it, but it’s prompted me to acquire a few Lisp books, including one on Emacs Lisp and Land of Lisp.

Where this will take me, I’m not sure.  I haven’t spent a whole lot of time with Lisp yet aside from reading a few chapters about Emacs Lisp.  I don’t have any projects on the horizon that I can see doing in Lisp just yet, but you never know what will come up.

xkcd: Lisp

Beacon teardown

At the AAPM 2018 annual meeting, attendees received a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacon that was used to track attendance at sessions for continuing education and SAM (Self Assessment Module) credits.

Little blue beacon
Little blue beacon
Little blue beacon
Little blue beacon

The website stamped on the beacon redirects to a company called Gimbal where you can purchase the beacons for $5 each or get a whole case of 1650 for the same unit price.  They also provide web based software for managing the beacons.  The manual for the beacon contains some specs, instructions for using the beacon with the Gimbal software, and links to API docs for creating apps to use with the beacon.

The beacon opens pretty easily using a quarter.  Most of the beacon’s innards are taken up by a CR2032 coin cell that powers a tiny little circuit board underneath a plastic cover.

Beacon innards
Beacon innards

A bit of careful prying to release the cover (also held down by a couple dabs of adhesive) reveals the circuit board.  Three contact pads presumably for testing/programming are easily visible.

Beacon innards
Beacon innards
Beacon innards
Beacon innards
Beacon PCB
Beacon PCB

Not much identifying info on the little IC at the heart of the beacon.
4348695
2500D0A
2AJ
P36V G4

Guessing the first number would be a product identifier with the next line (2500D0A) maybe being a date code.  Google led me to a reasonably informative post about the beacons.

Seems to be a fairly simple device and beacons in general might be something fun and interesting to get into.