The Electronics Shopping Thread - bought some new'n cool stuff? Show it here!

Best deal in years, lol - but found a totally new pair (mint-in-a-box) of my favorite headphones - even *much* better than the Index speakers - these headphones go down to 12 Hz and have 50 mm drivers (Index speakers can't go below 40 Hz and use 37.5 mm drivers): 

These are now collector's item - originally the cost over here was $1200 - 1500, but I think you could get them in the US for about $800. Still these are my favorite headphones for (surround) movies. The do light up like a Christmas tree, lol

Even if they do not support Dolby Atmos, Dolby Atmos is uncompressed, and Dolby Atmos sounds awesome in these headphones.

This was not an easy purchase. The seller in Nebraska allowed me to participate in his auction, and I won them on Ebay - but for a much lower price than I and probably the seller anticipated. Even used ones sell for at much higher price. And then the seller stopped responding and didn't add my country to the list of available destinations. Thus I could not pay - and lost the ability to give negative feedback. 

What to do now? It's not uncommon for sellers not to ship if they got a too low price. Ebay representatives couldn't help. Ended up contacting my aunt in Chicago and she didn't mind to receive the package and forward it to me. Thus added her address to my Ebay account, and then I could pay for the headphones - and suddenly the seller responded, lol. Did cost another $100 for the shipping - and another $100 for chocolates to my aunt, but totally worth it. 

In short they have arrived and are as awesome as I hoped for. And completely new:

Actually this was just for backup - I already own one pair, but it's getting worn:

I bought some new cool World of Warcraft stuff lately, including gear, items, gold...

I got a couple of iBeacons for $4us each from Aliexpress.

They are bluetooth transmitters used for approximate indoor tracking. Mobile apps can search for them and read the signal strength to estimate distance. I've got some ideas for them at work. If I can get the proof of concept working, I'll grab another 20 or so (but might be able to get my work to pay for them).

My Wooting Two Lekker Edition has shipped! I ordered it last year. It's an analog keyboard. Every single key can be read as an analog value instead of a simple pressed/not pressed value. So I can map WASD to a virtual analog thumbstick for analog movement in games.

It's Rapid Trigger mode lets you double tap a key without moving all the way up past the actuation point, instead it tracks movement direction reversal.

I don't know how useful an analog keyboard will be, I just want one because almost nobody has one, and I love odd input devices. Plus it's a small team trying something different, I respect that.

The limited run (only about 1000 exist) Lekker Edition:

(The new Wooting Two HE is basically the same thing, but isn't out yet. The Lekker was a limited special edition of their new switch tech)

I ordered a ProLab Mouse

Seems like a handy thing when I'm teaching a class on a projector.

Today I received an Aftershokz Aeropex.

They are bone conduction headphones. No speakers, they convey sound as vibrations through your cheek bones.

The sound quality is actually really good, although the bass isn't very strong (but better than expected. I've been listening to music today at my pc with them and it's fine.

Interestingly (more like "will this stupid idea work?") I can wear them under my Corsair HS70 headphones and listen to both at once. 🙂

The main point of bone conduction headphones is that you can hear audio while still hearing real life around you, so they are good for cycling or running (hear traffic). I'm going back to work on campus in 2 weeks (after 1 year of work from home) so I thought I'd try them for music in the staff room while still able to hear if people nearby want to ask me something.

A day of sadness, my old Series 9 died - and now I fear the worst

So just bought a new one - there's nothing like a close shave 😉

I guess Series 9 is still the best shavers I've tried - unless you want manual ... stuff 🙂 

I've found a REALLY cool combination of hardware and software.

I have a Behringer XTouch Mini. It's a USB based MIDI controller with 8 rotary encoders (like a volume knob version of a mouse wheel, infinite turn with clicking and a button when pressed down), 1 analog fader and 18 buttons (besides the 8 buttons that are part of the encoders).

I don't do music stuff, I bought it to try MIDI programming to use things like this as game input devices. Nice little device, and pretty cheap (about $125au). Anyway, this post isn't specifically about the XTouch Mini.

But a week ago I discovered a free program called MIDI Mixer. It lets you bind MIDI devices to various windows functions. The developer even uses an XTouch Mini for testing, although any MIDI device should work, it's very configurable.

You can bind any rotary encoder or fader to different audio outputs to control volume. I currently have Firefox on knob 1, X4 Foundation on knob 2 and Spotify on knob 3. This means while I'm playing a game I can control the volume of youtube videos playing on my second monitor without affecting the game. By default there's a row of mute buttons, one for each knob.

I've also got the fader set to control the master headphone volume and 4 buttons set to media play, media stop, media prev, media next (rather than doing a function shift thing on my keyboard).

You can also bind buttons to change audio input and output devices, such as selecting Oculus output or speaker output, etc.  They can also be bound to running files or sending key combos.

Finally, the default action of the knob button press is to bind that knob to the current in-focus program's output volume, so you don't need to configure new programs in the UI, just start some sound playing in an app/game and press a knob to get volume control.

Midi Mixer: https://www.midi-mixer.com/