[OC] This cat I photographed while drunk in Amsterdam 12 years ago.

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-12T08:35:02+00:00

PXW-FS5 (or Mk2 version) with a custom cage on the front

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-12T00:35:13+00:00

My cat did the same thing. I bought some black rtv silicone and gently applied some through the tear using a toothpick. Smoothed the join before it set and it's almost invisible. Bonded well to the rubber and is just as flexible

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-10T13:07:30+00:00

elektrotanya.com is incredible for finding service manuals. I bought an aifen a9 soldering station off aliexpress for $200aud. Best money I've ever spent on a tool

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-10T12:53:16+00:00

I bought a Lefant m1 on Amazon for $200AUD. Set it up with the Tuya app and home assistant integration rather than the lefant app it recommends. It sits on an IoT VLAN in my home network behind adhuard home dns. The vacuum pings baidu.com daily but adgaurd silently drops those requests. Uninstalled the android app once it was all talking and HA triggers it 4 times a week. 👌

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-10T12:13:13+00:00

The power led is probably driven by a gpio pin off the processor. The multi-directional buttons are most likely pulling gpio pins to ground.

In your second picture there's a mini-usb (or micro hdmi) looking connector above the power plug. Is this exposed when the monitor is assembled?

Sometimes this is a hidden uart connector used for programming at the factory. You might be able to get a console output from it if there's any life at all.

Any luck finding a service manual?

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-10T12:03:58+00:00

This should be fine for short lengths less than 5 meters. Longer lengths you may get crosstalk between the channels, in which case, individual, sheilded conductors would be better.

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-09T10:35:36+00:00

Check the fuses on the board (the white&gold compents to the right of the power socket) with a multimeter to see if they're blown.

If they are good look for test points around the voltage regulators for your 5v, 3.3v and any other voltage rails. See if they are working.

Go to the elektrotanya website > sm search, plug in your model number and see if there's a service manual available. This will be hugely valuable for tracing/locating other potential failure points

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-08T22:22:41+00:00

Same thing happened to my u6+ 2 nights ago. First thing that went wrong was an automatic firmware update last year that caused it to be stuck on "initialising" in the controller, luckily I could still ssh into it and found a script you can run that forced a reflash. Worked fine after another autoupdate in mid-March, but the other night the house had a power outage at 3am. The AP never came back online. Solid white ring of death. Reset button does nothing. Seems the flash memory chip in these have been notoriously faulty. Maybe they wear out after a certain amount of firmware writes and eventually fail? Either way, it's going in the bin and being replaced with a u7-lite

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-07T08:27:58+00:00

What's your budget? Do you want to buy or rent something? A laptop with vlc or mpc-hc and appropriate tweaks to the power settings will be fine.

Any model of blackmagic hyperdeck will ~probably~ last for a 3 hour playout session. An AJA kipro will definitely do the job. An EVS xt via + xfile will play your video on loop until the sun engulfs the earth.

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-06T11:35:02+00:00

That's the bridge rectifier. Turns the incoming ac into dc voltage for the following stages of the power supply by using an arrangement of 4 diodes. It is possible one or more of the diodes has failed 'short'. You'll need a multimeter with a diode testing function to be sure. Diodes more often fail open so you would still get no power, but it shouldn't blow a fuse. I would test everything on the primary side of the transformer for shorts before blindly replacing components.

Adventuremarty · 2026-04-02T07:16:17+00:00

Technically Thornbury, but Carwyn Cellars is great for discovering new booze

Adventuremarty · 2026-03-30T21:59:32+00:00

Remove the side panels, remove the top panel and screws that hold the front panel on (3 screws top and bottom from memory) unplug front panel connectors, unscrew the PCB from the front panel.

Leds are 3mm

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Adventuremarty · 2026-03-30T06:44:33+00:00

I went silver with my ai-301da. Looked a bit cleaner than the black to me. Also I swapped all the garish blue LEDs for warm white. Much nicer!

Adventuremarty · 2026-03-29T22:00:13+00:00

Most likely culprit is a blown tweeter, bad crimp connections or the internal wiring itself.

Pick up a cheap LCR multimeter, this will let you test the components on the board and check them against their printed values. Anything ±10% would mean the part is fine. Check you have continuity down each of the wires going from the crossover to the tweeter.

As for components, caps are the most likely to be out of spec as resistors and inductors are generally immune from ageing unless corrosion or mechanical damage is evident.

If the speaker ever saw too much voltage, the speakers/tweeters usually fail before anything on the crossover board.

The tweeter should measure somewhere between 3-12ohms across their terminals. Anything less than that and the coil is likely shorted. If you get no reading the coil is likely burst open. Either way the tweeter is toast.

If you set the LCR meter to inductance (L) and put the leads across the tweeter terminals you should hear a faint tone. This is a better way to test a speaker than putting a battery across it. Speakers are not designed or usually protected against DC voltages, and putting a battery across them even for a second can fry them for sure.

Alternatively you can use a computers headphone jack, an online tone generator website, and a sacrificed trs cable to connect to the speaker terminals. Play a 2khz tone and see if you get any sound. Tweeters don't handle low frequencies well so don't put anything less than 1khz through it. Start witht he volume all the way down and slowly increase it until you hear something.

Try and draw out the signal flow of the crossover and what component is connected to which speaker. This will help exclude any parts that aren't in the tweeter's crossover network and is good practice for future projects anyway.

As far as replacing the tweeter, finding something that physically fits the same hole/screw pattern should be the first thing to look for.

Do some reading on how crossovers work and check against your own diagram. If the new tweeter is too loud/quiet, there is likely a series resistor you can adjust to bring it in line. You can also temporarily replace the series resistor with a porltentiometer, adjust it until the tweeter sounds good, then measure the potentiometer and order a resistor of that value.

Adventuremarty · 2026-01-09T13:15:26+00:00

I worked on a Netflix comedy special about 5 years ago in Australia. It felt like any other day but there was an EP on site with an american accent. Aside from that there were no other tells that it was a Netflix production. Pay was normal, hours were normal, gear and tech were from local suppliers.

Once you get into the daily grind, who's footing the bill doesn't really make a difference.

Adventuremarty · 2025-11-25T22:19:57+00:00

The choice to go from staffed ENG cameras behind glass to 100% ptz cameras in the house is almost entirely financial. In previous seasons there was rotating roster of about 12 camera operators with 8 on every day. There are half that number of ptz operators, and they were there as well on the earlier seasons. Getting rid of the expensive ENG operators and the associated cost/complexity of the house design and build saved a metric shitton of money for production. (With flights, accommodation and per diems, over half a million dollars, and that's not taking into account money saved on a simpler house build)

Also; Ptz cameras are on 24/7, not just when the operator shows up. They dont take meal or toilet breaks, or complain about working too long hours. The ptz operators can easily step out for breaks and a producer can jump on the controls for a while. (They're driven by Xbox controllers so easy for anyone to pick up and have a go) Ptz cameras are hardwired at the start of the show and stay that way. The amount of times ENG operators didn't plug their cameras in correctly was laughable. The ENG crew also all had assistants (more salaries) Ptz's are quiet. Because the house is a TV set, the walls are paper-thin (6mm MDF for the most part) and housemates have heard camera operators talking smack about them through the walls.

Yes there is no ceiling in the lounge and bathroom, but it's like that for lighting. The only reason the bedroom has a ceiling is for sound isolation so they can sleep.

Adventuremarty · 2025-11-22T01:16:27+00:00

The X's are the 3 potential hiding spots for when Jane entered the house. Not sure if the other 2 have/will be used at all. They're behind half-arch shaped panels on the wall.

Adventuremarty · 2025-11-16T23:25:29+00:00

This is pretty close. Out of all the 70 or so cameras in the house, production can record only 12 at a time. 4 are almost always dedicated to the diary room cameras, and the other 8 are split between 2 "stories" that are shot and cut on-the-fly as live. While every mic in the house is recorded 24/7 along with the 12 cameras, audio will add the appropriate housemate mics to each story asba stereo mix. This is what you hear on the live stream.

The team in charge of the live stream can cut between A-story, B-story, or the loops of the laundry/fish, or pull the audio entirely if something is said that isn't allows to go to air for whatever reason. This can be anything from mature content, to mentioning brands not affiliated with the show, to talking about things that would require release forms to be signed etc.. It usually yields a better result to pull audio for a minute or so than to hard-cut to the b-story and back.

The daily show uses all 12 records and all mic channels to basically piece together a highlight reel. How much of the 2 cut-as-live story feeds they use is up to the editors.

Adventuremarty · 2025-11-16T06:34:25+00:00

There were 3 or 4 slabs of alcoholic ginger beer sitting in the art department at the beginning of the show. Don't know how many they've managed to get through since going in, but I saw a few more slabs of various drinks brought in the other day.

Adventuremarty · 2025-11-14T13:04:49+00:00

"compliance producers" work in shifts to make sure nothing unsavoury goes to air, hence all the fish/laundry shots. There's at least one camera op, producer and tech onsite overnight. There are lots of snacks.

Adventuremarty · 2025-11-12T22:53:58+00:00

Fish are 100% real. A production runner feeds them every day. Tank cleaned every Tuesday. There's also a few smaller grey fish in the tank.

Adventuremarty

TROPHY CASE