Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • _Dear Friends,_

    I thought I’d be leaving Kibbles to Emily this week but since my plane is leaving late, here I am. I am heading to Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. While you will see all manner of electronics products at the show from cars to TVs to amazing car stereos, I will be looking for upcoming trends and oddball gear. I will specifically, also, be looking for new Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C gear and home automation innovations.

    I remember about 5-years ago when the first of the drones were being shown. It was just a couple booths and drones were not that sophisticated. Last year there was a huge drone section with highly choreographed drone dancing and drones of all sizes. Now, I hear that drones were one of the most popular Christmas gifts this year. I wonder what will be that next amazing tech. I think we will see a lot of VR and AI stuff with some already announcing competitors to Amazon’s Echo line of products.

    I am very pleased to announce that we have a new finance manager at Small Dog Electronics. Kianna Bromley has joined us and we are all very happy to have her on the Small Dog team!

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive is a Chill Pill six-pack. “Get three black, and three white Chill Pill speakers for only $29.99!”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002527/kibbles-bytes-exclusive-is-a-chill-pill-six-pack? **This is a 50% savings!**

  • Kianna Bromley

    Family: My husband, Sam and my little girl, Zoë Pets: Abeja (PWD) Hobbies/Interests: Musical Theater, Skiing/Snowboarding, Tennis Favorite Bands: Heart and the Heart,…

  • Grace and I are off to pick up our puppy on New Year’s day so we are starting the year off right! I leave a few days later for Las Vegas and the big Consumer Electronics Show. It will be a quick trip and a lot of walking to see all the gadgets and technology coming in the future.

    Emily will have the honors for Kibbles & Bytes next week as I will be out west but when I get back I will have a report from CES for the next Kibbles.

    All of us at Small Dog Electronics send our best wishes for a safe, happy and prosperous New Year from our family to yours!

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_

  • Ticking Turn Signals

    My topic for this week’s edition of Kibbles was inspired by a video I saw (but didn’t watch) on YouTube. The title of the video was “Why do turn signals click?” I didn’t watch the video because I know the answer, and I think it’s interesting enough to write about here. It also ties in many of the concepts I’ve already written about.

    As you know, when you activate the turn signal in your car it makes a clicking sound as it turns on and off. That sound is very distinct and comes from a device called a relay. A relay is a mechanical switch that is electronically controlled. The turn signal circuit in your car is actually the combination of two circuits. The first is whatever controller is being used to create the on/off pulse for the light. The second is the actual circuit for the light itself.

    There are all kinds of circuits that can create an on/off pulse that would be suitable for a turn signal. With digital circuitry this is a trivial task. There is actually a digital IC (integrated circuit) called the 555. First produced in 1971, it was estimated that over 1 billion were manufactured every year as of 2003. It’s no surprise then that the 555 is the most popular integrated circuit ever made. Primarily a timer IC, it can be used in three modes: bistable mode, monostable mode, and astable mode. The bistable and monostable modes are very interesting, but not relevant to the topic here. The astable mode is what we would use to create a series of pulses suitable for driving a flashing light in our car.

    There’s a problem though. Most electronics in a car run off of the nominal 12VDC from the battery (or alternator if the car is running). Running lights in cars (headlights, brake lights, turn signals, etc) are typically xenon or halogen bulbs (though LEDs are becoming more common these days). The headlights in my car for example are H7-type xenon bulbs rated at 55 watts ??each??. Turn signal bulbs will use less wattage, but something like 20 watts would still be typical. Let’s do the math on this to find out how much current we need to push through these bulbs. The 55-watt headlight will need about 4.6 amps (Power = Current x Volts) and the 20-watt turn signal will require about 1.6 amps. Why is this a problem?

    Integrated circuits, as well as most digital circuits, are great at running logical tasks, but they do so at very low power ratings. Milliamps and fractions of a watt are typical. If you tried to use their output directly to drive a 20-watt bulb, it would fry the entire IC. This is where the relay comes in. As I said, a relay is just a mechanical switch that is electronically controlled. Inside of a relay there is usually some kind of electromagnet or solenoid. When a relatively small amount of power is applied to the electromagnet or solenoid, it pulls a piece of metal onto the contacts in the switch thereby completing the circuit. The power passing through the relay can be orders of magnitude greater than the power used to engage the relay. Critically, the circuit being switched by the relay is electrically isolated from the circuit being used to engage the solenoid or electromagnet. So instead of driving the light circuit with our 555 IC directly, we would drive a relay. Because a relay is a mechanical device, when it engages and disengages, you hear an audible clicking sound. If you ever see a car with signals that seem to be flashing too quickly, this is usually the result of a bulb failure elsewhere in the circuit or a failure of the relay. The circuit is designed to operate with a specific expected resistance, and any change to this can affect the operation of the circuit.

    You might be wondering about LED lights. They take a lot less power than your standard filament-based bulb. Could they be driven by an IC directly? In some very specific cases, it might be possible, but an LED’s power rating is still much, much higher than that of a tiny little IC. In order to do it, you would need to reinforce the IC and lower the LED power rating so that they could meet, but this adds lots of cost. It’s far, far easier to continue to use the relay to drive the LED.

    One last thing…even when the controller for a high-powered circuit isn’t digital, we still often use relays. In fact, your headlights on your car are driven by relays. You don’t hear the click because the relay itself is typically located inside the engine compartment fusebox. Automatically switched headlights aside, why do we use a relay if the mechanical switch is being activated by our hand? It’s a safety and cost issue. If the switch by the steering wheel was directly driving the headlights, the wiring all the way from the switch to the headlights would have to be sufficient to handle that power (55 watts in the case of my car). It also presents a hazard if the switch fails right near your hand like that. Instead we use cheap, low-current components and a low-current circuit to switch the ??relay?? on and off. Then the relay activates and deactivates the headlights. This reduces the amount of high-power wiring we need to use (which is more expensive).

    Hopefully this explanation of a common thing we encounter was interesting and informative. If you have any questions about similar everyday things, send me an email.

  • Trading in my Crystal Ball for Backwards Binoculars

    Okay so as we do every year I will review how I did last year in predicting the future and make some long leaps of faith for 2017.

    *Cubbies will win the World Series – THIS IS THE YEAR*
    YES! The Cubs broke the 108-year curse in spectacular fashion including a game 7 for the ages!

    *Warriors will repeat for the NBA title but the Celtics will get by the first-round*
    The Cavs brought home the championship on the back of LeBron but the Celtics did not manage to beat the Hawks to get out of the first round.

    *Patriots will lose in the Super Bowl*
    Well, I am giving myself the win here even though the Patriots didn’t even get to the Super Bowl

    *Bernie Sanders will win the Democratic nomination*
    He SHOULD have!

    *Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination to a lot of people’s dismay*
    Wow, that was a long shot back then and I hate that I have to call that a win.

    *Bernie Sanders will beat Trump for the Presidency*
    He WOULD have.

    *2016 will be the warmest ever recorded*
    Yes, that is unfortunately true.

    *Spring will come to Vermont early*
    Yeah, did winter even come?

    *Apple stock will recover to record highs*
    Nope, but the stock did stage a nice recovery!

    *There will be evidence of extra-terrestrial life*
    Nope, not yet.

    *Marijuana will be legal in 7 states*
    hmmm…Alaska, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Massachusetts, California, Oregon, Maine that makes 8.

    *Democrats will re-take the Senate*
    Nope – went the other way.

    *Apple will make that surprising large acquisition this year*
    Nope, they didn’t buy Tesla or Netflix or GM.

    6 for 13, not too bad.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4939.jpg!

    Let’s take a look at 2017!

    Cubs will repeat as the start of a dynasty!

    Warriors will win the NBA but Celtics make it to Eastern Conference Finals.

    Lots ‘o snow for Vermont and a bad mud season.

    Large demonstrations in major cities protesting Trump-led changes.

    Apple will definitely hit an all-time high stock price.

    Something completely bizarre and chaotic will happen in the US political system.

    There will be confirmed existence of extra-terrestrial life.

    Apple will make a surprising acquisition.

    Tesla will not ship the model 3.

    Apple will ship an Amazon Echo competitor that will make Alexa seem as lame as Google Home.

    And one softball… 2017 will be a much better year than 2016!

    Happy New Year!

  • ThunderUSB

    I will be getting my new MacBook Pro which will sport four Thunderbolt 3 ports and I am going to need to connect…

  • Quick Tips!

    One of the best parts of my job is how excited I still get when I learn about something new I can do with my devices. I am constantly learning and finding out about new things that I can do or as often is the case, an old tip I’ve forgotten about. Here are three favorites!

    **Read Song Lyrics in iTunes**

    How many times have you found yourself singing along to a song and just start to hum through the part you don’t know? Better yet, how many times have you had a friendly argument over what the lyrics really are in a song? Most of us know that you can simply Google the lyrics, but did you know you can get these answers right from iTunes? If you’re running iTunes 12.5 and using Apple Music you can instantly get song lyrics. You can check to see if what you just heard was what you sang by clicking the lyrics button in either the” up next” popover or the mini player window. I will say it doesn’t work for every artist. In my playing around with this feature it worked for most artists. This article took me down memory road for some forgotten artists. Little Feat’s ??Waiting for Columbus?? album was a favorite of mine in high school. The album is in Apple Music but, alas, not the lyrics.

    **Copy Phone Numbers From Incoming Calls**

    I’ve been adding contacts to Contacts from incoming text messages or even via digital address cards, but did you know you can also copy numbers via your incoming call log? This is handy if you need to redial a phone number or share it but you don’t want to keep it on file in your phone. In the phone app’s recent screen, there is a hidden workaround that lets you copy the number. Tap the ‘i’ button (it’s typically blue with a circle around it) next to the call, then press and hold the number for a second or two until the copy button appears. Tap copy and you can then paste that number into Mail, Messages, Notes etc. To paste: tap where you want the number to go and then the paste option will appear.

    **Take Screenshots**

    If you experience something weird on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, you might find you’re in a situation where you need to record what’s on your screen. There are two quick ways to do this: press *command-shift-3* to take a screenshot of your entire screen or *command-shift-4* to select a specific area you wish to take a screenshot of. The image will go to your Desktop. On an iPhone or iPad, press the **Home and sleep/wake buttons** at the same time. Your image will go to your camera roll in the Photos app. On your Apple Watch, press the *digital crown and side button* simultaneously.

  • _Hello Fellow Technophiles,_

    Since our last issue of Tech Tails the most important day of the year has come and gone: Rogue One release day! Despite my picture to the left, I am a huge Star Wars fan and have already seen the new film twice with more theater viewings likely. People have often described, perhaps inflated, the rivalry between fans of the big two science fiction franchises, but like a good Vulcan I say that celebrating “*infinite diversity in infinite combinations*”:http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/IDIC is a more desirable state of mind.

    In our tech world, the big rivalry is between Microsoft and Apple. But I am here to tell you that these two worlds are more intertwined and compatible than you might think. Heck, Microsoft even bailed out a struggling Apple company in 1997 by purchasing $150 million in stock and agreeing to support Office for Mac for 5 years (and it is “*still available today!).*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/88515/microsoft-office-home-student-2016-for-1-mac-product-key-version

    Some other examples are that Macs can connect to PC servers and vice-versa, you can run Windows on a Mac either virtually via “*Parallels*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/87459/parallels-desktop-11-for-mac-1-license-oem or natively using “*Boot Camp,*”:https://support.apple.com/boot-camp and many file types (such as .jpg, .mp3, .pdf, .txt, and many more!) are supported on both systems.

    While we are mainly focused on Apple products, our technical team can assist you with cross-platform integration and troubleshooting. Email me or “*support@smalldog.com*”:mailto:support@smalldog.com anytime for advice or to book one of our consultants.

    Thanks for reading! Happy New Year!

    Mike
    “*michaeld@smalldog.com*”:mailto:michaeld@smalldog.com

  • I’m looking forward to this coming weekend not only because it’s a holiday, but also because it means I survived! In addition to the busy times around the office this time of year, there’s the craziness at home. Did I forget to buy a gift? Did I remember tape? Where is the elf on the shelf now?

    In addition to winding down from the holiday season this weekend, I’ll also be spending a lot of time cleaning. I found out this week I’m allergic to several things around me. Thankfully my allergies are not severe, but annoying enough to send me to a specialist to help track down what’s causing all my sniffles. Spring cleaning in December it is!

    Wishing all of our readers a very merry holiday season,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_