cathoderaydude
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Video: Plug N' Talk
🕑 Added 2024-10-17 01:50:50 +0000 UTChttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvwxLP3xKFo
Trying out a new style. Can I replicate this with any subject matter other than this specific thing? Who knows! Do I know what to call this? Well, since LTT apparently took "quick bits" already, no. But I enjoyed making it and hopefully you enjoy watching it ALRIGHT BYE
P.S.: A patron said it would have been nice to see the inside of the thing. That's true, he's right, I even considered it, and I figured you all might like some insight into my process. Andrew, don't take this as criticism, you just gave me a good jumping-off point to talk at length, as if I needed an excuse. :p
It would have been easy to disassemble: four screws, done. The problem is, I'd have to figure out how to get the thing in focus and stable and well lit, so now I'm setting up a camera rig on a hard surface somewhere, and getting a light and monitor display rigged up... in a video that, up to this point, consisted of me just talking into a stationary camera for 20 minutes. Suddenly a lot more time and effort.
Also, I know very little about RF circuitry, so if I had any observations they'd be along the lines of "wow that's a surprisingly large diode," and more likely I'd just have no observations at all so I'd have to say something like "here's the insides, in case you want to see them, I don't know anything about them," and that would trash the flow of the video. That's the thing, see, I think this video flows really well, and that's not something I've been able to manage for a while.
You may have noticed that it's only thirteen minutes long. That's after I added a segment; it was ten, originally, and I was wary of making it any longer. This video sticks just to what's on my mind - these are the thoughts I immediately had about this product and very little more. I did not let myself go off and do a bunch of research because I know I would have ended up talking about 50 other Radio Shack products if I did - sure enough, as soon as this video was over I found out that there was a very similar Realistic system that used FM over phone lines, and had I known that, I would have been compelled to mention it. And then where does it stop?
That would have eaten up three minutes, and if I'd taken the thing apart I would have had to find something to say about the insides, and that would have added five to ten additional minutes. And suddenly the video is 35 minutes long and becoming unwieldy, so I'd decide that I needed to make a proper script in order to keep all the thoughts straight. And well, if we're doing a script we should probably just shoot this in the studio, right?
Ah, but now it's getting serious, so I really need to get my story straight: if I'm going to mention this phoneline model at all, I better find the manual so I don't make any false assumptions... hmm, nobody has the manual online. I guess I should probably buy a pair and wait six days for them to arrive so I can make sure they work the way I think... all for an offhand mention. And hell, if we're this deep in, maybe we should put an oscilloscope on the line and compare the signal between the phone line and power line versions, because I'm sure we're all curious about that...
Two weeks later, I'm putting the finishing touches on an hour and fifteen minute long video that will inevitably contain an error or two because it's simply too long to proofread in its entirety every single time I make a change. Except I don't even get that far because I look at the 19,000 word script and go "oh, another huge one, I better set it aside in the queue behind all the other huge scripts that I've been putting off for months, those take priority." So the thing, which I bought because it looked like A Quick Bit Of Content, becomes another piece of clutter in my studio, eternally unseen by an audience who would very much like to see my clutter. This is basically what happened to Little Guys.
I am trying to figure out how to do things that do not eat up my entire life for a month each time, and that requires saying "no" to a lot of stuff. Up until now I have been saying "yes" to essentially everything, and it isn't really sustainable, because it turns out that every "yes" comes with strings attached that are really hard to see until you've been doing this for long enough to realize just what it costs to add "a quick offhand mention." Basically, once you say "no" to anything, it makes sense to say "no" to a lot.
I think doing so resulted in a video that's fun, has general appeal, is easy to watch, was very easy to produce, and is probably going to do the most collective good in exactly the form it now has, and if I'd changed anything, I'd probably have ruined it. Or... maybe I publish this tomorrow and a week later it has only 15,000 views, the whole experiment is a failure, and I just go back to the way I was doing things. We'll see, I guess.
Comments
Carl Seiler
We definitely had these in our house in the mid-1980s. We used them because yelling was the alternative and mom hated that. It was largely a “call to dinner” or “where are you?” thing.
William Hyatt
I think your assumption about every other one working would be correct. Unless it was only using one transmit frequency for the caller, and the other for the called, but then the called participants would not hear each other. The only way to know is to analyze it. TO THE SCOPE!
Danny Forche
Wow, this brings back memories! My house actually has an intercom system - still functional - but it wasn't from RadioShack nor was it radio-based. It just had an electrical wire running between rooms and was mounted on the wall, so there's no handset to pick up and it's not blasting out radio waves since they're all connected by a wire. I want to say the brand is Nutek or something? But it has a similar operation to these, a talk button and a call button that makes a loud buzzing noise. There's also a volume knob so you could turn yours off if you didn't want to be bothered. When you press talk it broadcasts to every other wall unit, we have one in every room, so I always kept mine off to not be bothered. I remember we added a new one at some point - they just split the wire much like you'd split a coaxial cable. Edit: (I'm still watching the video) regarding the squelch thing, ours obviously didn't need that since it's not using radio waves. If anyone pressed talk it would just activate the speaker in every room. Sometimes someone would bump it and we'd have to walk around the house to find which one has a talk button stuck down, lol. I think you could also jam it up that way because only one could "talk" at a time, so if someone was being obnoxious you could just press talk on yours and drown them out Edit 2: Ours don't need batteries, nor do they need to be plugged into a wall socket, so I think the way it works is that one of the units is connected directly to an active circuit (like inside the walls, running in series with a plug outlet somewhere) and then the rest of them all just draw power from that. Ours likely use the same sort of power-line transmission as the ones you show, but in their own isolated circuit as I'm 99% positive there's a separate wire connecting the intercoms together, not just each room's power socket. I'll post a photo when I get home
Emma May
Your comments about using 2 frequencies were explained by having "duplex" on there. If it were simplex, on the same frequency, folks wouldn't be able to interrupt if the other party was speaking. Having it on separate frequencies makes it a lot more phone like and eliminates the need to indicate when you're done speaking
Lonely Roman Noise
Mark Twain once said, “I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one." and goodness Gravis does that apply to video editing. I really hope your new warehouse setup is as good as this little snack of a video makes it seem, because the casual, friendly vibes of "Hey, man check this out!" are so apparent in this video. I hope it's successful and you can get more lower-effort (by which I mean absolute wretching heartbreak) out.
Tim Tom
Love this context, thanks for sharing!
Red Dragon
This isn't a criticism of the format (I really like the super informal style!!!), more just a note -- At 8:57 you mentioned that there's a system for power systems communicating with one another over the power lines themselves. This is all but dead nowadays. It was a standard for a while, and it was meant for, well, exactly what you said: Reading power meters over traditional power lines. But it also served the purpose of communicating electrical network faults over the long-distance powerlines themselves. The problem (and what killed it) was that due to antenna physics that even I don't understand, the longer HV transmission lines of power systems could pick up unwanted interference from ham radio that operated on similar frequencies. The issue was solved by giving ham radio operators the upper hand: If you want to operate a station on that particular band, you have to contact a specific authority to see if you're allowed to do it or not, but if they give the OK (Which they usually did) then the power company isn't allowed to deploy any systems using that technology within a fairly large radius around your "station" for a good length of time. What resulted was a ton of ham radio operators who had no actual intentions of operating on that particular frequency range submitting those requests and essentially mapping out where the system was already in-place before those standards were widely deployed. But in doing so, they also made it virtually impossible for power companies to deploy the standard across the US due to the aforementioned reasons. The consequence was that the systems were never widely deployed outside of the test areas and before the FCC got involved. It's basically a non-issue now that the hams won, but it's still an interesting footnote!
adorfer
I remember those powerline radios as baby phone devices.
Jason Long
Hah. I had an alarm clock as a kid that had a remote station that used powerline transmission to act as an intercom. If it didn’t have an annoying buzz at rest I would have actually used that part, so I just used the regular alarm clock part instead.
Kris Asick
We actually did have a pair of these back when I was a kid in the early 90s. Not that specific model but the speakerphone type. The problem it solved for us was that, back then, my father owned a pretty large house and you had to cross almost the entire distance to go from the family room upstairs on one end where we had our TV and computers set up, to the kitchen downstairs at the other end, so getting these devices allowed whoever was in the kitchen to let everyone upstairs know when food was ready. :B
skyhawk
Wait. > FM over phone lines Used *what* over the **what?!**
Scott Kemp
A Bit of A Lot.
Rom
I found a pair of the desktop ones at the thrift. They sounded surprisingly good! I thought it’d be cool as a front door intercom…but then realized no one ever comes to my door that I’m not expecting soooo
EyeMWing
"Welp, that exists" is definitely my reaction to this particular product, and would be a killer title, but probably not the kind of thing you want to apply to all the warehouse vids. It feels like the kind of thing that I *DEFINITELY* should have seen as a kid. It feels like the kind of thing that everybody with a receptionist-secretary sitting outside their office would have had, and probably should still have. But I have no evidence that it ever existed aside from you showing me one.
doink
Shop Talk?
Kerne
Gravis' Gear
Chas Becht
COTS Corner
D. Roscoe
Shop shelf... maybe "Off the Shelf"? I mean, if that shelf is going to be the stage for all of these, it could work.
Xaviette Katzenfrau
tbf it would be very funny if they almost never dropped on Wednesday despite being called that.
Xaviette Katzenfrau
quick *bytes.* they'll never know what hit em.
Rodney Hubbard
"We can imagine they sounded better when new." Umm no, no they did not. The hum was there when I was young and visiting my uncle (that always managed to have unique electronics) and there was a hum when me and my cousins played with them. But you mention a second hum higher pitch I don't remember I just remember the 60hz hum.
Mike Barnes
It's always Wednesday somewhere, right?
Marlo Delfin Gonzales
Bench Warmers?
Scott Kemp
Maybe call this series B-side Tech. In much the same way a song that didn't make the full length album still had exposure, this is tech that didn't need a full length video but still deserved a mention.
Cathode Ray Dude
god i guess it is warehouse wednesday. but i can't commit to release these all on wednesdays! maybe i should anyway
Kerne
Warehouse Wednesday? Shop Shelf Show & Tell? Past Their Prime Products Pop Up Video? ;D
