Hi Welcome to everyone's favorite segment Mailbag where: I Open viewer mail and also company mail companies can send stuff in to send it to. PO Box 7949 Northwest New South Wales Australia not Austria Spoiler Alert: We have Ploopy headphones. Thank you very much The Ploopy Corporation that's what they call themselves anyway. Fantastic! Let's check it out.

Tongue at the right angle. always important. Let's go. We have a note, but let's get straight in.

hang up. It's got a USB cable so they are obviously. USB Headphones: Oh look at that! Whoa. Whoa.

Enormous. And they're purple. For all you purple aficionados out there, these are. these are not commercial headphones.

These are do-it-yourself jobbies. Oh oh look, oh look, it's got wood grain on it. Oh so these are either broken or I've got to assemble this together. but these are anyway.

I'll show you I'll play yeah, wood grain wood grain on the outside for a touch of wankiness. These are like do-it-yourself headphones. so let's check them out. um I can't do much here so let's go to the bench and the computer I guess to play them hi Dave Thanks for looking into this.

Everything is assembled and ready to use. Just insert the left and right drivers into the headband doesn't matter which and uh, thank you and enjoy Colin and fill the ploopy Guys These are open source. uh headphones? Open back? uh headphones which is my favorite I Do not like uh closed back headphones. They're just no no no no no no no no.

open back headphones. These open back monitor. uh headphones that are DSP So it uses an external uh DSP and Driver here which you can individually uh, tailor and all of this is open source. All the design uh to build this and you can buy the complete kit for 130 Canadian dollars not an American rubbish.

Um, under 30 bucks Canadian for the kit or as you see here, fully assembled for 250 bucks and these are designed as a reference monitor. uh speakers and they use a apparently a planar magnetic uh design in here and there. a 3D printer to Helmholtz Resonance thing here so that it and then individually tailored and then you can individually tailor and tune it. uh using the DSP and the software and it's all open source and they've got this.

It's that 3D printed two on the complete Flex thing or is that that using something else? I'm not going to disassemble It Anyway nice and soft and Squishy and even the case here is 3D printed as well. So we've got the headphone out and a USB C in and it uses a Raspberry Pi processor in there. So anyway, the fact that you know you can do a do-it-yourself headphone I think there's going to be lots of uh, you know aficionados out there who just love to tweak their headphones. You know the fact that you can build it yourself and then tweak it.

um, to your own personal taste. I think that's uh, fantastic. Not a fan of the purple, but uh gee, it's all about how it sounds I Don't know how they've done the earmuff here. Maybe that's like a commercial one and they're designed it around that? Not entirely sure.

but anyway, these are quite large and these are physically, uh, quite large cones and well, let's plug it in and we'll try out the software. and uh, sorry, this is not a hero. Vision Um so unless I design like a proper like acoustic head like with a proper acoustic ear with a proper measurement mic in there I can't do comparisons on headphones so trust me bro. and there's inside the driver there.

it uses a Raspberry Pi uh micro here and well I won't go into huge uh details, you can. This is all open source so you can, uh, manufacture it. You can play with it, fiddle to your heart's uh, content, make your own if you don't want to buy the kit, and I believe it's all available on the githubs and whatnot. Um, so yeah, this is a complete DSP done locally here, but there's a PC software that hooks up to it and then uh allows you to, you know, tweak it to taste and wood grain.

of course. Is that some sort of like Canadian Timber Oh, pure wankery, it's going to make it sound more better. The cables here have an outer sheath and uh, just a three and a half millimeter jacks on the uh side there. Oh, one's left, one's right so that, uh yeah, you don't want an integrated cable, you want to be able to, uh, roll your own there of course.

Now, as for the band up here, there you go. They're 3D printed in uh, little uh, notches there and they've got this clip up top I Guess which helps? it helps it in they said I could put it in either side. it didn't didn't matter and oh, that, and that's not going to come back out unless I probably take the screws off there. Wow, that works remarkably well for a 3D printed thing that actually feels rather professional.

Oh, that's off. So I've got my ploopies on and the cables stick out the front I'm not sure if that's the best thing right out the back I don't know I'd have to. Yep, no idea, but that's just the way if you want to go left, right I could swap them. uh, of course.

but anyway, they're very light, there's hardly any pressure on those at all. and the first thing I notice is that, um, yeah, they're They're comfortable because there's hardly any pressure whatsoever. comfortable on the top and at the sides. Uh, due to that lack of pressure.

But as soon as I move my head at all, there's a squeaky noise unfortunately. So I I assume that's due to the slippage because I can feel them slipping and they just rubbing so there's just not enough not pressure there. so that's one thing. But anyway, uh I just plugged it in and it appeared as audio and like a headphone.

Uh, actual device. and Bob's your uncle and I'll play something I'm familiar with. It's this idiot I listened to all day. every day.

Uh, thousands and thousands and thousands of hours. So I kind of know what he sounds like. It works. It's like I think my volume's low.

I'm up to 100 and it's not. It's not loud that that sounds pretty good now. I'm behind camera. Maybe it's a little bit tinny I don't know I've got to come like I'm comparing them to my studio monitors I never edit with headphones I edit with uh studio monitors that's not going to tell you anything.

Of course, hold up to the microphone and look at a signal and there it is there. 30 millivolts Peak to Peak I need a bit more depth on that I think now I swapped over to my Samson Sr 850i headphones I've got custom uh foam, uh, extra foam, uh padding on these. So these are these are my standard reference headphones. They're probably the best you can get like a bang per Buck for a reference monitor headphone and they're recently regarded.

Try these. Switch it directly back over. Yeah, there's not much difference there actually. I'd Maybe tweak up the bottom end, but this this idiot with the high Rising terminal Aussie voice is really annoying.

Anyway, it is going to have to be one of those trust me bro things because I can't possibly get you a proper comparison using a microphone. It's just it's just not going to do it. That sounds pretty good. So they've got not just headphones, but they've got open source uh, moose as well.

Um, excellent. So here it is here. like a planar magnetic design. Haven't had a look at that.

uh, studio monitor, frequency response out of the box, etc. etc. And yeah, there you go. Yeah, they've got their helmholtz.

uh, resonator. Um, and it's all open source. It's all open source. Uh, there you go.

Bird Brown for you, Bird Brown Fanboys PCM 3060 there. if you didn't see that in the close-up Uh, there it's got the Raspberry Pi uh, 2040 uh controller there and this software. Get the headphones toolbox, you know George Norton's GitHub I don't know who George Oh okay and this is a third-party person who's designed the software have they? George Norton's GitHub Uh, let's just get the lately I always just download the latest um monitor software for it and there you go. That was really easy and now I'm listening to myself.

Yap on Okay So we've got flat but presumably I don't know how do we use this? Can we rename so? oh, you can have different configurations so uh, if you know different family members use it or something like that, you can have your own tailored response. Can we just no I can't just drag that a new configuration. Oh there you go. Preamp.

Oh there we go. That's the preamp. These sound really good and we can tweak the frequency. Oh look, look at this.

Oh wow, we can so we can see where the peak the frequency Peak is that sounds pretty good And the gain? Whoa. Wow. You could play with this until the cows come home I Don't know what the quality does. Oh I Can hear the difference when quality is down low.

there don't know what the qual what that quality factor is. that's like compression that's obviously some sort of reference number that they've picked um and then so that's for peaking. This is for low shelf and oh my goodness. High Shelf Codec configuration: 16 Okay, 32 times over sampling is not going to make a difference I Wouldn't expect that to make a difference for my Just Voice digital roll off.

that's not going to make a difference with Voice digital D Emphasis Oh, hard to tell. you'd have to get somebody else to control it and see if you can hear a difference because you know you don't want to bias yourself. Get it? Mirror Week? So sorry yeah? I can't obviously cannot. um do this thing Justice right? But trust me, they work and they sound probably as good as my um Samson um Sr850s Yeah, I'm not as they're pretty good, but with these I don't get that squeaky um thing when I move my head so that it's yeah, it's just a design of the um, just the looseness of them I guess my head too small.

never been accused of having a small head and then I've also got these: Audio Technica uh ath80700 X's yeah, there are differences between these headphones, but I'm not sure which one I'd actually prefer I just think these actually sound pretty good I'm not saying they're better or worse than the others, they're just they're all slightly different as you'd expect, but you can tailor the response to what you want and that's you know I don't have these with well I Oh, maybe you can install like a software thing like intercept thing DSP intercept thing for your headphones I'd that now to tweak them. but yeah, we can, right? So we can individually enable disable any of these like band pass, skirt, and bus Peak Notch Filter custom Iir filter Wow, that's literally right. Wow. You can set the coefficients.

Are you kidding me? This is nuts, right? This is nuts and that's the thing you can get with custom, right? I Can I can enable that? Whoa. And then I can disable that and it all works in real time. It's great I can hear that low pass. There's not much in my voice below 612 Hertz Anyway, so what I've got is just flat at the moment and just flat response.

sounds fine. Whoa, there's some bass in that playing me some. MC Frontalot whoa wow, that's got some serious bass. Well yeah, I can just fill the under 40 Hertz but I say I've just filled it off everything else.

Wow, that's amazing. Anyway, they sound really good I am I am I'm happy with the ploopy apart from the apart from the loosey-goosey um scratchy thing when I move my head like that. but they've done an excellent job. So yeah, thank you very much Ploopy.

Um, that's terrific. You can Muck around I'm sure there's going to be a ton of people who want to muck around with their own open source headphones Even build himself or just the ability to just to tweak it and muck around with it. Wow, that's it's. very cool.

I Wouldn't have thought that like a do-it-yourself headphone like this could be fun, but it is I like it I like it. I'm just gonna maybe strengthen that up some. Oh geez, it's very different now. Um, just wouldn't want to have a closed back headphone anyway.

these are very cool. Um I'll link them in down below. thank you very much. Bloopy.

Well done Anyway, these are fun and they've done an impressive amount of work on this. So I'll link Ploopy Headphones down below. Check it out, They even like the name. Next up we have another one from the United States of America it's already opened I don't know why I opened it.

maybe I didn't realize it was a mail bag and I've got I forget what's in here. Anyway, let's have a look. Well, we have a note, won't read that and what is it? What is it that is a that is a holder. What is that? How does that? Oh okay.

oh, that angles. That's a probe holder. Cool. Wow.

Okay, cool. bananas. I'm sure that is a probe holder. Okay, let's check it out.

So here's Ned's Ee tackle made in the United States of America Fantastic. And it is a oscilloscope or multimeter probe holder. We've of course seen variations of these in um, previous videos and they're putting pros and cons of them. This one is designed to be a hefty weight like this at and basically leverage like this.

see stickier probe in here and the heavy weight on there just puts your probe down onto a board. so that's rather neat. And of course you can change the angle like that based on what angle you need. I'd say that angle is probably like it's adequate for going right to the ground like that.

That was its design purpose. Probably would have been nice to have a little bit more range than that, but I'm certainly not going to complain about that range. Um, so anyway, let's give it a bill. Anyway, it's very nicely built.

I Presume this hole over here is just move it around like this. but it might have been nice if if it had like some like non-stick rubber feet or you though you can add your own. It does actually have a couple of feet there, you can add your own. it slides around.

But anyway, let's give it a try on a board. So of course, when you've got a board on the bench, especially like small lightweight ones like this Arduino Mega Here, it's just going to slide around on your bench so you know you're really like you want something heavier, some sort. You know, there's lots of solutions for holding, uh, your board. So anyway, let's whack our probe in there.

So here you go. we can just hand tighten that up. There's no need to actually use a driver for that. But anyway, there you go.

I can now tilt what that and that is not loosey-goosey either. You don't want that ball joint in there loosey-goosey it actually requires. you know, significant amount of force to do that. So I'm going to actually, uh, probe down on one of these pins and see if we can get a result.

Okay, so this is one of these annoying fine pitch uh jobbies here and let's see if we get something on the crow over here and I think I've got the right I've got the right pin up? Have I got the right pin there we go look at that and the weight of that. There's a pretty decent Hefty weight in that, but that works really well. I'm I'm happy with that. I'm I'm going to use this sucker.

this is uh, this is quite good. and of course, if you want it angled, you can actually rotate ah like that as well. so you know you could go in at an angle if you're really, uh, needed to. but the weight is still coming down.

but there's no way to avoid that. Uh, really. And there you go. I've got it coming down on an angle like that now as well and that works great.

I Really like that that's a Bobby Dazzler. that's a that's an absolute winner. So uh, thank you very much Ned for sending that in. That's terrific I reckon if you're in there, you've got to have some sort of uh probe solution like this and there's others on the market.

although I find some of the ones I've looked at previously didn't have the Hefty weight in there to actually, you know, get like because you got it of course depends on sharpness of your probe and you've got to pierce through any oxide coating on there and you know stuff like that. So um, yeah, the more weight, the more better and this thing works really well. I like it so so can I what don't wanna I don't know how well I'm on that pin I'd actually need a magnifying I have to get my macro lens to see how well I'm actually on that pin? Really? Oh geez, bloody fine pitch things. um but yeah, that's that's working even if I did all with the bench here.

So yeah, let me give it a bench. a bit of a what? you can't see that, but the bench is physically wobbling and that probe staying on there at an angle like that. Fantastic. Um, thank you very much.

Ned Anyway, sells this on eBay and uh Tindy So I'll link in the website down below or you can do the scannery a doodad and go over to Eetackle.com Nice work Ned and it can also hold your multimeter probes as well. No worries I Do all my viewers in Switzerland This one comes from Uh. two wave Technologies So does that? Don't need the knife for this? I Think this is gonna? there you go? Two Wave Technologies I Wonder which waves are they selling your soil? Are they something else? I don't know I've got a little box of something. a lead status display.

What do we got here? Your cordless intertooth. It's an inter tooth, your cordless com port less com port a a white. Oh, it's a while it's a bluetoothy wireless Bluetooth connection to the notebook and oh cool. Okay, this actually this looks really quite professional.

I Thought it'd be like a do-it-yourself thing. No, it's got the Ethernets it's got USBC And it's it'll do and it's a Serial input. Wow straight off the bat I would have said oh it would have been nice to have like the leads um coming. you know out so that you can probe like actually put them on a PCB So I'll point one inch out pin header up here.

um for your input. So if you've got something you want a probe uh like a Serial Port You want a probe on a board or something that's in a remote uh location then um and you don't want to have wires running everywhere. This can do it wirelessly. I Don't have anything like this.

Cool bananas. Let's check it out. No stupid me. I was thinking that this product was for like a Serial like actual Connections in products that I'm used to like uarts and stuff like that and like TTL level uart.

So I can plug it into the laser oscilloscope and get the you know, the latest serial dump or whatever. Um no it's not for that. It's a specific bit of Industry kit for the networking industry. For those who manage switchers and routers and things like that, you've got three different ways to connect into a you know switching your router.

Either you connect via the ethernet which is not ethernet. Apparently some switches have like a dedicated ethernet port that also doubles as a serial uh you know console interface. It's designed to connect to a console and also the USB here here. not only Powers the internal rechargeable battery which has like a 30 hour battery life in it, but it also apparently some switches and network.

um, you know, routers and whatnot have uh, like a USB console interface and of course a lot have um, the regular old old school Rs-232 serial console interface. so this handles all three of those apparently. and well I do have a dumpster um switch available which might be able to work, but I don't know I might not have be able to get this Um working sufficiently to evaluate it. But anyway, let's take it apart and here it is here.

the two Network engineers and they decided to, you know, build the product that they wanted. So uh yeah, so it can connect to the console uh ports. As I said either ethernet USB or uh, serial and there's their first prototype I Love it. Look at that.

just point to point on a bit of perf board. Fantastic! So let's have a look inside this thing and see what the final production is like. Oh hello, that looks very nice doesn't it? I Really like that? uh sorry, it's upside down. all the electrons are going to fall out.

um your cordless uh com port and I'm sure the network Engineers are probably in the audience I Know there's a lot of them probably wetting themselves right now wanting one of these things. of course. Yeah to meet the SSC compliance and it says that uh oh, made in Italy Look at that for mini tools. Oh the cases made in Italy Fantastic! I've never heard of mini tools before but that's that's absolutely terrific.

Anyway, it says on the bottom that uh, it has the FCC it contains FCC requirements and this is one of the you know if you're developing a niche product like this, you don't want to dick around with getting your own compliance and stuff like that. You just buy an already compliant module and you just whack it on your board. It costs more but it takes a lot of the uh, stress and it expense out of getting a product to. Market Anyway, um what do we got there? I can't see that on a camcorder screen? Oh it's a pig pig fan Boys go wild.

It's the 24 F uh j11024 um Series So yeah. nice. They've got a little pick there and yeah, it doesn't need a huge amount of effort. so nice to see a pick in a design there.

and under that we've just got a Lipo yeah battery there it is there. Yep, no worries and that gives you your 30 yard nothing on the bottom and that gives you your like I think about 30 hours battery life and it has a smart uh power off uh feature as well and it'll beep at you um quite loudly that uh, you know if you left the thing in the data center and you know the pointy head bosses come around and giving you another task and you forgot that you had this hooked up? Yeah yeah, it'll uh, beep at you and tell you that you've left it behind. Nice! Anyway, that's a very nice build. I Like that.

So I've got my own dumpster notebook because I actually none of my machines here in the lab actually have Bluetooth because they're all like desktops and dumpster machines and stuff like they're not, um, laptops. So anyway, um, yeah, it. uh, it connected and no worries. um and then you go into uh Bluetooth and com ports and I'm sure enough, incoming outgoing.

There you go. Com3 and com5 nice and Boom! I Open up our termite which is a terminal program and there it is. Um, it's uh, automatically selected 57 600 8n1 and introduce your cordless com. Port Accelera version four.

uh no, that's 9600 but it said it was 50 I don't know. Anyway, we're in. Oh look, it's beeping. It's actually got like an auto.

uh, power off? um warning thing which is nice. if you leave it there, you know, hooked up in your network room or whatever it's gonna, it's gonna beep fairly loudly. So yeah, I did because I hadn't done activity for so long. Anyway, nice touch.

sorry I'm not screen capturing this. but anyway. I Entered in uh, five dollar signs uh which is said to enter config mode is active press dirt for help so I can do that and oh there's no there's no help it said help I want help Okay, I'm pretty sure I'm just not nerdy enough to use this. I can get into the uh config menu with the five dollar signs here, but then like you're supposed to be able to change the board rate and change all sorts of uh things to do with the setup and be able to view the configuration.

but I can't and I'm I have rtfm and I don't know how it actually works because it just seen no matter what I type right Joshua it just Echoes that back. So I'm not sure if I'm in some like Echo mode or something, but I don't seem to be out you're supposed to do into tooth hash and then view config and that doesn't uh, work. I've tried many different I tried this many different times and many different configurations and I can't seem to get it to do what it's showing in the manual so I'm probably just dumb I've probably got my configuration set up wrong and ah anyway. I don't think I'm going to be able to do anything with this anyway because the only like switch thing I've got like manage switch thing is this thing I found in the dumpster.

um and it's a Linksys thing and it I well it's got a Serial port on it but I don't seem to be able to get anything out there and I've tried another tool as well and I can't seem to get anything. uh, you know, in or out of that. so I don't know if this is busted like it came from the dumpster. the fan sounds like a jet engine.

um and it's got no uh, it looks like it has no com like a RJ45 that ethernet connection that actually works as a com as well and it's got no USB interface which is the three interfaces for this thing. You either connect the serial via the ethernet but your switch has to support that and mine doesn't or what you get the cereal which I'm not even sure this is actually working to begin with and or the USB on. here. you can actually connect.

Apparently some switches have like a USB port on them and you can access them that way and this is designed to be flexible enough to connect to switches for all three of those things. But unfortunately, I ah no. I'm gonna have to call it quits for the mailbag because um I don't want to spend countless hours on this trying to get it worked. sorry into tooth I'm sure your tool your tool looks very, uh, professional and designed for a specific Market that I am not into I'm afraid.

but yeah, I'm afraid I'm just not networking smarty enough. Leave it in the comments. people are probably screaming at me I'm doing something dumb but I just can't get this thing working like you know and if I try and do the help thing like the help just like Echoes back the stuff I've already typed in so I don't know what the heck's going on there? um I don't know I even though I've TFM I'm just no, this is dumbass Dave sorry Anyway, this does seem like a very cool tool. If you're into that, you know, networky switch? Um, you know the the It business where you're you know, monitoring.

You're in a data center in your configuring switches and routers and things all day long. I'm sure it's great, but uh, fortunately it's not the tool for me to and every way to test it anyway. I'll link it in down below. thanks in the tooth I think it is a call I like Niche tools like this that just do a you know a specific job and that's you know and that's it.

Um, unfortunately it's not my business.