Well Hello again Loyal Customers,
It seems to me that the ancient Greek Philosopher Heraclitus was right
“The Only Constant in Life Is Change.”- Heraclitus 540BC
It seems every week we learn something new and the world keeps changing at a rapid rate. Having sadly said our goodbyes to Queen Elizabeth we now have King Charles, the first time in my lifetime that we have had a King. Personally, I really liked Queen Elizabeth and admired her tenacity and leadership. Whatever your views on royalty, certainly the future for the Commonwealth is going to be very interesting.
Speaking of interesting, our field of electronics also continues to change and this month I wanted to share some items I came across that I think may be useful. Starting with a technical problem we have encountered…
Remember what our TV’s used to look like…
SONY TV tuning issues
Recently we have encountered an issue on the Manual Tuning of the new, and relatively new, Sony TVs. The auto tuning seems to work OK, but the manual tuning won’t find all of the channels.
The only reason this is a problem is that in some locations on the coast where you receive TV channels from 2 or more transmitters, we need to manually tune the TV to the strongest transmitter, and eliminate the other, unwanted, transmitter, otherwise the TV autoscan locks onto the wrong signal and the result for you is digital break up. So if you are in one of these areas, and a few of our customers are, this becomes a real problem
The cause of the problem appears to be the Australian TV channel plan that has been put into the Sony TVs at manufacture is incorrect. Australia has a slightly different channel plan of TV frequencies than other countries and we suspect that that is where the error occurred. We are following this up with Sony to see what they can do to solve it. Mean time we have obtained some specialty filters that will allow us to filter out the unwanted channels allowing the auto tune to be used. Where this is not possible, we are using a Digital Set Top Box as a budget option.
If you have encountered or encounter this difficulty, we hope to have a solution from Sony which we will include in the next newsletter. If you want to be advised directly, then please send us your details and we will email you as soon as we get Sony’s solution. (no plug)
Security News: AI (Artificial Intelligence) cameras with Human Detection
There are always technology changes coming through but this one I think is a real winner! I wanted to go over the value of this new technology for home and office security:
Firstly, as the CCTV camera and alarm system mobile app technology improved many people started doing their own monitoring, both for cost savings (from monitoring charges) and convenience – you got an alert to your phone from your alarm, then you could check your cameras. But false alerts and integration issues between alarms and camera systems caused issues. Also, you had to have two systems which obviously costs more.
So the reason I am excited is because the new security camera system, with AI cameras that have accurate Human Detection, allows you to just have the camera system and use it as an alarm, all in one.
Now, please don’t misunderstand that this can replace all the features of an alarm system in all situations, as full alarms do have their place, but in many homes and small offices this new technology can give you the full self-monitoring feature with minimal chance of false alerts to your smartphone. And at the cost of just one very affordable camera system and not the extra cost of an alarm system.
In its simplicity you put an AI camera system in; you put normal cameras for most of your external cameras and then, for example, put AI cameras inside your front door facing the door, inside your garage and inside your rear door facing your rear door. (so as not to intrude on your own privacy)
Then you set the AI Human Detection alert function on a timer for after hours (which you can set and also disable easily anytime) on those specific cameras. This means that the other external cameras simply record if triggered but the AI cameras will detect human movement (not pets, bugs or anything else) and send that alert to you on your app, with video, immediately. If someone comes through the door or garage that you don’t know, you definitely want to know about it straight away.
Of course you can use AI cameras in other areas but a) they cost more and b) you don’t want to put them where you could get false alerts because people walk by.
So there you have a camera and alarm system plus monitoring with video sent to your phone all in one neat package.
If this interests you or you know someone this could help then please give us a call and we can come out and estimate on site. (shameless plug)
In closing, I want to mention we now are working with a wonderful interior designer Natasha from Labyrinth Interior Design and so if anyone is building or renovating not only can we help you with the needed cabling and Audio Visual advice and design, but we can help you make those critical decisions that make the new home look amazing!
Well that is all for this month, but look out for next month where will be reviewing the Consumer Electronics show on the Gold Coast, the first one in 2 years so it should be full of new ideas!
Cheers for now.
Phil, Mandy and the Sunshine Antenna Service team.