Nokia Speakerphone HF-510 Frees Your Hands For Driving


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Many states have laws about using your cell phone while driving. Even where the law permits it, using your phone while driving can be dangerous. I have to admit, I talk on the phone while driving a lot. Although I can still drive safely, it’s inconvenient and ties up my free hand. Nokia sent me something that makes it all easier.

Nokia Speakerphone HF-510

About the HF-510

The Nokia Speakerphone HF-510 is a hands free kit for your car that connects via Blue Tooth to your phone. Simple enough, but what makes this different from other hands free kits out there? I’ve seen a ton of them and decent kits start around $50 last time I checked and the HF-510 comes in a little over that mark. The first difference this device has over others is easily noticed the first time you look at it. The large, easily mountable speaker allows for nice clear audio and can be pretty loud if you want, too. Because I didn’t want to mount the speaker for my review, I found myself throwing it in the cup holder in my car. The speaker size is just about a perfect fit for the cup holder, so if you want to share it between cars, you could try that.

The next stand-out feature I found on this device was the OLED display for caller ID. The whole point of a hands free kit is to not be messing with your phone while driving, so it’s nice to have the incoming caller’s number displayed. This is a great feature and shows up nicely. I hate getting stuck on the phone in my car with someone I don’t want to talk to or someone trying to sell me something. If you don’t mount the speaker or use the included visor clip, though, this feature is not as easy to notice without taking your eyes way off the road. So if you need the caller ID, mount the speaker or use the visor clip.

Other Features, Likes, Dislikes

Additionally, the Nokia HF-510 has a ring around the outside that is used to control the volume and sift through the phone book. While it’s kind of cool and probably works fine if you mount it very stable, it otherwise makes the phone book navigation and volume control harder to accomplish with one hand. While I didn’t really use it long enough to notice any battery issues, it boasts up to 30 hours of operation time and 180 hours of stand by time on the included battery. That’s pretty decent, but they provide a car charger for those really long trips.

Nokia Speakerphone HF-510 Nokia Speakerphone HF-510 Nokia Speakerphone HF-510

Conclusions

This hands free kit just worked well. I might have liked it a little smaller for my visor, but it has a nice design and was generally easy to operate. Call quality was as good as being on my phone, itself and it paired up really really easily. For the extra extra mile the HF-510 goes, I expected a slightly higher price than what I’ve seen and that doesn’t hurt one bit. The Nokia HF-510 looks and works great at a good price, leaving little to ask for.

Build Your Own Portable Gaming System with Meggy JR RGB


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For Christmas, Michelle bought me one of the things I was hinting for, a diy game system kit that I can program. I figured it would take a long time to build, since I had to solder everything on, so I put it off until I had a nice block of time available last night. The whole process was a lot easier than I thought, and took about three hours.

Meggy Jr

What is Meggy Jr RGB
First, though, what is Meggy Jr RGB?

Meggy Jr RGB is a handheld platform for developing your own pixel-scale video games.

Featuring a fully addressable 8×8 RGB LED matrix display, big fat comfy button switches, customizable handles, a lo-fi audio transducer, and even 8 extra LEDs for lives, score, ammo, or level, Meggy Jr RGB is a little kit you won’t want to miss. Meggy Jr is fast, programmable, open source and hackable. And fun.

Putting it all together
As mentioned above, this was easier than anticipated. I first read through all the instructions ahead of time to make sure there would be no surprises. Then I followed the instructions closely, step by step, until it was completed, taking photos along the way. Below are a few photos of the process, but you can see the whole set here.

Meggy Jr Meggy Jr
Meggy Jr Meggy Jr

What’s next?
It’s a great feeling to be able to build a portable gaming platform from the basest of components like this, but there’s another part of this kit that makes it shine. It can be programmed via the Arduino programming language, which I’m told is just Processing. Luckily, I’d already been messing with the language, which is pretty much javascript, so it’s really easy to program in. So… The next thing I’ll be working on with this is making a game to run on it. I don’t yet have the interface cable I need, but should soon, so when I have a game ready, I’ll post again about it.

Another cool thing other people are doing is creating their own “handles” for it. That’s just what the clear plastic pieces are called. I’ve downloaded the templates for that and might make something custom for mine.

Finally, EMS has some other awesome projects, so I may move on to Peggy 2.0 next, as I can think of tons to do with that.