What hardware I supported on croudfunding and how I ended up

On Kickstarter

Everykey

No more Keys, no more Passwords… but I don’t use this widget, because this role was taken over by my iPhone, which I bought before this bracelet was made and delivered. I still have it stashed somewhere…

MagCable

An excellent idea with a magnetic USB cable from the year 2020. Today I have solutions from other companies, but this was a good start.

SonarPen

Before I could buy an original stylus with my new iPad, there was a solution that made it possible to have a working stylus with older models. Connecting via a jack connector was an exciting solution and I used it successfully for some time. However, the current Apple Pencil and its wireless solution are generations away. But for 2018, it was an interesting solution.

Fingertip Microscope – Add an 800x microscope to your phone

I used this microscope a lot. We used it to examine a lot of natural history at the kids’ camp. It was interesting to look really closely at ticks. One of the few investments that I think has really paid off!

Mindset: smart headphones that improve your concentration

Headphones that delivered what they promised and I use them at work every day. For a while, it looked like Covid broke their neck, but it looks like they will continue on despite adversity.

iMicro Q2p: An 800x Polarizing Fingertip Microscope

The previous microscope was usable with the first-generation iPhone SE. When I upgraded to a newer model phone, the manufacturer thankfully came out with an updated version of the microscope that picked up where the old one left off.

I was very happy to support them again because the quality of the view, the magnification levels (I bought multiple lenses) and the compactness (the whole thing takes up space like 3 credit cards laid on top of each other) are breathtaking. 

µChart – Test your camera, lenses, phone, and other optics

A great addition to the microscope, which I bought also to support the authors in their future work.

On Indiegogo

XOO Belt – A Phone-Charging Belt

An interesting idea, the processing, and timing of which (smaller power banks began to appear, allowing greater freedom of use) unfortunately did not meet with much use. What was interesting was the universal cable, which allowed use for both Android and iPhone.

AIRTAME: Wireless HDMI for Everyone.

It’s a device that works and within reason, I still use it occasionally. But in 2014 it was a revelation that was really interesting, and connecting a projector near the ceiling without having to hunt down a multi-meter cable was and still is useful.

Lantern: A Global Satellite Data Radio

Biggest disappointment. Great idea, nice visuals – and still hasn’t arrived. I guess it wasn’t even finished.

Smartwatch Powered by You – MATRIX PowerWatch

They worked for a few months, then got stuck during a firmware update. Unfortunately, covid was raging at the time, so communication with the manufacturer was difficult. Sent them in for warranty and they never came back.

iSpin fidget-spinner

A little silliness that has entertained and currently delights my son.

WonderCube Pro – Mobile Essentials in 1 Cubic Inch

A useful little thing that accompanied me on the keys for a year and even in some moments fulfilled its role with honor. Emergency card reader, charging cable, flashlight, cell phone holder, and handy reducers.

Smartwatch Powered by You – MATRIX PowerWatch 2

Bought in the euphoria of a working first-generation that broke a few weeks later. However, upon delivery of this piece again, a good experience at first. The GPS worked, and the battery life was not great, but it was usable for some shorter runs with the sun at my back.

Unfortunately, this is where the cyclic restart glitch manifested itself. Simply in the course of use, the watch turned off and on by itself. After experiencing the lack of communication regarding the first unit’s warranty claim, I can in good conscience very strongly advise against this company and its products.

Kharbon: The Longest Lasting IP67 Wireless Earbuds

Although there is some suspicion that the project was not entirely clean (there were a few references where apparently identical devices could be bought, printed, or engraved and then sent in the form of a large number of pieces), the headphones served me for several years, the battery life was good, they held in the ear and the only thing one had to watch out for was tucking them into the charging case. If the earphone was turned the wrong way, it would stand upright and could not be easily removed afterward.

EarFun Free- Ultimate Comfortable Wireless Earbuds

Other earbuds didn’t play badly, but for some reason, I liked the Kharbon better.

Unlock the locked Word file

Maybe you had this problem in the past, perhaps you google a solution now. You got a locked .docx file, it is read-only and you need to edit it. The Internet gives you many solutions, for example, buy an app that can remove this protection. But here is a free simple way how to do it – without buying an app or uploading your sensitive file to any server.

Locked Word file

Just open your file in Word. Then save it like XML. Now open this XML file in a plain text editor and search form parameter enforcement. The code will look something like this:

<w:documentProtection w:edit="forms" w:enforcement="1" w:cryptProviderType="rsaAES"…

Set the parameter enforcement to 0, save and exit.

<w:documentProtection w:edit="forms" w:enforcement="0" w:cryptProviderType="rsaAES"…

Open the modified XML file in Word and use Save As → Word Document (*.docx).

Now you have a doc file you can edit as you like.

Turn an eBook into an audiobook
E-book to audio file

First of all, you need some software to install – you can use terminal and brew.

brew install --cask calibre
brew install lame

In Calibre open your e-book and convert it into a text file. Use Convert books → Convert individually → Output format: TXT → OK.

Now you have a text file without any formatting tags. You can remove/move to the end texts you don’t want to hear—like copyright info, ISBN, publisher notes, etc.

Your macOS have very useful command say. For how to install other voices see the support Apple page for your OS version.

You can select the voice, you prefer with parameter -v. In my case, I select the Czech voice → Zuzana.

say -v zuzana

And now is the time for some “magic”. In the terminal get into the directory, where is your ebook text file and run this command where mybook is the name of your text file and myaudio is the name of the output you want.

say -f mybook.txt -o myaudio.aiff

And wait… If you have a lot of space on your disk, you can stop here. Audio Interchange File Format in my case has 1.57 GB. But after conversion with lame

lame -m m myaudio.aiff myaudio.mp3

it has 142.6 MB. That is a lot of space to save. If you need to save more space or you prefer other settings for spoken word, use

lame --longhelp

and tweak the conversion command. For example, you can specify bitrate, add ID3 tags, define filter options, etc.

Homebrew on M1/M2 macOS

First, install Homebrew – https://brew.sh/

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Authenticate when prompted to. Edit/create bin paths in the .zshrc file. In the home directory run the command

nano .zshrc

then add these lines in. (The last line is my local bin – my little reminder).

export PATH=/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH
export PATH=/opt/homebrew/sbin:$PATH
export PATH=~/bin:$PATH 

Save and exit. Then restart the terminal, or you can log out and log in. Now you can run these commands and wait some time. Easy, fast, and effective.

Do you need other applications? Found it here https://brew.sh. Don’t you need some application that I have in the command? Remove it from the list before running it.

brew install cask coreutils terminal-notifier hudochenkov/sshpass/sshpass unzip p7zip rename imagemagick ncftp alerter node
brew install --cask sublime-text codekit dash fork iina ealeksandrov-cd-to deepl iterm2 free-download-manager gimp inkscape libreoffice audacity itsycal bartender typeface birdfont google-web-designer optimage scapple freemind viscosity sigil mamp camtasia maccy ukelele dbeaver-community firefox opera bettertouchtool expressions timemator whatsapp spotify appcleaner paparazzi imageoptim colour-contrast-analyser keka istat-menus typora waltr-pro anydesk teamviewer discord transmit

The best of this solution is the fact, that you can update all these apps from the terminal. Use commands

brew update && brew upgrade && brew upgrade --cask

…and wait. Brew does everything for you.

If you sometimes use the built-in upgrade mechanism of some apps, you can run this command to be sure, that all brew way installed apps will be up to date:

brew upgrade --cask --greedy

In a one-line command, it would be like this

brew update && brew upgrade && brew upgrade --cask --greedy && brew cleanup

How to fix the macOS (intel) VirtualBox VM resolution problem on the Retina display
VirtualBox on macOS

I use VirtualBox and GNU/Linux Ubuntu for some tasks. But on macOS with a retina display, I had a problem with resolution. Everything was small and hard to read and use. So I googled and find this video. It is working on my macOS Catalina 10.15.7.

macOS Monterey users see the bottom section ↓.

For me and other people, that try to find a text-only solution:

  1. Press ⇧G – it means [cmd] + [Shift] + [G]
    • or open the menu in Finder → Go → Go to Folder…
  2. In dialog paste /Applications/VirtualBox/Contents/Resources/
  3. Right the mouse button on VirtualBoxVM, select Get Info and check Open in Low Resolution

Or, if you want click

  1. Go to the Applications folder
  2. Find VirtualBox app
  3. Right the mouse button on it and in the context menu select Show Package Contents
  4. Dive into Contents → Resources and here is the file VirtualBoxVM
  5. Right the mouse button on VirtualBoxVM, select Get Info and check Open in Low Resolution
Open in Low Resolution checked

Now, if you start a VirtualBox machine, it will be much ease to use (see the decoration of the main window and its name font size).

macOS Monterey problem

If you don’t see the option Open in Low Resolution, you have a higher version of macOS, where this option was removed. For this case in video comments following advice:

You have to change the info.plist with admin rights. For example in terminal type:

sudo nano /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/VirtualBoxVM.app/Contents/Info.plist

Then you can change the following key to false:

<key>NSHighResolutionCapable</key> <true/> 

should now be

<key>NSHighResolutionCapable</key> <false/> 

This does the same as the checkbox did in previous macOS versions.

enophone by Mindset Innovation, Inc – a quick review
eno phone
This is the final product. Arrived in January 2022. Ordered May 2018. Was it worth it?

How is it different from a promise? The Hardware is awesome – I got a better Bluetooth version, better battery life, and one more sensor than promised.

The app is still being developed and it has some issues. And we are still waiting for some features like temporally mute notifications, gentle focus audio cues, rest time suggestions, better graphic look, etc. But, so far, so good.

What was the promise?

Visualization from Kickstarter.
Visualization from Kickstarter

Sensors

  • 3 active dry electrodes: C3, Cz, C4
    ~200k impedance
  • 2 active dry reference electrodes: A1 & A2
    ~100k impedance
  • EEG signal processing chipset
    1uVPP noise floor
    Actively shielded wires
    Up to 16kHz sampling rate 
  • Accelerometer

Battery

  • Rechargeable 800mAh
  • 8 hours of continuous playback, ANC, and data streaming

Connectivity

  • Optional 3.5mm audio cable
  • USB-C connector
  • Dual-mode Bluetooth 4.2 + 2.1

Audio

  • 40mm audio driver
  • Active Noise Cancellation

Reality – final enophones specifications

Noise-cancelling headphones
Noise-canceling headphones
  • Dimensions 200×200×85 mm
  • Weight 370g
  • APT-X and Qualcomm cVc enabled
  • Microfiber ear cushions

Sensors

  • EEG sensor location A1, C3, C4, A2
  • EEG sampling rate 250 Hz
  • EEG voltage input range [-25mV, +25mV]
  • EEG noise level 0.2 uVrms

Battery

  • Battery 920 mAh ~ 10 hours

Connectivity

  • Bluetooth Yes, Version 5.0
  • Audio input Stereo Mini Jack (3.5mm plug)
  • Charging USB – C

Audio

  • Drivers 40mm
  • Impedance 16 Ohm
  • Frequency Range – 20Hz-20,000Hz
  • Four-microphone hybrid active noise cancellation

Usage of enophone

If you turn it on, you hear – power on, battery status, and connected (if the computer/phone or something like that catch the Bluetooth).

It fits on the head very well and comfortably. Sometimes I have a problem with the left head sensor because I have more hair. Or my head is not in „ideal shape“. But after some tries is all fine.

Noise cancellation works great. I can switch three modes. Noise cancellation on, talk thru, and noise cancellation off. You need only double press the middle button on headphones (easy to find with your thumb) and it switches – you hear audio information about which mode is active.

Music sounds very good, and communication via Teams, Skype, etc is without problems.

Enowork – the app

Loading screen
Loading screen

Pictures are better than long writing. Sometimes it freezes on start and I must kill the app in Activity Monitor. But in most cases, it behaves correctly.

Was it worth it?

Almost 4 years of waiting can be frustrating. The truth is that the manufacturer did not want to ship a product that has design flaws. They uncovered a few in the making, wrote openly about it, and explained everything. The other complications were caused by coivd-19, but covid-19 had a global impact.

I have been using the headphones every day for several weeks now. At work, they help me to shield myself from the noise of my surroundings, even when I’m not listening to anything in them. It’s even better with music or spoken word.

Even after a few hours on my head, the headphones don’t bother me in any way. The connectors do not press and are not uncomfortable. The ones on the head bridge can also be removed. I really appreciate the soft microfiber, which is more comfortable than leather. I’ll see how I feel about them in the summer.

The app is still in development and has a lot of room for improvement. Just today a new version 0.6.0 was released, which added a new stats page.

I’m happy with the headset. Would I buy them again? Definitely yes!

P.S.: And yes, I really have them!