techmoan

Cup Phonograph Kit Assembly

A good proportion of viewers seemed to enjoy my Gakken Wax Cylinder kit video despite the less than impressive outcome...so here's the sequel. 

This take on Edison's phonograph records onto disposable plastic cups rather than wax cylinders. Th...

Whatever happened to pocket TVs?

Have you ever wondered why handheld TVs disappeared from the stores when the analog signals were switched off and why manufacturers like Sony  and Casio didn't instead switch to making handheld digital televisions. If the answer is no, then I'm ...

The Sabamobil

Here's a video about a forgotten audio format from the 1960s, the Sabamobil from SABA. In this video I'll explain where it fits in with the history of tape players, you get to see it in action, hear the music from a Sabamobil cartridge and find out t...

Smart Home WiFi Plug (socket)

In this video I set-up a voice controlled smart plug...and while this is something that has been possible for a while now, I wanted to show that it's become simple enough for anyone to do it. 

Home automation has been around for decades with t...

A Video Double Bill

Today we have a Main Feature with a supporting Short.

The main feature has turned out to be of my personal favourites from recent weeks - its all about Video 8 - I hope you enjoy it too. 

The supporting feature is a quick tip that will o...

Custom Picture Disc

I wasn’t planning on putting anything else out before the weekend but this one was too simple a subject to warrant a longer video - so consider it a bit of an extra. 

I'll be making this one public later today as the views on Tuesday's helme...

Back to basics with a Helmet Camera review.

I get a lot of requests asking me to demonstrate new helmet, action and dash cams, and now that the weather here is intermittently half-decent, I thought I should try a couple of models out. 

 Action cameras are a mature technology now co...

1986 in your pocket

Here’s a fun little video - I wonder if anyone else remembers seeing this device in the stores in 1986. 

A three-in-one personal media player that shows  watching video,  listening to your  music and receiving  radio broa...

The Gakken Worldeye - UPDATE v2.0

This is something that I hadn’t seen reviewed before, so it seemed like a good idea to import one and find out for myself what it really did. In the end it didn’t turn out to be a worthwhile  endeavour…but I suppose at least I know that no...

A classic cassette deck

I hope you enjoy this video about the Sony TC-D5 cassette deck. A tape recorder that was the go-to high-end portable for the best part of two decades. 

Over the next few weeks I'll be working flat-out to get ahead by a few videos . I need to h...

On Wax/Off Wax - Building a Recorder Kit (early access)

In this video I assemble a Japanese educational kit that should be able to record on, and play recordings off, a wax cylinder.

If you want to see some of the other Gakken kits - their website is here: 2017-05-01 09:09:29 +0000 UTC View Post

Behind the scenes…of a video that doesn’t exist. (Exclusive)

I promised to make a behind the scenes feature documenting every step of my process of making a video. With this in mind I started shooting some early BTS footage for a future video, but as things turned out, this video had to be abandoned. 

I...

Atari Video Music - Early access

I’ve had this one on my to-do shelf for a couple of years, but I’ve finally decided it's time to make a video about it. 

A bit of background info......I make a point of avoiding watching videos about the subjects I’ll be covering so that...

Polaroid Snap Touch Review & Outro changes

I’ve been focusing on retro tech for a while, so it seemed like it was time to mix things up with a camera review. This video looks a bit different to some of the more recent ones I’ve done as it’s not bookended with spoken sections to camera. ...

Audio Craft Cassette Cartridge

In this video I get the opportunity to do one of my favourite things, showing off an unusual object that most people won’t have seen before.

If you decide to stay for the outro you may recognise the influence of our discussions from the previous ...

Tonight we’re going to blather like it’s 1985

Here’s an extra Patrons Only video in which I comment/reminisce while a Japanese Video Product Catalogue from  1985 is playing in the background. 

If that sounds like a bad idea, it probably was and that’s why I’ve also included an ...

Tape-to-Tape Walkman ('Repair' video)

Here's a nice simple video to make your mid-week that little bit brighter. 

Repair videos are satisfying to make (sometimes) - however a lot of the work takes place off-screen, in the editing.  Taking something apart whilst also keeping i...

Shaking things up

For a good few years now I’ve been trying to source a Buttkicker wireless kit at a sensible price, available to the UK. I’m happy to say that I finally managed to get hold of one on ebay so I’ve made a video about it.  

There’s quite a...

Light Relief

All the late nights, early mornings and all day editing sessions I spent getting the MiniDisc video finished finally took their toll and laid me up ill for a few days. 

However, I’m now back to work but only had enough time to make a very si...

Finally… MiniDisc.

There’s a good reason why this video took me a few years to make…MiniDisc is a monster.  I’ve ended up producing  a 45 minute video that still only touches on a tiny part of the story. 

 I decided that rather than getting ...

Sony MP-CL1 (early access to an out-of-date review)

Here’s a product that I probably should have reviewed in 2016…but I was busy making videos about other stuff. 

As I was uploading, I realised that it is the perfect thing to annoy the people on youtube who get annoyed about things like thi...

Seeburg 1000 - Pt 2

As promised (threatened?) on Sunday - here’s part 2 of the Seeburg BGM video. 

In this video I show the best way to play Seeburg records without the official machine. The experience is a compromise compared to using an original  Seeburg...

Seeburg BMS1 - Background Music System

I’d normally leave a bit more of a gap between retro-tech videos than this, but I’ve been tripping over this thing on the floor of my ‘studio’ for weeks, so to create a bit of much needed space I’ve expedited this. 

There should be a...

Results of last week's experiment....

A quick update on last week’s experiment. 

You may remember that I wanted to see if a shorter video (about an MP3 badge) combined with a formulaic thumbnail picture would generate more views than my previous video (about VHD) which took cons...

MP3 Button Badge & an Experiment

You may have seen me mention that last week’s video about VHD was very well received by subscribers but didn’t seem to attract many views from anyone else. One factor I suspect was the 30 mins length…but I’ve another theory that I’d like to...

RetroTech: VHD - The 3rd Disc

Every few weeks I like to pull out all the stops and put out a more complicated video. These kind of projects take me so long to research, shoot and edit that the next couple of videos afterwards need to be much simpler, to give me time to recover. 2017-02-16 16:25:20 +0000 UTC View Post

1980s to the max

I'm working on a longer video this week - it's probably going to take three days of solid editing. In the meantime here's a tiny part of it. It's video captured from the device that I'll be featuring...and this might possibly be the most eighties thi...

Mobius 2 Review

This one is due out on Friday - I've still got a couple of things to tidy up before release (including the video samples). 

Hope you enjoy it.

Outro Text - are you missing?

I've been comparing my my list of $5 patrons with the scrolling video outro list and I've discovered a few people who's names were missing despite having been patrons for a couple of months.  

I thought I'd included eveyone, so feel like a bit...

Patreon Only - Behind the Scenes.

My next proper video is due out later this week, in the meantime here’s a behind the scenes segment  exclusively for patrons.