Using an electric bug zapper seems easy enough, put it where the bugs are! Maybe you’re out late one summer night and the bugs are relentless! The worst are those blood sucking mosquitoes that nobody wants to be bitten by. The thing that makes them worse than even a few decades ago is that they now carry viruses sometimes, and nobody wants to get sick while enjoying a nice summer evening gathering. There are just a few things you need to know before putting that bug zapper out that will help it work more to your advantage.

First of all, when you use a bug zapper, realize that it may not be in your best interest to locate the unit near the people. It is now being said that as far as seven feet away, particles of a bug zapped in the electric bug zapper can shower down. If you are eating or have food out, you don’t want it to be close enough for that disgusting predicament! You might have a lot of great food out at your gathering, but you don’t need any special bug-zapping garnishes to add to the mix!

Many people think that placing the electric bug zapper near the crowd will keep the bugs away since the bugs will then die and if they come into the area, this will eliminate them. But in fact, the bugs truly are drawn into the light. Think about a moth in the light. That is the effect that using the device near your party will have. This will bring the bugs right to the prime feast, the blood of your guests. Obviously, this is not your goal at all, but since you don’t want to feed your guests to the bugs, you will want to position your bug zapping device farther away from the center of the party zone.

To set up your electric bug zapper, use a shepherd’s hook to hang the bug zapper in a location that is at least twelve feet away from the party area. This will draw the bugs away from the party scene, keeping your guests bug bite free, your food bug-zapping garnish free, and everyone happy and healthy. You will only need an outdoor extension cord that is long enough to accommodate your purposes. With these tips, you and your party guests will enjoy a great evening outside without the mosquitoes and other bugs being too friendly.

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An Android TV box is a portable device that can be placed near your television. The device comes with HDMI cable, power adapter, USB adapter, and USB cable. The functions of both internet and television can be enjoyed by using the same device. A new edition of the android operating system known as ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) is used in an Android TV box.

Android TV box is useful to share your songs, videos and pictures through television to other people. You can play online games on the television and watch television programs at the same time. The device is portable and lightweight, and you can carry it to any place with ease. You can browse internet and television channels whenever you want, regardless of time and place. A person who is using a smartphone can easily understand the user interface of the device’s software, because both use the same operating system.

The only difference between television and mobile android applications is that with a television box, you can enjoy both internet and television programs on a big screen. You can chat and connect with your friends on social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, MySpace, etc., with the help of this device. The device has enough storage space with good amount of processing power and RAM. SD cards can be used for additional storage requirements.

The device supports various languages such as English, Czech, Spanish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Danish, etc. One of the greatest advantages of this device is that there is no subscription fee to enjoy internet browsing and television programs.

The users will receive software updates and service upgrades automatically for the device. Hence manual upgrades are not necessary. The users can easily use the parental control options in the device enabling secure viewing of both television and internet. You can use USB and Bluetooth to transfer pictures, movies and videos from the computer to android TV box. All types of audio and video formats are supported by this device. You can also check emails and play online games on your television screen by connecting android TV box with the television.

Setting up of this device is very easy. You just have to plug in the device to the power source. Then, all you have to do is connect the device to HDMI port of the TV. You are now all set to enjoy the advantages of this great device.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the noun bug can be defined as an unexpected defect, fault, flaw, or imperfection. Going by that definition, common issues such as cars not accelerating properly beyond some speed, air conditioners making weird sound when the thermostat is set at certain temperature, word processing software crashing once in a while could all be attributed to bugs. However, we generally reserve the word bug and buggy for defects associated with software applications. It is not a common practice to call a defective automobile engine or a defective air conditioner as buggy.

Defects that do not consistently cause undesirable behavior are hard to detect and fix. Most of the software bugs belong to this category and identifying and fixing them could involve hours of tedious troubleshooting. They could be caused by inherent flaws in the program or due to external causes like the hardware configuration of the computer. If your car is acting up only on certain days, no car mechanic would ever think about looking at the weather data to correlate the engine behavior to the relative humidity in the air.

Errors caused by bugs manifest only under certain conditions. Novice users without the help of proper diagnostic tools will not be able to identify the cause of these problems. They would need the help of a software engineer, who would debug the program to identify the problem at hand. The term debug is slightly misleading. The debugging process by itself does not de-bug or kill the bug. It just helps the engineer to locate the bug. Similar to how x-ray, MRI or colonoscopy helps doctors identify issues and decide on a treatment, debugging helps an engineer identify the root cause of a defect in software. In the case of the bug in the word processing software, debugging might reveal that it was crashing because of a memory allocation bug that affects only large files. The designer of the software did not foresee anyone dealing with documents beyond certain size and created the software with that constraint. How a bag that is designed to hold only five pounds would break if you try to squeeze ten pounds inside, the word processing software would crash when it is told to handle documents that are larger than what it was designed to handle. However, unlike a bag, software can be designed to handle these edge conditions gracefully. For example, the software should display error message when an edge condition is reached and provide the users multiple options to recover from the condition. Even though the example might sound trivial, such software bugs are not uncommon and their ramifications could be large. For example, the root cause of the Y2K fiasco was programmers working around the space constraint by using two digits for date instead of four.

There’s generally a callous attitude toward software quality and software bugs are not given the importance they deserve. If you search the internet, you will see that every popular software will have bugs reported against them. With the advent of broadband internet access, most of the vendors rectify the bugs by automatically delivering the fixes to your computer. Software bugs are generally considered inconveniences; not life threatening. If a bug in the image processing software corrupted your honeymoon pictures or a bug in the email software caused delayed delivery of your son’s birthday invitation, they are not considered grave. Even transactional inconsistencies resulting from glitches in banking and financing software are not considered very critical because of the relatively straightforward recovery processes and FDIC assurance.

This is very contrary to other areas of our life where we take quality very seriously. If the quality of a movie does not meet our expectations, we reject it. We probably will never watch another movie by the same director again. If the technicians did unprofessional job by making the transitions between the scenes sloppy, or the sound recording horrible, the director or producer will not get a second chance to fix their “bugs” and release another version of the same movie again, like software companies do. If an architect constructs a building, he will not unveil it to the public unless and until it meets the design he had envisioned. In other words, lot of planning, thought and creativity goes into the making of these products. Ironically, creators of software do not seem to exhibit this level of passion and precision. They are created by individuals who only see the brick and the mortar not the cathedral that is being built.

With the proliferation of software in consumer electronics and other critical parts of our life, the importance of creating bugs free software cannot be stressed enough. With the healthcare reforms, software is becoming an integral part of patient care. Critical workflows like prescription, bed transfers, and lab orders are managed through software. Even minor defects in these software components could produce catastrophic results, including death.

Most of the software defects stem from inadequate testing and improper requirements engineering. While most of the software bugs are identified and fixed though multiple levels of iterative testing by the vendor before the software reach the market, it is nearly impossible to avoid bugs altogether because of the sheer volume of testing involved. Many times, the different software components of a product suite are created by groups that work in siloes without collaborating. If a product owner does not understand the requirements of market and the end users, these gaps in the requirements gathering is going to manifest as bugs in the software. Software programs are made of millions and billions of lines of code that contains several paths of execution. Each path follows different rules and not all these rules get evaluated all the time. For real life use cases, these rules could get very complex and testing all the different combinations becomes cumbersome without good test plans. For example, if a plan of care software determines the course of action based on data like cholesterol level, blood sugar, blood pressure, age, sex, race and prescription medication the person is currently taking, during quality control testing, test data should be created to meet all these different combinations. Acceptable range for the vitals could change and new medications come into the market all the time. Similarly, a claim processing software should be aware of the latest federal and state rules governing insurance policies. If the software is not keeping up with these changes and not getting tested continuously, it could cause unpredictable results and cause unrepairable damage to the users.

Most of the time, a centralized software module will have to integrate with diverse software units to get the necessary data to determine the outcome. Defects in any one of the components could affect the outcome. Traditionally, when you go to a doctor, he or she will check for any allergy reactions before writing a prescription. Once you take the prescription to the pharmacy, the pharmacist will also check for any drug interactions before dispatching the medication. If you are one of the well informed patients, you would probably call your doctor friends to get his or her advice also, before taking the medication. However, in today’s information technology driven world, most doctors don’t write paper prescription anymore; they rely on software. When the doctor submits a prescription, drug interaction checker software will check for any drug-drug and drug-food interactions and send the prescription to the pharmacy. The pharmacy will run similar drug interaction check on their side also before dispatching the drug to the patient. This looks like a very clean and sophisticated workflow; except that if the doctor’s office and the pharmacy used the same drug interaction checker software and the software failed to warn about a potential allergy reaction because of a bug. If the drug interaction checker software is available as a cloud based service, when you check for any interaction from your home computer for final confirmation, you might be using the same defect prone drug interaction checker software that your doctor’s office and pharmacy relied upon and you will be getting similar, invalid result. This is as good as your doctor, pharmacist and your friend all phoned the same expert to get the same (albeit wrong) opinion on the allergy reaction.

Until recently, computers were probably the only consumer devises that relied on software applications. If you did not use computers, you were pretty much isolated from software and software bugs. Unfortunately, that is not the case anymore. Software form integral part of most commonly used electronic items. Your automobiles, TV, cable box, cell phone, security system and even treadmill have software components. Unfortunately, the enriched user experiences provided by these software components come at a price. For example, it is not uncommon, when you are watching your favorite TV program, you are interrupted by annoying messages saying that the cable box will be rebooted because of a firmware update. When you sit down with your family for a pizza and movie night, the blue ray player might not play the disc because of missing software patches. Most of the time, these updates are required to fix software bugs.

Software bugs could also make the electronic devises vulnerable to hacking. The smart phones of today are much more powerful and store way more information than the computers few years ago. Today, you are basically carrying a computer in your pocket or purse. While the mobile apps have brought your medical, financial and other critical data to your fingertips, they add an important concern. Most of these apps are written by not so experienced programmers. Anyone could create and market applications though the app stores. There is no governance or certification process around this. If these apps expose the internals of your phone because of undocumented bugs, you are basically broadcasting your personal information to the rest of the world without your knowledge.

This is not to say that we should avoid software or be overly paranoid about software bugs and vulnerabilities. Remain an educated consumer and be aware of the bugs. Think twice before downloading and installing apps in your mobile devises. First ask the most important question – do you really need it? Do you really need an app that will let you decorate your dog pictures with bow ties on your phone? Check the credibility of the publisher of the app. Check the bug reports. Ask your cable provider to supply the list of bug fixes and enhancements with every firmware update. Get the name of the software your doctor’s office using and go online and check what kind of bugs they have. It is an open, uncontrolled and scary market. Government will intervene only when the catastrophe gets out of control. But as an educated consumer, make use of your rights to information and do not let the software bugs bite you.

Buying a refurbished Zune is not a bad idea for several reasons. Obviously, buying a refurbished Zune is certainly cheaper, (by about half), but will it break after you buy it or not work at all out of the box? The answer to those questions is yes, but the same is true for a new Zune as well. A new Zune comes with a warranty, but many sellers of refurbished Zunes offer a warranty as well. Any electronic device can fail at any time. Electronic gadgets have many small components these days, and although they are quite reliable, the small chance that any one could fail adds up. Even if there is only a tiny chance a particular component fails that chance is multiplied by the number of components in the device. In the case of a Zune or most any electronic device nowadays, the number of individual components will number in the thousands.

Any electronic component – say, a capacitor, is manufactured to operate under certain conditions and many components per batch of thousands, or millions are tested, if more than a certain percentage of those tested fail, then the whole manufactured batch of components is thrown out. That way, when someone buys an electronic device, he or she can be relatively certain that the components are reliable and device will last a good length of time, and as a rule most gadgets today are very reliable.

Electronic manufacturers know, however, that if a something is going to fail, it will do so soon, (within a day to several weeks, or even longer, after the device starts being used). There’s even a nickname in the industry for this: “infant mortality”, sounds grim doesn’t it? Well, it’s just a term used when electronic components fail early on.

So there’s the actual advantage when buying a refurbished Zune. It has been around the block so to speak, and any weak components have already been replaced, those left, being more “mature” are not as likely to fail. Also, if any damage has been done to the plastics of the Zune, or wear is visible, those plastics are replaced, therefore a refurbished Zune should look exactly like a new one out of the box.

Now I know that many people just can’t resist buying a brand new Zune in a shiny new box with that nice “new gadget smell” and all the original accessories in pristine condition. But if your are short on cash, and still want a Zune, don’t feel too bad about purchasing a refurbished Zune. Chances are, it will last as long as a new one, and your friends won’t be able to tell the difference unless you tell them. You can get refurbished Zunes online; at eBay, Woot, Slickdeals, and many other online sites – just do a Google search for “refurbished Zune”. It is important to confirm that the seller offers some sort of refund or warranty just in case the Zune doesn’t work, but if you have that assurance, buying a refurbished Zune may be a great choice!

How can one imagine a truly happy home without proper safety? Safety is the most important factor to be considered while constructing a home. When it comes to safety, it is necessary to mention the need of good electrical wiring, as this is one aspect of home which often creates life threatening incidents.

Well insulated good quality electric cables should be used while installing power and electrical systems. These cables are shock proof and can maintain uninterrupted and reliable delivery of electricity. There is, however, an absolute need for everyone to understand the necessity and importance of using good quality electrical cables.

Necessity of quality electric cables

You should not compromise with the quality of electric cables for house wiring. When selecting electrical cables and wires, you need to be careful and should keep in mind the extent of damage that is likely to happen due to low quality cables. A high tensile strength and perfect resistance to high temperatures are the features of quality cables.

Generally copper wires are used for house wiring purposes. Make sure to use cables that contain high quality copper wire with fire resistant plastic.

If copper wires contain impure or low quality copper, heat may be generated leading to short circuits. Such wires may simply act like heaters. The plastic insulation around it may catch fire causing huge damage to the entire house. Also, appropriate cabling should be used for various equipments. Otherwise, your electronic appliances such as television, refrigerator, etc., are at the risk of premature failure.

Importance of earthing

Inadequate earthing causes performance problems. Protection against over voltage and voltage stabilization are the main purposes of earthing. A low-resistance conductor should be used to connect the ground wires to the earth. An ambulance is allowed to pass through even in heavy traffic. Its main purpose is to save life of the victim. In the same way, the earthing ensures safety and prevents any electric shocks. A floating or an unconnected ground causes malfunction of electronic equipment. Therefore, you should not overlook the importance of proper earthing.

Ensure to purchase best electrical cables from a reliable and certified brand. You can assure 100% safety and satisfaction by using the best quality electric cables. It is essential to cross check the product quality, and its brand while purchasing power cables. To protect people and buildings from fire hazards and electrical shock, it is recommended to follow wiring safety code.

Electromagnetic Radiation is a self-propagating wave of energy, produced by many contemporary electronic devices and this is a form of energy to possess beneficial and harmful health effects. Some people claim that exposure to so much electromagnetic radiation has cause them to heal injuries and wounds and to become sick. But we can prevent ourselves from electromagnetic radiation by taking some precautions.

Some precautions are there that can reduce electromagnetic radiation’s effects on Health:

1. Avoid living near a radio/TV transmitters or mobile phone masts.
2. Avoid using wireless security systems or wireless baby monitors, where possible hard wire them in.
3. Avoid using especially DECT phones, cordless phones as these transmit radiation when not in use.
4. Do not use wireless routers, use CAT5 cable.
5. Do not use the Microwave, it does not good for your food and will flood adjacent rooms with radiation.
6. Use a cordless phone or mobile phone for emergency calls; use a corded phone for all regular conversations. Do not use a mobile phone in pregnancy and do not allow a child under 16 to use a mobile phone at all.
7. Use your mobile phone on hands free but without a Bluetooth headset. Do not use a mobile phone in your car without an external antenna because the radio waves will be reflected back from the metal chassis at you.
8. Avoid keeping your mobile phone in the same pocket every time; keep it away from the body on a desk or in a bag. OR rotate it around the body.
9. Reduce the number of electronic devices around your bed like alarm clocks, lights, telephones, electric blankets and extension cords. Battery operated devices like an alarm clock are good replacements.
10. Do not living under or near high voltage power lines. The same goes for electric transformers and sub-stations.
11. Don’t sleep near your distribution box or fuse box.
12. Avoid all unnecessary exposure to CT scans and x-rays.
13. Electronic devices should be grounded.
14. Drive those cars that have low electro magnetic fields.
15. Do not uses a dimmer switch in the house as it emit high magnetic fields and cause dirty electricity.

I hope you would definitely take these precautions to live healthy and to provide safety to your family or friends.

A few months after the release of HDMI 1.2 in May 2005, HDMI 1.2a was released in December 2005. The principal new features that were strengthened were the compliance with the full set of Consumer Electronic Control (CEC) features, as well as the agreement between the manufacturers of what command sets and CEC compliance tests should be carried out in the ATC (Authorized Test Centers) around the world.

Increasingly through the early years of the 21st Century, consumer electronics manufacturers worked continually to improve increasingly more intelligent consumer products. The rapid advances in digital electronics offered, for the first time, the possibility for devices to collect information and configure themselves; this also extended to identifying and correcting errors. This meant that users of these new devices were freed from having to become experts simply to install the digital equipment that they had bought. HDMI is a critical component in this network, as it is perfectly able to deliver the new intelligence from device to device, while at the same time simplifying the cable infrastructure.

With HDMI 1.2a launched and available, the possibilities that CEC offered could finally become reality. Now system level automation was available, never had such ease of use been available to users. Once all of the devices in the home are attached by HDMI 1.2a, a full range of functions are available from a single remote hand held device. You could be watching a program on your HDTV, whilst at the same time, the remote could play or reset content on another CEC HDTV. You can control the set top box, manage the audio video receiver, while turning other CEC enabled devices on and off.

As a standard, HDMI requires that all the manufacturers producing products that follow the HDMI standard, declare which features they are supporting. CEC specifications are quite clear on the minimum functionality that must be supported in order to declare CEC compliance. The objective of these declarations was to help the user. The user needs to understand what features are supported device by device and which features are not.

The HDMI ATCSs, therefore, continued to have an important role throughout 2005 and 2006, with numerous new features being introduced. In particular, close attention was paid to the electrical and protocol compliance, to ensure that the HDMI CEC specifications were being satisfied. A number of additional test programs were developed by the ATCs; these required and received the approval of the manufacturer consortium.

I own a golf cart dealership located in North Florida. We sell and service golf carts, both electric and gas powered. At our dealership there are far more electric powered golf carts that we repair than there are gas. I would say we see about a hundred electric carts to every gas powered in our service department. This isn’t because gas cars are so much better and require less servicing.

The reason for the mass difference is due to our location. We are in North Florida. Flat without any hills North Florida. We are also in a State that has been very “go green” friendly. Hence, not really a high demand for gas powered golf carts for the not so hilly greens. And right along with every electric golf cart is the golf cart’s battery charger. We have walk-ins every week bringing us these chargers for us to diagnose.

Sometimes the charger is just fine indicating that there is a problem on the golf cart which we then schedule for pickup. However, the majority of the time the initial plug in test indicates some sort of failure with the battery charger. There is a pretty good chance that the power surge demon attacked the battery charger. We live in an area of North Florida that has more than our fair share of electrical power surges. And if that’s not bad enough we also experience a great number of afternoon thunderstorms accompanied by enough lightening that would have made Ben Franklin want to live here!

These power surges and electrical spikes search and destroy just about any electrical circuit in their path. We once lost our microwave, coffee maker (May Day, May Day,… ) portable phones, computer and printer all in the same afternoon! Yes I know, we should have moved! These surge demons have a mission in mind to seek and destroy, including golf cart battery chargers. After repairing a customer’s battery charger we ask them if they have a surge protector in the circuit that they use for their golf cart’s charger. Folks, we already know the answer. Most of them have the darnedest look on their faces when we encourage them to place a surge protector before their charger in order to protect it from damaging surges and spikes. They can purchase one from us or wherever they choose. But the concept must be put into place before another repair cost is incurred due to these electrical demons.

We had a customer that didn’t agree with our advice and paid for his charger repair and went on his way. a couple of months later he was back wanting his battery charger warrantied. Folks, the electronic regulator board was burnt just as the first time we repaired his charger. One of the larger demons must have attacked it and hit so hard that it literally blew a couple of components off of the circuit board.

After show and tell with the fellow and explaining that a power surge/spike did the damage again, he paid us and went and bought a surge protector and we haven’t seen the man’s charger since. I know he bought one for he called us from one of the big box stores asking about one of the protectors he was looking at if it would work OK for his charger. Live and learn. My mother used to say that some people just don’t learn the easy way. They have to be hit twice before they learn to duck. In today’s society the school of hard knocks isn’t suffering from a lack of students, that’s for sure.

I hope I have communicated these concepts in a positive way that helps us understand the need for a surge protector to be installed in the power circuit to the golf cart’s battery charger. And in doing so you will prevent having to pay for costly repairs caused by the “electrical demons” of power surges and electrical spikes. With the end result of you saving money and taking better care of your golf cart. It is for these things why I write. I write for you and your understanding of your golf cart. Thank you for taking the time to read what I have to say. You honor me by doing so. OK, until next time we meet, get out there and enjoy your golf cart. After all, isn’t that what you bought it for? MKR

Every manufacturer will tell you that an automatic gate opener installation should be completed by a qualified installer. The truth is that installing an automatic gate opener is not rocket science; you can do it yourself.

An automatic gate opener is a device capable of opening and closing the door. The on-board circuit instructs your gate operator to open or close (reverse operation) as needed when it receives a signal from a transceiver. Only proper installation assures there will be no chance of hazards and you will be able to enjoy some acclimatization on your property.

What are the available devices?

Automatic gate openers are controlled by the access controls system, and the actual operator (actuator) will depend of the type of gate. Gates can slide (open from side to side), swing (instead of sliding; they rotates or pivot ) or can raise (slide up/down or better, they can roll and unroll themselves to open/close) There are also different type of access controls; including wireless remote, clickers, keypads, exit sensors and intercoms. Different access controls act on separate principles but results in the same operation… opening or closing a gate.

Bottom line; nowadays we are talking about an electronic device that sends a signal to a motor to execute.

How to install the opener

Everything on installing an automatic gate opener depends of the kind of gate we are talking about; of course things will be way easier if you have the door already installed. For swing gates, we commonly find 2 types of operators. One is an electro-pneumatic piston that push/pull the door slowly but firmly; and the more eye pleasant – hidden underground operator that installs in the pivot post. No matter what kind of operator/gate combination you’ll have you always have to do the following steps:

Drill holes for putting up the gate opener control box.

Mount the control board cautiously so that the full functionality of the gate is not affected.

Connect the wires from the power source to the control box.

Connect the control arm / swinger to the control box.