u/Environmental_Leg471

Hi everyone, first post here. It's a very low-level query about a backpackable solar panel, which is working fine but behaves in a way I don't understand.

The panel is a 14W wallet fold job, with two solar modules about 18" long that fold face-to-face when not in use. A flap with a popper closes the assembly and also carries a small solar controller with two USB-A ports. My particular example is branded Ryobi, the tools manufacturer, but I've seen the same design under many different brands -- it's a Chinese generic.

The panel works very well charging small cellphones, flashlights and so on, but it's really slow at charging my Klarus K5 powerbank -- not surprising, as the Klarus is 10000mAh capacity and designed to charge at higher power than 5V, 1A. I figured I could speed things up using a Y-cable, of the type you used to get with high-capacity hard disks, which sums the output from two USB-A ports to provide double the power. The trick didn't work.

I then decided to take a look at the output from the controller using a USB power meter. Connected to a single USB cable, the panel outputs about 2w for a few seconds, then drops rapidly to zero, then repeats the cycle. Some kind of low-frequency charge controller process, a bit like the ones you find in solar-to-leisure battery setups. Well, that's OK, but unexpected -- I would have thought it would be pretty easy to maintain USB-A voltage.

The thing that really got me, though, is that if I fit the Y-cable, I get exactly the same voltage and current off the summed output of both ports as I did from just one. I tried two different Y-cables so it probably isn't the case that one of the legs has failed in each case. Can anyone explain?

Need hands-on advice for this one.

I have to shoot some selfie-type footage in full HD vertical format (1080x1920px) and at PAL-friendly 25fps. I've managed to capture some on my standard camcorder by using a sideways tripod mount and rotating the output in Handbrake. It would be a lot easier to rig up a smartphone on the tripod and use the front (selfie) camera for the shoot and the screen for live previewing, so that I don't keep going out of frame.

I know the Apple iPhone7 and up can do this, but I'd prefer to use an Android phone with a 6.5" or bigger screen.

Apparently the Open Camera app can force 25fps out of most Android phones but the camera hardware may deal with the unexpected request by defaulting to 30fps or (worse) dropping one frame in six. I've been told that the Samsung Galaxy S8 does good 25fps. Would like to know of other phones that can handle that combination of settings.

Subject line covers 90% of my query. Since the Tiny 2 Lite does 4k (provided your video card can handle the output) I assumed it would fully support vertical-format HD, that is, 1080*1920. Hey, YouTube shorts! But, to my surprise, there's no such setting in OBS Center.

Plan B was to turn the camera on its side. This is easy to do with a tripod, although of course it makes the PC interface very difficult to work with. But, even allowing for all my settings being 90deg out, I thought the camera behaved even more strangely than usual when turned over. Does anyone else have any tips?

Hello guys, I've been getting to grips with a Tiny 2 Lite, now installed on a Windows PC with nVidia card and an up-to-date Windows. I haven't missed the "Desk" or "Whiteboard" settings from the bigger versions, but I want to use the hand tracking feature and it doesn't seem to be working properly.

I can engage all the main AI tracking modes ("Headless", "Upper Body" etc). However, when I try to engage hand tracking I get at most a minute or two of rather jerky tracking, then the status light on the camera changes to green and various items in the Obsbot Center UI become unresponsive. (I'm not interested in "Group".)

I did all the standard fixes: full update to latest versions of all software, deleted Obsbot entry in the Device Manager; checked cables... A few other people seem to have suffered from this one but there's no definitve answer online. Hope someone can illuminate.

Hello guys, bottom-feeder-type question here. I just got a cheapo Panasonic Viera tx-32lxd80 from a house move for use as a computer monitor. It's a great screen but it defaults to 16:9 overscan, so I'm losing ~50px round the edges of my display. I have a replacement remote on order, natch. Meantime, is there any way to access the service menus or some other means to disable overscan *without* using the remote?

Hello guys, I googled the following and hit on a number of discussions on the same topic, but none of them helped me. Sorry for repeating: I'd appreciate advice from long-time users.

I'm new to computer video editing but experienced on graphics and on Linux. I'm presently assembling some YouTube videos in OpenShot. They're all 1920*1080 or 1080*1920 and use very simple cuts of footage shot on a Samsung HD camcorder in black&white mode with two pre-edited soundtrack files. OpenShot has performed very well up til now.

My last operation is to add text overlays generated outside OpenShot in Inkscape. I did the obvious things, that is: 1920*1080 Inkscape file, set alpha channel transparency, exported in SVG. OpenShot imported the file fine and I placed it on the highest track number. It appeared as an opaque black rectangle, blocking the tracks below it. I next tried a PNG format import: same problem. I checked the properties of the imported file in OpenShot by right-clicking and can confirm that its alpha is presently set to 1.000 in the app, which I gather is appropriate.

All comments gratefully recd.

Hello guys, I'm developing a B/W YouTube channel, working on test shots and gear choices right now. I know 16mm pretty well but I'm new to video.

I'm confused. Every guide I've read has said: shoot in colour, then get your B/W effect by reducing the saturation to zero during the edit. That's what I've done so far.

Last night I was experimenting and I set B/W mode in the camera, a pretty basic Samsung HD camcorder. I expected the results to be identical to the desaturated version. In fact the "camera B/W" has more grit and character than the "software B/W".

I'm pretty happy to shoot in B/W from here on but I don't understand why doing so should make a difference. Can anyone explain?

Hi, does anyone know of a keyboard case that pairs well with the Blackview Active 5 (8.6") tablet? The tablet is ruggedized so is thicker than eg a Lenovo Tab. Blackview don't make one but I figure somebody out there does a generic one that would work.

Hello guys, my post here. I'm not quite a n00b, having done lots of rough outdoor carpentry, but I'm a novice at finishing. Here's my problem. I need to provide full background.

My wife's house of 35 years was built strangely and has required me to do all kinds of odd maintenance tasks. One of these was the replacement of the front door sill, an unusually thick, wide slab of wood with fiddly cut-outs at the ends. I couldn't find any suitable timber at the local builders depot so went to a timber salvage yard, where I found a piece of white oak large enough to yield both the sill and a much smaller weatherstrip. Shaping it in my small workshop was a challenge. I was generally pleased with the results, but noticed a discoloured patch which I was mostly able to cut away while cutting the slope into the upper surface.

My wife, who did the varnishing, noted that the wood where I'd cut away the discoloration didn't take varnish very well. She used generic "yacht varnish", nothing special, and kept on applying new coats until it looked right.

After a winter, the sill no longer looks right. The hard-to-varnish area on the main sill has acquired a black-to-grey discoloration, and there's a similar, smaller patch on the weatherstrip. I assumed that this was fungal growth because the varnish hadn't bonded properly to the wood, so got some Epifanes varnish, read up on application techniques and began a refinish. Sanding went fine, yielding clean white wood. However, when I washed with acetone, the grey-black colour we'd seen over the winter re-emerged. I'm now thinking that the discoloration isn't from fungus growing on the surface of the wood but is somehow in the grain.

Is this a well-known phenom? Obviously we can paint, but I'd rather avoid the problem by prepping properly.