Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month, Net Work asks if hydrogen is a viable alternative to fossil fuels and batteries for cars;
revisits old PE fora and offers a route to avoid ‘Zoom shame’ if your bookshelves are letting you down!
T
hanks to Internet access, life
for many users during lockdown
has somehow stumbled along, and
we have been forced to accept the need
for video calls, webcasts, online tutoring
and multi-user video conferencing.
Whether it’s a local meeting such as
the chaotic one infamously held by
Handforth Parish Council (see: https://
youtu.be/BujIT9NSDoM – Channel
5 TV news), or simply checking in
with other office colleagues, working
from home (WFH) is here to stay in
one form or another. This new way
of doing things has paid dividends
for the online bookseller and book
recycler Bookbarn International (www.
bookbarninternational.com) who sell
The Cameliser browser plugin tracks Amazon prices. It shows how prices for this ten-yearold Logitech webcam leapt in lockdown last year.
Got an important Zoom meeting coming
up; want to impress colleagues, your
boss or customers with a studious,
intellectual or cultured background? Your
bookshelves can now be stocked by
Bookbarn International – reading optional!
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used books for TV and film sets as well
as for individual users. They report
an uptick in sales because prominent
people want to look more ‘learned’ and
‘well read’ when appearing on webcam.
No stock images of faux library shelving
for them, when a more authentic way
is to line their bookshelves with some
weighty and well-thumbed titles – the
book firm supplies anything from an
entire shelf to a whole bookcase of them,
they say. You can even rent them by the
yard, with a wide choice of spine-based
themes (Penguin/leather/textbook)!
In recent Net Work columns, I highlighted the problems of sourcing a PC
webcam, because stocks of them have
dried up thanks to WFH. Due to the
uptake of mobile devices with builtin cameras, there’s no incentive for
manufacturers to update webcams,
and although the author’s desired Logitech C920s (‘s’ for privacy shutter – see
later) is nearly a ten-year-old design,
it still lingers on sale. Branded webcams have sold out almost everywhere
thanks to WFH, and Net Work readers
might remember how one, sourced by
the writer via Amazon Spain last November, ‘mysteriously’ disappeared
without trace from their local UK depot
just before Christmas.
Eventually though, my four-month
quest for a Logitech webcam has finally
borne fruit after striking lucky with the
slightly faster Logitech C922. This near
identical 1080p USB camera is optimised
for gamers and streamers, offering 60
frames per second at 720 px. It’s a good
autofocus webcam for Windows 10 or
Mac, and also bundles a very small tripod
but, disappointingly, one or two legacy
features such as the clever ‘follow my
face’ function are not included in Logitech’s ‘Capture’ software. Nor could I
make it work with Windows Hello (in
Windows 10, simply hit the Windows
key and type ‘Hello’ to access Face signin). This may be a firmware issue.
A streaming setup
This camera goes further than an ordinary Plug and Play webcam does
though, as the package offers chromakey processing, titling and a few
effects, along with 3-month XSplit
Premium licence for broadcasting,
creating YouTube videos or streaming. A PC webcam like this therefore
offers a good introduction to creating
Practical Electronics | April | 2021
It’s great – if you can get one. Logitech’s
C920s is a Full HD 1080p USB webcam
with stereo microphones and (at top) a
privacy shutter.
your own videos, and more details of
XSplit’s popular broadcast software is
available at: www.xsplit.com
Consider too the pricier Logitech
Streamcam, while business users will
want to look at the more expensive and
secure Logitech Brio.
Many such products are listed on
Amazon, but their pricing practices
can trip the unwary: the indispensable Cameliser Amazon price tracker
(www.camelcamelcamel.com) alerts
buyers about price drops and, sure
enough, the webcam in question suddenly fell to £72 for a few hours before
rising to £140 again, and then it sold
out before returning on sale at £95. It
is definitely worth taking your time
and tracking prices closely before committing to more expensive purchases
where possible.
Finally, the privacy shutter, if that’s
an important issue for users. The largely unavailable C920s webcam bundles
a flip-down shutter, but the same-sized
C920 and C922 do not. The simple
answer was to buy a compatible one
for £4 on eBay which simply clips
onto the camera body. It works perfectly, but of course it doesn’t silence
the microphone!
international trade is being forced to
adapt to pre-single market conditions,
which involves goods clearing customs
and paying any applicable import duty.
British buyers can import goods up
to £135 in value free of duty (except
for excise goods like tobacco and alcohol), and VAT should already have
been included in the purchase price.
Exceeding that £135 threshold by one
penny opens a can of worms for buyers:
in many cases the courier or freight forwarder may pay import duty on your
behalf to speed up delivery, but you
will then have to stump up duty, VAT
and agent’s ‘brokerage’ fees plus VAT
before they deliver the goods. Sometimes these added costs outweigh the
import duty itself.
With containerloads of goods currently stacked up in British and
European ports awaiting customs
clearance, and vessels moored offshore because the docks are running
out of space, it was inevitable that international trade would buckle under
pressure after Brexit. There will undoubtedly be plenty of wrinkles to
smooth out when importing or exporting goods in this new era, and it’s
yet to be seen how well, for example,
Amazon or eBay’s Global Shipping
Program will cope with the added
need for customs clearance. Once the
dust settles and more experience is
gained, though, the process should
hopefully become much smoother.
For now, the risk of incurring hidden
extra costs must be borne in mind by
consumers buying from the EU. The
excellent UK Government website
is commendably clear and explains
import taxes (www.gov.uk/goods-sentfrom-abroad/tax-and-duty). Importers
and exporters may also want to see:
www.gov.uk/trade-tariff
Our legacy projects live on
Our postbag proves that many old magazine projects published decades ago
still capture the interest of electronics
constructors around the world. Recently, someone enquired about the
PIC Virus Zapper from the March 2002
issue! Readers love to describe how they
recently restored and updated an old
project ready to face the 21st Century.
We enjoy hearing your stories and recollections, so do keep them coming.
Quite a few constructional projects
have a special place in our readers’
electronics heritage, especially our
library of PIC-based microcontroller projects dating back to the early
2000s or before. Many regular enthusiasts will recall the pioneering PIC
microcontroller projects created by
our late Technical Editor, John Becker.
John was self-taught from scratch and
singlehandedly carved out the hobby
market for DIY PIC projects when ‘EPE’
(as we were called then) decided to
major on Microchip’s brand of PIC
microcontrollers. We were also the
first hobby electronics magazine to
give away PIC project source codes for
free, which at last empowered readers
to program their own microcontrollers and study or modify the source
code for themselves. Very many readers remain grateful for John’s tireless
work in designing ingenious circuitry
along with the source code and DOS
or Windows-based software that accompanied some of his major projects
and series.
We still receive requests for old PIC
project source codes from time to time,
and even though the new PE website
does not carry legacy material earlier
than 2010 (www.electronpublishing.
com/library/), the writer does maintain
a legacy website (www.epemag.net)
A Brexit bottleneck
When shopping online in this post-Brexit era, one major issue to bear in mind
is that Anglo-European trade now has
geographical borders to contend with.
Amazon quoted an all-inclusive price
(£89) for the above webcam, which in
the event was airfreighted from Italy
and delivery maybe took a day or two
longer due to customs clearance. In
this case there were no extra costs,
VAT or import duty to pay. However,
Practical Electronics | April | 2021
John Becker (right), late editor of Practical Electronics, paved the way for our PIC projects.
Seen here with Sir Clive Sinclair (left) at PE’s 25th birthday in 1992.
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where our oldest files dating back to
2000 (and earlier) are still available.
Starting in 1996, in the very early
days of the web, our file area was
hosted on a now-closed FTP server
in Southampton, UK, but eventually the downloadable files were given
a popular web-based ‘tree’ front end
to make access easier. This was migrated to www.epemag.net where it
is visible from the left-hand menu
‘Legacy PIC Source Code’. Since FTP
file transfer is no longer supported by
mainstream browsers anyway, this
web-based alternative offers a simple
way of downloading old source code
files for legacy projects. Each project
included a readme.txt file which has
proved handy 20 years later on. Note
that the website itself is on ‘R&R’ and
is only updated periodically.
Currently, our legacy website at
www.epemag.com is still running
and hosts older material and legacy
project details for the time being. It
is no longer maintained. Also, don’t
forget you can buy entire back issues
of EPE/PE for immediate download
or on CD, see our online store for details: www.electronpublishing.com/
product-category/pe-back-issues/
Is the future H-powered?
I’m grateful to regular Net Work reader
Ken Wood who writes: ‘Apropos your
column in the Feb 2021 issue on electric vehicles, it seems we hear very
little about hydrogen as a source of
energy for road vehicles, and yet (on
the face of it) hydrogen would solve
many of the issues which plague EVs.’
Ken is right to highlight the hydrogen
fuel alternative and he suggested some
possible options and benefits of hydrogen-fuelled (or dual-fuelled) cars
and trucks, and a lot of interesting
correspondence followed!
A highly respected British motoring journalist claimed many years
ago that the future lay in hydrogen
fuel-cell powered vehicles rather than
in rechargeable battery-power. Hydrogen-powered vehicles have zero
emissions and hydrogen is itself the
cleanest of fuels. The British government has its own Office for Zero
Emission Vehicles (OZEV) which
is funding projects such as hydrogen-fuelled London Ambulances, but
hydrogen-fuelled transport has yet to
gain a toehold. The public is getting
used to the idea of hybrids, there are
next to no hydrogen stations yet and
the cost of producing and distributing
the gas is currently high. There is also
a dearth of viable fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) themselves. Honda UK
was exploring hydrogen production
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China’s latest electric microcar from Wuling is outselling Teslas.
and has floated a hydrogen-powered
car (the Clarity) but is now closing its
UK site altogether; FCEVs potentially
offer major advantages over EVs, but
the infrastructure to fuel them simply
isn’t built yet.
That is not to say that FCEVs are dead
in the water. In Spain, there are plans
to build up to 120 hydrogen stations
by 2025, while in Britain there are
proposals to produce ‘green’ hydrogen offshore, using wind turbines, in
a world-first project called ‘Dolphyn’,
an acronym for Deepwater Offshore
Local Production of HYdrogeN. The
ERM Group behind it has been awarded £3m of government funding to
develop Dolphyn at Aberdeen, Scotland. In South Korea, by comparison,
industrial gas manufacturer Linde has
partnered with Hyosung to build an
entire hydrogen infrastructure network costing £200m.
In January, the consultancy firm
MJB&A, a member of the same ERM
group, published a report on how it
sees the EV market over the next 5-10
years: it states that, ‘globally, auto
makers have committed to spend
$257bn (up from $185bn in the last
report) on vehicle electrification over
the next 10 years, including at least
$2211bn on domestic US manufacturing, supporting the view that the auto
industry has embraced the vision of
electrified mobility and the EV market
is on the cusp of a period of significant growth.’
Early adopters of EVs aren’t always
having a good time of things, though.
A recent blog on Automotive News
Europe describes some rotten experiences of trying to run a new VW ID3
(see Net Work, January 2021) using a
nascent EV charging network around
London, with myriad problems with
payments, mobile apps and broken
charging points. (Incidentally, you
can peek inside a Volkswagen electric
car battery recycling plant at: https://
youtu.be/Qi8Y2lF7Luw).
All of this is enough to put many
motorists off the idea of buying an
electric vehicle altogether. Hydrogen
fuel remains very much a possibility in the future, but clearly not just
yet. I see it perhaps as the ultimate
fuel solution waiting in the wings: if
it was the light bulb market, perhaps
battery-powered EVs can be likened to
CFL bulbs, a stopgap measure needed
until decent LED bulbs arrive. Ken
has created a Facebook group called
‘Hydrogen power for vehicles’ to publicise and promote the idea of FCEVs.
Meantime, the EV market in China
grows unabated and another brand,
Wuling, is powering ahead with the
production of extremely low-cost
($4,000) electric microcars designed
for the younger driver commuting
around town. For size, think of a
Daimler ‘Smart’ car. The Wuling Hong
Guang Mini EV, to give it its full
name, is a joint venture with General Motors and China’s SAIC (also
the name behind MG Cars) and has
overtaken Tesla as the top selling EV
car in China, manufacturing about
30,000 a month. It’s aimed at the
Chinese home market – for now. It
doesn’t stop there: take a look at Chinese car maker Nio (in Mandarin it’s
Weilai, or ‘Blue Sky Coming’) which
produces a range of very smart-looking EVs, and is working on Formula
E racing and autonomous cars too.
You can see more at: www.nio.com
Nio is presently aimed at the Chinese
market, but they and other brands like
Practical Electronics | April | 2021
Renault plans to relaunch the much-loved Renault 5 as an electric vehicle.
MG and Xpeng (see last month) are part
of the huge groundswell in Chinese
EV development and manufacturing.
They may face tough competition from
European makers though: presently no
Net Work column is complete without
a photo of an EV and France’s Renault
has slated the relaunch of the muchloved Renault 4 and 5 as electric cars.
A Chat Zone chestnut
My thanks go to regular reader Edward
Chase who wrote: ‘Sadly EEWeb [an
online electronics forum] is proving
to be a very poor substitute for the
excellent old EPE Chat Zone. When
I post things there, I get almost no
responses and the volume of posts
that interest me is generally low. Is
it time to have a rethink? Perhaps
have a blitz to encourage PE readers
to post more to make it work or set up
a new forum that maybe is moderated
by some long-term PE readers rather
than you to save you the considerable
effort. There are several commercial
forum hosting services that work well,
and some will be free to use. I have
no one who I can talk to face to face,
even in non-Covid times, about detailed electronic matters, so forums
provide an essential service for me.’
Thank you for writing, Edward.
We certainly know that the old EPE
Chat Zone forum was the favourite
go-to place for many readers to share
their views, get help with projects
or generally share some banter. It
was not pre-moderated by me but
was closely monitored to keep it a
friendly, pleasant and helpful forum
where EPE readers could swap notes
and help each other out. Hopefully,
I got the balance right – most of the
time anyway!
Practical Electronics | April | 2021
Its Discusware Perl-based server
software was extremely robust, but
it was very clunky and lacked features that some readers wanted to see
(though others didn’t mind). After a
great run starting from 2005, several
factors contributed to the ultimate closure of this forum. A key one was the
competition for traffic, as users found
many other places to go when the web
exploded, including other forums or
Facebook. There is only so much jam
to go around, and the number of posts
dwindled very dramatically as users
moved on, or their interests changed;
it was barely a handful of posts a week
in the end. To make things worse, Discusware suddenly shut up shop and
vanished overnight.
This left us with a legacy, unsupported forum and the introduction
of GDPR data protection rules made
the maintenance of users’ privacy and
security a worry. It eventually went
into read-only mode, and the level of
interest remained extremely low. Finally, a web server upgrade knocked
out the Chat Zone forum software for
good, something we had always prewarned could happen at any time
without notice.
I managed to grab a portion of the
old Chat Zone messages and rebuild
them on my own web server. To give
you a taste of olden times, there is
more at: www.epemag.net/chatzone.
html but some broken links or other
oddities are evident here and there. I
hope it brings back some memories.
EEWeb is a decent quality electronics engineering forum (see: www.
eeweb.com/forums/) and we were
given a small corner or ‘category’ to
operate our own area, but it was a
poor fit and it never really took off.
70 years of technological developments
have brought us to today. Some of
these advances were monumental
and game changing in their own
right. Some significant spin offs have
revolutionised many unrelated areas.
The author has had a front-row seat
through most of this revolution and
puts it in perspective in plain English.
Available on Kindle or in
paperback at Amazon
The interest again reflected the minimal traffic levels as seen in the old
Chat Zone. Then a change of staff at
EEWeb more or less severed our connection with them, which is why the
forum has largely been de-emphasised. When there’s very little traffic
to begin with, it’s hard for us to justify building a new one in the hope
of building some sustainable traffic,
especially when there is far more
competition today for people’s time
from the web, streaming video and
social media. You are right to say that
running a forum is very time-consuming; it’s also extremely onerous due
to the pressure from data protection
law and the GDPR. Any data breach,
even though not our fault, causing a
loss of personal data risks substantial and possibly ruinous fines from
a largely unsympathetic Information
Commissioner. One small UK agency
was fined £66,000 for a fairly minor
technical breach. This matter is under
review, though and we welcome more
feedback and ideas from readers.
See you next month for more Net Work!
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
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