Category Archives: Gadgets

Gadgets, Product Reviews

Drinking Water Test Kit

Safe drinking water is one of the most important survival resources. You could survive for weeks without food but you can’t last longer than a few days without water. Being able to determine if your water is safe to drink after a natural or man-made disaster (such as Government incompetence and malfeasance as in Flint Michigan) wasn’t easy until now. TESPERT sells a 19-parameter test strip kit which allows you to test for water contamination and quality such as bacteria, ammonia, lead, and chlorine.

This TESPERT kit comes with a variety of sealed packets. Each packet is a type of testing kit containing 2-25 test strips. The whole kit comes with 100+ test strips, a plastic pipette (eye-dropper), and a small test tube.

The majority of the kit seems to be focused toward those testing swimming pools and aquarium water. But a number of tests are also applicable toward my interest, testing for drinking water contamination. While I can not accurately test all of the kits (nor do I have the expertise to test lead or water contamination), I chose to test 2 of the packets. If they could detect contamination of water, it’s likely the other tests are of the same quality.

AMMONIA TEST
I added 10ml from a urine sample (mine) to a beaker containing 100ml of water. I tested this solution using the Ammonia Nitrogen test strip but after 30 seconds, I did not see evidence of a color change. Adding additional ml of urine, I did see a small color shirt in the strip. While the test strips work, and may be helpful for aquarium fish, it is not sensitive enough to detect drinking water contamination for my comfort.

BACTERIA TEST
I added a drop of Yakult, a pro-biotic drink with live bacteria to a 50ml of water and added a drop of this sample to a Bacteria test card. The test requires 48hrs for results to appear on the card, so I stored the sample packet at room temperature. 48hrs later the blue test card showed a white contamination area confirming the presence of bacteria.

CONCLUSIONS
I am no expert, nor do I claim that this kit can guarantee safe drinking water, but what I tested confirmed the potential for these kits to be used to help inform the user. Unfortunately the sensitivity and speed of the tests make them impractical as a replacement for boiling or chemically sanitizing your water after a natural disaster.

TEST PACKETS

Water hardness

Free Chlorine

Iron

Copper

Lead

Nitrate

Nitrite

Total Chlorine

Cyanuric Acid

Alkalinity

Zinc

Nickel

Chloride (Salt)

Sulfate

Amonia Nitrogen

Low Range Chlorine

Low Range Nitrite

Bacteria

Available on Amazon through this affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3Gn9y3t

Gadgets

New Year Gadget Cleanse

It’s the New Year and a tradition in Japan is for the Shinto priests to cleanse the temples of the previous year’s paper slips and wooden plaques (ema) left by the shrine visitors. You should do the same with your phone TXT messages and start with a clean slate. Especially those negative messages and rants. Happy New Year!

Gadgets, Product Reviews

Boruit V1 Micro EDC

I recently reviewed the V3 light from Boruit which claimed to output 900 lumens but fell far short of those numbers in my estimation. So I was surprised when Boruit sent me their V1 to test. Unlike the V3, this box claims a more modest 400 lumens and I discovered it came far closer to keeping that promise.

The V1 has a USB thumb-drive form factor and this model has a glow-in-the dark translucent body. It comes in a similar box to the V3, with a USB-C charging cable, keychain ring, and instruction manual (though it was really more of a spec sheet). The flashlight is activated by 2 quick-presses and turned off with a long press. You can cycle between ECO-LOW-MED-HIGH brightness modes with a quick press and the unit also has a TURBO mode which is activated by a continuous press.

Like the V3, the unit also has side LEDs which can function as a signal light and table top lamp when head-standing it from it’s squared off metallic crown. Modes include: WHITE-BLINKING WHITE-UV-RED-BLINKING RED-RED/BLUE BLINK-WARM WHITE

After charging it over night, I conducted an endurance test at high brightness mode and it stayed on for about 82 minutes, slowly dimming as the battery ran down. Recharging it again I ran a lumen test. I was unable to confirm its 400 lumen TURBO mode due to my testing box must be completely sealed to get a more accurate reading.

Testing in HIGH mode, the unit briefly put out a maximum brightness of about 300 lumens after a 1-minute warm up. This was higher than the 220 lumen specs on the box. But the unit does not stay that brightness but instead drops steadily to about 80 lumens which is somewhere between HIGH and MEDIUM output as stated in the product specs.

Unfortunately inflated lumen numbers is par for the course in how budget EDC lights are marketed today. These brightness numbers are disappointing to anybody who bought this flashlight expecting 400 lumens but actually better than expected from a micro-EDC light no matter its price point.

The V1 easily passed my 6ft drop test and high-pressure water test. Its real world performance was good to above average, fully illuminating an interior hallway with a wide flood pattern. Outdoors this flood limited its throw to about 50ft-60ft. But for a thumb-sized flashlight that could do this for over an hour, this is pretty impressive. Even more so for a thumb-sized EDC that costs less than $17 as of this writing.

The Boruit V1 EDC is available on Amazon through this affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3BGIhX7

Gadgets, Product Reviews

Bafovy: The cheapest water flosser on Amazon

I test out the cheapest water flosser on Amazon for $9.99, from Bafovy, a brand I’ve never heard of. I previously tested the Waterpik Waterflosser which costs more than 3x as much. But in my testing, the Bafovy cleaned just as well, has a built-in rechargeable lithium battery, and collapses to less than half the size of the Waterpik.

The Bafovy has a compact travel design, similar to the Panasonic portable flosser. The clear plastic reservoir sits below the pump body and telescopes into the reservoir when packing for travel. The unit charges with a proprietary USB-A based charging cable.

The strength of the stream feels comparable to the Waterpik but the unit is operated via button rather than a slider/switch. The unit has 3 pump pump modes: soft, pulse, and DIY (strong). The unit remembers the last mode selected. In practice, the button operation is a little unpredictable sometimes switching the mode rather than turning the unit off when pressed. This was the product’s only negative quality during testing.

The only potential issue that could not be tested is battery longevity and motor durability, which remains to be seen. But for $10 I’m more than willing to give this product a try. It comes in 3 colors (well really 3 color accents on the button and rim). As I mentioned, it’s available on Amazon though my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3B72dSG

Gadgets, Product Reviews

Waterpik Waterflosser

My wife bought a Waterpick Waterflosser on Amazon after getting a cavity in her rear molar. As the name implies, this handheld water pump sprays a high-pressure stream of water to flush out food particles stuck between your teeth and below your gum line. It functions like flossing with water.

We chose the Waterflosser to save space in our tiny bathroom. I once owned a full-sized Waterpik which has a larger water reservoir and plugs in. But it does take up room on a sink top which can be in a short supply when you add an electric toothbrush charger, electric razor, and all the other bathroom supplies.

The battery powered Waterflosser is less than a third of the size of the plug-in Waterpik. The package comes with three AA disposable batteires but it can work with rechargeable NiMH. Waterpik also makes more expensive version with an internal rechargeable lithium battery.

The Waterflosser’s only shortcoming is its smaller water reservoir. Yes, you can refill it. But I quickly learned to be more efficient when cleaning my teeth. I can clean both my upper and lower teeth before fully emptying the Waterflosser.

Despite its smaller size and being battery powered, its water jets feel just as strong as a plug-in Waterpik. While it won’t compete with a Super Soaker in my non-scientific testing, my unit was able to shoot a stream out to 23ft away. There aren’t many other bathroom hygiene gadgets that make that claim.

Support Moondog Industries buy purchasing this device on Amazon through this Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3hOChoh

Gadgets, Product Reviews

The cheapest 1080p webcam on Amazon

I bought the cheapest 1080p USB webcam I on Amazon. In fact it doesn’t haven have a model or brand name in the description. Looking through the product description and details, I was able to find a connection to a webcam brand named JIGA but even their Amazon product page doesn’t include this particular model. On the box it says is “Stream Webcam 1080p”. On the side, it reads model: WB-203PRO manufactured by Shenzhen Xinchengxin Technology Co Ltd which after a quick Google search seems to be associated with the JIGA brand name.

But I needed a cheap webcam for my upccycled 2011 Mac Mini which uses an old Apple LCD monitor that doesn’t have a built-in camera. Not that built-in camera from 2011 would look that good (I think they were 720p or 720i back then?) My son needed a webcam to group-chat with this friends for a class project, so went on Amazon and found a $12 no-name webcam that was on sale for $9.99; it seemed to have decent legit-looking reviews.

Opening the box, I was surprised at how large this camera first appeared. It is 3″ x 3″ and roughly the size of a hockey puck but twice as thick. The large size accommodates the design of a built in LED ring-light. It was very light but the plastic body felt very cheap or at least what you’d expect for $10.

Around the camera lens are two “eye-lids” which can be pinched closed as a privacy blocker. The webcam doesn’t have a powered-on indicator LED. You can leave the ring-light on low-power as a reminder that it is plugged in and active.

The ring-light is controlled through the touch-sensitive front plate around the lens. A short press changes the brightness. A long press changes the LED color temperature from warm-cool-balanced-off. The color settings didn’t have that much effect on my apparent skin tone and the ring-light was too small and dim to really work to fill in shadows and provide primary illumination.

But if properly and well lit I found the image quality to be surprisingly good and detailed. Using only it’s built-in LED or in low light, the frame rate is noticeably lower with motion blur. In brightly lit settings, the frame rate appears to be less than 30fps and depending on your computer setup the footage you record may be a few frames out-of-sync with your audio.

The camera’s built-in microphone is its worst feature. The sound has low volume and thin. My 2015 vintage Macbook’s built-in mic sounded worlds better than the webcam. I would recommend using a separate headset, analogue or USB microphone when using this webcam for better results. But as I mentioned you may have audio sync issues but for a $10 webcam, its to be expected.

Overall this webcam is surprisingly good for $10 and certainly worth the price. If JIGA or whoever makes this camera were to provide a firmware update to fix the 6-frame lag issue, this would be an excellent budget webcam save for the crappy built-in mic.

This product is available through my Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3ALaADm

Gadgets, Product Reviews

Gardencube Hydroponic Grower

San Francisco is famous for its regular layer of moist fog and blessed with a mild year-round climate. Too cool and mild. I’ve tried without success, to grow vegetables and fruits in the backyard. So I was thrilled to be sent a Gardencube hydroponic grow grow system to test and evaluate.

The unit has a built in bank of LED grow lights so you can set it up anywhere indoors, such as a closet, bedroom, or garage. I choose the laundry sink, the darkest place in my basement. For the test, I purchased heirloom tomato, cilantro, and basil seeds and filled up the hydroponic tank.

It took about 3 days for the seeds to germinate (you don’t need to power the unit for that part). I plugged in the unit and activated its built-in water pump and LED lights. It offers options for standard green leaf growth and a lighting option to encourage flowering for fruits and tomatoes.

After 2 weeks of growth I could identify and differentiate the planets. I discovered I had mistakenly planted one too many cilantro and had to cull it and re-planted tomato seeds. The tomato plants grew the fastest, the basil the slowest. After 3-4 weeks, though small, cilantro and basil could be harvested, one leaf at a time.

Even after only a few weeks, I can confirm the Gardencube works as a hydropnic growing device. It remains to be seen if the small grow pods can provide enough of a base to growing full-sized plants that can be harvested year round. And of course it remains to be seen if my tomato plants will actually bear fruit (I’m not sure if they pollinators?)

For those interested ingrowing other planets, such as the kind you can smoke or ingest for recreational use. I don’t have any experience to share with you. But for growing temperature sensitive vegetables; it works.

Purchase on Amazon through this Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3TNix1f
and help support us.

Gadgets, Shooting Sports

Oneleaf NV100 Night Vision

Night vision (light enhancing) scopes have been used by hunters and soldiers since the Vietnam War but even today these devices can cost thousands of dollars. With progress of technology, these devices have shrunk in both size and price. The Commander NV100 is a digital video camera that is designed to mount directly onto a typical rifle scope and turn it into a night vision scope. Oneleaf technologies sent me an NV100 to test out.

Almost all digital video cameras can see in IR light but most have a built-in optical filter that block out most IR light which can distort and fog an image in normal light. Using the NV100, you are looking at its built in digital display viewfinder much like you would with an old-school video camera. In fact, when using the NV100 in normal light, the image looks slightly blown out with a glow on objects, a side-effect of IR light.

The NV100 can record 1080p videos and photos onto a micro-SD card. It runs of a rechargeable CR18650 battery which can be recharged using a micro-USB cable. The unit can also record sound and output though a 3.5mm headphone jack, though the audio sounds compressed and low fidelity.

In practice the NV100 is equivalent to a Gen 1.5 night vision monocular. To a small degree it can passively enhance low-light images but in reality, it does require IR illumination to function as intended. The unit has a built-in IR illuminator and visible red laser to light up and aim at targets.

The NV100 can be used as a hand-held Night Vision monocular. It has a standard 1/4(20) camera screw mount at its base to allow the unit to be mounted on photo tripods. OneLeaf does not offer any type mounting system or adapter to attach it to a helmet or headband.

Where the NV100 shines is its ease of mounting to a rifle scope. The packing includes a 42mm, 45mm, and a 48mm adapter collar to allow you to mount it to your scope (some spotting eye-pieces may be too large even for the 48mm adapter). The NV100 attaches to the collar via bayonet style locking ring; the package also includes a roll of electrical tape to assist in shimming your eye-piece to provide a more secure fit for the adapter collar.

When mounted to a rifle scope, the image you see in the NV100 appears like a low-resolution videocam viewfiender. The unit’s menu system is accessed through the viewfinder and the buttons on the unit function like a D-pad for navigation through the menu system. Adjustments in focus are made through the NV100 large physical focus knob.

I could get a decent focus of an object 100yrds away but I could not get both my target and the reticle in the same plane of focus, despite adjusting the scope’s paralax focus, ocular focus, and the NV100’s focus. I could get both somewhat in focus at my scopes lowest magnification (4x) but found it impossible at magnifications greater than 6x.

I was easily able to see objects 100yrds in low light and even faintly in pitch-black in its full-color video mode. Switching to B&W mode activates the unit’s built-in IR illuminator, an IR LED flashlight with a lens that allows you to adjust the beam from flood to focused. Oneleaf claims it can illuminate objects up to 300m away.

In B&W IR mode, the issues with depth-of-focus were even more pronounced. The reticle was blurred to the point of invisibility when my scope was at 20x magnification. Given that IR illuminators are far shorter range than visible light flashlights, long range engagements using a scope and the NV100 may be a moot point though some users have posted varmint hunts at ranges out to 200yrds or more.

The NV100 does have two shortcomings, the first one is a potentially a deal-breaker for some hunters. In my testing the NV100 has a short 1.5″-2″ eye-relief from the back of its eyepiece (OneLeaf claims up to 2.75″). This is fine for shooting 22LR or even 5.56mm AR’s. But on a large caliber rifle this short eye-relief could easily cause scope bite. OneLeaf does include some larger eye-cups which could provide more padding but a real solution would be to design a viewfinder eyepiece with a minimum of 3″ of eye-relief.

The second issue is minor but annoying. The image the NV100 displays is distorted, with the vertical proportions appearing shorter than the horizontal giving you a squashed image of your target. This is also evident in the movies and photos you take with the NV100.

Overall the Commander NV100 works as advertised without breaking the bank (though the latter is relative the cost of higher-end NV systems costing hundreds more). On my wish-list of improvements would be a firmware update to allow adjustment of X/Y proportions of the image, a lanyard loop to attach a wrist or neck lanyard for handheld use, and an adapter arm to attach it to a GoPro or PVS-14 mount.

The OneLeaf Commander NV100 is available through this Amazon Affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4kMPrO6

Gadgets, Shooting Sports

Athlon Midas 1 Mile Laser Rangefinder

Years ago I bought a cheap $50 golf laser rangefinder. It does the job, measuring distances out to 500-600yrds but I’ve always envied the hunters and shooters who had laser rangefinders that could call out distances to +700 yards. That’s why I was excited when Athlon sent me their Midas 1 Mile Laser Rangefinder to test out. And I’m sure with the start of hunting season in much of the country, others are eager as well.

My first impression of the unit was that it felt lighter than my golf rangefinder, while feeling far more solid though both have plastic bodies. The Athlon has a textured brown body with thicker rubberized panels at your handholds to provide a more secure grip with wet hands or wearing gloves.

The viewfinder has a fixed 6x power magnification. Sadly not to the level of Athlon’s 6x scope optics but par for the course for a range finder (or a dirt-cheap budget binocular). The image is clear-ish and I was able to differentiate car sized objects about a mile away.

The unit comes with a single CR2 lithium battery housed in a battery compartment with a coin slot screw cap. The cap has a rubber o-ring to keep it water tight. The manufacturer claims it is “rain resistant” which means it is not “water proof” or submersible. But remarkably it is covered under Athlon’s No-Fault Lifetime Warranty.

The menu options are visible through the viewfinder in a projected display. You can choose measurements in meters or yards, and it has a golf or hunting mode (the later displaying the distance in a furthest of target in a group). The unit can also be set to display vertical, linear, and horizontal distance to your target.

Available on Amazon through my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3f9b12D

Gadgets, Product Reviews

V3 Micro EDC Light

The current trend in EDC lights is creating ever smaller flashlights that are ever brighter. I was sent a BORUIT V3 EDC light to test and review. This micro-EDC light is the size of a Car alarm keychain dongle and its packaging promises to output up to 900 lumens.

The device has a smoke colored clear polymer body with two buttons and a covered SUB-C charging port. On one end is a twin-head LED emitters and the other end has a keychain loop and a rare-earth magnet end that allows the light to magnetically mounted and used hands-free.

One button activates the primary twin-lights. The device has high, medium, low, and endurance (candlelight) modes. Double-tap for continuous light, short tap for momentary, and long-press activates the devices Turbo mode which BORUIT claims is 900 lumens. It is very bright but in my testing, I suspect this number is inflated.

The other button double-taps to activate small set of LEDs. There is a high, low, red, blinking-red, and blinking-red/blue modes. This appears to be for specialized low-light work when tail-standing, magnetically mounted, or as an emergency signal.

I drop tested and water-jet tested the unit which passed without issue. The beams from the twin-headed unit cast a wide flood pattern that are still able to illuminate objects from over 100ft away. Unfortunately, in lumen testing the unit fell short.

I fully charged the unit overnight and let left it on high output for over 1-minute to stabilize the battery. The device specs claim the unit is 650 lumens on high mode. I measured 360 lumens. I also tested the unit in low which claims to be 150 lumens but I recorded only 50 lumens (less than half its stated output). Based on these numbers, I doubt it is capable of outputting 900 lumens in turbo.

Despite its over-inflated lumen numbers, the light is perfectly sized as an EDC or emergency light. For those that don’t want to carry in their pocket, it’s form factor makes it easy to clip-on to accessories or keys. And given it’s features is a reasonable purchase for less than $20 (some clones for even less than $15).

Available on Amazon through my Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3yPHlOL