[OKDXA] Life is full of surprises...

[Nelson Derks]

Last Sunday I stopped by the BA Goodwill store in search of electro-junque.
Came up with a GE clock radio for eight bucks that looks kinda' like this:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005MNF8.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Nothing unusual about finding this, but the radio looked above average in
quality and the clock part uses big green LED's so it can be read from
anywhere in the room. Didn't care so much about the radio part, just wanted
the clock. One curious feature was a thin wire coming out the back that
terminated in a yellow RCA phono plug. Normally that's the FM antenna, but
what's up with the phono plug?

Got it home and found that it works fine, but the radio dial pointer was off
a good 1/4" on both AM and FM. No prob, just open it up and tweak the
pointer.

Funny thing about this one, glued behind the front panel where the
auto-brightness photocell would normally be is a PC board about 2" square
and packed with surface mount chips & such. Someone had done a nice job
splicing the board leads into the radio wiring and it was definitely an
add-on part... Damned if it didn't look exactly like a pinhole video camera.

Plugged the yellow phono plug into a video monitor and saw me looking at me
in black & white. ( ! ) I know the spy shops sell surveillance cameras built
into things like smoke alarms and such, but I wasn't expecting this one...
The video quality is nothing to brag about and there are a fair number of
dead pixels, but it does remarkably well in low light and has good AGC
action in mixed light situations.

Helluva' deal... Someday I may pop up in the ATV net with the only
clock-radio cam in Broken Arrow.  ;-]

- AC5UP






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