Vestax VCI400

The Vestax VCI400 is another monstrous all-in-one DJ controller (as NUMARK MIXTRACK PRO 2 ), although it’s becoming more rare as the years pass. We all know that name of when it comes to DJ equipment and they’ve joined in on the digital age with a controller of their own. This is in our opinion one of the better all-in-ones, featuring a 4 channel layout with transport buttons at the bottom (3 banks, too), two JOG wheels with torque and sensitivity control, filter knobs, LED back lights for all buttons, some nice filters, 3-band EQ, an LED meter, and impressively a stand-alone mixer. As you go up in price with these DJ controllers, you start to get the built-in soundcards with pretty high sampling rates; although this one is only half the amount of the Pioneer we’ve listed previously. It still gives you very low latency with the built-in interface. It also comes with some decent software in the Virtual DJ limited edition as well as Serato Intro for you to try out if you haven’t yet. The VCI400 does however work with other software as well, such as Traktor Pro and MixVibes. Grab this if you’re a bit more advanced than normal. If not, you can still grab it but it’ll take some time to learn, plus you may not even need the four channels if you’re doing the standard DJ setup with a computer. Note this thing is big and heavy! But it’s a beast.

Dimensions: 457 x 328 x 61mm
Weight: 100 lbs
4 channel layout
2 channels for standalone mixer
Transport buttons (3 banks of mapping)
Instant deck
Soft touch buttons
Aluminum, large filter knobs
Loop/sampler section (smaller drum pads)
Large sized JOG wheels
Built-in dual core digital processor
24bit/48 KHz soundcard built-in
Comes with Virtual DJ LE and Serato Intro
XLR and PHONE outputs
Two mic and an AUX input

What to Do If You've Lost Power After a Storm

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, more than 6 million residents of Florida are without power, and many could remain that way for weeks. Some Floridians have only darkened homes to contend with, while others are dealing with water damage, or worse.

For those whose houses aren’t flooded but are preparing for a potentially prolonged power outage, Consumer Reports experts offer a few ways to navigate your home safely in the days to come.
Use Caution When Operating a Generator

Generator misuse can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. Already, four deaths and multiple hospitalizations have been reported in Florida following Hurricane Irma, believed to be caused by running a generator inside the house.

"Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas, so you won't even know you're inhaling it," explains Don Huber, CR's Director of Product Safety. And running a generator improperly can kill you, if the concentration of carbon monoxide is high enough, in as little as five minutes.

"No matter what, resist the urge to move a portable generator inside the house or the garage," Huber says. Operate it as far from the house as possible—at least 15 feet—and away from doors or windows. If you don’t have a transfer switch, you can use the outlets on the generator, provided you follow certain precautions.
Unplug Your Appliances


If you see absolutely no signs of flooding, disconnect your appliances from power outlets. “When power lines are damaged, there can be a spike or surge in the line, when electricity is restored, that could potentially damage your appliances,” says John Galeotafiore, associate director of product testing at CR.

Never do this, though, while standing in water. And wait for a pro to inspect any appliances that came into contact with floodwater.

Write Important Info Down on Paper


If you didn’t take note of emergency telephone numbers before the storm, take the time to do it now. Don’t depend on the contact list in your phone, since the battery may die. Instead, write down phone numbers and addresses you might need, such as a nearby hospital, a school that's providing supplies, the local library or storm shelter, or other public places that might have power—places where you’ll be able to go to recharge your electronics and contact loved ones.

Then, conserve the phone’s battery life by switching the phone to a power-saving setting, such as airplane mode on an iPhone or economy mode on an Android device.

When you make your way to a local shelter or library, it’s a smart idea to bring a power strip, says Maria Rerecich, CR director of electronics testing. This way, when you do find power, you can charge multiple devices at once—or share the makeshift charging station with others.

Use Your Gas Stove to Prepare Food


In homes that have lost power but suffered little other damage, you can safely cook on a gas stove by lighting the gas burner with a match or a lighter to ignite the flame.

What to cook, though, is another question. Food in your refrigerator is likely well past the window when it would still be safe to eat. (If you keep the doors closed, a refrigerator can maintain a safe temperature—below 40° F—for about 4 hours; beyond that, toss anything perishable.) Toss any food that may have come in contact with floodwaters, advises the USDA’s guide to food safety during storms and hurricanes.

Get creative foods that will keep without refrigeration—apples, peppers, carrots, tomatoes—and with grains and canned goods to feed your family when the power is out.

No Gas Stove? Use a Gas Grill


A gas grill offers another cooking option when there’s no electricity in the kitchen. If you were able to properly store your grill in a dry space, such as a garage, before the storm and notice no water damage to the grill or gas tank, it should be safe to use it to grill food.

Be sure, as always, to use the grill in a well-ventilated area. Of course, don’t try to grill any foods that have been without refrigeration for more than a few hours, and follow the USDA's food-safety recommendations for grilling.

Avoid Any Standing Water in Your Home


Even if upper floors weren’t effected, don’t venture into areas that are dark, even if you have a flashlight.

“If a basement has several feet of water, don’t walk into it,” advises Galeotafiore. Water can be contaminated by a stew of chemicals or other debris, and it can carry an electric current should power be restored.

Also see GOAL ZERO YETI 400 the best small generator, use solar energy with this solar generator

Summer Heat, Camera Placement & PIR Sensors

Summer heat. It is something we are used to here in the south, Georgia specifically. In testing cameras, lots of them, we noticed that the range of the PIR sensing is reduced, sometimes drastically in high summer heat.

As July and August approach it can become very hot here and the day temperatures can reach or equal the body temperature of many of the target animals. The PIR sensor, a chip located on the main board of the camera and located behind a fresnel lens, converts changes in heat to voltages, monitored by the firmware and chipset on the camera board.

Heat is actually light in the infrared spectrum and the fresnel lens focuses that light onto the PIR sensor. Some fresnel lenses are very narrow angled, like on your Cuddeback cameras while most of the industry has adopted a wider angle fresnel.

The PIR sensor in combination with the camera firmware is designed to accept the gradual warming from the sun without triggering the cam in most cases. Suppose we place a camera looking down a trail at a foliage background in a fairly warm time of the year. Now let’s put an animal on a direct approach to the camera. The camera perceives a slow progression of heat build up at a distance compared to the background and will typically not trigger until that heat source is very close.

Think of the approaching animal as producing a gradual heat change. Now suppose an animal passes the camera from behind or from the side at a close distance to the camera. In a relatively short period of time, the animal displaces a large portion of the sensing zone relative to that foliage background. This will be perceived by the camera as a motion event much more readily.

We actually tested this theory using a camera stand that allowed us to mount two scoutguard SG550 cameras back to back and place this mount along a trail. Keep in mind each camera looked down a trail. We analyzed weeks of photos and found that the cameras triggered faster (actually earlier) when the animals walked past a camera from behind than when they approached the camera from a distance.

Check the MOULTRIE ALL IN ONE TIMER KIT smart feeder that makes practically no scaring noise for animals

Now, how do we make a correction to our typical mounting setup to improve our success on the approaching animals? We can aim our camera and still look down the trail this time of year but not straight down the trail. Moving a distance off the trail and looking down the trail at an angle should do the trick. An approaching animal will trigger the camera when it is closer to the camera and thus create a larger % change in relation to the background foliage. Remember that, in general, the reason for looking up and down the trail is to compensate for a slower trigger time. Modern cameras have faster and faster trigger times thus the sharper the angle to the trail can be.

Nanostructures taste the rainbow

Engineers at Caltech have for the first time developed a light detector that combines two disparate technologies -- nanophotonics, which manipulates light at the nanoscale, and thermoelectrics, which translates temperature differences directly into electron voltage -- to distinguish different wavelengths (colors) of light, including both visible and infrared wavelengths, at high resolution.


Light detectors that distinguish between different colors of light or heat are used in a variety of applications, including satellites that study changing vegetation and landscape on Earth and medical imagers that distinguish between healthy and cancerous cells (for example: GOAL ZERO NOMAD 13 ) based on their color variations.

The new detector, described in a paper in Nature Nanotechnologyon May 22, operates about 10 to 100 times faster than current comparable thermoelectric devices and is capable of detecting light across a wider range of the electromagnetic spectrum than traditional light detectors. In traditional light detectors, incoming photons of light are absorbed in a semiconductor and excite electrons that are captured by the detector. The movement of these light-excited electrons produces an electric current -- a signal -- that can be measured and quantified. While effective, this type of system makes it difficult to "see" infrared light, which is made up of lower-energy photons than those in visible light.

Because the new detectors are potentially capable of capturing infrared wavelengths of sunlight and heat that cannot be collected efficiently by conventional solar materials, the technology could lead to better solar cells and imaging devices.

"In nanophotonics, we study the way light interacts with structures that are much smaller than the optical wavelength itself, which results in extreme confinement of light. In this work, we have combined this attribute with the power conversion characteristics of thermoelectrics to enable a new type of optoelectronic device," says Harry Atwater, corresponding author of the study. Atwater is the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech, and director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP). JCAP is a Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub focused on developing a cost-effective method of turning sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into fuel. It is led by Caltech with Berkeley Lab as a major partner.

Atwater's team built materials with nanostructures that are hundreds of nanometers wide -- smaller even than the wavelengths of light that represent the visible spectrum, which ranges from about 400 to 700 nanometers.

The researchers created nanostructures with a variety of widths, that absorb different wavelengths -- colors -- of light. When these nanostructures absorb light, they generate an electric current with a strength that corresponds to the light wavelength that is absorbed.

The detectors were fabricated in the Kavli Nanoscience Institute cleanroom at Caltech, where the team created subwavelength structures using a combination of vapor deposition (which condenses atom-thin layers of material on a surface from an element-rich mist) and electron beam lithography (which then cuts nanoscale patterns in that material using a focused beam of electrons). The structures, which resonate and generate a signal when they absorb photons with specific wavelengths, were created from alloys with well-known thermoelectric properties, but the research is applicable to a wide range of materials, the authors say.

"This research is a bridge between two research fields, nanophotonics and thermoelectrics, that don't often interact, and creates an avenue for collaboration," says graduate student Kelly Mauser (MS '16), lead author of the Nature Nanotechnology study. "There is a plethora of unexplored and exciting application and research opportunities at the junction of these two fields."

Vintage Gold Watch Guide

Will you be planning on running a classic pocket watch? Are you experiencing any idea about what to consider, and how to spot a wristwatch that is good of type? Have no idea how to start? Choosing most of these timepieces to need an eye fixed this is certainly skilled. They are not any longer generally made, and something that is finding be challenging. Finding a genuine artwork is just a tale this is certainly different.

These types of vintage gold watches are available in niche stores and stores which are classic. Many were reconditioned, and don't have got all the parts which can be original. It will require a lot of ability to revive these time that is a classic, and have them working. The skill of making vintage gold watch is practically a lost art, and training this is certainly few know how. Every single watch of the piece is held by this type of our history, for they've been around for longer than 700 many years. Sadly, its appeal was inundated by the today very popular and modern-day vintage gold watches, and also the knowledge about this certain timepiece is lost this is certainly nearly long.

You need to know at least the fundamentals if you intend on acquiring a good classic pocket view. You can find countless internet sites that hold info on the designs being complex designs, sizes, of various eras. Knowing this given information will allow you to identify the knockoffs through the genuine.

With all the information that is right, you'll be able to locate a traditional watch of the kind. Or perhaps a view is constructed of gold or gold, or from what country it originated in, purchasing these uncommon time items of old is enjoyment that is absolute. Not merely would you show your appreciation for our history, in addition, you help protect a missing that is long passed down by our ancestors. By having a vintage pocket view, you help preserve an art form this is certainly uncommon.

Disaster in Sterility: Visitation Centers

There are lots of couples nowadays, which aren't blessed with the capacity to get becoming pregnant fast.

The inquiry rises, what variable in their own health is keeping them from becoming new parents and will this type of facility have the capacity to solve this issue. If you're among the many couples with fertility issues, you shouldn't lose hope, because, on the idea of scientific and technological developments, a number of whom are now capable of broadening your odds of getting a kid.

There are all those new possibilities open to you personally.

But it is up to you to determine in the event you would like to go to the facilities of sterility to acquire a certification from their physician. It's indisputable that medical science has advanced many developments in this new science. This ought to give much hope for a lot of couples where there was little expectation before of getting a kid. It's now true that lots of couples have been successful seeing visitation centers of sterility as well as your own chances of having healthy kids is great.

Infertility facilities are equipped with individuals from many specialists and professionals, including endocrinologists, embryologists, and nurses. Additionally, many specialists who understand the other staff of acupuncture, and a few members of the team of specialists in natural medicine and healthy eating.

Because visitation centers specialize in the science behind the pregnancy, they are able to offer many gains, you can follow these practices. The main goal of the disaster in sterility is so you can be with kids. Already there are lots of couples who became parents after an extended struggle with infertility. Your treatment regimen for the review of visitation centers Tacoma would be to get it reasoned with joyful faces after having a baby.

Although many visitation centers have yet to demonstrate their worth, additionally it is a fact that a few of these facilities have shown exemplary performance. Because of this, it's almost always a major measure to contemplate all your choices before you give your permission. Learn more about these academic facilities, particularly if they're in good standing in society. Seek out those who went to these facilities and get their view. You need to do this research since it's an essential portion of your own life. Comprehend you have several choices to empower this significant choice.

How to Take Your Business Online and Work for Yourself

For entrepreneurs who are looking to start their own businesses, it's not enough to have a bustling storefront—you need to be able to supplement your sales by building a strong presence online. The internet not only widens the net of your potential customers, a digital identity has become a way of validating and informing what a store has to offer.

E-commerce is a competive space to navigate: Online real estate is crowded, and there's no shortage of other businesses vying for the same attention on Google. That means not only do your online operations need to run seamlessly, your understanding of digital marketing needs to be sophisticated. But starting your online business doesn't need to mean going into debt earning your MBA.