New Sky Product Raises Pollution Fears

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British premium television provider Sky have launched a new product, Sky Q utilising the PowerLine technology that pollute the HF radio spectrum.

 

Sky, who service over 10 million homes in the UK are rolling out Sky Q as a premium service to customers.

PLT Standard prEN50561-1 relaxed the HF emission limits by almost 10,000 times (38 dB) - http://www.southgatearc.org/news/august2012/new_draft_plt_standard_pren50561_1.htm

UKQRM is a group fighting powerline communications -http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKQRM/

Ban Power Line Technology - http://www.ban-plt.org.uk/

UK Retailer Fined for Faulty Battery Sale

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UK HIgh Street Retailer Poundstrecher has admitted 35 offences of “supplying or offering faulty or dangerous goods” after Swansea Trading Standards teams launched an investigation into the sale of Hyundai and V2 Xtreme branded batteries.

The inspectors uncovered a number of stores throughout Wales were selling the batteries, that were either leaking or out of date.

“Their customers deserve better than to be sold sub-standard batteries which were leaking zinc and acid and putting people - especially young children - at risk of very serious harm. ”
— Mark Child, Cabinet Member for Wellbeing at Swansea Council

The company admitted the offence, and was fined £350,000, with an additonal £20,000 court costs awarded against the company.

Crown Crest (Leicester), who supplied Poundstrecher with the product, were fined a total of nearly £150,000 including costs for the same offence.

More information - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-34902387

New Raspberry Pi “Zero” Launched

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The Raspberry Pi foundation has launched a new edition to the successful Raspberry Pi range, the Raspberry Pi Zero.

The new device, made in Wales, UK, is the smallest most cost effective device the group have manufactured.

Priced at just $5 / £4, the specs are in line if not better than a high end laptop from ten years ago.

  • A Broadcom BCM2835 application processor
    • 1GHz ARM11 core (40% faster than Raspberry Pi 1)
  • 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM
  • A micro-SD card slot
  • A mini-HDMI socket for 1080p60 video output
  • Micro-USB sockets for data and power
  • An unpopulated 40-pin GPIO header
    • Identical pinout to Model A+/B+/2B
  • An unpopulated composite video header
  • Our smallest ever form factor, at 65mm x 30mm x 5mm

Many amateur radio and technology enthusiasts have spotted the new device as a “free gift” on the cover of the MagPi magazine.

More information - https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/