A
Presuming you’re talking
about playing retro games,
it’s a case of finding the
best second-hand TV – look
towards Sony’s pre-flat post-
NICAM 4:3 Trinitrons if you can find
them, or at least go for a known
good brand as opposed to the glut
of capability-limited cheaper
screens – then using the best
source you can. If your TV supports
RGB SCART, pick up the
appropriate connector;
retrogamingcables.co.uk can
supply you the necessary hardware.
Original kit is a real plus, and the
purist’s choice, but it’s not the only
way. Perhaps most exciting (and
Guru is truly very excited, because
he’s ordered one to be delivered
from Spain) is the RGB-Pi, a ¤35
cable which plugs directly into the
GPIO pins of a Raspberry Pi and
pipes its output to RGB SCART,
fuss free. It does frequency
switching, resolution tweaks, the lot- it seems to be the best way to get
emulated retro games displayed on
the screens they were built for.
GADGET GURU’S MAGIC BOX
A
Guru knows what you’re up
to. You’re trying to trick him
into making all those
obvious jokes about ‘volatile
organic chemicals’ in the air. Thing
is, there are plenty of devices out
there ready to measure the gaseous
emissions seeping through your
halls, some of which can sniff out
some particularly strange and
dangerous brews. Take the
AirThings Wave (£200) and the
slightly brainier Wave Plus (£239),
both of which can huff up Radon,
some of the nastiest gas there is.
It’s silent and deadly, the kind of
thing you wouldn’t know was
there until it was too late – but
when you know, you’re going to
want to take action.
Particulate matter is an obvious
issue when it comes to localised
pollution, so get yourself something
that can detect the bad bits in the
air – really, you can’t go far wrong
with the Awair Second Edition
(£169), which is capable of getting
its delightful digital nose around
fine dust (PM2.5) as well as a bunch
of other airborne nasties. That said,
Guru has spotted that it’s out of
stock at press time, so who knows
what’s going on there.
If you’re after something
sensitive enough to pick up a
thinner floating concoction, yet
tough enough to muscle through
a particularly thick fog, the Plume
Labs Flow 2 (£139) can detect
PM1, PM2.5 and PM10 – and it’s
portable, with a leathery strap
which allows you to waft it gently
from room to room. You can even
let rip with a reading outdoors, and
share your results far and wide
through the app.
All jokes aside (and there were a
few in there, believe it or not) get
yourself a carbon monoxide
detector now, and don’t even worry
about it being smart – the Nest
Protect (£109) can do it, but if you
can’t afford it then a bog standard
single-serving unit will do.Is the air that I’m breathing
in my home safe?
MARY BINNS, WEYMOUTH
How do I get
the best CRT TV
experience?
CRAIG SCOTT,
ABERDEENIt turns out Old Uncle Guru placed slightly
too much reliance on the structural integrity
of the shelf directly above his wall-mounted
monitor; when gravity eventually decided to
do the thing it does, the contents of the
shelf smashed the screen below to
smithereens. Boo. Turns out, though, that
GaGu’s VGA-only old monitors are still
perfectly viable – all it took was a pair of £6
Benefi converter cables from Amazon to
send HDMI and DisplayPort output from his
graphics card to the 15-pin ports on those
ancient displays. A more permanent
solution is, naturally, in the offing – if it’s not
super-wide, something’s
gone wrong.
Strangely that’s
about the only major
disaster to have
befallen GaGu this
month. But indulge
him with the airing of
some minor gripes:
why can’t he make any
portable hard drive in
the house work with
Guru Jr’s saved-up-
for and fresh-to-him
Wii U? Why has the
software on GaGu’s
Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro become so sluggish
and glitchy as to make it near useless? How
was the shady-looking pedometer app that
GaGu Sr installed on his Android phone able
to inject ads into just about every other app
the old man launched? These are the
questions that Guru is usually paid to
answer, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to
do that off the clock.
A positive, now. This month the Guru
family’s slight obsession with the Eurovision
Song Contest led to the viewing of a stack
of national song selection finals. It’s
obviously been many years since the
internet changed everything, but the
childlike wonder of being able to just open
an app and send Swedish TV to the living
room screen is the same as that of Guru’s
first forays into Yahoo chat rooms, talking
to people from all over the world.MAY 2020 T3 25Gadget guru
ABOVE
The Incredible
Hulk looks like
he might be at
home today...