TP-LINK TL-PA511 KIT AV500 Powerline Gigabit Adapter Starter Kit, up to 500Mbps

TP-LINK TL-PA511 KIT AV500 Powerline Gigabit Adapter Starter Kit, up to 500Mbps..

Special Price TP-LINK TL-PA511 KIT AV500 Powerline Gigabit Adapter Starter Kit, up to 500Mbps By TP-LINK

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130 of 133 people found the following review helpful.
Truly Plug & Play and Work Great
By IGold
This item is as described. In reading some of the other reviews, I believe the confusion is in the initial paring of the units. All I did was plug them into two different outlets in the same room (clearly they were on the same circuit) and paired them, I did not even bother to plug in any Ethernet cables. I then moved one unit near my router and the other unit to a distant bedroom, hooked up the Ethernet cables and everything worked as described. I did not use the software resource disk that came with them.

I am getting much faster speeds in the bedroom than I was with Wireless N. I changed the cables to Cat 5e and both units are humming along with green lights. I would highly recommend these to anyone with wireless issues.

Also, although they are bigger than your typical power wart, they are designed so that if you plug them into the bottom outlet of the receptacle, they do not interfere at all with top outlet, leaving it free for a power strip or UPS. This was one of the unknown concerns I had prior to purchase.

For clarification the model I am reviewing is the TL-PA511 KIT.

156 of 165 people found the following review helpful.
OMG I have internets.
By C. miller
We live in a 100 year old house with plaster walls underneath wood paneling. Pity us. Wireless will not penetrate the walls no matter how many repeaters / antennae / amps / cats with tinfoil you place. My 14 year old daughter was throwing a stereotypical teenage girl conniption fit that her wireless kept dropping out, had a 1mbps downstream, and was generally poo. After some last ditch settings adjustments I ordered these, on the advice from a popular hardware forum.
While they were a little fiddly to initially pair, once I got them installed, it was magic. Digital unicorns flew out of my daughter's Tumblr feed at the speed of 30mbps, and she no longer things I'm a moron.

In other words, works awesome.

86 of 91 people found the following review helpful.
Just As Good As The More Expensive Brands With Intercompatibility!!
By Hyoun Kim
I've been a Network Engineer for over 10 years and ever since I've dealt with computers, cabling is one of the worst aspects of the job. I can't tell you how many times I've run/extended CAT3/CAT5/CAT5e/CAT6 cabling and ended up terminating both ends and testing them. Some situations are easier than others when you're allowed to run a cable across the floor or above ceiling tile... but in other situations like getting networking in a certain room in your house can be a total pain in the butt.

For the average home user, the only way to get networking from point A to your house to point B is either wired with cabling or use WiFi & bridging if the WiFi didn't extend far enough. When Powerline technology came out it added convenience of using existing power cabling but still was a little flaky and troublesome. But since then, Powerline has jumped leaps and bounds since and is much more reliable & faster.

When it came time to buy originally back in July 2012, I put a lot of research into looking into the latest powerline solution for my home. I wanted something with high performance and the current version of "high performance Powerline devices" allows 500Mbps transfer rate. Even still, I was having trouble selecting which manufacturer to go with (Belkin, Cisco, Netgear, etc). After my homework (and despite Netgear's horrible sales support), I ended up with the NETGEAR Powerline 500Mbps Nano Adapter - Starter Kit (XAVB5101).

Despite the insane price point (currently $87.99 on Amazon - 12/13/2013; I bought these for $108 back in July 2012), the Netgear adapters worked wonderfully in my home. I was able to maintain faster throughput from device to device while on wired Ethernet while not saturating my WiFi network. However, over the course of a year and a half, the number of devices I had in my house grew considerably (especially over WiFi).

In the past year, I added a few cell phones, a laptop, a tablet, a Roku 3, a Western Digital TV Live, 2 Chromecasts, and a new Smart TV. Because of that, my WiFi started to become degraded because every single one of those new devices was connecting to my network over WiFi. When multiple devices would start streaming things like Netflix and I was doing transfers from my media server to a PC, Netflix would stutter and my WiFi throughput would literally crawl slower than a snail on a salt bed. That's when I realized I needed to invest in more Powerline Adapters for certain rooms to speed up transfers as well as help reduce the load of my WiFi network.

But you see, despite being pleased with my Netgear adapters, I didn't want to spend another $100. A friend of mine (who I told the Netgear adapters about) bought another brand of Powerline AV 500Mbit adapters from a company called TP-Link to save money. He said they worked pretty good. After finding out that they were $35 on Amazon, I immediately pulled the trigger. I mean after all, I had a word of mouth approval from a friend and you can't argue saving over $50 vs another set of my Netgear adapters... the result? Absolutely no difference in speeds.

Just like the Netgear adapters, these are essentially Plug & Play. There were literally no problems connecting these in my house. I went to the living room where I needed wired connectivity and plugged these up to the wall. The TP-Link adapter immediately recognized my existing Netgear Powerline adapters and the 2nd LED (Powerline LED indicator) immediately lit up. I plugged in my small 10/100 switch to it and then my Roku & TV up to it and the 3rd LED (Ethernet indicator) lit up and the devices could not only talk to other devices on my LAN, but they had Internet access as well. I personally noticed NO DIFFERENCE in throughput speeds both within the LAN and the Internet.

The *ONLY* difference between the TP-Link set and the Netgear is the that the TP-Link doesn't tell you the "current speed" of that adapter's Powerline network. The Netgear has multicolored LEDs that indicate the speed of your Powerline network. While this normally won't matter to a lot of people, it will tell you whether you are having degraded performance within your home's electrical wiring. It also aids in troubleshooting as well. But it's not a show stopper...

Personally, I would recommend this product over the Netgear adapters I have.
1. The price is a LOT cheaper.
2. TP-Link has a TWO YEAR WARRANTY vs the Netgear's ONE YEAR WARRANTY. If you're really concerned on whether you're buying "a crap product", rest assured that this works just as good as the bigger name brands and you have an extra year of product care!

Highly recommended.

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Arduino Uno Ultimate Starter Kit -- Includes 72 page Instruction Book

Arduino Uno Ultimate Starter Kit -- Includes 72 page Instruction Book..

Special Price Arduino Uno Ultimate Starter Kit -- Includes 72 page Instruction Book By Vilros

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240 of 244 people found the following review helpful.
Absolutely Amazing !
By Thomas D. Walker
Old men's toys don't have to be expensive but they do have to be awesome and thought provoking. The Arduino Uno is all that and more.

My last foray into electronics was when the telegraph was a new-fangled contraption and my last programming languages were Fortran and Cobol so I was a bit intimidated and not sure whether I should check out this Arduino-thingy.

I got the Uno and a couple of very basic books and, over the course of a couple of weeks, I acquired a couple of servos, which I modified to make continuous rotation, a Ping Ultrasonic sensor and very soon had a small two-wheeled robot running around the floor driving my hound dog crazy. The Uno makes controlling the servos and the ultrasonic sensor a snap even for a 65-year old. I have a long list of future projects to try out and components to find and have taken over half of the dining room table (much to my wife's chagrin). I recommend the Arduino for anyone who has a desire to make things go bump in the night. Thank you for an excellent product.

I can also recommend "Arduino Cookbook" by Michael Margolis, an excellent book.

Thom Walker
Sandy, OR

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Bought this for my teenage son
By Julie
And by far, it's the best money I've ever spent on a gift for him. He's been able to create some pretty damn awesome things with this Arduino, and I'm glad I purchased it. The only issue he's had is just making sure the software is running properly, but that doesn't have anything to do with the product itself not working correctly.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
Arduino Starter Kit
By Gregory B Besch
I was absolutely delighted with the SUPER quality of all the items in the kit.

I've been using insulated solid wire (bits of old 25-pair telephone cable) with the ends stripped back as breadboard jumpers for my old Heathkit solderless breadboard. The problem with using solid wire is that it breaks after being bent too many times. I was always having to make a new batch every so often.

The jumper wires in this kit are a really nice upgrade. They're made of stranded wire with very soft, flexible insulation that allows them to bend easily without breaking. There are several different lengths, which makes for cleaner prototypes when you're working on a large project. Each has solid pins connected to the ends for plugging into the breadboard holes and the ends are nicely finished to exactly the right length with heat-shrink tubing to prevent accidental shorts. I'll be ordering a couple more sets of these and retiring my old solid wire jumpers!

The breadboard is a real class act compared to the low quality versions I've bought from a certain electronics chain store popular in the U.S. The molding is crisply detailed with raised, color printing to identify the power bus holes from component bus holes. Each row of holes is numbered on both sides to aid in identification when you're connecting circuit components and jumpers. The small size makes it conveniently portable, unlike my heavy old Heathkit breadboard with its built-in power supply. The manufacturing fit and finish is excellent.

When I saw the plastic Arduino mounting tray in the product photos, I figured it was essentially just packing material that I'd end up throwing away. I couldn't have been more wrong! This is a surprisingly convenient little accessory. It has built-in standoffs for the Arduino along with built-in spring clips that allow the Arduino to snap in and be held securely in place. I can place it on any surface without worrying about shorting out the traces on the bottom of my Arduino board. Again, manufacturing fit and finish is excellent -- no leftover "flash" on the edges or other casting "nasties" to cut your fingers on.

USB cables come in so many different combinations of connector types that figuring out which one you need can be a research chore. Having the correct USB cable in the kit removes the guesswork.

The Arduino Uno comes with the "blink" sketch preloaded so that you can see it working as soon as you power it up. Downloading the Arduino software and getting it loaded onto the computer is straightforward. This little board is delightfully simple to program and use compared to other microcontrollers I've used and the community support is absolutely amazing.

The kit also came with one more thing that isn't shown in the product picture: outstanding support from Prestige Milano. This is actually the most valuable component and easily justifies the cost of the entire kit. The kit I received came with the wrong USB cable, but Alex at Prestige Milano responded to my support email within minutes of clicking the "send" button. I had the correct replacement just a short time later at no additional cost or hassle. Alex was very courteous, professional, and pleasant to deal with throughout.

You may find similar kits from another vendor, but you certainly won't find better support!!!

In summary, I'm extremely pleased with my new purchase and the experience with Prestige Milano. I plan to do business with them again soon...

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Raspberry Pi Complete Starter Kit -- [Model B - 512 MB]

Raspberry Pi Complete Starter Kit -- [Model B - 512 MB]..

Special Price Raspberry Pi Complete Starter Kit -- [Model B - 512 MB] By Vilros

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60 of 66 people found the following review helpful.
Finally! A cheap AirPrint server...and more!
By T. Caradonna
Amazing little board!

Background
The Raspberry Pi is a "fit in your shirt pocket" linux box! Brilliantly designed to meet a simple goal: putting open technology within affordable global reach. There are many Pi enthusiasts who use this inexpensive platform to build some pretty cool projects including home automation, running media centers for videos/music, robotics. Just search under raspberry pi projects on the web and prepared to be amazed. After that, let your imagination run wild!

To clarify, this is the Model B (latest) version of Raspberry Pi with 512MB. The one I received from this seller was made in the UK, not China. Furthermore, the cat /proc/cpuinfo command confirms this as revision '000e'. These are all the versions released thus far, and their manufacturer: (Note that some Model B's that only have 256MB)

'0002' => 'Model B Revision 1.0',
'0003' => 'Model B Revision 1.0 + Fuses mod and D14 removed',
'0004' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 256MB', (Sony)
'0005' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 256MB', (Qisda)
'0006' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 256MB', (Egoman)
'0007' => 'Model A Revision 2.0 256MB', (Egoman)
'0008' => 'Model A Revision 2.0 256MB', (Sony)
'0009' => 'Model A Revision 2.0 256MB', (Qisda)
'000d' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 512MB', (Egoman)
'000e' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 512MB', (Sony)
'000f' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 512MB', (Qisda)

Setup
I purchased the kit that includes the board, clear case and wifi adapter. (EDIT 1/25/2014: It looks as if the kit I purchased is no longer available, rather an expanded 11 piece kit is offered with many accessories.) I used an old cell phone charger, and 4GB SD card (the bare minimum) that I already had lying around. (Note: I just used this stuff to get going but you probably want to upgrade to 8gb, see below for more comments about power supplies.). From my Windows 7 PC, I installed the free SDFormatter software (from the SD Association) to format the SD card, and installed the NOOBS (New Out of Box Software) on the SD card. Once I booted up the Raspberry Pi, the NOOBS software presented me with a choice of operating systems. (Depending on your final application(s) you may want different OS). I selected the Wheezy Raspbian for my OS (as I planned to make an AirPrint Server). I may also consider the XBMC OS's in the future, but what I really wanted this for was AirPrint. The GUI walked me thru an installation process that was virtually completely automatic.

A note about Power Supplies:
Although I am getting by with a cellphone charger (rated to deliver 0.7A) this is really the absolute bare minimum. Many pi hobbists have reported unreliable function with weaker supplies (mine would be included in that category.) So far I haven't encountered any problems, but if I did, I would go straight to a decent 2A USB charger. (There's no sense fiddling with questionable equipment.) PowerGen sells a very nice 2.4A dual USB power supply for $10 which I have tested on the Raspberry pi. PowerGen Black 2.4-Amp (12 Watt) Dual USB Wall Charger w/Swival Plug Designed for Apple and Android Devices This would be my first choice.

AirPrint Server
As I've been garnering more iOS devices, and the iPad is becoming more popular, the lack of available print function has been more intolerable. AirPrint (apple's communication protocol for printing) is only available on certain printer models, and there are no drivers for older (and otherwise fine printers). I personally own a Brother HL-2170W, that has been performing great for me. I didn't want to have to replace it, just to be able to print from another device. I considered the Lantronix xPrintServer, but it costs about $90. I wasn't to interested in paying that much considering a new printer would not be much more.

It turns out that there are several "how-to's" on installing and configuring software on the Raspberry Pi to make a cheap airprint server. They use the CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) spooler and print scheduling system, which Apple has been using in MacOS X since 2002. The instructions are pretty straight forward and can be implemented in a couple of hours. The particular website I used was:
[...].
EDIT: Amazon keeps deleting my link. Just do a search an google for "raspberry pi airprint" and you should get useful hits near e top. If you can't find it, just ask me in the comments.

So happy to be finally printing from my iOS devices!

VPN Server
There are many examples on the web on setting up a low-powered, always available VPN server. This allows you to privately browse the internet on any network (work, pulic wifi) with total encryption. Another benefit from VPNs are the ability to change the source of your internet traffic. For instance I have a VPN server in Japan that I use to obtain Japan-only streaming video content in the US. Hulu, Netflix and another that rhymes with Bamazon have this restriction, which the VPN can circumvent. You can make a PPTP (simple to make) or OpenVPN (more complex but more secure) servers. There are several how-tos for both.

XBMC
Another application I'm very interested in is attempting to make a media server based on the popular XBMC platform. The reviews I've read on the Pi implementation have been very positive, there are also a few demonstrations on YouTube so I'm looking forward to trying this out! I've seen Xbmc used to setup Apple AirPlay to stream music and videos to your Pi. Cool!

Some more ideas (All of these have been implemented on the web to some degree)
Home automation: controlling lights, garage doors, sprinklers and appliances with a mobile interface
Security camera: for 30 bucks on amazon you can add an HD motion camera, then mount it in a security camera shell
Temperature and humidity monitor: monitor your house temp and possible interface with thermostat or outside vent shutters

A very enthusiastic 5 stars!

Please feel free to leave a comment/question as I'm happy to reply.

56 of 63 people found the following review helpful.
Good kit to get started, but weak power supply caused me some learning curve grief.
By R. Grokett
The package arrived fine. All pieces were included. Very nice kit for anyone starting out with Raspberry Pi. A few notes though:

o The SD card is really 4GB, even though Windows will only show 1GB. Ignore that. The included OS takes up about half the card, leaving about 2GB free once booted.

o The power supply is underpowered and appeared to cause problems during booting, which I thought were SD card related, but weren't. Since the included power cable is USB, I replaced the supply with a much better one and this cleared up the booting issues.

o After installing a LAMP stack, I ran out of space on the original card, so I went ahead and bought a 8GB card and ended up with about 4GB free after LAMP. I also d/led and installed the latest version of Rasbian on this card.

o The included WiFi worked fine, after adding the SSID and passwd, (just google raspberry pi wifi).

o My kit contained no instructions at all. Would have been nice to add a one page Getting Started, but googling raspberry pi setup got me thru the initial stuff.

You can piece together all the items in this kit, but the resulting cost, if you have to buy separately, ends up about the same or more unless you already have some of the cables and such.

UPDATE: The company contacted me offering to replace the power supply for free, saying that they did discover a bad batch. Excellent customer service!

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Raspberry pi set up a breeze
By LMFlan
The RPI set up was very easy following the instructions in the book "Sams Teach Yourself Python Programming for Raspberry Pi in 24 hours". This kit was probably overkill, but I wanted the options for my daughter. I only wish someone somewhere had mentioned that it's very easy to set up VNC server on the RPI so that you don't need any peripherals. I wouldn't have spent the extra money on the external powered USB hub. If you have an HDMI TV and USB keyboard, you can just use that for the initial configuration, then after setting up wifi and the VNC Server on the RPI, just use any other laptop you have to access it remotely. As a UNIX person I should have guessed it would be easy to set up VNC Server, but it just didn't occur to me when I was buying things. Another tip: I had to search and search to find out how to select a locale in the raspi-config utility. Use the space bar to select one from the list. FYI: VNC server set up instructions: [...]

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