Inside a common eBay dusk switch.

Gray is nice, but the graphics a bit too busy. Besides, the wood surface's battle scars give it character! (most notably from the battery episode)

Apart from the initial glare at the top from the lights I prefer the grey background as the image contrast seems more 'stable' and once you had zoomed in a bit to mitigate the glare the background soon became practically invisible.

That matt is too distracting.

The Wago terminals are awesome :) I've used some in my home wiring and it speeds things up considerably

Dustin

The circles and lines are distracting to me. I prefer a plain background.

Personally I like the grey cutting mat as a background, it looks like serious business! The grid would probably help you stay in shot when zoomed in too.

Matt Tester

Use the old bench like a badge of honor (honour).

+1 vote to keep the scorched, much suffering wood bench please.

Like the new background - the grey is easy on the eye - but don't like the reflections much. Good old 555, been around as long as I have, I recall playing with them as an apprentice in 1975!

Phil Collins

I much prefer the bare wood surface as background.

Have you though of the silicone soldering mats that are available from banggood and the like. They are definitely not reflective and are also available in a variety of colour. Some of the newer ones are magnetic and have little compartments as well. May be worth a spin or to use with the more flammable projects. However I really like the bare desk as well. Always interesting to see the "skid marks"

Vaughn B.

The pink and purple ones caused immediate eye discomfort. And, honestly, the grey one is a bit busy and distracting. And the reflection is horrible. Otherwise its fine... :-)

The actual grey background is sensible, as Auto White Balance won't be affected by it. But the glare from your lights is horrible, as is that sort of test pattern.

The company I work for has biometric fingerprint readers in one of their products. I took a look at the control circuits for one of the readers, and there were no 555 timers to be found. :)

Chris Kelley

+1 ditch the mat. Makes eyes sore after a few minutes.

I like the mdf(?) bench. Less cute, much more BC. Also less reflective. Scars are battle honours to be worn with pride!

I prefer to see the old bench showing a history of disasters and character

Ditch the mat and go back to the old battered and bruised bench that we have grown to love.

Malcolm J Bannister

+1 ditch the mat. We like the candor of bruised and battered work spaces. We've been there with you and those scars are our memories too.

I prefer the Big Clive basic board...... your channel is better in content than others I could mention who use these mats. Before we know it we will have 'mailbag Wednesdays' and see blu-tack holding the components you are soldering .

Erik G

Sorry, I think you might have mentioned this in an email? I've been getting so much email that even ongoing conversations often get buried.

Big Clive

I agree, the bare bench is practically a Big Clive trademark by this point! It has a character all of its own, it bears the scars of all the previous experiments and explosions, and in a way it sort of symbolises the channel: ad hoc, lo-fi, honest, no frills, straight to the point.

In a way this tidy mat, while it looks nice and clean, is just less 'Clive' (bruised and battered with a band aid or two). ;-) The lines on these are a bit of a 'problem', they show camera alignment and optical artifacts immediately and it's generally 'busy'. And it adds to the glare indeed. I would suggest a regular grey ESD mat. They are not really expensive and are not shiny.

Nice:) Busy:)

Rav

I think I like the naked bench look more. Less glare.

Eddy Gurge

If you were to short out the capacitor and power it with 12V, would you not drop ~1.4V across the bridge rectifier still? Not sure what effect if any that would have on the operation - I'm guessing it would still work but the timings may be slightly different?

Paul Smith

please don't use zoom that much! I don't mind putting the video on full screen, but when the object goes out from screen or gets blurred I just get annoyed

Balázs Keresztury

Clive, I actually was given a bigclive.com laser cut board that a friend made for you a few months ago and I have not sent it on yet (rather embarrassingly), shall I send it on?

The Backoffice (Andrew Armstrong)

Oooooo, love that new backdrop. The pink's a bit too saturated to look good if you're trying to see small stuff against (the white lines on the gray are almost too much as well) and the yellow/purple mix hurts my eyes a bit. But the gray is goldilocks. The circular marks cause a bit of moire or something similar when you zoom though. You could always scuff up the shiny bits with very worn fine sandpaper, but really better diffusers for the lights are probably going to be the better fix.

Mark Dennehy