This week on the channel +106K views this week

A weekend phone company keeps Level 2 Jeff connected

Jeff Geerling's ShadyTel visit explores a temporary mid-1990s telephone exchange at VCF Midwest.

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Level 2 Jeff Story of October 12, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.

They built a phone company for one weekend

Building an entire telephone exchange is quite a commitment for something that gets packed away after three days. That is ShadyTel's annual routine, and Jeff Geerling's visit remains the strongest daily draw on Level 2 Jeff, despite an upload-free week.

"They built a phone company for one weekend" has reached roughly 347,000 views. Jeff talks with the team about its equipment at VCF Midwest, following the technical trail through T1 lines, copper pairs, frequency references and the full telephone-company equipment stack. There is even a talking clock, a wonderfully fitting feature for a network with such a short working life.

The channel added about 106,000 views over the week, while subscribers stayed unchanged. Its current daily viewing is around half its usual pace. Nearby gadget channels ZTT Extras and cmcteq had much larger viewing weeks and added subscribers; Level 2 Jeff's library drew a little more weekly viewing than The Retro Collective or GadgetsBoy.

Two older investigations also keep the shelf active. "Now you can build your own Raspberry Pi factory" tests a CM5 Programming Jig supplied by Raspberry Pi, moving from custom operating-system images to flashing a Compute Module. Meanwhile, "How does a $35 monitor have more sensors than a $200 one?" takes the bargain air-quality monitor apart. The description gives away the answer: it doesn't have the promised sensor advantage, and the teardown distinguishes a decent particulate sensor from what is not a CO2 sensor.

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