Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.
 |
After a nice bike ride I couldn’t think of what to have for dinner, and this is what resulted: hash browns, fried up in butter, with onion, roasted garlic, rosemary, spicy chicken sausage, and sweet corn, topped with mild cheddar. I’m eating this with a glass of Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout, a very nice, malty, licorice-y stout that goes wonderfully with savory food.
Leave a Comment |
This week I received a PC Engines alix2d13 board and Netgate NET-CASE1C2REDU-ANT enclosure which will replace the venerable Trashwall. While Trashwall served its purpose for a while, I was getting tired of its noise (a slight but present hard disk whine) and power consumption and the need to manually set up utilization graphs and such.
After giving pfSense, a FreeBSD / pf-based firewall distribution which works nicely on embedded devices, a try I decided to move to it. I’ve now got pfSense v1.2.3 embedded (current stable release) installed on a 4GB SanDisk Ultra II compact flash card which the ALIX board boots to run the OS. Console output (when needed) is via serial port, but after the initial configuration, practically everything can be done via the web.
I’m running into a couple quirky problems with port forwards, but it’s otherwise doing a fine job of running my home network. DHCP with reservations, DNS, DynamicDNS (for DHCP clients to be resolvable), and NTP are all working as they should. Once I get the port forward issue sorted I’ll likely backup the config and give one of the pfSense v2.0 beta snapshots a go. If whatever beta snapshot happens to fail or doesn’t work out I can then just reimage the CF card back to v1.2.3 and reload the exported config. pfSense configs are simply XML files that can be backed up and restored at will, which is particularly convenient.
If you’d like to see more photos of my PC Engines alix2d13 setup, click here.
If you’d like to buy one, check out Netgate. The specific items I purchased for this are as follows, for a total of US$183.85:
Leave a Comment· ALIX.2D3+B System Board: (3/1/256/LX800) with battery [ALIX.2D3+Battery]: US$140
· LIX.2D3 3 LAN Indoor Enclosure Red with USB & ANT [case1c2redu-ant]: US$24
· AC/DC 15V 1.25A 18W Switching Adapter only [PS-15V-1.25A-18W]: US$9.95
· SMA Dust Cap / Rubber Antenna Hole Plug [SMA Dust Cap Plug]: US$0.14/ea (2x)
· Postage via FedEx: US$9.62
 |
When biking I tend to stay fairly dry, but there are the occasional times when I’ll end up a bit more wet or banged up than desired. Since a phone can be a lifesaver in such a situation I wanted to ruggadize my Nexus One a bit. Stopping by REI in Northville yesterday on my way to the bike shop I picked up a Pelican 1015 in solid black.
This nice case fits my Nexus One almost perfectly in two dimensions, but is a little deeper than needed. Thankfully with the addition of some extra foam in the lid and the cushioned rubber liner the phone now doesn’t move around, even when fairly strongly jostled. With the rainproofness and extra shock protection afforded by this cases it should now be perfect whenever I care to take it; biking, hiking, or whatever.
Leave a Comment |
This is my setup for the first charge of the Li-Poly battery used in the a Bicycle Video Recorder. I had the battery sitting in a partially covered ammo can, my multimeter and thermocouple monitoring the battery’s temperature, and the charger connected to a Kill-A-Watt to show current flow. While charging occurred I’d periodically check in on this to be sure the temp isn’t way up, current draw isn’t unexpectedly high, or the battery hadn’t exploded. Not pictured is the fire extinguisher which was located ten feet away from this setup towards the stairs.
As the green light on the charger shows, the battery is now charged, and everything sitting in place without a coating of extinguisher dust shows that nothing exploded. Now it’s time to grab an 8GB or 16GB SD card and do a runtime test. That sounds like a job for tomorrow, though.
Leave a Comment |
After getting the battery and power supply going the next step in the bicycle video recorder project was to fit everything in the case. The foam block seen above, carved out of a $2 remnant from The Foam Factory, is a big part of this, as it supports the recorder, battery, and power supply inside the bag. Everything is now assembled, and I’ve even gone for a quick test ride around the courtyard, as seen in this video.
Photos of today’s work begin with the blocks of foam here and end on page 6.
Leave a Comment |
Today I received the voltage regulators to be used in the aforementioned power supply for the Bicycle Video Recorder that I’m working on. They fit perfectly in the PCB that I’d made, and worked exactly as expected. As the battery had a slight charge when received from All-Battery.com I was able to use it to test out the assembled power supply — as seen above — and I’m getting a proper 5V and 12V out of it. This is good.
Tomorrow I’ll give the battery a full charge, as I want to do the first charge in a relatively safe area, just in case something bad happens. I’m also hoping to finish up the routing and assembly of cables that will hold it all together. After this is done the setup should be ready to record video, and I should then be able to take it for a test ride and get on with battery life tests.
Figuring out where to run all the wires (out which sides of what) and how to bundle it all up in the bag will be a bit of a challenge. I’ve got an assortment of foam to use for padding things, but I’m not yet sure how I’ll arrange it all. The SanDisk V-Mate needs open access on the top during use, and the battery has to remain easily removable / unpluggable after use.
Leave a Comment |
I’ve been working on a video camera system for my bike. The project is just getting started, but today I made the PCB for the power supply. You can see it above fit inside of its project box (a RadioShack 3x2x1″), or you can see the bottom side with solder and traces here.
It’s been a few years since I last etched a PCB, and as I’d run out of photoresist developer (a lye solution) I decided to make due with what I had readily available and laid out the board by hand, drawing it in pencil and marker and using nail polish as resist. I’m quite happy with how it came out. The many-year-expired tin plating chemicals that I had sitting around the basement even worked, giving it a nice tarnish-resistant silver finish.
This PCB and housing is designed to hold two eBay special step-down DC to DC switching regulators (buck converters) to get 5 VDC and 12 VDC from a 14.8 V 3000mAh LiPo battery pack. The 5V will power a SanDisk V-Mate solid state video recorder and the 12V a VioSport Action Cam 3. All of this together with an 8GB microSD card should allow for the continuous filming of eight to nine hours of mobile video while fitting in a small bento-style bicycle bag.
Now to wait for the rest of the parts to arrive so I can put it all together. The camera and recorder are here, I’m just waiting on the hand grenade battery and charger, bento bag, regulators, and powerpole connectors. Hopefully this won’t be too bad for a ~$200 project. The video quality should be decent as shown by this intentionally shaky test which features Danielle and Roxie (warning: contains dog nose) and single-charge recording length should be long enough to capture any bike ride that I might choose to record. More photos are available here, if you’re interested.
 |
With this shipment the very last SDrive NUXX is sold, and the project is complete. The bare PCB on top is the first / prototype device with retrofitted ZIF socket. I may use it for future development work, or I might just keep it around as a memento.
Now, time to find another project.
Leave a Comment |
After acquiring a hub (from a trashed wheel that I was given) and borrowing a dial indicator I decided to test out a prototype of the disc brake rotor truing stand that I’ve been wanting to make. Initially I’d planned on making a wood base to hold a hub and either a feeler gauge or dial indicator, but after trying this all out in my bench vise, I’m quite happy with this setup.
I’ve ordered this dial indicator from Grizzly Industrial, Inc., which is the same one seen in the picture above. Next I’ll probably make a plastic or wooden block to fit in the jaws of the vise and hold the bottom of the quick release, and then future truing activities will use a setup just like this.
Leave a Comment |
In other cheap Chinese device news here’s DealExtreme p/n 8422 with the case removed, powered by a benchtop supply, peered to my Nexus One, and playing audio. I’m hoping to redo the output circuitry on this and put it in another case to make a decent Bluetooth audio device for connecting to either a home or car stereo. It runs off of 3.7 VDC and has an on-PCB antenna, so it should be pretty easy to work with.
The PCB contains an I.S.S.C. IS1621N and FM24C08B EEPROM, which likely contains the IS1621N’s config. I’ve requested the data sheet for the chip from I.S.S.C., so hopefully I’ll have that soon and can work on it. I’d also like to change the identifier string in the EEPROM, but I probably won’t touch that until I know what the IS1621N expects to find in other parts of it. I also hope to find an example implementation, as it should be easy to build off of that to get line level output.
Here’s a few more pictures of the board:
23 Comments· Detail of the FM24C08B EEPROM which likely houses the config for the IS1621N on the BCK-08.
· Top / button side of the BCK-08 PCB.
· Bottom / component side of the BCK-08 PCB showing the I.S.S.C. IS1621N Bluetooth IC and FM24C08B EEPROM.
