Well, since Kompressor has taken his site down, I have mirrored it here.
I also just finished upgrading the hardware in my MAME cabinet. The Slackware 10.2 discs are coming down via BitTorrent right now, then I’ll get to work on redoing the software. I’ll also try and get some good photos of it once it is done, too.
Crap. The sound card in my MAME cabinet just died.
I’ve got plan to replace the innards of the machine, but I was hoping things would hold out through tonight.
Ah well, no MAME cab for a few days…
Okay, so from last night around the time I got home until today just after I got home, I captured 2762 individual frames in an attempt to make a stop motion video of last night’s snow storm. One frame was captured every ~30 seconds, then those were all squished into a video running at 30 frames per second, making each second of cover 15 minutes.
The video is available here if you would like to see it:
I apologize about the screen in the window, but it is non-trivial to remove it. Also, it appears the window is much dirtier than I thought, but I was having a hard time telling that last night, so I just ended up shooting through the dirty window. Ah well, at least it’s kinda nifty.
I’m sure there will be plenty of other snow storms this year. Next time I really want to have a camera that can be controlled by Apple’s Image Capture and have each photo taken automatically downloaded to the local machine. Now that could make for some nifty time lapse video.
Ahh, phase one of the project to ‘properly’ connect an iPod to a 2006 Honda Civic is done. In short, I built this box and the cable running to the iPod. The box contains a filter to (hopefully) cut down on car engine noise and the break-out to provide the audio signal as two RCA connectors.
Inside of the shell of the iPod connector itself is a 1MΩ resistor which signals to the iPod that it has a car adapter connected so it should pause the iPod when power is disconnected, as this would typically happen when the car is shut off.
For now I’ll use this bundle of hardware to connect the iPod to the new car. It’ll power/charge the iPod, pause it when things are disconnected, and provide audio into the ‘aux in’ connector.
The next phase of the project is to wire the box (or perhaps just the iPod cable) into the car itself, either via factory-compatible connectors or straight hard wiring. My goal is to have the iPod powered from a keyed, filtered accessory line and the line-out to run straight into wherever the aux in connects to. I also want the iPod nicely mounted in a good location, within arm’s reach, and easy to navigate while driving. That kind of fitting (along with the factory-type connectors) I can’t do until I have the vehicle.
But, yeah. At least this much is done.
Well, the damn thing works. I got the connector wired properly, closed it up, and tested it with a 12v supply from the car. The iPod charges, and if it is playing and the power is disconnected, the iPod pauses. Tomorrow I’ll go get the stuffs to enclose the power filter and end-of-iPod-cable junction in a box. I’ll also stick a pair of RCA jacks on the outside of the box so that I can get audio out of it all.
I should have left the DIN5 on the far end of the cable for the time being so that it could have simply been plugged into the project box, but that’s okay.
The end result of this should be a temporary single cable iPod hookup which I can use until I get the car’s wiring figured out, connectors ordered, etc.
Earlier while working on this I became pretty frustrated with myself because after screwing up the first connector I made a second. Everything was going absolutely great until I realized that I’d wired it backwards, mixing up pins 1 and 30. And it was going so well, too. Ah well, at least it’s set for the time being. I’ve already got the RCA panel connectors, so I just need a project box. That shouldn’t be too hard to come across, I hope.
Now, I just wish I was tired. I thought the coffee I grabbed on the way home from
UPDATE: I forgot to mention what a pain it is to solder inside of these connectors. They are 0.6mm pins spaced 0.6mm apart. To make it a bit easier I took to removing unneeded pins from the last connector used, the one that was properly done.
An easier way to think of it is in regards to mechanical pencil lead. Most mechanical pencils that people use are either 0.5mm or 0.7mm. Most rollerball pens that people use make a 0.7mm wide line. That should give you an idea of what I was working with. Soldering one (or sometimes two wires) to something that small is a bit interesting.
Guh! Two solder points away from being complete and I screwed this up. I guess I’ll be redoing it another day.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to solder .6mm connections? to wires, a resistor, and a few other components?
Uggh. I’m mad at myself for this.
In case anyone is interested, I’ve got some photos here (photo gallery retired) of the initial work I’ve done in an attempt to fit my iPod into my new car:
http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/v/stuffivemade/ipodin2006civic/
Odd. It seems that my article isn’t going to be in Volume: 04 of Make: either. I’ve been paid the full rate for an accepted article, so I’m wondering when it’ll actually get published?
Ah well. Maybe Make:’s getting better and better articles and the iSight Tripod Adapters just don’t fit the bill any more.
Nothing like an evening of laying pipe to make one feel like they’ve accomplished something. ;)
Unfortunately it’s not done. Well, not quite…
See, for some reason around 9pm I decided to start poking at running the water line in the wall. Well, a little over two hours later and it’s almost done. I’ve got the full length of water line hooked up, into the wall, into the little box, and everything is pressurized. All leaks are corrected, and I’m letting it go until tomorrow before I mount things for good. This means cutting the pipe to length, fastening the box together (read: gluing / epoxying, since I modified it all to be like a sort-of old work box), doing a final routing on the pipe, and cleaning up. I also need to pick up some of the little metal straps used for nailing such pipe to the joists.
I must say, I think it’ll be pretty nice… Instead of a wee stub of pipe poking up through the tile or out of the wall and hooking on to things, there will be a plastic box mounted in the wall about twelve inches above the floor recessed into the wall behind where the fridge goes with a valve inside of it. Then a flexible jumper hose (I got a six foot stainless steel braided one which won’t get pinched) connects from there to the fridge. Yes, it’s more joints and one more valve, but it really seems like the most elegant solution.
The only thing that I’ve got left to figure out is how to stick the trim ring for the box on to the box itself. I’m thinking I’ll use hot melt glue, because it should hold solidly, shouldn’t soften, works well on plastic, and can (generally) be removed should the need arise. All that is needed to hold the box is the trim ring, because it’ll fall into the wall if pushed, so the ring will hold it nicely. I’m just afraid of leaks so I’m not putting it together yet… Oh, the reason I had to mount it this way as opposed to something easier, is all the ice maker supply boxes seem designed for new construction. I ended up with this one here, the I2K from Oatey and I had to modify it a good bit so that it fit my needs. It should work out well, though.
But anyway, click the picture above and you can see some of the images I grabbed while installing the water line.
Goodnight. :)
Sweating a brass shut-off valve to copper pipe is no fun at all. I can’t get the solder to wick down into the joint (I’ve had a leak on both tries) so I just tried reflowing it. Hopefully that’ll work.
