nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Lighting Continues…

January 24, 2006


GE BCA, 115V, 250W, 4800K

Well, as was suggested to me, I ended up going to Camera Mart at lunch and buying three of the 250W daylight GE Photofloods, product BCA. My only concern is that they are only listed as having a 3-hour life, but I’m hoping that means 3 hours at the particular temperature. As long as they drift uniformly, that should be fine with me. Price was US$3.99 each, so I figure it’s worth a try. May as well use the proper item.

UPDATE: It seems that one can also get compact fluorescent bulbs with a CRI of 93, and a temp of 5500K. They are probably going to be around US$15/each, so maybe I’ll order some of these for working with in a few weeks. For now I’ll play with these photofloods and hope I don’t burn any out. :)

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Good Morning…

January 23, 2006

Well, this is just what I wanted to see when I read my webserver’s log files this morning.

rez.nuxx.net kernel log messages:
> ad10: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (2 retries left) LBA=208317255
> ad10: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=208317255
> ad10: FAILURE - READ_DMA timed out
> GEOM_MIRROR: Request failed (error=5). stripe/stripe1[READ(offset=213316869632,length=4096)]
> GEOM_MIRROR: Device mirror1: provider stripe/stripe1 disconnected.

And the output from a script I wrote to check the RAID status daily:

GEOM mirror status:
Name Status Components
mirror/mirror0 COMPLETE ad0
ad2
mirror/mirror1 DEGRADED stripe/stripe0

GEOM stripe status:
Name Status Components
stripe/stripe0 UP ad4
ad6
stripe/stripe1 UP ad8
ad10

< sigh > At least I’ve got some spare disks… And I just happened to run a backup last night.

(Just FYI, there’s no data loss. One of the stripes which makes up half of the 0+1 array I use for data has gone offline due to a disk faililng.)

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Photo Lighting

January 22, 2006

Here is the first test image from my hackjob photo lighting rig. It has been white balanced, the saturation turned up to +2, and cropped somewhat. Best I can tell, (thanks to Photoshop’s Camera Raw plugin and clicking on a grey card) the lights are putting out ~2850 light, which I’m able to compensate for, even though it’s really, really low. Also, I can’t help but think I’m blowing out the side of the bottle with the way the lights are setup right now. I think they need to be moved or I need to get a soft box or something.

suggested dollar store clothes hampers, so I may try them… I might also take the bulbs back and see if I can find some hotter ones. The light off of these is just too warm by default. If you look at this uncorrected photo of my grey card you can see just how yellow the lighting is. It’s correctable, but it seems to me that with such a drastic correction, some color range is lost. I… think that too much correction for too warm of colors decreases the range available for reds and yellows? (Must read up on this some more…)

Anyway, if you are curious, this is how I have it set up for now, although I have tried moving the lamps around to the sides of the bench, and changing the angle at which the backdrop hangs. Most importantly, I think I first need to get decent temperature bulbs, then some sort of soft box, either for the lamps or to put the object being photographed in. We’ll see…

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Honda Music Link

January 22, 2006

So I’m sitting here with a disassembled Honda Music Link interface box (P/N 08A28-1H1-1000-01) on the workbench. It appears that the PCB inside is double layer, so I don’t think I’ll have too much of a problem making a schematic from it.

Now I just need to find some good software for making schematics… I used to poke around with Eagle, but I haven’t used that in quite a while.

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Custom iPod Adapter for 2006 Honda Civic EX

January 21, 2006


Looks and works good, even with a white iPod…
(Click for more…)

Well the white iPod stands out a bit in the all grey and black center console, that doesn’t stop it from working.

Yes, it’s done. Completely done.

That is, the iPod adapter I’ve been working on for a good part of the last week and a half or so has finally been completed. Designed as a replacement for the Honda Music Link which gave me so much trouble (photos here (photo gallery retired)) it does exactly what I want and works exactly as designed. It firmly holds the iPod in place, plays audio through the factory Aux In, is within arm’s reach of the driver, and keeps the display in sight at all times.

As was proven with the iPod setup in my previous vehicle, such a setup works very well. I had originally intended to make such an adapter right after I originally accepted delivery of my 2006 Honda Civic EX (photo gallery retired), I was convinced to wait for a factory adapter, the Honda Music Link, by the promises made in this press release. Most people who read this journal know how that ended up going, although I guess the events surrounding it made it much easier for me to make the adapter. With one person providing me some nice technical detail about the pinout in 2006 Civics, people to bounce ideas off, and just with it regularly being on my mind, things seemed to work out pretty good.

That all said, here’s a few notable photos from both last night and today’s work:

· The base of the iPod holder bolted into the trim piece from the center console.
· The underside of the PCB, just before I closed up the box.
· All the parts in the interface box, just before I screwed it closed.
· Goop applied to the interface box and padding foam.
· Clamping down the interface box to the workbench to help the adhesive on the foam set.
· The finished kit, ready to be fit into the console and dash of the vehicle.
· The interface box strapped to a pipe inside the console.
· The holder and stand match the vehicle’s interior quite nicely.
· Larger view of the photo above, showing how the iPod fits amongst other parts in the console.

Of course, all the photos from this project are available here: iPod in 2006 Honda Civic (EX w/Navigation) » Second Version (Built-In) (photo gallery retired)

The only thing left to do is get my current white 40GB iPod Photo replaced under AppleCare (it has the problem detailed in these two H.264 videos: 1 – 2) and purchase a 30GB 5th Generation iPod Color in black. Then everything will match nicely… Oh, I’ll be selling the iPod, so you’ll likely see an ad here for it, if someone doesn’t pick it up first.

Now, to clean up my workbench and the table near by. Well, maybe I’ll do that tomorrow… Instead I’ll write another LJ post. Or something.

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It fits!

January 20, 2006

Yay! The physical iPod mount fits with no issues thus far! Now I just need to finish up the wiring… Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. We’ll see… Regardless, I’m really happy thus far. Pictures coming soon.

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NAIAS 2006

January 20, 2006


Honda Sports Car Concept
(Click for more…)

As mentioned previously, on Wednesday , his younger brother, his brother’s friend, and ‘s sister Andrea and I headed down to the 2006 North American International Auto Show. It wasn’t anything too special, just the standard auto show.

Not wanting to be carrying such a large camera around the show, I took along my older digital camera (Nikon Coolpix 5400) instead. Now I see why I replaced this camera… It’s a comfortable size, but it’s slow to focus, doesn’t focus that well in low light, and is just rather blah. The 20D (photo gallery retired) was definitely worth picking up.

So, yeah. Either click the photo up above or at the link below if you want to look through the photos:

2006 North American International Auto Show (photo gallery retired)

By the way, that vehicle pictured above? I really rather like how it looks… Also, I’m not a huge fan of sports cars, but I also think the Ford GT is rather nice. Oh, and Allstate‘s area where they had bumper cars was amusing.

And this may have been fairly wrong of me, but I also grabbed a picture of a rather powerful femullet.

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Tonight iPod in Honda Civic Work

January 19, 2006


Click for more…

Yes, I know that’s not the most impressive photo, but that’s the completion of my work tonight. I ended up making a new and much better PCB with which to tie everything together, mounted the filter and resistor, installed the second grommet in the case, soldered on the previously made Aux In cable, added the power cable, hacked in a fuse for the power cable, and called it a night.

So, yeah. Now the only things left to do are tear into the dash again, finally assemble and bolt in the iPod holder, run the iPod dock cable through the base of the stuff pocket in the console (whoops, need to purchase another 7/16OD x 1/4ID grommet), add the ends to the power cable, plug both the power and aux in cables in, strap the project box to a support in the console, and close it all up. Then, provided things go the way I want, it should just work.

After that I’ll start looking into changing the firmware on the head unit to read IPOD instead of AUX, and I’ll probably start seriously looking more into the Honda Music Link Device. I’ve got a growing desire to document as much about it as I can. Pinouts, high res board photos, and if the board doesn’t have too many layers, I may even try to work up a schematic. Or maybe even read out the ROM. We’ll see…

UPDATE: Oh, I forgot to add this photo of the bottle of acid, namely ferric cloride in water. I had it sitting in a pyrex measuring cup for two days because I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It can’t come in contact with metal at all, so I was having a hard time finding a container for it. While I was at GFS unsuccessfully looking through their cleaning products for such a contain, it came to me that I should just use a 1L wide-mouth Aquafina bottle to hold it. So I did. It’s working out nicely. Now I can save the solution to use a few months from now.

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NAIAS

January 18, 2006

Well, tonight I went to the North American International Auto Show with , his brother, his brother’s friend, and our friend Andrea (‘s younger sister).

While the show was typically so-so, there are a few points to mention:

1) My Nikon Coolpix 5400 doesn’t compare to the Canon 20D. At all. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with it. I think the CP5400 will do nicely relegated to the status of pocket camera when I’m out and about in the woods or some place where I don’t want to be seen with expensive camera kit, but it won’t get much normal use.

2) When I was poking around the Honda exhibit just before we departed, the sales guy I purchased my vehicle from came over. It seems that the Honda booth is (generally?) staffed by local sales people, and tonight was one of his nights. He asked about the vehicle, so I explained that it was going well and that I like it quite a bit.

I also explained a bit about the Honda Music Link iPod Adapter to him and handed him a copy of my review. I stressed that I am happy with the vehicle and that I have no issue with him nor the dealership and I am taking it up with Honda corporate, but I wanted him to be aware of the issues experienced with it. He took the review and, I can only assume, will give it a read. We’ll see where that goes…

I am cleaning up the photos for upload now, but they aren’t that great. I’ll probably post one tomorrow, if I get around to it.

Now, I think I’m going to relax a bit before bed.

UPDATE: Oh, I forgot to mention that either I had made up the image I (still) swear I saw of a Honda Element with iPod logos all over it, or it wasn’t at the NAIAS. When visiting both Honda exhibits, I saw no mention of the Music Link iPod Adapter or anything about connecting a Honda vehicle to an iPod. Perhaps my suspicions about Honda’s just-wanting-it-ready-for-NAIAS were unfounded… Ah well, at least I was able to inform someone there of the issue. Hopefully he’ll actually read the review.

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