Was given a Designjet 600. It should work, but have not tried it yet. Found the driver for it, got cables (too short) and will try to set it up this week. I have really wanted one of these for a while but have been hoping to get a free one.
We were given a Magellan Sportrak gps by my stepfather. He had a hard time making it useful for himself, mainly because of the menu system and the innate lack of functionality of the device for your average guy. It is about 3 or 4 years old and noticably dated. No SD card and only about 4 meg of memory onboard to upload maps to. He bought a new gps that should be easier to use and enjoy, and gave me his old one.
Of course I was very excited about this, I had been wanting one for quite a while but really had been put off by the cost to get something that was basically locked up by the companies making them. It sure seemed like they were preying on their customers by reducing the functionality of the devices in order to offer basically the same unit with the extra features for extra money, features that I thought should be in the basic units and for all practical purposes cost the makers little or nothing more, yet were cunningly held back for the sole purpose of squeezing more coin from their "Marks". When the features or functionality did reasonably cost more they appeared to gouging their customers where they could. The situation seems to have changed a bit. I think it is the competition that is out there now.
You are probably thinking, "if you think is sucks so much, you don't have to use one"
EXACTLY, and so I didn't for quite a while! Until I go a free one! I will point out that where there used to be just a couple big names, there are many now. Big names that are still big, but probably would have locked out much of the competition if they had not been so blatant with their contempt for their customers.
One example is that the software that they charge another $100 for is copy protected by not allowing you to run the program without having the data cd in the drive, and by licensing that does not allow you to backup the cds (as well as actually not allowing you to copy it). (also you have to buy the cable to connect your gps to your computer separately for $15 to $30 more) (Or make one like this guy)
Tough luck if you want to have the software on you laptop and it has a external cd rom drive that you don't want to lug around.
Anyway enough of that for now.
I decided that I would never buy Magellan software or products until they shaped up with this lousy attitude. Fortunately there is a bunch of competition eating into their butts. Also I can go to competing software products, which brings us to:
Freeware? There is freeware that will work with the Magellan but the two I have seen look like they are limited teasers for their for purchase only versions.
I have not tried them yet.
EasyGPS is touted as for geocachers etc, it is the freeware version for ExpertGPS http://www.easygps.com/resources.asp
GPS Utility from the UK, freeware with $55 registration fee to make the shareware version that gives much more functionality and usefulness. http://www.gpsu.co.uk/
FOLLOWUP Tried EasyGPS and it locks up on my computer. GPS Utility, will download the waypoints, and tracks. I was able to view the tracks and waypoints but didn't go much further. It is supposed to be able to import scanned images of maps, and scale them. That sounds neat but I didn't have a whole lot of time with it.
I got a AT&T BIS-34D. It was a in a whole pile of stuff I bought from a guy I see at TSs all the time. He was having his own TS to clear out space and gave me a great deal on the afore mentioned pile of stuff, he even gave me 2 AO spencer he-ne lasers (Model 3100) that he was going to bring to the dump because he was worried someone might hurt themselves with them. They can be dangerous because of the high voltage circuit and not just from the laser light.
As a side note the laser tubes probably wont work because of the age and construction according to this site (search for 3100). Interestingly the output is probably in the 2-2.5mw range which is fairly low by todays standards compared to LED lasers. They are more a novelty at this point.
I basically bought everything I was interested in a huge heap for a "get it out of my basement" price.
Anyway I got the phone because it had dozens of leds on it and S and N and I could take it apart and maybe make a blinky project or a led light sweeper out of the leds. I did notice that it had a LCD display but having taken a few devices with LCD displays apart, I didn't expect it to have a display I could use. This one proved me wrong.
I think you can probably find this display for pretty cheap, still I find it very cool to be able to take "junk" and find stuff that I can make things out of. The real fun is in making new things out of "junk".
I went back to figure out how I had made the LCD display work in May and I really had done a poor job, and had to re figure it out so I am going to try to make a better go of it this time.
Why was I happy to find this LCD? First, the Hitatchi HD44780 driver standard for LCD displays is well known, documented and works well with microcontrollers. It takes 4 output pins if you can spare them. I use picbasic pro and it uses a command called LCDOUT that will send text you put in "" to the lcd.
Look under LDCOUT for the description in melab's manual for more detail, or the code at the end of this post:
These are the settings in IC Prog I used. IC Prog is the application that I use to program the PIC, the settings are important for the oscillator and fuses. I am using IntRC I/O which is the setting to use to specify the internal oscillator.
This is a video of the lcd running. Not my best work but gets some of what I was trying to document across.
The picbasic pro code I am using is basically the lcdout demo code.
'***************************************************************************** '* MICROCODE STUDIO TIPS * '* * '* (1) : To get context sensitive help, move your cursor to a PICBasic * '* : command and then press F1. * '* (2) : Program assumes the PIC is running at 4MHz. To change the default * '* : setting (for example, to 20MHz) simply add DEFINE OSC 20 at the * '* : top of your program. * '* * '* This sample program is supplied courtesy of microEngineering Labs Inc * '*****************************************************************************
' PicBasic program to demonstrate operation of an LCD in 4-bit mode ' ' LCD should be connected as follows: ' LCD PIC ' DB4 PortA.0 ' DB5 PortA.1 ' DB6 PortA.2 ' DB7 PortA.3 ' RS PortA.4 (add 4.7K pullup resistor to 5 volts) ' E PortB.3 ' RW Ground ' Vdd 5 volts ' Vss Ground ' Vo 20K potentiometer (or ground) ' DB0-3 No connect
Pause 500 ' Wait for LCD to startup
loop: Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "Greeting" ' Display Hello lcdout $fe,$c0,"s Human" 'Display second half of 1x16 line Pause 1500 ' Wait 1.5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "We Come in Peace" lcdout $fe,$c0,"in Peace" Pause 1500 ' Wait 1.5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "*" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "**" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "***" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "****" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "******" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "*******" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "********" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "********" lcdout $fe,$c0,"*" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "********" lcdout $fe,$c0,"**" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS POWERING" lcdout $fe,$c0,"POWERING" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "*" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS " lcdout $fe,$c0,"FAILURE" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "*" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WEAPONS" lcdout $fe,$c0,"FAILURE" Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "*" Pause 1500 ' Wait .5 second Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "UH OH" Pause 1500 ' Wait 1.5 second
Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear LCD screen ' "1234567890123456" show 16 digits of display Lcdout "WE COME" lcdout $fe,$c0,"IN PEACE" Pause 2500 ' Wait 2.5 second
Got this book, "Making Things Talk" by By Tom Igoe. Split the cost with Pete, he had it first and when I got it I asked him if it was any good. He said "yeah" in a kinda noncommittal way and would not elaborate. I think maybee he didn't read it or the monkey on the cover intimidated him. I really don't know. Anyway it was recommended on the sparkfun.com site and I like the site and the tutorials have been good and I respect the guys that do the site so if they recommended this I thought that meant something. I just started reading it and it is interesting so far. It is about interfacing electronic stuff (hardware objects) to this and that. Like controlling stuff with your computer and wireless networks, but cool. I will know more after I get into it. What I really want to do is make stuff that communicates with my computer and controls things.
Made a "Cylon Eye" Led Sweep circuit last night. It is basically the one from http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/CylonOLantern.
Did a bunch of point to point soldering, it was fun for the novelty of it. I won't bother describing it in detail because it is very well explained by the the evilmadscientist link and the 555 and 4017 IC data sheets.
Completed an idea that I had for a while which revolved around using a cd rom tray that saved from a dead cd-rom. The tray has a drive motor installed on the tray that makes the tray move out and in, and a switch that signalled the processor when the tray was full open or full closed. Anyway I replace the switch with a DPDT switch (with the skillful use of a tacking nail and hot melt glue) to cycle the drawer back and forth as long as power was applied. I added wheels (lego technics are pretty handly) and a bent wire to make a ratcheting pawl to make the wheels only turn in one direction.
This is the battery powered model.
After making sure it worked, I replaced the battery power with solar. The solar cells kinda overpower the rover but it worked.
This is from last week. I finally got things together to take some aerial movies, the quality is not up to what I want but the setup works. Certainly there are alot of videos out there that are pretty stunning, and many not, but it is all for fun anyway.
I bought this lens almost 2 years ago, and never got around to doing anything with it until now. This weekend I just had to make a stand for it. I had Memorial Day off and the Tuesday after and the weather was going to be sunny all week. Perfect for it something solar powered.
I did the quick and dirty job, I just needed to complete it in day. Still I would try to make it fairly decent and use it as an opportunity to test some ideas. One area I tried to do well was to make the frame for the lens strong as any future improvements would benefit.
A couple of observations I had during construction. The lens is a sheet of acrylic and sags a little in the middle. Maybe 1/2" or so. Pretty annoying but it still works, I don't know if the performance is degraded significantly. Second the sheet itself appears to be frosty, it doesn't look clear, I don't know how these lenses are rated and since this lens was surplus who knows if it is really ideal for what I plan on using it for. In the future I will try to measure it's efficiency and other things like max temperature etc. Maybe I can estimate it's efficiency by heating water and measuring the temp increase vs. mass vs time. You get the point.
One thing that worked out pretty nice the 1x1 cedar rail pieces I used for the frame. They had been kicking around for a while and I finally found a decent use for them. They were very straight and light, and made what appears to be a very nice light but substantial frame for the lens.
Once I got it together I had to go burn something. The first item was a stick that blackened nicely and smoked and after a little while started to burn. It was bone dry and punky. After having fun with that I move on to melting zinc pennies. That was pretty satisfying for a few cents. Next I tried boiling water. It did boil but was not a gratifying boil.
I decided to call it a day and get some other stuff done.
Next I want to add some cranks and mechanisms to adjust the rotation and angle of the lens. From there I think adding stepper motor control would be cool. If it tracked the sun it would be much more useful.
Sorry for the poor video quality, but the stick does burn, a little.
Again, sorry for the poor video quality, and poor cinematography, but keep in mind, the Penny LOOSES. Yeah it gets it good.
Replaced the tuning peg on M's Aunt's guitar. I fixed it as a favor. She had been using a vice grip to tune it and didn't seem to want to spend the money on a new tuning peg set so I offered to fix it for her, I even asked her if she minded if it didn't match, and it would be wood, etc. She said she didn't mind so there it is in all it's "I not like the other pegs glory". I hand made the peg using some scrap finger board wood. It looks pretty decent up close.
Two successes, got the lock picked on the Cool Pool cabinet. Also got brave enough to de-solder the power mini connector off my ipod mother board, and solder it onto the donor board. The donor was a 60gb that landed in the sea, and when a friend of mine took it apart to try to fix it, the power connector came loose, apparently corroded by the seawater and direct connection to the battery. That connector got lost. After some tight spots I managed to solder it onto the donor board.
I went ahead and bough a broken Cool Pool Arcade Machine. It has a failure during boot and has a PROM failure U4. After looking at the solvalou site link that shows pics of the PROMs I think U4 is the actual PROM that is failing. Knowing almost nothing about arcade machines doesn't bother me in fact that is part of the reason for getting into this. It will be a nice expedition. Other neat things about it are the coin mechanism will be nice to fool with and it also has a track ball. It is a little grindy but I think I can rebuild it. Don't know but will take a look.
There are two panels on the front that are locked open, one panel in the back locked. I have been meaning to try to learn lockpicking and it would be a nice challenge to open these. The ultimate would be to make keys for them. That would just be gratifying.
Did a google search on topic, but not much useful came up. I think google is just not what it used to be. From what I have read the way google comes up with "good" searches is probably part of the problem. It supposedly categorized by the popularity of the clicked links people use and thus doesn't come up with the technical links I need. It comes up with the mass popular links. This is just what I imagine but the fact remains, the searches just miss alot of good stuff.
To continue with the aside, I have started looking for different search engines. Irony, didn't find any good links to other search engines on google.
Oh Yeah, there is a stigma to the "3 wheel bicycle" which is really a misnomer. It is correctly called an Adult Tricycle. That sounds cool, doesn't it?
Okay, maybee not, but this is interesting. Not just one but numerous variations. Electric and motorized but Tricycles none the less.
This is a jeep I got years ago. It is a mongrel and a poorly done one at that.
Anyway it used to run before the head gasket blew. (I think the guy I bought it from did a "fix in a can" to unload it on me. And the locking hub mechanism flew off. Strangely several of the bolts appear to have been sheared but put back in with some sort of glue.
Not the last the front right wheel mounting bolts were loose when I tried to take off the wheel. That is the studs were loose on their mounts.
I finally decided to deal with it for various reasons and spent an hour grinding the 3 nuts off the bolts, and finally got the wheel off. Next I will get the hub off to see what I can do to repair it.
I think I am going to practice using a cutting torch on it and chop off all the poorly done junk on it like the monstrous plow hitch and the junky roll cage and the weird winch on the back. I really can't hurt much.
Doing some research on state of the art for making new things from bike parts. More to make a electric vehicle out of whatever I have lying around.
I got a good chuckle out of his wife calling the back part of the yard where he does his bike stuff "boyland". Not a real masculine name, but funny coming from a wife.
Got a cool looking mower this weekend. From it's speckled red shifting ball to is classy orange color and futuristic Battlestar Galactica styling it is one hip machine. The most appealing part, I got it cheap.
Next I got it home. It works amazingly well, probably better than any craftsman I have had, and that is even with it's 6 hp engine. Yeah, 6 HP! and me at 200lbs. It does only cut a 26" swath but it is pretty fast in the shorter grass in 6th speed. Yeah, it has 6 forward speeds and reverse! The slowest speed is a real creeper, but I could probably skid logs with it. I found out they did have a 40" snow blade accessory for it on the Ariens Parts Radar page.
I got it home and the spark plug was gunked and oiled like crazy, it would huff but not really catch. I was lucky that I had an exact replacement new plug on hand, and once it started, I mowed the whole lawn. It was actually pretty fun to drive, especially after pushing a broken self propelled toro over a 2 acre lawn. The self propelled part was broken, not the mowing part!
Unfortunatly the engine is blowing smoke, I don't know how long it will last but I plan on running it until it dies. And since it runs so good, design wise, I am thinking that it would actually be worth it to get a new motor. Some research turned up that the V60 motor it has is considered by some to be one the best engines that Tecumseh ever made, thus it is discontinued. Also it is old enough that parts are scarce. Maybee an electric conversion would be the way to go. Ahh, I can dream.
