6 hides of silver lambskin (Pearlized “Smoke”), 9 square feet each
1 hide of black patent leather, 6 square feet
1 hide of black suede goatskin, 8 square feet
1 scrap of black suede goatskin, 2 square feet
5 yards x 63 inches of Kevlar type K-159 style 779 (correctional facility stab-resistant)
2 square feet of Silver/Nylon conductive cloth

Stuff I already have:

Black Sun Silky anti-static nylon liner
3M Thinsulate 100 weight

Notions:

Common Sense “twist lock” fasteners, cloth-to-cloth
300 meters of Gutermann grey polyester upholstery thread
regular all-purpose black polyester thread for the lapel stitching
thin cheap thread for overlocking leather edges
zippers for lining

Pattern: Walker’s Western Wear of Arizona pattern M-9206 (Long Hunt Coat)

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

All of the leather and textiles have been ordered, leather should be here today.
(and later) It’s very good.  It really does look great, and a quick layout and placement with the pattern pieces suggests that I bought the right amount of everything, other than the patent black, and I wanted leftovers of that.  The goat skin is so soft as to resemble… well, it’s like a chamois, almost double sided.  The silver lamb skins are pretty soft, and a little thinner than I thought they would be.  Here’s a shot with the sleeve parts set on top, mind that the pattern pieces need to be trimmed, and two inches added to the “lengthen or shorten here” lines:

This is all 6 of the silver hides in a pile, so the pic is somewhat misleading.  Fashion Leathers International shipped immediately via Priority USPS, the service was excellent.  This is quality stuff, and the cost was not excessive, but something to be considered.  It’s worth it.  I spent an evening reading their FAQ about the sizing, it seems to have been correct and my estimates weren’t too off.  I’ll have to do the lapels in two parts as the goat skin is a little irregular, but it was expected.  The smaller piece of goat is for the inner collar (against the back of my neck), which will also be in two parts.  The back of the collar will be patent black, along with the pocket flaps.  I could add piping, some grey with reflectivity would really trick this out, but seems kinda cheeky (artificially important).
Okay, primary materials are collected or on the way.  Time to get cutting.

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

I’ve cut and modified the pattern.  Here’s a pic of the goat suede getting cut:

I’m convinced that a zip-out liner isn’t difficult, and that the first one should be something pretty light, probably just the anti-static liner and kevlar (no thinsulate).  The kevlar won’t really cut with scissors, this will involve a hardware store run to see the best pair of hardened steel electric sheet metal shears I can get.

The chemistry of the active ingredients is well known.  Caffeine, another one of those handy xanthine derivatives from the botanicals of South America, is the main base stimulant.  The organic botanical nature of the base ingredient creates a brazillion (pun intended) different mixtures of oils and bitter alkaloids which can be prepared in so many different ways, the culture of coffee preparation and consumption rivals many complex foodstuff lifecycles.  It’s not just about the caffeine, caffeine is available over the counter from discount pharmaceutical supply merchants at a fraction of the cost of coffee, and yet saturated overkill location coffee product franchises continue to post profits from the sale of their highly fashionable and pragmatically socialized boiled bean juice mixtures.

As usual, I’ve sought ways to amplify a good thing into a fantastic thing.  I believe I have succeeded.  Let’s take this consumable but otherwise slightly sub-miraculous bean brew and add another known complex chemistry family… alcohol.

Mixing stimulants and depressants?  Nothing new here.  This is a pretty mild form of dosing which I credit Shelton and Mavrides with terming “Crisis Crank”.  Not sure what, but something is going to happen.

This is my Saturday morning coffee.    I use a generous sized shot glass and proportion thusly:

• 1 part Cointreu (or Gran Marnier), French orange flavored liqueur
• 3-4 parts Bailey’s Irish Cream (I recommend the regular flavor, but the Mint Chocolate, Caramel, and other flavor variants are tasty)
• 2 parts Frangelico (Italian Hazelnut liqueur)
• 2 parts Kahlua (Mexico)
• fill remainder of adequate vessel with strong coffee

* I’m pretty sure that Antarctica still has to import coffee

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/02/facebook_carbon_data_analysed/

Thank you for NOT sending in videos of either.

However…

It’s getting old.  It’s at an age where things start to break with increasing frequency, and I’m just not sure if I want to deal with that, as I’m getting old too.  2001 was one of the last purely European design years for Volvo, I knew Ford was getting their hands into it soon.  I knew I didn’t want a gasoline-only powered car again, but I wasn’t sure if the world had gotten anything else to work yet.

There was a lot of talk about Chevrolet’s Volt.  I anticipated a glorified golf cart.  I was wrong, and the more I found out about it, the more I liked it.

It wasn’t hard for me to justify this.  As far as the environmental stuff goes, I’m cheaper than I am green.  I don’t mind if I help save the planet, but I don’t want to pay extra just so somebody else can waste what I save.  If it’s cheaper in the total life of the car, I’m all for it.  I’ll do another post concerning the costs and benefits, but to sum up those concerns: the math worked out.

My first real problem was, “Can I get into this car?”  I mean physically.  I’m 6 foot 4 1/2 inches tall, about 3 inches over the max designed for a Volt.  However it didn’t seem a problem.

The next problem was, “Will my wife like it?”  All testosterone-related automotive jokes aside, I needed acceptance from her.  We went for a test drive, and all doubts were eliminated.  Key features: real air-conditioning, heated leather seats (premium interior package), and a very good safety rating.  We refer to the electrically heated seat feature as “butt warmers”, we got used to them on the Volvo and we weren’t giving them up.  Michigan winters can sometimes be harsh, so this is important.

I qualified for financing, and a few attempts at dealer trades later we got one.  I can’t say enough about the dealership, Suburban Chevrolet Cadillac of Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Jim did a fantastic job for me.  I highly recommend him/them.

This is the Voltec powertrain.  The engine is to the left and center, the electric motor on the right.  Inside the planetary gear transmission is the generator.  The high voltage main transport battery drops out of the car from the bottom, and is T-shaped along the center of the car and under the rear passenger seats.  It has a good amount of 12 volt power, so auxiliary functions aren’t a problem.

It’s an electric car with an electronic dash.  The center console touchscreen adequately controls climate control, audio, and other information, and the controls sufficiently access what I must assume is CAN bus architecture of the wiring.  I personally think the graphic interface might be improved, but hey, it works.

I’ve had minimal difficulty in adjusting to the new features.  The wireless key just plain rocks, I can’t believe it took this long to get this technology into cars.  In my humble opinion, Chevrolet did it exactly right.  All the normal modern features on a GM car are there, cruise control, anti-lock brakes, traction control, anti-theft, intermittent wipers, lots of air bags, power windows (including express up on the driver’s side), wireless electronic tire pressure monitoring.

You keep the key fob in your pocket and turn the car on/off with a big blue button. I still reach for a metal key that isn’t there out of habit every time I get somewhere. The door unlocks with a thumb button, then just pull the latch, still keeping the key in your pocket.  It won’t work if the key is more than about a yard away.  There’s a backup camera when you shift into reverse, a slightly expensive option, but darn well worth it.  It sounds like an electric train that takes you between terminals at the airport, there’s kind of an electric capacitor whine, then just wheel-on-road and wind noise. The OnStar hand-free bluetooth is initiated by button on the steering wheel and controlled by voice command, I just upgraded my cellular telephone to one with bluetooth on it, and it works pretty well.  AM/FM/XM radio + CD (audio or MP3), USB, and 1/8″ jack is standard, the base speaker system isn’t great, but not shabby.  I mostly listen to the news, so I didn’t bother with the upgraded speaker option.   I’m also planning on installing a 120V inverter.  I just put a load of custom bumper stickers all over the back, and screwed on the license plate.

I’ve qualified for a program from the electric company (Detroit Edison Plug-In Electric Vehicle Program) that they will install and maintain a 240V charging station in my garage, and they can watch me use juice with a smart meter at about half the normal rate if I charge off-peak, which is a feature built into the car. I’m already saving about half off the price of gas, so the technology will pay off before the battery warranty.  I’m so cheap birds feed me worms.

The Volt won Motor Trend 2011 Car of the Year, European 2012 Car of the Year (first time an American car did that) and I can see why. It’s not better than sex, but it’s pretty good.

Dump the olives in a big bowl and pour off the water.  Open the anchovies and pour off the liquid. Optionally, chop the anchovies two or three times.  Grasp an olive in one hand, and an anchovy in the other, and shove the fish into the olives.  Put the olives back in the jar.

Put a big slanty triangular martini glass into the freezer.  Pour the cheapest possible white vermouth over ice, shake once, pour off most/all of the vermouth (to taste).  Pour in Hendricks, cap and shake hard (gin is evil, beat it up) for 30 seconds (hum Jeopardy!).  Strain into cold glass.  Add two or three olives on a toothpick.  Let melt slightly, when the temperature is correct for drinking, both the olive and anchovy oils with become translucent in droplets floating on top. Femtoscopic microcosms will be evolving in your hand, so hold carefully and sip slowly.  May cause hallucinations, convulsions, conniption fits, death, out of body experiences, kundalini enlightenment, elephantiasis of the genitals, and/or intoxication.

15EuLqSyw6StoV37T3LEk3dZcyXxUXMV6Q

I’ve become a fan of bitcoins.  They make sense to me.

I’ve read the paper by Satoshi Nakamoto.  I can follow most of it, although I don’t profess to understand every minute detail of every reference given.  It’s a very neat set of ideas wrapped into a software tool.  It’s self contained and the meshed data has a replication factor.  I like the Fred Saberhagen series on berzerker killer android self-replicating robots.  I also like the flying arms on Lexx, but Fred goes into more details about the internal programming.  Berzerker logic is circular, completely self contained, and includes AI routines that pit humans against each other when they can be exploited.  Bitcoin is a digital decentralized cryptocurrency designed to disenfranchise any central authority over the currency.

Effects:
* decentralized nature makes it difficult to exploit
* decentralized nature also means well-intentioned controls are also difficult to implement
* All transactions are public, but tracing persons (from transactions) is difficult
* public acceptance is lacking, system is underdeveloped
* requires technology, not suitable for use in impoverished areas
* impossible to totally kill (i.e. the monster already walks this earth)
* paperless
* design of system is inherently self-sustaining and balancing

Start here: http://www.weusecoins.com/

The Paper: http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The business primer: https://www.bitinstant.com/static/erik_btc_primer_business.pdf

I don’t watch much TV. As a computer developer, I watch plenty of video monitor without needing non-interactive push-feed broadcast television. I think that maybe some of us remember when TV was actually paid for by advertising and broadcast directly to you for FREE. Paying for cable or satellite, and then STILL having commercials is just a bit too much for me. It’s not that good, I can’t interact with it. The biggest problem I have with TV programming is the sheer amount of fabricated malarkey… politicians that spout baldfaced lies (“non-factual statements”), fantasy garbage under the premise of “science fiction”, and “News” programs on television about television characters on television programs. The half-life of my “Willing Suspension of Disbelief” is about 10 nanoseconds, which is slightly further than I can barf at the speed of light.  So most of my personal video to eyeball input is pre-selected recordings playback.  I get a couple hours of live “TEEVEE” a week in the pub, but that’s mostly it.

I’ve never paid for a “TV” with a tube. I did own a television receiver, I have a couple actually. One of them I won in a raffle when I was pretty young, it is not in use as it is a model well-known to spontaneously catch fire and burn down houses (however it does work very well and was used many years).  I’ve purchased plenty of computer monitors and a few tuner cards to watch TV on them.

The one in my living room was a Zenith console.

It was manufactured in December 1989 (parts in Springfield, Missouri and assembly in Juarez, Mexico), and was “Rebecca’s Grandmother’s TV”.  It received VHF 2-13, UHF 14 – 83, in North American Analog NTSC format.  It’s big and cranky and I suppose nobody wanted it when Grandma upgraded to an eye-tap.  It’s more than just a TV, it’s a piece of furniture.  We got kinda used to it being around the house, and although it was perfectly operational, 1950′s analog television no longer exists, and it was less than stellar at producing viewable images for today’s video media.

The solution was clear to me, here’s how it went:

Step 1: Render harmless, disassemble, and recycle.  Note that touching certain connections in an old tube TV like this can KILL YOU.  DEAD.  And not just ‘play dead’, REAL DEAD.  So I avoided those.  Scared ya, didn’t I?

Step 2: Add computer parts: Aluminum Lian Li case, 1500 watt UPS, Gigabyte motherboard, AMD Phenom II Quad Core 965, 8GB RAM, 2TB disk, 40 watt sound system, wireless keyboard & mouse, silent very long life fans, dual Blue Ray / DVD / CD RW optical drives, NEC white LED backlight flat panel monitor

That’s the computer sitting on top of the UPS, the audio amp on the bottom right, the wall-mount speakers cut into the sides of the cabinet, and the flat screen center holding bolt mounted with some steel strapping to the old cabinet steel mounting ears.  The edges of the flat screen fit in the bevel of the old plastic frame around the picture tube from the front.

I’m currently trying MythBuntu Linux, which is a derivative of Ubuntu with MythTV packaged inside.  This gives access to the Ubuntu updates, but it doesn’t actually work that well.  It’s a nice try, but none of the nice features seem to actually work.  I like open source software, I like learning about applications, but I don’t feel the need to be an expert just to get the silly thing to operate.  The Linux itself is good, but XFCE using BIG FONTS (readable from a few feet away) isn’t ideal.

A nice HTPC with a remote control wouldn’t need big XFCE fonts, because the software would work.  Obversely, a huge flat panel display mounted on the wall might be readable without needing bigger font size.  Both of these are possible, MythTV will likely improve (and I will learn more about it) in time, and 45″ white LED backlit large form factor monitors are coming onto the market.

Two wireless USB transceivers are taped to the inside top of the cabinet.  The wood does need some acoustic dampening material, I have some nice foam I’ll cut up when things get situated a little better.  I plan on mounting a couple more fans in the back panel, and maybe an AC outlet.  The fans are very highly rated but not too expensive, they run silently with a speed control that I’ll tape down inside somewhere.  The old VCR goes on top, not internally mounted.  I think it needs a back mount USB or a top hub as well, the tuner unit needs USB and seems to be better just sitting on top for the antenna connections, so I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it or get another tuner card.  The infrared sensors on the VCR and the USB tuner need to face the front.

et Voila…

Front panel access: UPS power switch and LEDs, computer power and reset, computer power and disk LEDs, sound amplifier power cutout switch, computer audio out and microphone in, USB 2.0 port, USB 3.0 port, eSATA port, BD / DVD / CD.  The other optical drive is still inside, I haven’t decided on moving it yet.  The monitor controls are accessible.  It needs a black curtain around the back of the monitor to mask the steel mounting straps, and that mounting could be firmed up some.

So what does it do?

* Blue Ray disks, DVDs, and Video CDs
* Audio CDs
* Store a few thousand movies/albums to local disk
* Internet / YouTube / Flash video
* limited and difficult to use: NetFlix

There is still plenty of work to do.  MythTV is less than perfect (I won’t comment much more on that), and at this time NetFlix doesn’t stream instantly to Linux, so I run a virtual machine of Windows and Firefox with Silverlight to watch NetFlix, and it works fairly, sometimes good.  Firefox with Flash plays Aljazeera news in English very well, and YouTube is just fine.  VLC plays almost any AVI or MPG file.

I’m hooking up an antenna.  If I point a medium-long range UHF directional antenna at around 75 degrees from North, I should get a set of digital television signals about 35 miles away in Southfield.  I got a pretty big DB8 antenna for about $80 thinking I could get it in my attic.  So far I’m not getting reasonable results, and I haven’t narrowed the problem down to aluminum house siding, bad wire, burnt or mismatched transformers, or stupidity.  The weather is getting hot fast, so this will likely wait.  I feel the need for some type of remedial television reception for news and emergency purposes, but I’m not going to die because I’m missing American Idol.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I sure do see a lot of “News” about it.

How much did this cost?  I used premium components with necessary economic considerations, but my intention was to build a fast machine that would last 20 – 30 years with minimal recurring costs.  The optical drive will take some wear, but there is a spare.  The hard disk will take years of continuous use, but can also be replaced easily.  There is room for more disks and thousands of more movies.  There’s no fluorescent backlight in the monitor to burn out.  The UPS batteries will need replacement, but I don’t mind that very much.  If you bought a really nice laptop, it would easily cost more than the sum of all parts cost me as seen here, and this TV will last a lot longer.  It costs NOTHING when turned off, no subscription fees of any kind.  Internet access costs money as does electricity, the old Zenith was rated at 95 watts per the label.  This computer and the monitor and audio can take 125 watts, and that goes up fairly dramatically when the 4 CPU cores actually get busy.  I haven’t stress tested the CPUs yet.

It burns most organic materials (wood, leather, cloth, paper) but isn’t really strong enough for cutting metal, although it is used for anodizing lettering on metal and glass.  Plastics will burn, but make some pretty nasty fumes.  To handle the exhaust, I configured an inline fan with a large carbon filter made for odor control:

That’s a 6″ Vortex inline centrifugal fan on top of an 8″x24″ Phat Filter, both acquired off the shelf from The Grow Show local hydroponic supply.  It pulls the smoke and fumes out of the enclosure pretty well.  Here is the inside of the work area:

The laser reflects off that mirror on the end of the Y-axis gantry, and is directed downward by the second center mirror on the X-axis flying jig.  Here are the electronics:

The large back PC board is the laser power supply, the 12V accessory power supply is in the center, and the stepper motor control board (second picture) is mounted to the front inside of the box.  I suppose the coolest part is the laser tube itself:

The tube goes across the back of the box, and is water cooled, see the jug and small hoses going to it on the left.  Here is the business end of the tube, and the first gold reflector mirror that sends the beam to the gantry mirror in the front of the box:

To drive it, I’m using a 12 volt powered VIA EPIA 1GHz Nehemiah machine that I once had in mind for use as a carputer.  That didn’t work out, but it has plenty of power to drive a copy of EMC2 with the dedicated RTOS Linux kernel.

So far, initial tests have shown that the filter and fan work pretty well, but don’t completely solve the problem, as when burning a test pattern into a CD case, there’s still a bit of smoke… however the fumes (burning styrene smell) are very greatly reduced.  I may have am looking to add some kind of additional HEPA filter.

On the lowest possible power (~5mA), it will cut a business card and melts the clear plastic of a CD case.  My original purpose is to be able to cut stencils for solder paste when making PC boards, and also to try ablating the paint off of copper clad PC boards for soldermasking.  I know it won’t cut copper, copper absorbs the infrared and won’t burn, but I should be able to burn the paint off the top of the copper then, right?  I will see.

Regarding the CD cover test: This was WAY stinky.  I won’t be doing this again.

The store front for this laser is LightObject.com.  It was shipped direct from China (Wo ai zhongguo ren!), and had minimal delays considering it was covered in green “EXAMINED BY U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION” tape.  Somebody did actually engineer it with a 3-axis stepper motor controller, so the interface to it is a standard LPT port.  Other laser engravers I’ve seen on the market don’t have this capability, or use some rather proprietary looking Windows based software and/or USB driver, so this was highly desirable and worth the extra cash.

The documentation is… completely absent. All attempts to discover any technical information about the stepper motor controller board online have been fruitless, it’s a variant of the “3 Axis CNC TB6560 Stepper Motor Driver Controller Board – Toshiba TB6560AHQ chip”, which seem to have endless Asian suppliers, but this board has surface mount components, an isolated relay for the laser enable, and a few DIP switches that I have no clue about.  I did get one CD from LightObject with a Mach3 configuration file (in raw non-whitespaced XML).  Studying the file and gleaning what I can, I’ve got the X and Y axis step and direction pins, and it moves pretty fast, so I think I might have them set right.   I can also turn the laser on and off, so those are the absolute essentials. Now that I know a little more about what’s inside the box, a cheaper laser could have the controller guts replaced with a known and documented controller, maybe even with a digital PWM for the laser power, but EMC2 might be able to do this as well. There’s a potentiometer on the front panel for the power, it adjusts from ignition at ~4mA to full blast at ~21mA. I’m assuming that this means the power supply is around 2000 volts.

It includes outputs for the X/Y axis minimum limit switches, so it can auto-home.  The stage has a spring loaded clamp for mounting flat stock about 3″ by 6″, and it looks like I may be able to replace it with a vacuum base or just a regular flat metal base if I want. The “kill” switch appears to be hooked up, but does absolutely nothing. The total area of the stage is 320mm x 235mm.

14-MAR-2011

Jo-Anne Fabrics and Crafts had sheets of mylar, and I’m finding that the cad.py Python script will convert a PNG file to GCode.  There’s some trouble with scaling, but I’ll figure it out.

15-MAR-2011

The #EMC IRC chat channel is being helpful in solving the problem with the laser beam switching on the Z-axis.  I like the idea of a laser tool “plunge rate”… at 10600 nanometer wavelength, should I set the Z-axis plunge rate to 186 thousand miles per second?

18-MAR-2011

I’m taking some advice from the #emc channel on freenode.net IRC.   Thank you Jymmmm, who upon viewing the pictures here was very quick to note that the Vortex fan and the Phat carbon filter aren’t capable of doing this job.  The centrifugal fan is good for normal air flow, but it doesn’t have the static pressure necessary to really pull the smoke out of the laser enclosure, and the smoke would goof up the optics if I don’t get that working right.   I’ve acquired a blower from Harbor Freight (also per advice… and the exact model recommended was on the shelf at a HF store 5 miles away) and I’m in the process of hooking up a 4″ duct to vent it outside.  This was very good advice, and right on the money.  I’ll keep the Vortex and Phat filter, but I’ll likely put a HEPA filter on top and use it in my study as a general purpose air cleaner.

I also acquired some 3-mil clear polyester (mylar) from Grainger Industrial Supply, along with assorted HVAC parts for the exhaust vent, and I’ve discovered that I love Grainger.  I can order online and pick it up at the Will Call window, with all the charm and professionalism of old full-service auto parts stores.

Here’s the expected artwork, this image is generated from the design files:

The colors represent the ENIG (immersion gold) plating, white soldermask paint drawn slightly translucent so you can see the copper traces underneath, and black silk screen paint.  The beauty of this design is that it’s on a single layer of copper with no jumpers.  This is possible as I’ve scrapped the non-working soft-start circuit.  It does include the power supply for the heat sink fan.  Here’s the board as designed in Eagle CAD:

Here is the schematic.  Not much has changed other than the STCS2A driver.  There’s plenty of ESD protection, and a couple of optional diodes in case I want to change some of the LEDs.

It will use 5 LedEngin Deep Reds, and 2 LedEngin Blues for each of 4 strings.  That’s 28 LEDs, 20 red, 8 blue.  This is different from the first grow light in that I’m going straight color, the first one used a white LED in each string to give the light a little more ‘human’ color.  The strings will run at (0.1 mV/0.068 Ohms) 1.47 amps each, or 6A total.  That’s top end for these LEDs, so I’m running right up to the red line.  The red LedEngin LZ1-00R205 LEDs drop 3.1V at 1.5A, the LZ1-00B205 blues drop 3.8V, so each string will need 23.1V.  Add 1 volt for the power diode, and 0.5 volt for the STCS2A overhead, and the circuit will should run optimally at 24.6V.  The circuit board contains test harness connectors for each of the strings so I can try out my new test wand.  The whole thing should use just under 150 watts.

The spare parts were $35, the LEDS were $240, the boards are $220, the heat sink will be a Scythe Big Shuriken at $40, the power supply will run $40, altogether about $600 in parts and machining.  The LEDs are over $8 each, but they are right on the frequencies for horticultural usage and there really isn’t a substitute.  Sure, there are other blue and red LEDs available, but the purpose isn’t just to make a purple lamp… this is to make one that plants will eat.  So far the reported results are very encouraging, but this lamp will add another 50% amperage to the LEDs, which should correspond to a 17 – 25% increase in luminosity.   I can dump the 0.068 ohm current sense resistors for slightly higher values if the lamp does in fact get too hot, or it doesn’t appear that the difference is worth the extra risk.

15-MAR-2011

I got heat sink for new lamp and it’s nearly perfect .  Slightly modifying the clips holds the board firmly to the PC board.

PCB Cart will ship the boards on the 21st, and all the parts are here, so just have to wait a week.

28-MAR-2011

The boards arrived on Tuesday the 22nd.  This is the real thing as manufactured per specs in the image above:

It took me until yesterday to figure out the problem with the Laser Engraver so I could make a soldermask stencil.

This shot came out cool (IMHO):

It works.  It’s only taking 75 watts at calculated voltage, but if I turn the power supply up all the way to 26.x volts, the holding voltage on the source pin goes up a little and it takes 120 watts.  The LEDs are dropping a little more voltage than I thought and the power supply needs to be a little higher.  Switching out one more blue for a red should make this circuit work well.  I’m burning it in a bit while I think up a housing.

Copyright (c) 2011 MDVE.NET. Some rights reserved.
This design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License .

This radio will be a small platform for home automation attempts.  The obvious first task for it will be to control the wall switch dimmer for the Bright Lights project, but this dimmer interface (Maxim Dallastat and D flip-flop) I’m going to use elsewhere as well.  I have so, so much work to do before I can begin to actually consider practical purposes.  I have to set up communications standards, program the mesh networking, generate encryption keys, program encryption algorithms, program boot protocols.

Here is the board

Part of this I’ve been working on for a while.  I had the Atmel circuit done pretty well using a 915 MHz transmitter, but decided I wanted to use this lower frequency as it’s not quite so clogged up yet ( I hear 433MHz is bad already), and there’s a lot of bandwidth that this can cover.  The antenna parts are tuned for 315 MHz central, but should cover a fairly good range if I want to stray a bit from there.  The chip antenna is pretty cute:

The boards are quad-paneled for prototyping at Silver Circuits, and they are making 4 of them, so I’ll get 16 when I saw them apart.  I have the parts for 2 to build, I combined an order from Digikey with the Linear Array LED light.

I have an Atmel Dragon programmer debugger, and a UC32 B0256 ETK1101 evaluation board.  The new AVR32 studio version 2.6 seems to be working better than v2.5 so far.  There is a lot of example code I can use, including the code from One-Net.Info, which has interested me before, but I’m using a Linux tool chain and the hardware so far described as useful to them is not very Linux friendly, in my humble opinion.

This is a lot.  This is going to take a long time.

16-JAN-2011

The boards arrived and they look pretty good.  This was some pretty small detail, and the manufacturing is a little tight, but I’ve melted up one board and it works.  These were pretty cheap to manufacture, but still… when I send off a design and it comes back and works, it’s a pretty good feeling.

The reflow toaster Oster was out in the garage, it’s January here in Michigan, and it’s fairly cold.  The thermocouple registered 300 something degrees C when I turned it on (which is clearly stupid), so since I couldn’t use the oven I tried cooking up a board in a new Presto electric skillet (acquired in order to reflow and repair the Grow Lamp).  It worked, but it didn’t seem to be quite as easy as the oven.  It got plenty hot, but there seemed to be a lot of unmelted solder paste around the parts, especially the MCU.  I tried to melt it on a little bit better with the Aoyue 2701a hot air pencil, but it didn’t seem to help and I scorched the board and a couple of parts.  So far everything seems to be working, and the oven is just fine again after bringing it inside and letting it warm up.  The skillet is nice for a little reworking if absolutely necessary, but I’m not completely crazy about it.  The heating in the skillet is rather uneven according to my infrared temperature gun, maybe if I put in a piece of copper cold plate it will help.

AVR32 Studio drives an Atmel Dragon programmer, that’s talking to the board just fine on the JTAG port and powered by the USB port.  It’s taking programming, it’s switching to the 50MHz oscillator, it’s running a small program with FreeRTOS and four tasks to toggle the four optoisolator outputs at 1Hz/50% each.  I’ve got example code for the M25P16 flash chip, and for the CC1101 radio.   It’s extremely encouraging.

Some bad news, the budget for this project has been completely slashed, along with everything else that isn’t food or rent.  Hopefully this is extremely temporary.  Fortunately, I’m at a point where I need much more time than money to proceed.  I’m beginning to envision a larger block diagram for all the software components, and I’m thinking of a PKI infrastructure that should pretty much eliminate any silliness.  Programming and testing is ongoing.  My brain is like an enormous fish, it’s flat and slimy, and has gills through which it can see.  Should these gills fail to open, it can cause a failure in the autonomic nervous section of the brain, which allows you or I to discern some facts and eliminate others.

27-JAN-2011

The M25P16 flash memory is working, and I’m slowly starting to understand this microcontroller chip.  I optimized the read function a little bit and it’s transferring bytes at 25MHz about 2.4uSec apart.  This would suggest a data rate of around 417K Bytes/second, which is fast enough to support just about anything I’m going to expect of it.  I might be able to interface a peripheral DMA controller to talk to the SPI, so it might go faster.  Click this picture for a much larger and detailed one, you can almost see the coiled wire inside the little blue chokes on the antenna circuit.  Note the scorch marks around and underneath the Atmel (larger black square at center left).

Here’s a funzie, a movie of an oscilloscope trace of the second command byte from the SPI data input during a read command sequence.  The program is reading all sectors of the chip, so the sequence shows a binary progression of the 5 bits (32 sectors) switching in and out.  It’s only a 2 megabyte chip, but I don’t really need more than that right now, and it costs less than $2.

Squiggly green lines.  Those bits are about a tenth of a microsecond wide, this is about as much as my old Tektronix 475 can take.

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