I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my new HTC Droid Incredible 2 smartphone, but one thing I’ve been wanting is a way to secure it on a tripod.  Well this morning I got one made.  I made it out of cheap heavy guage stove pipe steel.  (I think it’s 16 guage.)

As many of you smartphone owners know, there are challenges to getting just the right setup.  I keep my phone in a Ballistic brand case which adds a little bulk and thickness to it, so I needed to design the tripod mount around that a bit.  Another thing is the steel used which I’m pretty sure would interfere with the cellular, wifi, gps, bluetooth and whatever other radio signals need to emit from smartphones these days.

So I sat down with my trusty CAD program DeltaCAD, some teardown photos and reference photos of my phone, and came up with a design that accounts for the various antennas that my phone has.  I drilled 1/2″ holes in the bracket wherever it was going to obstruct the antennas.  I haven’t actually tested the reception of the phone yet but I am sure the holes will help.

Another thing is the antenna hole toward the bottom greatly weakens the already mild steel, so I soldered two big nails (with the heads cut off) along side the hole.

Then I put some self-adhesive rubber strips (actually just heavy rubber electrical tape)  on the inside of the bracket where it touches the phone, both to help prevent abrasion and provide grip.

I’ve posted a pdf of my reference drawings so if you want to make one for yourself, feel free.

dinc2_tripod_mount.pdf

Here it is taking a shot of my messy workbench.

Oh yes another thing, you may be wondering why the tripod mount holds the camera way off to one side.  Well the reason is that I wanted the lens (which is where the picture is captured from, duh) to be at the rotation center of the tripod.  You may ask, why that?  Well if I ever want to do stitched panoramas, accuracy is important in this regard especially if the panoramas are indoors or closeup.  Sort of a technicality, but hey–I thought of that!!

ATX Computer power supply as benchtop power supply. These are quite common around the net, but this is mine with my favorite twist.

Ok, so this here is the very important feature that I think every ATX power supply based benchtop power supply should have: the ability to “break away.”  This is a lesson I learned with the first tutorial I followed for adapting a PC power supply for benchtop use:  I got all the binding posts, power switch, dummy loads, blah blah installed into the metal shell of the power supply, and all was smooth sailing.

But one day, something went wrong with the power supply, or maybe I blew it up with carelessness in my workbench uses, etc.  So now what?  Rip out all the binding posts, dummy resistors, get a new power supply, drill all new holes reinstall everything, aaaauuuuugh!!  And what if the next power supply blows up?  Repeat of all the nonsense.

So I decided that a better strategy was to  make a little gadget box plug-in thingy that the ATX can be plugged, unplugged, replugged, replaced, all with just a quick clicking together of the power connector.  No more wasting time disassembling the ATX power supply and retooling it with binding posts, etc. because it all stays on the outside, in the benchtop adapter unit.

Another thing is where on earth do you find the right kind of flameproof resistors to act as a dummy load for the power supply when you don’t have much (or maybe nothing, as in testing) drawing from it?  You can certainly turn to online sources for the most exotic of components, but here’s one that is very nearby in almost any hardware or general store: The venerable 1157 auto taillight bulb.  It contains a high and low filament, and you can use both of them, one on 12v and one on 5v.  The only drawback, it gets hot.  But so would a ceramic resistor.

Now, if you make your benchtop power supply adapter out of wood or other heat non-resistant material, you’ll need a fan to cool things.  Since I already had old computer parts lying all around anyway, I just put a fan above the light bulb, with cooling holes top and bottom.

This switch tells the power supply to turn on.  In the old days the switch was on the power supply itself on the back of the computer and a real pain to reach.  So the PC makers provided a way for the power supply to be signaled to turn on through the motherboard, which means that one of the wires in the ATX connector is the signal wire to tell the power supply to turn on.   Then the power button got to be on the front of the case and just went to a header on the motherboard. And then of course all kinds of things are possible like the bios telling the power supply to turn on at a certain time or schedule, or whether to stay turned off after a power outage, etc.

But this makes it necessary to put the power switch on the benchtop power supply adapter, which just makes the project even more fun.

Here’s a shot of the insides.  Not very complex.

I just discovered these handy voltage regulators while trying to get an LM317 circuit to work.  These regulators are switching type, which means they do not regulate by wasting the excess voltage in a resistive manner as do the LM317 regulators.  Rather, they turn on and off rapidly, and use an inductor to store and release energy for theoretical 100% efficient operation.

I was working on a circuit to power my Garmin Etrex Legend (Blue) GPS from my vehicle 12 volt power supply.  The Etrex requires 3 volts, so that means shedding the extra 9 volts somehow, actually more than that when the engine is running and the 14.5v alternator’s preset is enforcing.  My first thought was to really “shed” those extra volts with an LM317 circuit.  The LM317′s are simply transistors with  a voltage reference and regulator circuit built in, and the transistor just acts as a resistor to actively dump whatever extra voltage there is, into heat, of course requiring a heat sink.  This wastes power of course, and I was hoping to leave the GPS running all the time, summer, winter etc.  Blah.  When I felt how much heat really got dumped to the heatsink, I was concerned about how this could affect the battery of my vehicle.

I ended up scavenging an old cell phone charger, which in turn led to my discovery of the 34063A chip.  This circuit basically emulates the adjustability and function of the LM317 but in switch mode, that is, eliminating the voltage wasting nonsense with all its heat sinks.  I found that a pair of precision resistors were fixing the cell phone charger’s voltage at about 6 volts, and so  I removed the resistors and put in a trim pot to adjust the voltage to 3v.  It worked amazingly well.  I found that the current draw on the input side was only 40mA with the backlight off, and 60mA with it on.  Coolness!  So I can leave the GPS on all the time, with backlight on all the time!  60mA is not going to drain the car’s battery, and now I can effectively eliminate the use, misuse, reuse, and replacement of alkaline batteries in my car-mounted Etrex Legend.  When I get a moment I’ll upload schematics and photos.

Here’s the video: test-0000 This is an 8mb mpeg4/divx file captured with xvidcap.

The image flickers with any blend file.  The flickering shows a “background” of what was on the screen before pressing play, or as you can see in the video, if you switch browser tabs and then go back again, the background of the flicker is the contents of the previous tab.

Here’s my video card information from the `lspci -v` command:

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS880 [Radeon HD 4200]
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2ab1
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 27
	Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	I/O ports at d000 [size=256]
	Memory at fe8f0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
	Memory at fe900000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
	Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [a0] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable+
	Kernel driver in use: fglrx_pci
	Kernel modules: fglrx, radeon

It is an integrated video card.  Everything else works nicely, i.e. blender3d and any/all other 3d apps that I run.

Another interesting thing I noted, is that before I installed the burster plugin, the google chrome browser surprisingly did support the burster demos.  Some of them don’t work right, I suspect it’s the fact that some are made with the 2.4x blender which isn’t supported by whichever blender binary is incorporated into google chrome.

And, speaking of google chrome, it is not the only browser that shows the flickering problem.  Firefox does the same.  (However, firefox did not have secret built-in blender support like chrome seems to.)

Any questions, suggestions, or comments are welcome.

I’ve successfully completed a stage of my wood gasifier project–firing the swirl burner.  This is just a basic test of the hearth, grate, cyclone and cooling stage.  I got lots of nice gas, some water, and some tar.

I will be writing more on this, but for now there’s just some pictures and a youtube video.

And here’s a youtube shot of it running.

You might ask, where to from here? Well, I thought one day I might run a vehicle on this, or maybe a generator making electricity. More realistically, I could very simply attach it to a water heater for domestic hot water. I would do this outdoors of course, and there would be a lot of automating to make it work perfectly. I don’t think it would be very hard to make it automatically switch between pilot mode and full heat.

I wanted to contact a mechanic friend of mine and couldn’t get through with my free long distance telephone service, magic jack.  Actually it’s not free, but very inexpensive.  I got a recording instead with some legal mumbo-jumbo.  Then I contacted their tech support.  Here’s the story.

Please wait for a site operator to respond.

You are now chatting with 'Jed'

Your Issue ID for this chat is LTK554013431****

Jed: Hello, how may I help you?

Dan Hartman: I can't call the 906 area code

Jed: May I know if you can call other numbers?

Dan Hartman: yes

Jed: May I know what you hear after dialing 906 area code phone numbers?

Dan Hartman: I get a recording that says something like "your call cannot be completed as dialed. The terminating carrier in that area has not done an internect agreement ..."

Jed: Thank you.

Dan Hartman: I think he meant "interconnect agreement"

Jed: Your magicJack phone number is  (231) 421-****, right?

Dan Hartman: yes

Jed: Is your magicJack currently plugged in to your computer?

Dan Hartman: yes

Jed: Do you see the dial pad on your screen?

Dan Hartman: yes

Jed: May I know what operating system you are using right now?

Dan Hartman: windows xp

Jed: Thank you.

Jed: Please click the link to download and run the magicJack upgrade:

Jed: http://upgrades.magicjack.com/upgrade/magicJackSetup.exe

Jed: Let me know once done

Dan Hartman: k a few moments

Jed: Okay, Dan.

Dan Hartman: lucky me upgrading now

Jed: Okay, Dan.

Dan Hartman: same recording on the 906 number

Jed: One moment please...

Jed: I am transferring you to one of our top 10% agents as rated by our customers. Please hold while I transfer you.

Please wait while I transfer the chat to the best suited site operator.

You are not currently in a chat session.

You are now chatting with 'Mandy'

Your Issue ID for this chat is LTK554013431****

Mandy: Hello. My name is Mandy. To better assist you, let me put you on hold while I read your previous chat/s. Thank you.

Dan Hartman: thanks

Mandy: I will be right with you.

Dan Hartman: ok

Mandy: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.

Mandy: May I know when did this issue start?

Dan Hartman: well today is the first time I attempted to make a call to this area code

Mandy: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.

Dan Hartman: no problem

Mandy: May I know the exact time behavior of the call?

Dan Hartman: time behaviour?

Dan Hartman: right now it just happened

Dan Hartman: http://www.dynamodan.com/2011-11-03-1744.mp3

Dan Hartman: that's a recording of the call

Mandy: May I know what happens after dialing the number>

Dan Hartman: you already know, if you listened to that recording, it includes dialing and the message from magic jack

Dan Hartman: you already know, if you read the transcript from the previous tech before I got on with you

Mandy: One moment please...

Mandy: Please confirm if you   heard this recording message "Your call can not be completed as dialed. The terminating carrier in that area has not done an interconnect agreement with magicJack. There is a legal requirement for all companies to interconnect if one carrier requests to do so from the other carrier. We hope we will be successful in doing so.”

Dan Hartman: that's what I heard. Please confirm if that's what you heard?

Dan Hartman: http://www.dynamodan.com/2011-11-03-1744.mp3

Dan Hartman: it's an mp3 recording of the message. Did you listen to it?

Mandy: Thank you.

Mandy: Please provide me atleast 3 phone numbers that you cannot call.

Dan Hartman: ?

Dan Hartman: ok one moment

Mandy: Sure.

Dan Hartman: 906-49*-****

Dan Hartman: 906-49*-****

Dan Hartman: 906-49*-****

Dan Hartman: need more?

Mandy: Thank you.

Mandy: One moment please...

Dan Hartman: 906-49*-****

Mandy: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.

Dan Hartman: thanks

Mandy: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.

Dan Hartman: ok

Mandy: k. This time, I need to escalate your issue to the Engineers for them to check on this matter personally. Please provide me the best email address to reach you.

Dan Hartman: ****dynamodan.com

Mandy: Thank you.

Mandy: Please stay with me.Your patience is highly appreciated. I'll be back with you shortly.

Dan Hartman: is magic jack a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchance Carrier) ?

Dan Hartman: (just a little trivia while we wait?)

Mandy: Yes.

Dan Hartman: ok

Dan Hartman: I have to go eat dinner but I'll be back in 30 min or so, I'll leave this chat up on the computer, feel free to message me while I'm gone

Mandy: I will be right with you.

Mandy: Thank you for the time you have given me. I am done with the report on your issue and have forwarded this to our Technical Engineers already. They are currently working on it. We will resolve this problem on our end. Rest assure that you will get fine results on this matter.  You will also receive an email notification for that matter.

Mandy: Thank you so much for your time.

Since we haven't heard from you, we must release this chat. Please click here should you need further assistance: www.magicJack.com/techchat

I’ve lately realized how many boxes and boxes I have of this stuff.  Probably a hundred or two hundred pounds, not sure.  Old PC motherboards, printed circuit boards, video cards, sockets, wires, capacitors, components galore.  It seems like over the years people have gotten the idea that I collect this stuff, so then they contribute more to it.  Or maybe I shouldn’t blame others.  It’s probably just me…

If you are interested in a grab-box, grab-bag whatever people call it, or if you are looking for something in particular, whether it’s 4000-series cmos or 7400-series TTL chips, I probably have some.  Just post a comment below and let me know.  Your email address is not shown.

This is a solar panel I made with some big glass panels I scrounged.  It measures about 10 feet long by 3 feet wide.  It saves on the propane bill big time, during the summer months.  Sorry for the blurry photo, I used my aging Palm treo 650 camera.  So this is certainly renewable energy, the sun comes up pretty much every morning like clockwork.

Some people talk about disaster readiness, and I’m all for it.  The economy is showing troubling signs etc.  However I consider propane to be an ongoing disaster that started many years ago, and to that end, I do everything I can to minimize use of it.  Natural gas isn’t available in my area, and isn’t that much cheaper than propane here anyway.  In the winter, I have help from my wood stove to heat my domestic hot water.

The way I built this panel is very simple, it’s just a box made of 2×6′s and OSB.  I lined the inside with polyisocyanurate insulation, that’s the ivory colored stuff that usually comes with foil on each side.  Then I painted the inside all flat black.  There is about 110 feet of 3/4″ copper pipe occupying the interior and I could add more, but my source for recycled pipe dried up before I had it filled.

Accumulating tank

The panel circulates by convection into this accumulating tank, which is nothing but a gas water heater that I tapped into the lower drain port for the cold exit.  This accumulator is up in the attic of my house.  I drain it down during the winter.  So here’s how it works, the cold water drops down out of the drain fitting and down a pipe into the bottom of the solar heater, and then the hot water from the heater rises back up and into the hot outlet of the accumulating tank.  There are no pumps, but it works great.  It makes 40 gallons of nice hot water in a typical day.

The black lines you see in the first picture that go up into the eaves of the house are rubber hoses that connect the solar hot water panel to the accumulating tank.  In the picture above, you can see some light on the lower left where the pipes out to the eaves from inside the attic.

When you open the hot water faucet or take a shower, then cold water from the well comes into the cold inlet of the accumulating tank (different from the drain fitting) and then the hot water comes through the plumbing and into the propane fired water heater, which does a tiny amount of work to heat the water the rest of the way up to where its thermostat is set (much less heating to do than icy cold well water).

Yes the welds are sloppy.  But who cares.  It’s a burn barrel grate.  After the first use it will look worse than this.

I designed it to fit the curvature of the barrel.  It seems to fit the barrel like a hand in a glove.  Pardon the concrete blocks–one day I might weld legs onto it so these can be eliminated.  BTW this is the second grate I made like this, using rebar.  The first was square and used angle irons, and after about 12 years finally rusted through.  I’m very impressed with rebar for this kind of use.

A view from the top.  Sorry it turned out so white.  The bars are spaced 2.5 inches, and constructing this grate used up the entire twenty foot length with no waste (unless you count the iron grit left from cutting).

A peace canoe that I built this summer.  It’s not tippy.  We christened it “banana split.”

This boat is 22 feet and some inches long and weighs around 165 lbs.  (Funny how that sounds like a birth anouncement? )  It is made of 1/4 AC plywood from Menards and has a huge capacity, notice how far the stems are out of the water with my boys on board.  Our family of 5 went on a camping trip with lots of gear and the stems were just into the water.

It is scaled up from the 18′ peace canoe popularized by John Harris on the Chesapeake Light Craft web site.  I changed quite a few things.  I used fiberglass tape and epoxy to do the seams, and cut the ends curved to look more like a conventional canoe.