Keakers, Bali and Becca trying out the upper two levels of the kitty-tree that we have been building over the last two weekends. So far all parties seem pleased with the projects progress. Although Bali has requested a cat-lift under ADA guidelines.. 

Cookies

Nate's cookie addiction good for local girl-scout troups, new building dedicated. 

Stainless Steel Grocery Cart (AKA Delorean)

This is for those who claim the Delorean is not a practical vehicle. In fact, my beautiful shopping companion and I recently accomplished our weekly grocery-getting, in style, using our 1982 Delorean sports coupe.

Not an easy mission given the over 126,720inches (2 miles) distance from our home to the grocery store (more than 6,589,440 inches a year!).

Sarcasm is an art.

Cedar Key Dinner Trip

Cedar Key, FL - Trip Report

Last Saturday my wife and I have made the ~1 hour trip from Gainesville to Cedar Key for some gulf-side dinning. We walked around this harbor-town for a while and noticed that it has likely seen better days. There are a number of interesting shops operating, with local art and handmade products.


The 'FishBonz' sign earned our award for interesting verbage.


We enjoyed our dinner at the SeaBreaze Restraunt (although, unlike last time, there were no Dolphines playing in the harbor).

How to properly (POWER) carve pumpkins

Handbuilt by Robots

To keep this blog tidy, all future automotive/Delorean entrys will be posted to;
handbuilt-by-robots.blogspot.com

How to rescue your cat from the Lobster Trap

A while back my cat (Keakers) climbed into a coffee table that is built to resemble (apparently in function as well) a lobster trap. I'm not sure how long she was detained for (she was there when I came home from work), however she didn't seem to be particularly interested in solving the visual puzzle that kept her from just walking back out.

We had an impromptu education session where I would put my hand in the trap to show her that she could just walk out the center (lobster traps are cone-shaped nets that have a small opening in the middle to allow a lobster, or house cat as the case may be, to enter but makes is visually difficult to find the exit, as the center is further back in the trap than the rest of the net.

No avail, so I pried one of the ‘bars’ out and Keakers was free to find a good-o-fashion (safe) cardboard box to sit in.

How to 'properly' prepare Easter eggs

obviously this is out of season.. so what.. its my log.. your likely not even reading this.





The First step is to create (drill!) two small holes on either end of the eggs.









Secondly, and far more exerting, you must carefully blow out the egg-material.







Lastly, smile and look on the bright side of life, at least it wasnt someone you knew.

Silver River State Park

Pictures from our day-trip to Silver River State Park (Ocala, FL)

Becca next to a warning to aligators

Nate (me) accidently smiling for the camera

'Lefty loosely…'

Spider

Spider Food

A rather unpleasant conversation with a staunchly republican rooster

Becca's hair cut

DSC_0299
Originally uploaded by natesky1980.

For you trend-watchers, here's Becca's latest hair cut!

Delorean Console Clock – Part 1

Intro and Why

The Delorean Motor Company's first and only automobile was the 1981-1983 DMC-12. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Lorean_DMC-12 for more info). It was originally intended to become an 'affordable' super-car however design compromises, unrealistic production objectives, and unfortunate changes in the money market led to a car that was twice as expensive and far less capable than origionally promised. Out of necessity it was re-marketed as a 'gentlemans' touring car. For all of the Delorean's short comings, it is in fact an excellent touring vehicle that combines innovative style and function with economy and relative reliability.

While not traditionally considered a requirement of a GT vehicle, it is becoming prevalent for these cars to have more amenities-via-gadgets than their strictly-performance-oriented brethren. With this in mind I have been thinking lately of ways to integrate a trip computer without violating the integrity of the interior (the Delorean may have been rushed to market, but Lotus/DMC did a great job on the interior). Early Delorean’s were equipped with console clocks in the center console (in the shift gate/plate). This seemed to be a good place to locate a small trip computer.

Initial proof-of-concept
My first step was to locate a console plate that had the opening for the clock (my Delorean does not have this opening). I was able to purchase a rather rough plate from EBay. It was in good enough shape to make a fairly high quality mold (may be the subject of a later post). While I was working on the mold I proceeded to build a rough prototype of the actual clock itself..

I have several spare displays from previous projects, and a couple of them seemed to be appropriate for use here. I ended up using a small 84x48 pixel LCD display which uses the venerable PCD8544 controller (used on the Nokia 3310 Cell Phone). This display is likely a bit too small and to be honest I would prefer to use a VFD display for obvious contrast/visibility concerns. One of the objectives of this proof-of-concept is to see if a LCD with EL/LED backlight can ‘cut-it’.

I ended up using green LEDs for the backlight, as I was concerned that the blue EL foil wouldn't fit in a car that was designed and built years before blue LEDs were invented.

I used small perforated circuit boards in a stacked configuration (see photo) and divided the device into;
Layer 1: ‘Display/Input board’
Layer 2: ‘Processor, real-time clock, memory and power board’
Layer 3: ‘in-vehicle sensor interface, built-in sensors and optional I2C components’

Initial Functional Requirements
Trip computers are fairly well-understood. However for the sake of keeping this project ‘low-time-impact’ as is possible, I want to find the minimum set of functions that are interesting and potentially useful enough to spend the time to integrate into the final device. This is the first list I came up with;

Function1: Time (big characters for time, little characters indicating current date)
Function2: Interior (Ambient) Air Temperature (Digital readout and analog diagram)
Function3: Outside Air Temperature (Digital readout and analog diagram)
Function4: Compass ( magnetic field sensor, large character with N,NE, NW, S, SW, etc. and small characters indicating actual heading)
Function5: Cumulative MPG (real-time/instant MPG would be difficult to accomplish without knowing what the k-jet system is up to, any ideas?).

Current Status
The initial proof-of-concept has a implementation of function 1, 2 and 4. Note: While taking the photographs included here, the display shown is half way between rendering the ‘time’ function and the ‘compass’ function. it is now working proper with the three functions.

Future Actions
[1] Complete current proof-of-concept prototype

[2] Evaluate and adjust design
[3] Create ‘installable’ prototype (likely as far as I’ll take this)
[4] Post design details & results.

If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to post comments or send me a note.

2006 Mazda6s SportWagon

The Decision;
A few weeks after my wife and I settled into our most recent home, we concluded our long-running quest for a replacement vehicle for our venerable-yet-oh-so-1984era 1998 Jeep Cherokee (sport). The short list leading up to our decision included the 2006 Volvo V50 Estate, the 2006 Mazda6 SportWagon, and a slightly used 2006 BMW 325xi SportWagon. In the end the Mazda6 SportWagon dazzled us with its performance in the quarter mile, its effortless consummation of the slalom course and perhaps more so, the discount-eagerness of a commission-junky with looming end-of-month quotas.

Wagon’s are Back? Estate Wagons never really left, they have been and remain (IMHO) the quintessential vehicle of the everyday person. They have simple been in disguise. Think of all the SUVs out there today, and now think of how many of them are actually built on truck chassis. In fact a large majority of them are built like sedans and often times share common platforms with them. We American’s love our SUV’s, not because they are trucks, often they aren’t, we love them because they aren’t estate wagons, but hang on, I think they are.

Whats in a Name;
They call it a sport-wagon, and at first, I thought I got it; it’s a square box of mild steel & Aluminum with four little wheels and they don’t want me to feel any worse for being a person who needs such a vehicle than is absolutely necessary. It’s a ‘sport’, in the same spirit as Microsoft Windows is 'professional' or Fox is 'fair and balanced' and the Pontiac Vibe is ‘cool’. We, as a society, have become desensitized to many things, chief among them, due to the rampant proliferation of the word, is ‘sport-x’, ‘sport-y’ on every 5000lb SUV that stumbles out of Detroit’s auto-works. So some of us may indeed be skeptical when we see someone pull-up in the Kia Sportage Sport-model with the optional Sport package. In fact the only car I have owned in the past seven years that did not explicitly assign the word ‘sport’ to some attribute of the car, was a SN-95 Ford Mustang. Instead the Mustang had the ‘performance package’ (you guessed it, leather wrapped steering wheel + fog lamps). If the past 176 words haven’t convinced you, My natural instinct is to consider the use of ‘sport’ in the context of describing an estate wagon to be a overstatement at best or a flat out lie of Plymouth ‘Reliant’ proportions at worst. But when you think about it..

'Sport' Justification;

It does come standard with the 210BHP 3.0 liter (Ford) Duratec (concerned that they felt a need to say ‘Dura’, would prefer ‘Sportatec’) motor rather than the base 160BHP 2.3L standard on the four door sedan and hatchback models.

Net horsepower becomes Effective(ish) horsepower via a six speed ‘Sport’ (not kidding) sequential-automatic slushbox (Mr. Bill voice;‘NO!!”) or a slick short-throw 5-speed manual.

It weighs 3461lbs (curb) far lighter than Ford’s Freestyle @ 4112lbs (curb) and slightly lighter than Volvo V70 @ 3488lb

While not usually considered a plus, the Mazda6’s underlying platform lacks support for an AWD system (at present). In my opinion that’s just as ‘sport’ suggests, somewhat minimalist (although anyone who says the AWD Mitsubishi EVO is not a great sports car, can leave now).

It drives like a sports car, taunt and composed in corners has abundantly precise steering (even if a bit numb), engine noise permeates the cabin when driving aggressively. When in manual-mode the sequential slushbox will allow engine to redline until you shift (some upshift regardless). Upshifts feel about right, predictably slow perhaps, while downshifts largely depend on the status of the torque converter, current wheel speed, engine rpm and the deltas of those (changes), thus ‘requested’ downshifts may not occur until you are parked in the garage and contemplating a mid-life crises (you were 26 when you parked).

Honestly though, the strongest argument for justifying the sport moniker maybe the leather wrapped steering wheel.

Conclusion;
At the end of the day, we may well conclude that my wifes new Mazda6 estate wagon is indeed a ‘sportwagon’, but we now implicitly have uncovered the ugly reality. The automotive marketing industry is using the word sport quite separate from that of ‘sport car’, in fact their definition of ‘sport’ may well be ‘without’. I can now see a day where honesty will triumph and at new car announcement events we will listen…“Here is the new Ford Unnecessarily-Large-Status-Utility-Vehicle (ULSUV) ‘Sport’, and by sport we mean; without Stability control, a couple doors, limited slip, four wheel drive, sculpted seating, style, reliability, performance and every useful piece of automotive technology except, of course, for the leather steering wheel and fog lamps..”

PDA-based DSKY for NASSP 6

Useless Geek Project #42: PDA-DSKY for NASSP

*Warning, Off-Topic intro*
If you are somewhat like me you have, in the past, invested considerable time perhaps money pursuing innovated ideas that would (when omnivores fly) bring prosperity to you, the world and indeed the universe. Sadly this is not one of those ideas. However it may finally vindicate you for being a early adopter and purchasing the novel-but-nearly-useless Palm III (M505 or newer as well) PDA some eight years ago, well done.

[by the way; genetically, chimpanzees are 98.5 percent identical to humans, if you still don’t think you are somewhat like me, contact SETI,.. they are looking for you]
*End Off-Topic*


Firstly; what is a PDA? go away.

Secondly; what is DSKY? It is a clever acronym for Display and Keyboard which refers to an interface-device used during NASA’s Apollo project (Lunar Orbit/Landing & Exploration missions). This was the astronaut’s direct interface with the Command/Service Module & Lunar Module guidance computers (Apollo Guidance Computer AGC). The DSKY-interface is, more than ever, a paradox, both simple to use and required very little computational/logic resources. Of course, I could continue to write as if I had anything to do with it, or you can read this excellent wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer

Thirdly; what is NASSP? It is the project name for the Orbiter 2005 (and now 2006) ‘Project Apollo’ add-on. NASSP is a full-scale, accurate Apollo flight simulator. I have been following the project for a few months now; since I rediscovered it after a resurgence of development activity which rapidly brought it into the realm of usefulness (well, as useful as a useless project can be, no offense). It couples honest Apollo systems emulation, flight characteristics, Apollo-era guidance & trajectory injection procedures with an insanely non-trivial real-time gravity-physics engine in a 3D virtual environment. If you are interested in Project Apollo for Orbiter check out http://nassp.sourceforge.net/. Or to look at Orbiter 2005 itself; http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

Finally; What is this ‘PDA-DSKY for NASSP’; Currently it is a rough prototype that I quite literally threw together in a few hours (read; shoddily written) to explore the utility of having access to the guidance computer regardless of what ‘view’ was being rendered in the simulation environment. As the project became more advanced (read; resource heavy) it became less acceptable to toggle between panels during maneuvers (such as transposition-docking for LEM extraction and lunar decent/accent.

How does it work? Quite simply thankfully; I used a old Palm PDA, wrote a native (using code warrior) program that emulated the DSKY interface and passed along key presses and received register data directly from the simulation environment channels.

Future Development? A minor bit (although I have considered making a full-scale clone of the Apollo-era DSKY using seven segment displays and tactile buttons); There are a couple things I’d like to do before publishing the code/binaries.
1) Find a way to integrate I0 channel code into NASSP (as a plug-in module I would imagine)
2) Use some ‘real’ UI artwork instead of the neutral layout as is now.