Archive for March, 2009

The Military- Personal effectiveness and discipline

Last Monday (3/23/09), on the last day of my Dad’s and my weekend trip to Colorado we visited the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It was somewhat on impulse, it had not been part of the trip itinerary, as far as I was concerned. I did not have expectations for or preconceived thoughts […]

Posted on March 31, 2009 at 11:00 am by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Life and Times

Battery Regulator- the OTHER part of the project

I devised a workable fix for the circuit FAIL previously described and finished assembling a set of four battery regulator boards- their relatively small size belies that they have a LOT of parts on them! They are a pretty involved assembly project! I haven’t tested everything about every board, but as far as I can […]

Posted on March 30, 2009 at 10:11 pm by Henry · Permalink · One Comment
In: Battery Regulator

Racing is Expensive

I read Jalopnik regularly, so I became aware this morning of the link they posted to Speed:Sport:Life about the expense of racing. I’m still not totally sure what the purpose of the article is, I guess it’s just to educate people who weren’t aware- and I guess that’s reasonable enough. I have always assumed that […]

Posted on March 30, 2009 at 9:55 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: LeMons, Life and Times, Racing

Impression: 2009 Mercury Grand Marquis

In Colorado over the weekend my Dad and I rented a car- since the rental car lot was out of subcompacts, they gave us an automatic “upgrade” to a “premium” level vehicle- a nearly brand new Grand Marquis. While providing useful transportation all weekend, the Marquis (pronunciation informally decided to be “mar-kees”) was also much […]

Posted on March 25, 2009 at 9:20 pm by Henry · Permalink · One Comment
In: Cars, Reviews

Circuit FAIL

First- the good news. The circuit boards came in from Gold Phonenix, it really is very easy to order from them, and I am pretty happy with the quality. I first contacted them on March 13th (Friday), asking for quote confirmation for a 155 in^2 “Special Price” order, including the gerbers in a .zip file […]

Posted on March 24, 2009 at 10:33 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator

Battery Regulator- The Next Step

I finished the new board design a few days ago- I don’t think I’m an expert or anything, but definitely did a better job this time than I did on the prototype- Just to begin, I checked my schematics and footprints carefully. That in itself will make a big difference! I also got the overall […]

Posted on March 14, 2009 at 1:08 am by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator

More CNC Thoughts

I’ve been thinking more about how I would I’m going to build a CNC mill. My earlier ideas have changed a bit, some a lot. I’m not going to try to use servos, it is worth more to me to get the machine usable quickly, and the HobbyCNC stepper boards are pretty nice. It would […]

Posted on March 9, 2009 at 9:06 pm by Henry · Permalink · 2 Comments
In: CNC

Battery Regulator- part 4

I finished testing the battery regulator board over the last two days, as I planned I did a full-current “burn” test and tested the MCP2551 (CAN transciever) based communications circuit. Things went mostly according to plan. I had planned to burn in the power circuit for ~2hrs, but I got all the information I needed […]

Posted on March 6, 2009 at 7:11 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator

CNC Thoughts

Building a small CNC mill has been one of those projects I have thought about dozens of times over the years but have never initiated. It’s come up again now, and maybe this is the right time. I would really like to be able to cut parts out of acrylic and aluminum sheet, as well […]

Posted on March 5, 2009 at 2:08 am by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: CNC

Battery Regulator- part 3

I have confirmed that the board programs and communicates correctly via serial with the Arduino environment. Almost everything is working as planned. The timer that drives the PWM on pins 11 and 12 (ATMega168) or 5, 6 (Arduino), OC0A and OC0B, is used for system timing stuff too, so it doesn’t ever go completely “off”. […]

Posted on March 3, 2009 at 11:22 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator