I know it's been awhile since I posted anything, but due to the holidays and what not, I have been busy. Nonetheless, I want to take some time now to discuss a news story that I consider to be the most exciting published recently. I mentioned on my space page that I would try to provide some commentary and analysis of news regarding the space industry as I became aware of it. This will be my first entry in that series.
Picture 1: Falcon 9 as it launches from the pad at Cape Canaveral on Dec. 08, 2010. Photo provided by remote viewing cameras operated by Spaceflightnow Howdy All,
I know it's been awhile since I posted anything, but due to the holidays and what not, I have been busy. Nonetheless, I want to take some time now to discuss a news story that I consider to be the most exciting published recently. I mentioned on my space page that I would try to provide some commentary and analysis of news regarding the space industry as I became aware of it. This will be my first entry in that series.
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Howdy All,
So today I am mixing it up with something a bit different. I've been mulling over a poem in my head now for quite some time. It is political in nature, as well, perhaps, as philosophical. After all the bullshitting that has gone on due to politicians for the past decade or so (recessions, wars, severe impingements on human rights), I couldn't help but feel that we, as citizens of this country, and of this world, are responsible for letting those in power get away with all of the crap they have been getting away with. So I wrote the following. Judge it as you see fit: IntroductionHowdy Everyone,
So today I want to talk about some upgrades I gave to Ardie over the weekend. Most of the work involved a lot of coding and debugging, rather than hardware construction. As a result, this blog will be a bit lacking in pictures and such. However, for you code monkeys out there, I will partake in some in depth discussion of the control scheme that went into this particular version of Ardie. IntroductionHowdy Again Everyone!
So today I sat down and slapped together what I am referring to as a "volume board." Really, there is no sound involved with this project yet, so it's not much of a volume board. However, what the project does do is display a very simple digital output based on an analog input signal, or, an electrical "volume." Hence the name. I put together this project because I needed some practice in dealing with analog signals as inputs to my microcontrollers. Hence, I did some browsing on LadyAda.net and Sheepdog Guides and found this and this tutorial respectively. Both of these guides discuss safe ways of hooking LEDs up to Arduino's 5V power output pin. They also touch on the Analog input pins. The Sheepdog tutorial gave me the idea to use a potentiometer to control an analog signal to my Arduino board in order to light up certain LEDs. Thus, I mostly ripped off that design and modified it for my own purposes. Since my primary goal was to learn about Arduino analog signals, I did not feel it necessary to design an entire concept by myself. So, without further ado, I'll explain a bit more about what I did and how I did it. IntroductionHowdy Again Everyone!
So today I am going to talk about my latest robot platform that I slapped together in the last few weeks. First, I need to give credit where credit is due. Batist Leman developed this particular robot before I ever did, and that's where I got the idea. Batist eventually went on to hook his version of Ardie up to a Playstation controller, and he could drive the robot that way. I am hoping to take my version of Ardie in a different direction. Ardie is constructed, essentially, of an Arduino micro-controller rubber banded to a breadboard with an H-bridged wired up to two drive motors. This simple nature of Ardie allows him to be developed and tinkered upon to quite a degree. I will eventually develop Ardie to read sensor inputs and use them to control some sort of added functionality (maybe a small arm, or a pointer, or something). This should help me refine and develop my control system software development skills with time. Ardie was relatively cheap to build (I think about $50 by the time all was said and done), and simple to put together. Thus, if you are interested in building a simple Arduino powered robot, read on. IntroductionHowdy Everyone, So it's been a bit since I posted my last project (the motorcycle starter repair) and I have been quite busy since then. As such, I am still playing catch up on this website and, today, I will be writing about an older project that I completed back in April. This particular project goes by the name of Symet. I started working on Symet a few years ago when I first purchased Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels, by Hrynkiw and Tilden. I developed one version of Symet back in 2009 but it never quite worked right. Having been distracted by other things, I never sucessfully troubleshooted that version. Instead, I started a rebuild from scratch back in April and got a functioning robot in a couple weeks. Essentially, Symet is a simple little circular robot that does little more than scoot around and bounce off of things. It uses its geometry, primarily, for guidance and navigation. It is powered by some small solar cells. The electricity produced by the cells is conditioned via an FLED solar engine that uses a flashing LED (FLED) to charge a bank of capacitors. The capacitors discharge on a timed interval allowing Symet to pop about a surface. The basic circuit schematic for the Symet is shown in Figure 1. It was provided courtesy of Solarbotics' Junkbots Apache server. Hello Once More Everyone, So in my last couple of blog entries I started talking about troubleshooting the starter system on my motorcycle. I discussed replacing the battery, the solenoid, and testing the starter motor. I found that the starter motor was smoking when I had it hooked up to the rest of the system, but disengaged from the starter clutch. As such, my next task was to disassemble the starter motor and see what I could do to finally get my bike running. Disassembling the Starter MotorSo, basically the starter motor in the XS750 is held together via two long screws that run the length of the tubular body. To disassemble the motor, all I really had to do was unscrew the two screws and pull the body apart. Essentially, the starter motor consists of three sections: the gear assembly (depicted in Figure 1), the armature housing, and the rear brush assembly. Howdy Again Everyone, In my last blog I talked about my first steps to repairing the starter system on my XS70E. I talked about testing the solenoid and battery. The next step I had to undergo was testing the starter motor. This whole process is described below. Removing the StarterFigure 1: The starter motor sits under a black plastic cover as shown. Before removal, the crankcase breather hose and oil pump line need to be disconnected and moved to the side. The first thing I had to do to test the starter was remove it from it's position on the bike. When the starter motor is installed, the gear that it drives remains connected to the starter clutch. This means that if there is something wrong with the starter clutch (jammed gears), the starter motor won't turn even if it is functioning optimally. Thus, I needed to disengage and remove the starter motor entirely to test it in an isolated manner. The starter motor on the XS750E rests under the carburetor which sits just under the gas tank. Essentially, the starter motor sits on top of the oil pan and is covered by a piece of plastic. The starter motor location is depicted in Figure 1. Also notice that I pointed out the crankcase breather hose and the oil pump line in Figure 1. These two lines needed to be disconnected and moved off to the side in order to remove the starter cover and starter. Introduction:Howdy Again Everyone, So I haven't been out riding my motorcycle for part of June or any of July. The primary problem was the starter motor on the motorcycle. Between waiting for parts, trying different fixes, and throwing wrenches in frustration across the garage, the repair took me just over a month to complete. I documented the entire process with my camera so that I could write about the work here. I am hoping that anyone who has had problems working on vintage Yamahas (especially the starter system) will find some useful information here. As such, this will be a very detailed posting. I broke it up into three pieces to make things more manageable. You'll see Part II and Part III written later this week hopefully. Until then, I hope this is enough to tempt your appetite. The Problem:So, basically, my motorcycle (1978 Yamaha XS750E) has had some trouble starting since I bought it a year ago. When the weather is warm, the birds are chirping, and the stars are aligned, the old girl fires up with little trouble. However, on cold days, starting can be a bit of a pain in the ass. On cold and wet days, it can be downright impossible. Many of my coworkers can attest to how much fun it is watching me jump up and down on the kickstarter on a wet, rainy day in Santa Maria.
However, this was all pretty manageable until about a month ago. A few weeks back, I was going to make a ride up to Sonora for the second time (about 300 miles from Oceano). Unfortunately, I made it two miles to the gas station and couldn't get my bike to restart reliably. I thought it was the ignition timing so I took the time to retune my engine and that got me running, mostly, for another week or so. Finally, the starter system gave out in the end of June. I had some trouble with my bike on a steep gravel rode and had dropped it. This was the last straw for the starter because I ended up having to roll start the machine to get it back home. Once it was parked in my garage, I turned off the machine, but left the key in the ignition. Upon hitting the electric start button, all I heard was an ominous "click" and the engine refused to turn over. My bike was officially on strike until I gave it some much needed maintenance. It was time to break out my manual and toolbox and get to work. Myself on Waiheke Island, New Zealand. Oh my holy crap! I've officially started my blogging expedition on the intrawebz. Well, that's not entirely true, I did have a pretty successful blog running at Myspace for awhile. But since that site crashes my browser every time I log on now, I gave it up. I may well try to port some of the content over to this site as time allows. If I do, I'll dub these with the category tag: "Myspace Imports." Alright, well that was all very explanatory. So, for my first post, I figured I would post a few details about myself so that anyone who wants to get to know me can start here (or we could, you know, hang out). So let's get started: |
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August 2022
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