Week of 2nd February, 2009

Last Week

Next Week

Monday, 2nd February

So we got about 20cm of snow overnight - and London seized up. Very few buses, large parts of the Tube not running, the M25 showing large tailbacks (although this is no surprise) apparently due to people hitting a blockage (often a jack-knifed lorry) and just abandoning their cars to walk. One runway is closed at Heathrow (apparently due to an airliner skidding off the runway on landing) Lots of schools closed... The litany goes on.

This happens every few years, and the media creates a stink about it every time. This is, of course, just a convenient club with which to beat the incumbent Government. After all, sufficient assets to deal properly with this, a la Canada for example, would spend in excess of 95% of their time idle.

More to come later this week, it would seem.

Back to Daynotes


Tuesday, 3rd February

Things are thawing somewhat - but there's still lots of disruption. Katy, for example, has had 2 "snow days", where her school was closed. I haven't been out.

Back to Daynotes


Wednesday, 4th February

Back to Daynotes


Thursday, 5th February

These 2 days I've been on the noon-to-midnight shift, due to a shift swap. And this time is much more civilised. Ally has given no problems with starting, but I'm still concerned about the battery - he cranks slowly, but fires up after a few seconds. This suggests a weak battery, which I don't want to replace if I can avoid it - I'll not get full value from a new battery if I sell (or scrap) Ally when I take over Katy's Renault. Which I will - I just don't know when. This goes double for the string falling out of the exhaust pipe - Skodas of this vintage have a rear silencer box that's stuffed with a type of string, probably to enhance the noise suppression, and of the two examples of the marque that I'm familiar with, both have shown this effect. The indicated fix is a new rear box, at a cost of UKP100 or so - which again I'd like to avoid. Probably by cutting off the exposed string at intervals.

Because of the battery worry, I've invested in a portable jump-starter battery, from CPC. This will also serve as an auxiliary battery for electronics in the car, and includes an air compressor for inflating tyres. The order also included: a 50 metre drum of mains cable, with 4 sockets on one flange of the drum, and an RCD plug on the free end: a 12 volt 5 amp mains power supply, with a cigar lighter socket for output, and some cigar lighter accessories. All this will be for wiring up electronics in the car - whichever car I end up using. I'll also invest in a bigger solar panel, for charging these batteries - this one, 12 volt 12 watt, from Maplin, which is on special offer for the moment.

Back to Daynotes


Friday, 6th February

To Hammersmith, another London borough, today, to visit the Maplin shop there. I bought one of the solar panels I mentioned yesterday; a 13 port USB2 hub (which installed a "USB hub" 4 times in Windows when I fired it up - evidently there are 2 levels of 4 port hubs cascaded) which still only came with a 4 amp power supply; and a couple of triple phono-to-phono cables, so that Katy can leave her Wii connected to the same input on the TV as the DVD recorder - via the switch I bought from CPC yesterday..

I hadn't realised how big that solar panel is, nor how heavy, until I had to lummox it back from the shop on public transport. Never mind, the exercise will do me good. That panel is gong to live in the car, mainly, so that it will keep the battery topped off, now and in the future.

And, of course, I'd forgotten that the DVD recorder doesn't have a triple phono output. Nope, it's a SCART, and I can't put my hand on a SCART to 3 phonos cable - I have several, but I can't find them.

Back to Daynotes


Saturday, 7th February

To Chertsey today, to the amateur emporium, there to make another try for a dual-band magmount for APRS operation. Voice comms are well-sorted - the tribander sees to that, but I have thought that the whip antenna on the TH-D7 is inefficient, and thus causing my reception problems.

And they didn't have an affordable device - apparently one manufacturer has gone toes-up, and the remaining companies can't keep up with demand. My price limit here is UK30 - less preferred, obviously. I could have got one for a total of UKP40, but that's a little too much. But they will e-mail me when the preferred antenna is in stock.

I also picked up some tips about the Kinetic SBS-1 virtual radar - which still awaits it's ethernet upgrade. And they're having another open day about the device (and it's successor, the SBS-1e) next Saturday. I'm working, but I suspect that I'll take leave to attend.

On the return trip, I was hearing my local 70cm repeater, on the handheld, as I drove along the M25, west of Heathrow - which suggests that the TH-D7's aerial isn't that bad. There is anecdotal evidence that TH-D7s are prone to interference pickup on any cables plugged into them (see here) so maybe that's the problem. Ally is by no means interference-clean.

Oh yes, and he failed to start this morning. So the new jump-starter battery earned it's keep.

And when I got back, the central heating boiler is playing up again. Things have been a bit unstable since the big pipe clean late last year, so I've put in for a service call - tomorrow, between 8 a.m and 6 p.m.. Precise, aren't they. But at least they're turning out tomorrow, which is good. So that's knocked Harwell on the head (see tomorrow) even if I was planning to go.

Back to Daynotes


Sunday, 8th February

Harwell Rally today, held in the town of Didcot, for reasons best known to the organisers. In past years this has not been worth the trip down the M4 - 50-odd miles each way - so I think I'll pass, but I still mention it for completeness.

OK, with no Harwell Rally, I can look at other things while waiting for the boiler repair man. And first up is installing the software for the SBS-1 on another computer - one with a working built-in pointing device. The chosen victim is the Dell 510m, which has intermittent battery problems, but is otherwise working.

So download the latest installer (that's V1.1.1.130 as I type) This one is the first to be network-enabled, and was released at the same time as the SBS-1 EM ethernet module - which I have. The installer ran fine, but when I plugged the SBS-1 into a USB port, the autodetect kept failing. SBS-1s try to install 2 USB serial ports, of FTDI make, and the installer kept failing to find a file (but which one? Error messages were silent on the point) and looping. Eventually, having canceled the auto-detect several times, I tried to fire up Basestation - and it worked! SBS-1 detected, and up to 40 aircraft - this with the aerial on the windowsill in the dining room.

Next up, upgrade the firmware in the SBS-1 to add ethernet support. The supplied instructions are sufficiently clear that I had no problem. Run the firmware updater, then dismantle the box to add the module, which is a Lantronix X-Port on a custom PCB, with a short ribbon cable to plug onto an expansion header. Again the instructions were clear enough.

Came now the fun part - adding the Lanport boosts the power consumption beyond the capabilities of a USB port, so I had to find a suitable power brick. 12 volts at 1 amp suffices, with a 5x2.5mm coaxial connector, centre positive. Finding one of those was a bit of a saga, but I eventually succeeded.

So, on external power, and plugged into an isolated Netgear switch, I could find the ethernetted SBS at it's default IP of 192.168.1.170, and tell it, via the web configurator, to get an IP address via DHCP. Then plug it all into the main network, and reconfigure Basestation for networked access. And it no workee.

Couldn't ping the box, so it looks like the "Use DHCP" command didn't stick. $DEITY knows where it is now, so I downloaded the Lantronix Device Installer - which is a 2.4MB stub, fronting who knows how big a .NET application - and the .NET 2.0 installer, as well.

Eventually, after much clicking around, I found it, still on the default IP. So change it - and hit "Apply". Now, on the main network, I can ping it. But Basestation still doesn't see it - ah, there's a data source option in the menus. Change that from USB to Ethernet, and it worked - needed a Basestation restart, of course, but heyyy... this is Wind0ws.

Now to work out where to put it. I need a source of mains, and a network port - both of which are in short supply in the study.

During all that, the boiler man turns up - the boiler is working, of course - and decides that the symptoms sound like a stock fault with the Potterton Suprima. Apparently, the control PCB gets cooked by heat from the burner, because there's no heat shield. He undertook to order a replacement, and someone will call tomorrow afternoon to fit it.

Next, I need to modify a Linksys WRT54GS V2.2 for use in the car. The SBS-1 is likely to go in the car as well, networked back home via the Linksys wireless. But I'll need a car computer PSU for that, to avoid frying the electronics with transients. The auto-shutdown functions that most carputer PSUs have will also be useful. This will all run off the auxiliary battery - the main battery isn't up to the work, any more.

But before that, I have a work colleague's IP video camera, which he can't get to work.

Finding out what he'd done to it took a little time, but it behaves, closed circuit - that is, I can access it, see pictures and pan-and-tilt it via the local network. Comes now the fun bit - getting external access, from the wild world of the Internet, which worries me somewhat. The beast will work automagically with uPnP - which is even more of a worry. What is it doing? Can I find out? Paranoid? Moi?

Or else, I can do a bit of manual port-forwarding. This I'm more comfortable with. I admit uPnP is good for less knowledgeable people, but I prefer to know what's happening, rather than letting the thing set itself up - which always seems like a recipe for getting my *ss bitten. Remember Murphy!

Last Week

Back to Daynotes

Next Week