Archive of November 2008
This is something I’ve wanted to do since the first day I had my car and after only close to 3 years, I’ll have it!
03:42 AM | Tags: car, projects, arduino, videoAFP: Special forces launch assault on Mumbai hostage-takers
Thankfully this disgusting act of terrorism has been concluded. I’m also pretty glad that those terrorist scum-bags are dead. I guess all the people who said America was being over-aggressive about its “War on Terror” are going to shut up for a few days. They’ll be back.
03:43 AM | Tags: newsSpeaking of speakers…
Over the past couple months the front driver-side speaker was degrading. It started with a slight buzz at very specific frequencies in very specific songs, but the longer I let the problem continue to exist - the worse it got. It got to the point where I was almost embarrassed to show off my “amazing” system with a buzzy speaker.
Oddly enough, the location my car is parked actually had a role into why my speaker was acting up. It turns out that the sun heated up my door panel hot enough, often enough, to cause the glue that bonds the cone to the rubber surround to actually melt.
Melted glue has nowhere near the structural integrity of regular glue, so it did was things do, and came apart. Without anything to bond the cone to the surround, the surround now acted as a wonderful buzzer that would put increasing stress on the remaining glue until the entire thing fell apart; it never reached this stage since I caught it in time.
Using some flexible uber-glue, I re-bonded the cone to the surround. I even went as far as to use my frequency generator to put a low frequency tone into speaker so that the glue would get into all the little nooks and crannies. As we all know, if those crannies aren’t filled…
After letting the glue cure, I was able to put the speaker back where it goes - in my car - and sometime tomorrow I’ll be able to start pushing block rocking beats through it. Furthermore, I can check off one of the things on my “do to my car” list because to be honest, that list has been getting far too long. With the removal of the LCD monitor and the computer, my car has been crying that it isn’t as awesome anymore and I’ve had to give it (seemingly) hollow reassurances that it would be awesome again. (yes, I talk to my car - doesn’t everybody?)
I can’t really fix the monitor issue yet, since the monitor I want is both too expensive right now and not in stock. So it looks like I am going to be designing something to go into the open DIN slot in my dash. I’ve already gotten the prototype for a project that I’ve wanted to do for my car since the day I purchased it. Knight Rider lights.
Yea, that’s right - Knight Rider lights.
Of course they can’t be in red, but they can be in white. In fact, they will be in white. I have nearly all the electrical pieces, the only thing I am short of at the moment is the 90+ Ultra Bright LEDs but I’ve already sourced a cheap supplier of them. The next part would be to figure out how I am going to mount the final product as it needs to survive the rigors of the road and weather and such. I have to seal all electronics from dirt and moisture, as well as fit in some fairly restrictive size restraints.
In other words boys and girls: I’ve got myself a little project.
03:17 AM | Tags: projects, electronics, car
Any idea how I would wire up this AC Motor? It seems to be a split-capacitor motor and there seems to be two sets of windings. I have the capacitor that goes with this motor, but without knowing which pair it gets connected to it doesn’t help me much.
Update: Thanks internets, I got at least one confident response. We’re going to make a testing rig and give it a shot.
10:34 AMLet’s get another unicycle and attach it to the front of this unicycle - we’ll call it a deucecycle!