my own personal laboratory
my own personal laboratory
I got the Hall effect sensor working today and shifted the pins to put it on an interrupt. Also got the distance and speed calculations and display working.
Arduino Rally Clock
After working as a checkpoint marshal in last years Giro d'California I had an idea for a rally clock to make the job of time keeping a bit easier. The goal was not for it to do the work for you but to keep track of your time and miles in a way that would let you know where you stand. It's fairly easy to setup a bike computer to track your time and miles and as long as you stay on time and on course it all works great. Just like in public policy however, things don't always go as they should, people make mistakes. If you make a mistake with the bike clock then you have no way to get back to where you should be. Make a wrong turn and your milage will be off for the rest of the day. Show up late to one checkpoint and you have to try and keep track of how many minutes you were late and keep being that late to the following checks.
To correct for mistakes you have to be able to adjust your milage up and down as well as your time offset from the master clock. This second capability is not present in any rally clocks I've looked at so I thought I'd build my own. I also hate cycling through screens as this goes against the workflow when you are riding and trying to stay on track. The normal mode in the Giro is to be hitting specific distances at specific times by maintaining a specific speed. At a minimum these three bits of data should be viewable on a single screen.
I'm building this rally clock on an Arduino and after 4 days I've got the lcd layout with the master and keytime clocks working. Also have the buttons for adjusting the keytime offset working. Still have a long way to go to add in magnetic pickup for the wheel and the rest of the buttons. Also have to work out the navigation through the setup screens. But it's really cool to have something kind of working after 4 days.
Since about 2001 I've followed a strict practice of selling off any HP stock I come into as soon as I can. It's worked well with the stock purchase plan as you get to buy at a 15% discount and only have to hold it for about 2 weeks so the risk is low. Two years ago I got some options and exercised half of them last year on the day they vested with plans to exercise the rest this year. Problem is I didn't set myself a reminder and I was too busy with cannonball to remember that they were there.
I remembered them last week when the market tanked. Oops! So much for replacing my 5 year old computer any time soon.
On the 8th day of the cannonball heading into Cincinnati the "route" stayed north and went directly from Indiana into Ohio. However if you were following the GPS and taking the fastest path, As I was, then you hop on 275 and cut through the northern tip of Kentucky. Shortly after crossing the river I'm in the fast lane, full tuck, and then I see it. A yellow road sign (those indicate warning or caution right?) that reads,
"CREATION MUSEUM 11"
As I fumble for my camera at 70mph I realize there's no way I'll get a shot of the sign so I'm just going to have to go there. 11? As in miles? Then I notice I'm passing exit 11 and it's too late to get over to the right to make the exit. Well, At least I got to see the sign.
I went to see Religulous this weekend and I found out what I missed. Dinosaurs and people living together and a triceratops with a saddle! OMG I can't believe I was that close and missed it. I missed the chance to "travel back 6,000 years to the dawn of creation."
I'm moving my blog off to a subdomain to free up space on the main OopsClunkThud page for a business I'm launching at the first of the year. I'm rather excited about this as it's the first time I've actually brought a product to market. After getting a great idea you then have to develop it, make sure it works, sort out manufacturing, packaging, sales and distribution... It's a lot of work but I'm keeping the investment and prospects modest. I expect to have the first product for sale by the end of January.
So anyhow, from now on the blog will be located at blog.oopsclunkthud.com. I'll also provide a link from the new oops page when it's all done but for a few weeks it will be a bit of a mess.
well, here's the remains of my cool shoes
3 weeks ago I decided that my hair had reached the magic length of 10 in required to donate to locks of love so off it came. I'm still using too much shampoo but not really missing it all that much. I will grow it back out and donate again I think, provided work doesn't turn it all gray.
So Darwin has been really sick this week and we have had 3 earthquakes over 3.5 in the last four days. coincidence or is he trying to tell us something? Good news is he is no longer puking and he's started eating a bit so if he was telling us something maybe it's passed.
Last Saturday I was on a very leisurely ride through the hills of the east bay and I messed up. I was following too close to the person in from of me and, when their rear tire lost grip in a corner sending them to the ground and onto the shoulder of the road, I must have grabbed a hand full of front brake because the next thing I knew I was also on the ground.
We were only going about 15mph if that so damage was minimal. skinned knee, scrape on the forearm no big deal. On the way home my ribs started hurting but not that bad. Seems I landed on my arm and it pressed into my ribs but not a big deal.
Yesterday I went to see a doctor about the rib as each day it has hurt more and hiccups and sneezing approaches the "sharp pain" symptom listed for a broken rib. The doctor did a simple test of pressing to flex the ribcage, he said if it's fractured I would be jumping off the table. I didn't.
So it's just a bruised rib, may even turn black and blue in a few days. I think I'll get some winter tires for the unstealth.
Nothing like being a henchman for halloween only to have your super villain leader never show up. this is how it was supposed to go down but did the Monarch bother to show? No! Whatever, I'm done being a henchman.
Well, sort of. Yesterday I saw Bagel on his cannonball bike down in Cupertino and went "hey!" as I've heard nothing about mine. So I called ScootersO to ask if it'd been shipped. it had, went out on the 28th. got the tracking number and punched it in and it said it had already been picked up by pat owens. So I started to panic a bit. I called forward air and they saw that there was a note that it had been accidentally flagged as picked up but was sitting at the warehouse in south SF. This seems to have messed up there process for notifying me that it had arrived. nice!
Anyhow, picked it up and dropped it off at first kick to display in all it's bug splattered glory. I'm hoping they don't want it for too long as it's really fun to ride. Need to get some photos of it before a good bath.
All the rest of our scooters were in sad shape so I've been trying to get them all sorted. got the new clutch cable into Blue, and today I mixed up an oil/ATF mix for the torque converter on the rabbit. So now there are three scooters in good working order. Tomorrow I'll take the flywheel from Sparky down to be remagnetized, then we should be up to four with only the lambretta being in parts.
OK, so I know the updates have been missing but it's now over and the results are in so I thought I'd post them and then go back and fill in the days events as I have time.
I came in 11th over all with all 10 bikes ahead of me being in the 250cc Automatic class. I came first in the modified manual class :)
When I get the scooter home I plan to put it on the floor or window at First Kick for a bit before cleaning it and doing a bunch of inspections on the engine. My tach has 69 hours logged on it and a quick calculation says that while the engine was running I averaged 50mph. the crank saw about 30,000,000 revolutions in that time as well.
OK, time for sleep and then shoe shopping
The day started by hopping on US-30 and my engine was already warm as I made a fuel run in the morning instead of last night. As a result I was right at the front coming down the on ramp and tucked in to pull into the lead. OK, enough of that, I let the 250s lead the pack. I kept with them for a while and found that I was running a little hot, like right at the yellow. So I slowed down a bit to see if things would improve as the day warmed up and the air got thinner. By the second fuel stop in Clinton IA the engine was still on the hot side.
The gas station Heather and I had planned to meet at did not exist so I pulled into a large parking lot and called her. She told me that she got a call and Ashrat had crashed. The other support vehicle was closer so she was not going back but she was still a long way from Clinton so we would skip the lunch. I refueled and changed to a larger main jet to get the temperature down and tried to find my way back to US-30. This took a while as US-30 goes over the Mississippi right here and the bridge is closed so I had to find the right detour signs.
Driving over the Mississippi it suddenly hit me that I was doing something on a scooter that they just were not meant to do. it was like I just realized I was really far from home. I was now in Illinois, I'd been to Illinois before but I had to fly to get there.
The jet change had brought the temp down quite a bit but at the expense of low end power. This was OK through most of Illinois but when I got into Indiana and hit traffic it was unbearable. But given I'd lose 15min changing jets I just finished the day with what I had. Heather was very excited because she had finally made it to the hotel before me. only by like 5 min. but still.
As we were all waiting for news about Ashrat's condition she pulled up. She convinced (by threatening legal action) the paramedics that she was fine, patched her bike back together with duct tape and finished the day. On top of that she still finished 2nd in her class.
Things are already getting fuzzy. I think there were headwinds at the start of day 5. The day was mostly uneventful aside from my panic about eating another reed.
At the first gas stop I called Heather to have her order a replacement reed to be delivered to Cleveland. She started calling the shops that were open and I road on. By the time I stopped for lunch it was not looking good. she had found the reeds as part of a carburetor kit but not on their own.
On top of the fear of eating another reed, I was concerned about a modification I'd made to the reed manifold. there was interference between the screws that hold the reeds in and the manifold so I had cut small recesses for clearance. All motorcycles with reeds have these recesses so it seemed like a good idea to me. But all the screws on the reed cage were loose and if one were to fall into the engine it would be catastrophic. I was thinking I should fill the recesses with JB Weld or replace the manifold just to be safe.
Finished the ride with some daylight left and talked to Rolf about the reeds being loose and he suggested lock-tight and that's it. So off I went to the local home/hardware/farm equipment mega-store to get some gasket material and other items.
Heather got the replacement reed sorted. After calling many shops and having much luck she called First Kick and David found one and had it sent overnight to Cleveland.