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With one thing and another, my rechargeable battery tester project has taken a bit of a back seat since the parts arrived two weeks ago.

I needed to spend some time tidying the garden now that the plants are starting to die back and then the computer decided not to behave. Everything tested out ok, but tests on the memory and hard drives tend to be time consuming so it was a case of nipping in and out to sort the garden and the PC at the same time.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the computer’s main hard drive is on its way out so I’ve replaced it with a spare. Trying to rush things, I was installing Windows updates at the same time as I was installing other software and that didn’t go at all well. All in all, it’s taken about four days to get the PC back to how I like it. So…. back to the battery tester project!

I’d already designed the PCB before the other jobs interrupted me so, hopefully, I’ll be able to make some progress now before I get bored with it. I’ve just finished etching the PCB so now to the fun job of drilling all the little holes!

I contacted the Council about a bit of fly-tipping that I’d spotted about three days ago. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly they respond… or not.

The Council are having another discussion about the closure of Lyndale Special School tonight, the ruling Labour cabinet’s original decision to close it having been “called-in” (ie challenged) by pretty-well most of the opposition.

According to the Globe, the Education Secretary is “taking an interest” (whatever that means) so the Globe will make an interesting read tomorrow – although, knowing this Council, nothing will change.

If it’s not the cats, it’s the magpies!

Voice of the Globe: Lyndale families sold down the river

Let’s be honest. This Council has connived and manoeuvred themselves into an unassailable position over the last few local elections and then by manipulating the structure of the Council itself.

Nobody in their right mind could believe that every single Labour councillor thought this was the right decision – yet it passed unanimously. The same as every other decision this Council makes. When individual councillors are unable or unwilling to cast a free vote, in my book, that’s the definition of a Dictatorship.

And make no mistake, they know exactly which part of the electorate they can ignore and which part they need to keep sweet with subsidies and benefits in order to ensure they’re voted into a majority again next time.

Moan about this Council all we like, nothing short of – somehow – getting Central Government to intervene in this totally corrupt and rotten borough will change anything.

Finally finished the write-up for my Spectrum Analyser and put it on my main site:

Spectrum Analyser

A week or two ago something was causing interference to my wifi signal so I lost my internet connection on the laptop, tablet and the iPhone for almost an hour.

Although the WiFi Analyzer on the tablet showed nothing untoward, that App will only detect genuine WiFi signals. Unfortunately, there’s a myriad of other devices which use the same 2.4GHz band which don’t show up but which can block the WiFi signals.

I’ve made a start on cobbling together a simple spectrum analyser for the 2.4GHz band which will detect any source of interference. Although it won’t actually cure the problem, it should at least give some peace of mind that it’s not my equipment that’s starting to act up.

I’ll post full details on my main site once it’s a viable, build-able project.

I live in an ‘open plan’ road and was forever getting the corner of my front lawn damaged by vehicles using my driveway to turn round. Towards the end of last year, I moved a small potted bush from the back garden to the front in an effort to deter the reversers. Although it worked, a combination of the high winds and the neighbourhood cats (including my own) quickly destroyed the bush.

I ordered a “40cm topiary ball” from an online store to replace the bush and it looked good. Unfortunately, the same wind and cats very soon saw that one off as well. It’s currently in intensive care in the back garden but it doesn’t look promising.

So, I decided to get an artificial one on the theory that anything is better than nothing. It arrived today and I soon had it anchored down into a pot. I think it looks quite good (ok, from a distance!) but, more importantly, it should withstand wind and cats and still act as a reversing deterrent.

I recently ordered this dashcam from Amazon. Although apparently dispatched from China, I was amazed that it arrived in just 7 days.

There’s a very good review of it on Techmoan’s site so the following is just a quick summary of a few points I’ve found.

I wasn’t able to tuck it out of the way behind the rear-view mirror as there wasn’t enough space so I had to mount it alongside the mirror. It’s way above my line of sight, though, so it isn’t even noticeable during normal driving.

The USB power cable tucked neatly behind the roof lining and side pillar but I found that I had to take care there was no strain on the USB plug/socket on the dashcam or the electrical connection became intermittent. The socket is on the part of the dashcam that stays attached to the windscreen though, so once it’s in place, it shouldn’t need to be disturbed.

The “manual” is pretty useless – the functions of most of the buttons is best gleaned from Techmoan’s video. Unfortunately, there are a few different versions of the dashcam (with & without internal memory and with & without GPS) and the functions of the buttons don’t seem quite the same with different models so there is some trial and error.

I wasn’t able to get the PC to “see” the dashcam as normal removable media (as shown on Techmoan’s site) but that may only work with cameras with internal memory. I bought the model with GPS but no internal memory. It’s not a problem, though, because I’d rather slip the micro-SD card out of the camera and use an external reader.

The sliding connector between the camera itself and the windscreen mount (which also houses the USB power socket and the GPS electronics) doesn’t seem all that robust so I doubt I’ll be taking the camera off the mount more than necessary.

Although it runs quite hot in use, hopefully it’s not excessively so – time will tell.

One slight disappointment is there’s a lot of reflection in the windscreen from the top of the car’s dash and from the steering wheel. It’s not something you notice while driving but it’s more noticeable on the dashcam video. The camera uses a very wide angle lens (135 °) so it’s not really feasible to fit any sort of lens hood.

For it’s main purpose as a “crash for cash” deterrent, though, the image quality is fine.

This short video shows my first test run. Youtube quality is quite a bit less than the actual footage on the micro-SD card.

Update:

I’ve just spotted dashcamtalk.com with plenty of good detail for this dashcam and a link to an improved manual and, hopefully, any future firmware updates.

The USB-to-PC connection does work. I was trying to do it through the USB connector on the camera mount. It only works through the USB socket on the camera itself.

I’ve moved the dashcam to the left of the rear view mirror so the LED won’t be a distraction at night. I’ve also replaced the supplied cigarette lighter adapter lead with a more compact separate USB plug and an ordinary 3 metre long USB A to micro USB lead. Although I still can’t close the ashtray compartment, I think it looks quite a bit neater.

I’ve been racking my brains (or what’s left of them) for a new electronics project and had more-or less settled on a simpler version of my camera intervalometer.

I started costing the parts:
5-way Navigation Switch (with legend): £20.00
2-stage push switch (for focus & shutter): Unobtainable.
ATmega328 microcontroller & supporting parts: £5.00 ish
Enclosure: £5.00
etc etc.

I then came across this little item on ebay for £14.49 including postage:

Very often, we build things ourselves because commercially available products don’t quite do what we want but this does all I need it to do so, except for the pleasure of building something myself (something about 4 times the size!), it’s impossible to compete with.

Back to brain-racking time, I think!

If you use Windows Explorer to create an MP3 compilation on an SD Card or your MP3 player, you’ve probably noticed that the tracks don’t play in the same order as they appear in Explorer.

This is because Explorer displays the files in alphabetical order whereas the MP3 player plays them in the order they were saved to the flash card. The latter is more sensible because the tracks are played in the order the original album producer intended.

If you copy a group of files using Explorer, the order they’re stored on the flash card is completely unpredictable. Again, this makes it difficult to organise the tracks to play in the order you want them to play in.

SD Card Sorter/Printer is a little Windows program which will read an SD Card (or MP3 player) and list the tracks in the order they will be played. It allows you to re-order the tracks simply by dragging them up and down the list before re-saving the files to the card in the order you’ve selected.

I surprises me that there is no simple way in Windows to print out a folder listing – either alphabetically or any other order – so SD Card Sorter/Printer allows you to create a neatly-formatted ‘playlist’ which can be printed out to keep as a reference alongside the MP3 player.

It’s been tested on Windows 7 and 8.1 but should also run on XP.

Click here for the download page