Naturally, Blogger Changed Something

Of course blogger changed how the blog appears ! That led to a mess of my background image tileing and messing things up in the appearance. After some messing around I managed to get it appearing somewhat reasonable, but had to change the background picture. I've used the same one for years and years now, but so be it; I can update with the times ... sort of.

I kind of like the look, and will stay with it for while, or until google gets a bug up their butt and changes things again.

Yes, I'm still alive. I haven't been blogging because I got myself involved with local politics and have been up to my ears in that effort for many months. I do get in a technical project once in a while, but haven't had the time to write them up.

I'll put them on the blog at some point, since they may be interesting to some people out there. Here's a quick list off the top of my head of the things I've been into that haven't surfaced here yet.

1. A horrible problem with my XBee network. My end devices would leave the network and not rejoin. That meant that some of the critical ones that controlled the AIR CONDITIONING didn't update the thermostats that control the temperature. Hot house or cold house depending on where it quit working. The thermostats protected me against using power during the Peak period, so the power bill didn't get out of hand, however it was painful to deal with. I have it mostly fixed, there's still one strangeness that I have to work on to get everything back to working reliably though.

2. I still have the parts for monitoring my 220V devices piled up with an enclosure, and haven't done anything else with them. They stare at me mournfully each time I walk through the garage. I'll get to them as soon as I can. To see that project's beginnings look here <link>.

3. Stumbled across a really cool phone from the crank-to-call days. I fully plan to put this thing in service. I may have to update a few parts, but maybe I can hide them inside. There's a lot of these out there, so I'm not going to worry much about the value afterwards, but I do want to keep it as original as possible. Here's some pictures of the phone; notice it has a BRASS earpiece !

It's an Australian model, but the parts are easily found to update it. This phone was updated over the years that it was in service. The crank was disconnected and the handle lost (or taken by the phone guy that did the work) the earpiece and mouthpiece elements were changed and finally the dial was added. It is really fun to play around with. I hope I can get the ringer to work; that would be great.

Might want a switch though.

3. Stupid AcuRite 5n1 weather station channel A died. Now I have to set it up for channel C since I that's the only way it will work. Sigh, don't happen to know what the frequency is for channel C would you? If you want to look at this project, it's all under 'Weather' in the list on the right side top of the page.

4. The battery life of my XBee end device temperature sensors has been a little over 5 months consistently. That's not as much as I calculated, but it's still pretty good. I'm getting tired of buying AA cells though. They're not expensive, but when you have a half dozen devices that run on three of them each, it can get annoying replacing them. I always seem to be out of the darn things.

So, I'm looking at those Li-Ion cells that sell pretty cheaply on Amazon. They seem to last forever, have close to 4 VDC output when full and are really fast to recharge. I have a bunch that I use in flashlights around the house and one installed in a sensor being tested (for months, these things take time). I suspect I'll be switching over to them on all the battery devices; they're just great since you can always have one charged up for replacement and don't have to run to Walmart because the AC crapped out.

And Etc. See, I'm still at it, just don't have the time to gather the graphs, pictures, measurements and such that it takes to make a coherent blog post about these things.

But, like the Terminator, "I'll be back."