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Elite Screens ELIM92UWH Pull Down Projector Screen Review

JonC — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 05:48:25 +0000

I just received the Elite Screens ELIM92UWH pull down projector screen today and installed it and I really like it!

The screen came in a couple of days after my Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8350 1080p LCD projector arrived. I originally had used an Epson Duet screen for the projector until this new screen arrived.

The Elite Screens ELIM92UHW / M92UHW is a 92 inch 16:9 ratio pull down projector screen. It’s not an ultra-high-end model, in fact it’s a really cheap screen that can be had for around $90 but it’s quite suitable for someone building a budget home theater setup or someone who just wants to have a big screen in their living room. The screen certainly lives up to the big part. The viewing area is 45 inches tall and 80 inches wide and in reality it’s 91.79 inches diagonally, I won’t ding them for the .21 inch difference though.

The screen was fairly light in the box and was not a problem to mount. I wanted to mount the screen so that it would pull down just in front of my 47″ wall mounted LCD screen so I did the proper measurements and unfortunately there was no joist available within a few inches to hang the display from so I used some Hillman hollow wall anchors rated at 80 pounds a piece as well as a double hook setup to hang the screen from it’s D rings.

The Hillman fastener looks like a cylindrical slug but once you place it in the hole and tighten the bolt it mushrooms out in five directions to brace against the ceiling. I gave a reasonable tug on each fastener and everything held in fine. If you’re doing your own installation you’ll have to decide what the most appropriate way to hang the screen is for the environment that it is in.

The Hillman fastener came with a normal screw in it. I found some closed loop studs that had the same thread as the bolt on the Hillman fastener. I used the original bolt to clamp down the Hillman fastener and then install the bolt with the closed ring on the end into the fastener and all was good. I used two closed S loop link pieces per side and spread the tops and bottoms open. I tightened the S back down around the O shaped part attached to the Hillman fastener and left the bottom ends open enough to slip around the D ring on the projector screen housing. The S loops oppose each other so there’s no way that the screen is going to come loose from them. Click on the pictures below for a large version.

The screen looks wider than I expected it to look at first. The viewing area is 80″ across but the actual screen housing length is closer to 86″ over-all. I’d certainly recommend measuring everything and not just assume that the length or height printed on the actual box is the right measurment to make holes for, etc. With the screen all up and mounted it’s not really that obtrusive and the black housing fits in with the rest of the decor in the house, it’s my favorite non-color.

You can see a few ripples in the screen in the picture above. This screen being a lower end unit does not have tension springs or anything of that sort on the sides to pull the screen out, so I suppose some ripples will always be present. Honestly when the lights are out and I’m watching TV I can’t even see the ripples. They’re just slightly visible when the lights are on in the room.

Below are some of the photos I took of the screen with some 1080i TV stuff and below that are the pictures I took of a Blu-Ray 1080p source.

The following pictures were taken of a Blu-Ray movie in 1080p. The difference in quality over the TV HD at 1080i is incredible. Please keep in mind that my cable TV provider heavily compresses their HD feeds so while they are in 1080i format the quality is seriously lacking on many channels.

Overall I’d say the ELIM92UWH is a great budget screen. The model I have is the Matte White, which refers to the display surface, not the color of the case. If you’re ordering one of these and want a white case or a black one, make sure to contact the seller and tell them that so you’re not dissapointed. The screen also comes in the gray color surface which is supposed to provide deeper blacks. I’ve like to see the details in the shadow so I went with the white matte. You might want to go see the difference in person at a store that sells projectors to help you decide which style you want.

Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8350 User Review

JonC — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 02:54:07 +0000

I’ve spent some time researching and shopping for affordable 1080p projectors for my home entertainment system the last couple of months and finally settled on the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8350 (V11H373120) 3 LCD projector (Specifications (PDF), User Manual (PDF), Image Size Calculator) that costs around $1150 for my budget home theater setup. I researched prices for the screen and projector from various companies to find the best deal with highly rated dealers. I found the projector on Amazon which is great because my dealings with Amazon and Amazon dealers have always been great.

Choosing an HD projector was not an easy choice as there are quite a few projectors out there in this range with a wide variation of features. If you’re installation space allows you to use a DLP projector and you aren’t affected by the rainbow effect then you can get something for even less such as the Optoma HD20 1080p – (User Manuals, Quick Start Guide, Distance Calculator). I had seriously considered the HD20 as it has a lower price at around $950 but for reasons you’ll see below I went with the Epson 8350.

Why Did I Choose 3 LCD over DLP? I had two options both in affordable ranges but after doing a bit of research I found that most of the DLP projectors in my price range did not have a lens shift feature. These are the little knobs you twist on the projector to move the picture up and down and left and right which was an important feature requirement to me. Because the low price DLP projectors don’t have lens shift adjustment you have to be very careful about where you place them. Low price LCD projectors on the other hand usually have at minimum up and down lens tilt. The 8350 has up / down and left / right lens tilt. Additionally the DLP projectors in this range did not have a wide zoom lens adjustment. You use the zoom lens to shrink or enlarge the image to fit your screen. The Epson 8350 has a 2.1:1 zoom lens on it which makes it very adjustable compared to the Optoma HD20′s zoom lens which is only a 1.2:1 ratio. The major limiting factor was my 8 foot tall ceiling and the room being 12 feet front to back. The required space and positioning of the DLP type projectors in my room just wouldn’t work out well. One other concern is that some people are sensitive to the DLP rainbow effect and I didn’t want something that’d work for some people and not for others. Who wants a guest that says ‘Just use the TV, the big screen really messes with my eyes’ or something to that effect?

The Epson PowerLite Home Theater 8350. The projector and the mount came in the mail together but the projector screen I ordered an Elite Screens Pull Down Projection Screen, 16:9 Aspect Ratio-92in (Matte White) was shipped from the factory and won’t show up until later. For the weekend I picked up an Epson Duet 80-Inch 4:3 and 16:9 Aspect Ratio Screen from Staples. They have a 14 day no questions asked return policy so this was pretty convenient for the weekend however I may decide to keep it as it’s a very nice and portable screen for a low price. If you’re interested in screens click the link to see my Installation and Review of the Elite Screens ELIM92UWH which may give you an idea of what you’re looking at to install a projector screen.

The projector installed easily to the ceiling once I used a stud finder to locate the joist in the ceiling to mount it to. The mount, which has to be purchased separately from a third party as it does not come stock with a ceiling mount, used two 3″ long lag bolts on either side of the ceiling plate and was easy to do. I put about a third of my body weight against it to make sure it would not pull out of the joist. It’s important to center the mount left to right with where you plan to install your screen and if you are using a DLP projector you need to read the projectors manual to get the mounting height as well. With an LCD projector that has the lens tilt feature the height is less important.

One thing to keep in mind with a lens tilt feature is that if your display area is setup up properly, then a keystone correction feature is not required. This may sound totally crazy, but the front lens on the projector is heavily ‘bowed’ and moves in front of the other projection elements. If your projector is to the right, or left or above or below your projection screen, as long as the projector is set at 90 degree angles, you’ll be able to adjust the image to the screen without the need for a keystone feature.

There actually is a keystone correction feature, but it is reffered to as ‘automatic keystone correction’. The lens itself will deform and adjust the image to be square as you adjust the lens shift feature so if your projector is not centered on the screen, don’t try to point it at the screen, just make sure you have the projector and the screen at 90 degree sharp angles to each other, then use the lens shift knobs to move the image onto the screen, this will result in a square (edges are at right angles to each other) display. If the projector is off center, left/right or up/down and you work to aim it directly at the screen(a straight line from the lens to the screen), then you will cause a keystone effect.

As I mentioned the ceiling mount was not included with the Epson 8350 projector and was bought third party, a Sanus VMPR1. There are quite a few options for projector mounts with good ratings so I would either find one that fits your budget, has good reviews and fits the looks you want. If you’re mounting to a vaulted ceiling, make sure the mount that states it can be installed on vaulted ceilings, not all of them can. Below are a few photos of the projector mounted to the ceiling. Note (8/21/2011): A reader asked via the contact form if the Sanus VMPR1 reached the mounting holes in the 8350. The 8350 had 5 mounting holes spaced relatively far apart. There’s 4 on the corners and 1 front and center. The Sanus mount has four arms but using the included extension it is connected to the 2 corner mount points at the rear of the projector. The front arms are then crossed over each other and attached to the front center mount point.

A reader, GregC, emailed me about the mount I was using and I gave him some details, he decided to go with another type of mount and says he is very happy with it as well. The mount he purchased was the Sanus VP1-B1 for around $229.99 from Best Buy. He said the arms all reached the mounting holes on the projector and that it feels very secure although it cost a bit more. He’s been using his 8350 on a 92″ Stewart screen with the projector mounted 14 feet away from the screen and seems happy watching sports and movies on it.

The remote control for the Epson 8350 is pretty squarish and clean cut, it’s not very stylish but it gives you access to all the settings that you’ll need to adjust the projector and for selecting your source inputs. The back light on the remote is orange and subdued so it won’t be blinding you while trying to watch a move and adjust things.

The package I bought came with a 25 foot HDMI cable which I’ve been using to watch TV and Blu-Ray movies but I think it may come up a little short and I’m not sure if it is C2 (in wall) rated. I’m going to use this cable to connect my PC to the projector and I ordered a 35 foot heavy gauge C2 rated cable to run from the back wall, under the floor boards and up behind the entertainment center to the 4 input, 2 output (or 2×4) HDMI matrix switch I purchased but that’s for another post.

I set up the Epson Duet screen in the front of the room before the 92-inch Elite Screens pull down arrived. The Duet barely fits in that spot but I do get about 76 of the full 80-inches out of it. The 92-inch Elite pull down screen I ordered is wider but since it does not require a floor stand it will be further back in the room and pull down directly in front of the TV so there should be no issues with the available space for the screen.

I’ve taken some photos of the screen while watching TV, Movies and Blu-Rays and the quality has impressed me for being a ‘entry level’ projector as other reviewers mentioned it’s pretty good. The blacks could be blacker but that’s the only thing I really notice. The Epson 8350 is bright, sharp and very clear. I’ve tried the setup for video games, particularly Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (PC) , and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit (PC) and most recently Portal 2 (PC). The games are great on this projector! I am very satisfied with the performance and quality there as well though it’s a bit weird to play a game on such a huge screen at first and the detail is amazing.

The rest of the photos below were taken of the Epson 8350 projector on the temporary Epson Duet screen. You can see the pictures I took with the 92″ Elite Screens screen installed on my Elite Screens ELIM92UWG Pull Down Projector Screen Review. The pictures were shot with my 8.1 megapixel point and shoot Sony DSC-H10 camera. The Blu-Ray photos are the ones with a higher aspect ratio and are in 1080p the ones which look taller are shot from TV at 1080i with terrible compression from our cable provider.

The photo below was taken of a TV commercial with the camera flash enabled. I wanted to see how bright the projector really was and I was surprised that the picture was still this visible even when saturated with a camera flash.

Overall I’m very happy with this projector so far and I think I’ll be using it for a long time. The quality is stunning compared to the older projectors I’m used to. The brightness of the Epson 8350 is great and even during the daytime, if I have my shades closed the screen is still bright.

The lamp is rated for 4000 hours in economy or standard mode which works out to be 166 days of watching your TV non-stop 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The projector doesn’t support 3D and for the most part you’ll need a more expensive projector if you want to do that. I’m personally not sold on the whole 3D effect as it doesn’t really look natural to me and while I ‘see 3D’ it’s really annoying 3D, so this wasn’t a feature I really wanted. Perhaps in the future new 3D technologies and as film directors gain more experience shooting in 3D things will improve, but I will buy a 3D projector when and if that happens.

The projector makes a great home theatre TV for the price, compared to buying a normal 1080P HD TV. While prices on LCD TV’s have been dropping rapidly a home theater projector and screen is certainly worth a look and your consideration. It may not be for everyone but I wouldn’t dismiss the thought right away because you could be missing out on something great. The news looks great, TV shows look great, movies are incredible and gaming is a blast, especially with friends over.

In the next week or two I’ll be running the HDMI cables in the walls, installing a 4×2 HDMI matrix switch and taking care of a few other supplemental things which I will be documenting on my site as well.

Update 8/13/2011: I’ve rolled the hour meter on the projector over 1500 hours. I’m surprised that I’ve had it on that long already, but it’s still putting out a great picture and reliable as ever. I’ve not run into any glitches or weirdities with this projector, it just works very quietly and in the background you don’t even really notice other than to turn it on or off.

If you have any questions about my setup please let me know by commenting below this post.

Review:Monitoring Power Usage With TED 5000-C Part 2

JonC — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 06:46:05 +0000

In part one of my TED Power Monitor Review I covered the installation of the TED-5000 Energy Usage Monitor. In part 2 I will cover the software features and functionality of the Footprints software included with TED. In part 3 I am going to cover the setup and usage of Google Power Meter.

Please remember that the screen shots below are taken right after I installed the meter. You can click the pictures (below) to view a large readable version of them. As time proceeds the meter will keep a log of second, hour, daily, weekly and monthly statistics for you and provide you the ability to see your power usage over time. Already I find myself wishing that TED had an additional MTU and sensor or meter for the consumption of liquid fuel, such as heating oil, or gas fuels such as Propane and Natural Gas and later on I will talk about these things in relation to the TED series of meters.

Please remember that you can click on any of the photos below to make them larger for more detail at any time while viewing this page.

This first photo before is the screen you should see when you type http://ted5000/ into your web browser once you have TED installed. That address is actually the machine name of the TED Gateway and should resolve automatically to the right IP address, if it doesn’t you may have to log into your router to find out it’s IP address.

In the screen shot above you might feel a bit of information overload, at first. In the top left you see the days left in the billing cycle and the current rate in effect, as well as the plan type. You can also see money spent since midnight on my power usage as well as money spent this month on power consumption. The system will also project the power bill for my the month. I calculated the use of energy based on my power bills, and while I’m billed once every two months I did a little math and figured it out to a kWh billing rate which should be relatively accurate over 1 or 2 months. As of now TED does NOT support bi-monthly billing, a shortcoming, but they will hopefully be fixing that soon from what I understand. I also get a report on my present voltage (more of a nerd plus-up) Low voltage can cause electrical equipment to operate improperly. Most devices are tolerant to at least +/- 10% though (12 volts over or under) but any voltage that looks way off should be investigated. Also extremely low voltages while operating high power equipment such as a stove, dryer or other device can mean there is excessive resistance in a power supply line somewhere which can mean trouble. High resistance lines result in heat which can result in a fire!

My power company does not share their billing process with me in my bills and they don’t provide a detailed billing list. I’m going to try to get them to start providing more detail on my bill. I believe power companies should provide extensive detailing on the bills so that consumers can be properly informed on their power consumption and also be able to make decisions about their electricity provider. Because of this lack of available information I used the KWh usage and bill prices to derive an average cost per kWh. I know, I know.. there’s flat rate fees and delivery charges, regulatory fees and other things but when it comes down to it, this is how much it costs me per kWh, no matter what, on average so it is what I used.

On the screen below you can see the cost screen of the TED 5000 unit. It uses the information I provide about my power service and calculates how much money I am spending on the power I’m using at any given point as well as over time. This can be another good motivator to start reducing the amount of power used. When you see your money disappearing at the rate defined by “Present Spending Per Hour” it sort of gets your attention.

The spending screen is pretty informative and provides all your electrical spending information. I can’t believe I was spending $4 on electricity per day. The space heater is a large chunk of the constant power use at 1000 watts, the PC, TV, etc take up another 7-800. In reality, this is cheaper than running the oil furnace in my basement. Oil is over $3 per gallon and I know I can burn more than a few gallons a day to heat the whole house. The last 2 years my energy cost in the middle of winter have been over $100 a week just to keep the house at 55-65 degrees. By reducing the heat in my home and using space heaters to heat the active living areas I’ve been able to reduce my costs extensively!

The third page under “Present Readings” seen below is more for the tree friendly crowd. We need to love our trees. God, gods or evolution (I’m equal opportunity here) put the trees here for obvious reasons, to be our giant green air filters. As taught in high school science, trees help remove Co2 out of our atmosphere and release oxygen which we love but we also love carbon spewing coal and gas power plants, cars, fires, etc. Well, that junk has to come out of the air eventually.

So here’s my carbon footprint for my electricity down below. I just used the default calculation of 1.5 pounds per kWh as I didn’t see anything on my electrical providers page about how much carbon they generate.

OK!!! Past the tree hugger part (yay!). The next feature of TED is the History Tab. The history tab is pretty complex but easily broken down if you just focus on one piece at a time. There is the Month History which shows your usage per month. On a new system like mine there isn’t a lot of information but you have to remember that it builds over time. TED (The Energy Detective) Footprints software is kind enough to provide a comparison from this year and last year. So you have at least two years of history to compare to. You can also use these numbers to compare your bills to you TED estimated costs and see how well your configuration is doing. Do you feel empowered? You should!

You also have the Hour History, this shows you comparison of today vs. yesterday so you can compare today’s usage vs yesterday usage. I’ve included a slightly updated image since TED has been on patrol for a while now.

Huh, interesting! Power usage varies quite a bit. You can tell when I was awake because the power usage jumped. When the power is .2kWh I was asleep (with a shotgun and one eye open, so don’t try anything ) and had the heating blanket on plus my evil VAMPIRE DEVICES (oooo) powered on. Once I was up and downstairs I turned on the ‘dish heater’ which is a parabola shaped radiant heater which uses about 1000 watts, the TV which is about 300 and the computer which is another 300-700 depending on what I’m doing with it.

The next section of information is Graphing. The graphing tab provides a huge amount of information. You can break it down by the second, by the minute, by the hour, date, KWH, Cost Per KWH and a bunch of other cool stuff!

A lot of the power from the TED Footprints interfaces comes from how you set it up. The engineers at TED have spent a lot of time to set up the Utility Pricing Wizard as you can see below. TED allows you to set up your utility information to some detail. You can set your billing date (monthly only, no bi-monthly, yet) and how many seasons your provider charges you different rates for. Some utility companies (power delivery) may charge a different rate for 2-4 seasons where the rate varies depending on if its fall, winter, spring or summer. Other companies may go three ways or have a simple two or one way billing season. You need to ask your utility for EXCESSIVE DETAIL if you want to be super accurate on setting up your rates. If this seems like it can get really complex, it can, but if you can get this information from your power company it’ll go a lot easier. If not, do I what I did and average your power cost from your last years bills (I got mine online) and use the flat rate.

Once you’ve set that you need to go through the Plan Type as well which lets you choose your billing for a Flat Rate (I used this with my average), Tiered where you pay different amounts per kWh from 0-500 then 500-1000, then 1000-2000 kwh, or similar, Time of Use where the amount you pay for your energy depends on your the time of day you’re using power, such as daytime or evening. Generally evening is cheaper than daytime use. Also you may be billed on Tiered PLUS Time of Use. You need to know this information for accuracy if you don’t want to do estimated billing.

Once you’ve set up your utilities plan types you need to set your Energy Rates. These numbers will vary depending on the plan type you’ve selected but the TED engineers have made sure to add the input fields for all different types of billing plans so that most people are covered. If you’re not covered and want to use a TED system you should contact the engineers at TED and let them know!

If you’re on a tiered system for example; TED lets you define the number of tiers as well as the start and stop for each level of your power usage tier, you don’t enter your tiered rates yet, just where the tiers start and stop for each one, up to 4 tiers.

If you’ve enable Time-of-Use on you TED system you’ll need to enter the Time-of-Use ( TOU ) data as well on the following screen.

Finally after entering all of that information you get to enter the Energy Rate data. This is the information that tells TED how it much it should be calculating your energy cost. Depending on the options you’ve selected you may have to provide more or less information about your energy costs. If you’ve selected Time-Of-Use as well as Tiers you will need to enter the data shown below which is your 4 tiers, plus your peak/off-peak power usage. You’re almost there, don’t freak out!

Finally, if your utility charges any additional fees, taxes or other things you can set that up in the TED 5000 system as well. Again, I just used an average number based on my bill over the last few months since my power provider doesn’t willingly provide detail billing information.

Huzzah! You’re more-nearly there, the final decision is to go to the ‘Write to Device’ and upload the data to the device. This sends all of the information to the TED Gateway and saves it. Since the TED Gateway is also the web server, all of your information is there and NEVER saved on your computer which may crash or error out. Although it’s possible to lose the information on the TED Gateway as well if you have to do a firmware update or reset it. You can back up the data before a reset though and save it somewhere safe to reminisce.

Now that you have the critical information setup, or you don’t have it setup but want to go on anyways, you should look into the System Setup Wizard A lot of the settings are covered in the manual so I’ll go to a few which I’ve found interesting.

The first part of the System Setup Wizard which you may find interesting is the Operational Settings.

TED Offers an ‘Normal Mode’ which is what you see when TED is operating normally (go figure) as well as an enhanced mode. The normal mode is what you might view on a daily basis out of interest, or maybe on a weekly basis depending on how much you want to cringe. The enhanced mode allows you to set ted to update more often and provide higher resolution data for the voltage and energy usage. You may use the advanced mode when you have a small load placed on the line that you wish to monitor or you’re trying to nitpick energy usage. Say you want to harp on the old lady for using too much power on the clothes iron or the curling iron, hair dryer, coffee pot, etc then advanced mode is for you. BE FORWARNED! Non-geeks don’t appreciate you nit-picking their power usage, keep it to yourself for your own self gratification because TED also collects information about all of the things you’re doing too! Sharing the detailed power consumption information of a hair dryer is NOT a benefit to your happy abode and may find you on the couch.

The display unit for the TED 5000-C (the -C denotes it comes with an LCD display) is a generally nice looking display unit which should fit into most homes. Apparently it communicates with a 2.4Ghz protocol though which is unfortunate as other 2.4Ghz devices in the area can interfere with it’s updates and drastically reduce it’s range. This includes WiFi and BlueTooth communications devices so you should seriously consider this in your extended purchase. I knew this in advance, not what I had that would interfere with it, but that it may be interfered with. In the end for my situation it turns out my BlueTooth Logitech headphones cause it problems. I decided to keep the LCD screen near the gateway to limit interference and it’s next to the TV so I can always keep an eye on it when my computer is in sleep (to save power) or I’m not at my computer (usually the same time as sleep mode). The range for this LCD display is also short. The box shows going to your thermostat and adjusting it to reduce your power consumption which is lame but the concept is conveyed by the picture. In reality you might not get this far, still I recommend it.

The LCD has a green light on the button which blinks each time it receives an update, so if you’re not getting a blinking green light on your TED 5000-C LCD display you should move it closer to the TED gateway until you do. I would recommend experimenting by moving the device around and finding out your true range. My personal opinion is that TED should put a much better battery in their little LCD device and include one of the many available OEM WiFi modules which is compatible with most peoples homes to transfer the data. For homes without internet connectivity they could even make a few bucks selling pre-configured routers and setups. There’s a lot of communications stuff in TED which results in interference or ease of being interfered with which could be solved by a B or G WiFi connection. Hopefully that will be in a model like TED-10000 or something.

Below is the configuration for what the TED 5000 LCD Display will show when you hold it and push it’s buttons to change screens.

Click to enlarge the above photo! Here you can set the normal and enhanced modes back-light settings. When you’re in enhanced mode on the TED 5000 it changes how the display responds by increasing back-light power. You can also set a timer to dim the TED 5000 LCD Display’s back-light as well as set a timer for the scrolling of the display information and how soon the display falls asleep. Almost finally you can set the contrast.

On top of all that you can set which displays are shown Real-Time Use, Recent Usage, Month To Date, Monthly Projections, Co2 Nature Abuser Status, Voltage, KW Detail for Today, Spending Detail for Today as well as Multi-Panel which supports multiple MTU usage if you are monitoring more than one set of power leads.

Once you’ve setup the TED 5000 LCD Display the final setting before you write them to the device is to set the Footprints Settings. I find that most of the footprint settings are adequate and adjustable on the main info displays but you may want to fine tune them, you can do that in the screen shown below.

Once you have set all of the settings to your preferences you can go into the ‘Write To Device’ tab and update the settings with your preferences. This will send all your setting to the TED 5000 gateway and to the LCD display itself.

There is another feature of TED which I haven’t gotten into yet, and I would consider this an experimental feature. They have a function called ‘Load Profiling’. If you can accurately provide information on a known load you can track it separately without needing an additional MTU. The idea is that you tell TED Footprints how many kWh or Wh a devices uses and if it’s a multi-stage unit and TED can tell when that device turns on! While it’s good in theory the execution has been mostly good but partly hit or miss.

In the screen shot above of the TED 5000 Footprints software you can see that I have setup a load profile for a Dish Heater. This is the radiant heater mentioned earlier that uses about 1000 watts. I added this to TED as well as my 6kW water heater (50 gallon) and my clothes dryer (set on ‘auto dry’). My main experience has been that it detects the dish heater mostly okay, but occasionally determines it’s a dryer if the dish heater and water heater turn on at the same time. This is not so much a problem of the TED Footprints software as it is the method that TED Footprints uses and the data it has access to. If two devices turn on near the same time which have the same power consumption as a water heater, it’s going to show as water heater on rather than dish + something else.

Overall I would have to say the load profiling on the TED 5000 has limited uses and flexibility. They’re trying to offer a solution based on limited data so the results can be not too great. If you really want to be able to monitor another device accurately you should probably just buy an additional MTU for the TED and clamp the lines you want to watch. I’m sure with some time you could get the profiler to be more effective than I did, but it would take a lot of time and an assistant running back and forth to turn the device on and off for you since the ‘auto-detect’ for the load profile setup times out fairly quickly.

Also if you have loads who’s power usage varies constantly, this may cause problems. I have an Oil Furnace and that device has two power stages. The oil pump to the burner and the inducer motor turns on before the main blower on the furnace starts. The pump and inducer run for 2-3 minutes before the main blower turns on. Unfortunately the oil pump motor is an older version and it’s power draw can vary by up to .2kW every second then the OLD blower turns on and it’s power consumption varies about the same. This can throw the TED unit even with the ability to adjust the sensitivity. The better option for detecting this current draw may be a separate MTU. I may order a couple more but I want to research the forums on multiple MTU usage first. I’d also love to see a TED 5000 oil/gaseous fuel consumption monitor as well before I go nuts.

Thank you for viewing part II of my TED 5000 review. In part III I’ll provide a final evaluation of the unit, cost analysis(simplified) and let you know if this was a worthwhile investment for the home user who wants to save power and how it may apply in real life. Please stay tuned!

Amazon.com Widgets

Still here? Did you read Part 1 of my TED Home Power Monitor Review?

Review: Monitoring Power Usage With TED 5000-C Part 1

JonC — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:12:23 +0000

I’ve been wanting a way to monitor my home power usage for a while and recently did a lot more research. The folks at TED (The Energy Detective) had a selection of products which rated well and I ended up buying the TED 5000-C.

These are not installation instructions, just showing you how I installed my unit. Always follow the manufacturers instructions.

With that said, TED’s selection of products vary from the pretty basic to some pretty snazzy equipment. I went for the TED 5000-C system which lets you monitor one set of mains power lines and includes a nifty LCD display. I searched around for other options, and there were some pretty high end units which allow per-circuit monitoring, but you pay for the price. The TED with the display was around $240/USD and as package can monitor one 240VAC circuit or 120VAC. The most common usage is to monitor the main feeds into a persons home.

If you have an X-10 unit used to control your home lighting you may wish to check the TED support forums in advance. I’ve read that since TED uses power-line transmission for it’s data like X-10 does, it can cause erratic behavior in some X-10 switches and units, causing them to turn on and off at random times. It’s best to read the forums or contact TED and find out what the conditions are before investing in a system. I don’t run X-10 at home and have been looking at other brands of devices that don’t use power-line transmission so I am not too concerned about it.

I ordered the TED 5000-C on the Nov 14th and received it today, Nov 22, despite some possible back orders on their end. This gave me some time to read over their website and user support forums to see what sort of things I might expect to run into. As with most support forums there were a lot of requests for support with good answers, or answers found elsewhere on the forums for questions which have been asked multiple times. My impression from just reading the forums is that they seem to be putting in an effort for supporting their customers.

Here’s what I got in the mail today. Oh sweet I can hold the LCD Panel while adjusting my thermostat! I though it would have been cooler to push a button on the LCD display and vaporize my power bill, but it’s not going to be THAT easy. (Click pictures to embigginate them)

Open up the lid of the box and you’ll find 3 nicely packed sub-boxes. One box for the MTU components, one box for the Gateway Unit and one box for the LCD Display unit.

Taking a closer look at the components we’ll start with the MTU and the CT. The MTU (Measuring Transmitting Unit) is a small box that will live in or near your main electrical panel if you are using it to monitor your household energy use. The MTU is relatively small and unless your electrical box is packed you should have no problem finding room for it. Additionally the MTU box also contains the two clamp-on CTs(Current Transformers) which are used to monitor your 240 volt power feed into your home. Most often in the US and Canada a home power feed consists of two 120 volt lines which are 180 degrees out of phase with each other, so you get a clamp for each line. The clamps have a red dot on them, the red dots face towards the incoming side of the lines(towards the power meter). As you’ll see in my photos later, I actually had them upside down. I don’t think it should technically be a problem as long as both face the same way, but I flipped them the other way as per the manufacturers specifications.

In the next box is the Gateway. This is a rather unimpressive looking unit. The entire unit is built into shell with an Ethernet network connector, some LEDs and a 3 prong electrical plug. The LEDs near the Ethernet port show network activity. The LED on the right side of the box shows communication status with the MTU (it should blink about once per second when operating properly) and the LED on outward facing side shows connectivity to the LCD display. If no LCD display is present, then the green light stays solid, otherwise it blinks about once per second as well.

The final package contains the LCD Display unit. The unit is shiny and it has a base docking station with charger. The unit is able to be removed from the base station and carried around with you. I have a blue-tooth headphone transmitter in my living room which seemed to interfere with how far away I could carry the LCD display away from the Gateway. Some experimentation may reduce the signal and improve the range and I’ll make sure to update this post with the latest information as I go.

One thing that isn’t included in the package is a two-pole circuit breaker which you may need if you’re installing the TED in some locations. It depends on what your electrical code approves of. Some electrical codes will allow you to connect the TED power supply lines to an existing 2 pole circuit breaker, others may require that you use a standalone breaker. As I could not find the code which this was specified in, I decided to go the safe route and buy a separate breaker for the TED MTU. The breaker cost around $15 at Lowe’s.

Please read the installation manual and don’t use this as installation instructions, but simply a story on how I installed and got my TED 5000 up and running. Every situation is different, however what is almost always true is that working in your electrical box can be hazardous if you are not used to working with the voltages and configurations involved. I have experience working with multi-megawatt high energy / high-voltage capacitor systems, high voltage projects, and even some limited household wiring experience as well and I know how to be safe. If you’re not sure, hire an electrician for this part.

Below is a picture of my electrical box with the panel removed. You can see the breakers, and the wires going to the breakers. The feed lines are the big black lines at the bottom which come in from the right. The left and right lines are the 120 Volt feeds and the center line with the white tape wrapped around it is the return which is tied to the ground and neutral bars in the breaker box. This is what’s called a combined box meaning that the main breaker and sub-breakers are in the same panel. Even when you turn the really big breaker off for a combined box, the 3 silver colored blocks that the thick leads go into will still be energized(!).

You’ll notice in my box on the left hand side that someone used a black wire and a white wire to make a 240 volt circuit, but they didn’t bother marking the white wire with black tape which I’m pretty sure is a no-no in electrical circles. In some places you’re not even allowed to do that. That was corrected before I put the panel back on but it may have to be replaced with a proper red and black wire set to make it legit.

I connected the leads to the two-pole circuit breaker in advance. The red lead to one side and black lead to the other side and made sure to screw the terminals nice and tight. I connected the return wire (white) to the return bus bar in the box and after making sure the new circuit breaker was off I carefully installed it into the box.

With the breaker installed I installed the CT (Current transformers) around the feed lines. This is the area you have to be very careful about in a combined box because there is always live voltage with more than enough current to roast you and kill you pretty good. Again if you don’t feel comfortable doing this, get an electrician to do it for you. The clamps are supposed to be positioned with the red dots facing down the feed line towards the meter. I originally had them upside down, but the readings were the same either way. TED says if they’re upside down they’ll read wrong, but I think it’s mostly important to have them both face the same way as my reading didn’t change any after I flipped them over. When in doubt just follow every word of the manual!

I mounted the TED MTU box at the top of the electrical box and connected the MTU power cable from the new circuit breaker and the cable from the CT’s into the MTU itself. They are keyed and only go in one way. Look at the keying before you connect the box though so you don’t bend anything up.

Once that was installed I flipped on the circuit breaker and green LED on the MTU started flashing. I then proceeded into the living room, grabbed the TED gateway and plugged it in the nearest place that I had an open outlet and a network cable. I then went to my web browser and typed in ted5000 into the URL bar and the TED Footprints interface came right up. After setting the serial number for the MTU and Display, the MTU was communicating, I was seeing power usage, all was good. The display is another story, but I resolved that as well as you’ll see a bit further down.

Then I downloaded the latest firmware update from the TED website and sent it to the TED module. You have to install the Gateway firmware before you install the Footprints software, which I did. Once I had updated the software the Gateway and MTU quit communicating. It drove me nuts for a bit, but then as a sanity check I grabbed the TED gateway and plugged it into an outlet near the electrical box. Immediately the green light on the side of the TED 5000 Gateway started to flash indicating it was receiving data. I brought the Gateway back to the original plug and disconnected the power strip that was below it, which solved the problem. And I got great info like you see below!

Because the TED 5000-C uses power line transmission it is a bit sensitive to interference on the circuit it is trying to communicate with. Additionally a circuit which has filters, suppressors, UPS (battery backups / uninterruptible power supplies) are not TED friendly and can cause interference or actually filter out the power line transmissions which are used to transport data from the MTU to the TED Gateway. Apparently for some reason the TED could work on that outlet with the other devices connected with the older firmware, but the new firmware made it more discriminating and made it look like my TED 5000 was busted (oh no!). If in doubt plug your TED Gateway into another outlet and see if the green light on the side starts flashing again.

Now that I had the MTU and the Gateway communicating, I had to figure out why the TED Gateway couldn’t talk to the LCD Display. The display was powered up and sitting on my desk about 15 feet from the TED Gateway. I picked up the TED LCD Display and moved towards the Gateway and all of a sudden the LCD display came to life with the proper date and time as well as showing power statistics… when I was about 3 feet away. Okay, that’s frustrating, what’s going on?

Since the TED Gateway links to the TED LCD Display via a wireless link the first thing I did was check my most suspicious wireless device nearby. This is the BlueTooth headphone transmitter which I use for my computer. I brought the LCD display back to my desk and removed it from it’s cradle and reseated it, again it lost the signal. (apparently it reconnects every time you remove it from the cradle. I’m not fond of this myself). I then disconnected the bluetooth transmitter from the computer and the LCD display immediately picked up and noted it’s communication by flashing a little green LED on it’s button. So finally all three components were working well together. The MTU, the TED Gateway and the TED LCD Display.

Overall the installation didn’t go that bad, though I think it could have gone better. I understand the reason for the communication methods they use as it can be viewed as a simple and low cost for communication throughout a household without having to wire Ethernet cable up and route it, etc. I think a WiFi capable version would be really nice, but then you would have the costs involved with building WiFi into the MTU (at minimum) and LCD Display (would be a nice bonus).

I’ve taken a bunch of screen shots of the display and footprints software and I will post Part 2 of this review tomorrow Nov 23rd or Nov 24th with information about the display, software, configurability and possible pitfalls. I can say right now that I’m pretty happy with this so far. Once I post the next part I will include a link under this paragraph and a comment. So make sure to bookmark this page and check back tomorrow. While your waiting please check out my other sites and pages linked to the right!

Mini-Titan e325 Night Flying LED Setup Progress

JonC — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 03:08:03 +0000

I am working to convert my ACE Mini-Titan e325 to a night-flying setup. Since winter is on the way, the only time I’ll be able to fly is later on in the day when the sun is low, or gone so this is a perfect excuse to play with lighting.

I purchased 2 feet of green and blue LED strip lighting from a vendor at the 2010 NEAT Fair while purchasing a Blade mSR and some extra batteries for it. The LED strips can be cut down to sections consisting of 3 LEDs and require a 12 volt power supply. These strips can also be found that require a 5 volt supply. The 12 volt powered strips work great on radio controlled models which use 3S Lithium Polymer battery packs. Because LEDs are low power draw, even a lot of LEDs won’t make for a huge impact in your flight times if you run them off of your main flight pack. In my setup I use a male JST style connector on the canopy which makes connecting and disconnecting the LEDs for the canopy a simple and quick matter. The female JST connector’s wires run to and tie in with the power lines which run the helicopter tail boom lighting. These are connected to the power connector for the brushless motor speed controller.

The LED strips come with an adhesive 3M tape backing which will pretty much stick to anything. To prep the Mini-Titan canopy I scrubbed it down with 90 percent rubbing alcohol, then i scrubbed it down again and wiped it down, then one more time for good measure. I spent a little bit of time placing strips on different locations of the canopy and finally decided on a layout for the LED strip lights. Once set I cut the strips down to length for each location, removed the paper tape from the adhesive backing and then pressed the strips onto the helicopter canopy.

Once all the strips were down I soldered on all the wiring to connect the LED strips to each other. Soldering LED strips isn’t that hard to do with the right equipment and experience but if you haven’t soldered before I’d recommend practicing your soldering skills a lot before attempting this. There are exposed solder pads at each end of every set of 3 LEDs on the strip which allows you to solder the strips in parallel to each other. I was a bit concerned that soldering the tape while it was stuck to the canopy would melt the canopy at points, but it is a thermoplastic and did not have any problems with the short soldering times required. I used a 45 watt soldering iron to first prime the pads with a blob of solder, and tin the ends of the bridging leads, I then placed the tinned wire atop the hemisphere shaped blob on the soldering pad, heating both till they fused then let the joint cool normally. The last step of the soldering process takes about 2 seconds. You can see the pads in detail in the pictures below, and also how I routed the wires around and took advantage of solder pads being everywhere on the LED strip lighting. Just mind your polarity and you will be good!

That’s all there was too it. It took me about 3 hours last night to do all the work, but that was while watching TV and occasionally plugging the strips in after each addition to make sure everything was still working good and that I had not created any solder shorts which would cause unfortunate problems on the electrical system and batteries for the helicopter.

The results of this work are pretty good and can be seen in the photos below. You’ll also see I have some red and white LED’s in the back. I am planning to replace these with longer strips of alternating colors (red/white or purple/white) perhaps helical wound around the tail boom so I did not detail the installation of these, though it’s pretty much the same; Clean, place and solder. I also have a 1 Watt green Luxeon Star in the front mounted inside of the canopy. The Mini-Titan’s battery tray almost perfectly fits an old square style Luxeon Star board and with the LED right in front of a canopy vent it gets plenty of fresh moving air which means I didn’t have to add any additional heatsinking for the LED.

The setup is very bright, we took some video of it tonight and it over drove the video camera. I didn’t mess around with the video recorders settings too much but I’m sure it could have been adjusted to better tone down the lights. While the lights are extremely bright in person as well, they are also well defined and don’t turn into a ‘glowing glob’. Here’s the short video I made of this setup.

Please let me know what you think of the canopy setup for this helicopter, or share some info on your own setup by commenting below or using the contact form to send me a personal message.

Analyzing Your Radio Controlled Helicopters Current Consumption

JonC — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 01:36:39 +0000

I’ve been flying quite a bit and not paying much attention to the load I’ve been putting on my speed controller. Today I plugged my CC50 ICE into the computer to check out my last few flights. I was quite surprised. Most of my flying did not load the ESC as much as I had expected. While I had a few high spikes on current and wattage, overall my flights were pretty average. I’ve mostly been practicing flips and inverted hovering, and most things I attempt do not qualify as hardcore 3D. I’m slowly getting there though.

My inverted hovering skills have been honed over a few flights. The majority of it was done during one evening where I attempted it for the first time and then flew 3 more battery packs over the evening. You can see this in the video of my first inverted hover attempts below.

So I’ve been working on those but I’ve also just been screwing around. The log chart below is based on a flight where I was flying fast forward and then did a hard breaking maneuver by the following: Fast forward flight, rotate the heli 90 degrees(nose to the sky) and then applying high collective. This spiked the power readings on the ice as you can see, pulling out a large amount of current. Just click on it to see a full size version.

When I did that I pulled the current up to around 50 amps on the ESC, which is within it’s >peak< rating by quite a bit. I have another flight on which I screwed up and I did a recovery, highly loading the rotor disc and you can see that chart below. Again, just click it for a larger version

You can see in the above graph that I pulled nearly 60.3 amps,, again well within the limits.

Basically by analyzing the information from my speed controller I have a better idea of how my flying is affecting my system, and as well I know I’m well within the systems limits. Chance of an electrical failure due to my flying abilities is pretty low! Carry on!

E-Flite Power 90 Brushless Motor Rebuild

JonC — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 07:43:18 +0000

Hi folks, as you may know from watching the videos, I put my Twist 60 into mother earth a couple of weeks ago which resulted in some damage to the brushless electric motor I use to power it. Most of the damage was to the bearings, they sounded kind of crunchy. I also replaced the main shaft and prop adapter to make certain it would run true again. Below is the footage of this so called ‘crash’ and further down is a quick video on the repair of the E-Flite motor.

I ordered the new main shaft and prop adaptera from Horizon Hobbies for the Power 90 motor but they didn’t carry a bearing set for this motor model. In fact even individually I could not find the proper bearings on their website.

This is when I turned to a reliable bearing source. Now truth to be admitted, I have purchased bearings from Boca Bearings in the past for one of my nitro-methanol powered radio controlled helicopters, but I have not ordered from them in a long time and not for a brushless motor. Recently Boca Bearings friended me on YouTube which was pretty cool. So when I thought of replacement bearings for the E-Flite Power 90, of course, I instantly thought to check the Boca Bearings website. Good marketing!

The bearing part numbers for the E-Flite Power 90 brushless motor from Boca Bearings (the ceramic variety) are SMR696C-YZZ NB2 for the larger ‘rear’ bearing and SMR626C-YZZ NB2 for the smaller ‘front’ bearing. (Rear and front are interchangeable terminology depending on the prop adapter and mounting of the motor.. smaller/larger is the better bet!) They were 9.95US a piece, but high quality and I expect that they will last a long time until I perhaps crash the Twist 60 once again.

The E-Flite Power 90 brushless motor has been an excellent motor, so I wanted to replace the bearings with only the best quality substitution bearings for my motor. It’s not often you can spend so little for the something of very high quality in this hobby The bearings from Boca Bearings are probably much better than the original and will be more than sufficient for my flying needs.

I’ve posted a video of how to replace the bearings, motor shaft and prop adapter for the E-Flite Power 90 brushless motor below, please check it out and let me know what you think of it! (Yes, I am aware it does move a little fast, please use the ‘pause’ button if you want to hold on a step and I’ll remember that in future video slide-shows )

New Video 9/14/2010 – 12:30AM — I just did a run-up on the motor tonight, it sounds great. I ran it up bare/unloaded and then I ran it up on a 16×8 3-bladed prop. While I know 3-bladed props aren’t preferred for 3-D I have a ground clearance issue with this plane. As it was I had to re-form the landing gear aluminum to fit this propeller. The system is two 3700mAh 14.8 volt packs running in series for 29.6 volts at 3700mAh. With the previous prop, a 15×7 3 bladed prop I would get about 10 minutes of flight, most of it full out. I expect the time to drop dramatically with the new prop, but I should be able to use less throttle with a larger prop if I’m not aiming for speed. It should be a lot of fun at any rate, I really love this plane and motor combination.

Spirit 100 Glider – First FPV Flights – OT’s Discus Launch Glider

JonC — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:27:21 +0000

I’ve been working on the Spirit 100 glider to convert it to an FPV platform for the last couple of weeks. Today I finally was able to get the plane up with the First Person View gear and the results were awesome.

Having so much wing area is a huge bonus when flying FPV because it really slows things down and when you are just gliding your video is so smooth. With the addition of some moderate piloting skills you can get some awesome results and a ton of enjoyment.

The first video I have to show you today is the test video. I always fly a plane in ‘normal’ line-of-sight mode with all of the FPV gear, receiver, video recorded and goggles running but I let a friend wear the goggles while I fly the plane. If there are any interference issues they can tell me if there is a problem and I can go back and review the video later to see what is going on. Bryn wore the goggles for the first flight, I don’t think he’s worn them before and he really enjoyed the view as I flew around. I think it’s a view that everyone into R/C should get to experience.

Here’s a hard link to the video on YouTube (where you can vote and comment ): Spirit 100 Glider FPV-First Person View Setup Test Flight or you can watch it with the embedded player.

Once the test flight had been performed and I received good reports from my goggled co-pilot, Bryn, I proceeded to get some batteries charged up for the next flight, which was to be a true FPV flight. My buddy Ollie spent some time flying his discus glider while my batteries charged up. He built this thing from scratch and it flies great. It is amazing to watch him spin around and throw this thing a hundred feet in the air. Check out the gallery then scroll down for more FPV testing!

I hope you had fun checking out those photos. After quite a few launches, flights and catches of OT’s DLG (Discus Launch Glider) my batteries were finally charged and I was ready to do my first real FPV flight on the SPirit 100 (2.6 meter) powered glider. The first launch from FPV ever was pretty rough, I did not power on the motor soon enough and/or did not pull back and time and the glider left a nifty divot in the field. After checking things over and the glider (seemingly) looking okay Ollie threw it up again and this time it took.

Now, I had reset the camera to default settings because I wanted to go through it and demo all of it’s options, a project I still need to get to, but having forgot this, the camera was doing very poorly with the low level of lighting. Everytime I lifted the center of the camera to the horizon, it blacked out the video, and when I pointed it down everything lit back up. This was very difficult to fly with as I kept getting ‘blacked out’ and I finally decided to land it. I did get a good 2 and 1/2 minutes of flight time, and that 2.5 minutes was great. I really look forward to getting some full flights in!

Here’s the second video, again here is the hard link in case you want to comment and vote: First FPV Flight on Spirit 100 Glider or you can watch the embedded version below.

After the flight I found out that the root of one of the wing sections had been broken at the rear mounting point. I think the sudden deceleration caused the wingtips to move forward under inertia and the rear mounting points to pull forward and shear out of the wing-bolt block. the 1/4-20 screws seemed no more worse for that wear though. I’m going to strip the covering from this part of the wing and fiberglass it, at the suggestion of Ollie, and it should be all good to go again.

Also another problem discovered is that the motor I used for the power-pod on the Spirit 100 has a bent shaft which is causing excessive vibration when I power up the motor. If you watch the videos you can see the video ‘wiggling’ occasionally, this is the cause. I’m ordering a new shaft and bearings for this motor this week (probably Boca Bearing ceramics) since I also need to order a new shaft, bearing and prop-adapter set for my Twist 60′s Power 90 motor. I’ll try to get some shots of those two motor repairs in case anyone is interested in ‘how to replace bearings and motor shafts’

Thanks for watching!

Luxeon Star V 5-Watt Royal Blue LED Video Demo

JonC — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 03:54:10 +0000

I’m a big fan of LED lighting which is why when I ordered a bunch of parts from SparkFun the other day I ordered a 5 watt Royal Blue LED by Luxeon. These 1 Watt Luxeon LEDs are discontinued and brighter stuff is available now. Up to 100 Watts or more! This LED is quite bright and I wandered a little around the house and outside of the house shooting video while illuminating things with the LED. Blue is not a great color outdoors at night, let alone Royal Blue, but even so you get an idea of it’s brightness (way bright!).

There’s a little surprise at the end of the video, but I suggest you watch the whole video to get an idea of the brightness of this LED.

The LED was powered from a 7.2 volt battery pack directly with no ballast resistor for the LED. I slightly discharged the pack from it’s peak voltage, however according to the Luxeon Star V Datasheet I was well within the operation range of the Royal Blue LED.

Hard Link to Video

Li-Poly Battery Burns down Lawn and Distrupts Time/Space

JonC — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:18:17 +0000

I’ve intentionally blown a few Lithium Polymer R/C battery packs when they have reached their end of life. Unfortunately while my Outrage XP25 2200mAh packs still power my rc helicopter, they are beginning to puff and I don’t trust the pack to not burst into flames while I’m in mid-air. To alleviate the temptation I destroy the packs. In the below video you can see an Outrage XP25 pack being burst into flames. I connected the pack to a jump-start pack and hit the on switch, the pack eventually burst into flames and combusted gloriously. Enjoy!

Hard Link to Li-Poly Fire

My Arduino AtmoLight/Ambilight Clone Project

JonC — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:42:42 +0000

I was researching a project online the other day when I came across a project on Blogspot about how to make your own Atmolight/Ambilight type setup using an Arduino Deumilanove, a ShiftBrite Shield and ShiftBar modules from Macetech and some 12v LED RGB lighting strips. It was kind of amazing as I had all the parts I needed on hand and didn’t have to order or wait for anything. The project calls for using the ShiftBar modules and RGB LED strips, but I have a hand-full of ShiftBrites and MegaBrites that I had used for another project. There is no code difference between driving the ShiftBar, ShiftBrite and MegaBrite so I didn’t have to do any major changes to the code from The AtmoLight Clone Project Site.

The *Brite modules are generally setup to receive the shifted data from the SPI I/O port. This leads to good performance and fast updates since they are being hardware driven. Unfortunately I needed those pins for an older project I was working on which used the ShiftBrite shield and an Ethernet shield so I had rewired the ShiftBrite Shield to use other pins so the Ethernet shield could use the hardware SPI. The owner over at Macetech helped me build a bit-banging interface to do the SPI I/O to the ShiftBrites via software. The AtmoLight Clone project uses the stock Macetech code which made it easy to replace with my modified ShiftBrite driver code. This different code is slower on the output, but it’s not noticeable on a small number of ShiftBrites with limited data.

I mounted the ShiftBrite modules onto the back of my primary 21″ monitor. I have 2 ShiftBrite modules which point upwards, 2 to the left, 2 pointing down and 2 to the right with one MegaBrite module pointing straight back in the center for the summary channel.

Once your hardware and software on the Arduino you need to interface it to your computer. The Atmo interfaces connect through the Serial/Com port at 38400 baud. If your computer supports the USB com port of the Arduino, you should be able to connect to it. Make sure in the setup section of your code that you only have one serial start statement, and that it’s set for 38400.

I tried two different ways to get the data to the Arduino. The first was to use an older version of VideoLan/VLC Player. The current version of VLC (as of 8/21/2010) does not seem have the built-in Atmo output code. If you’re putting something like this together, check to see if the new versions have it, the author of the VLC Atmo module said on another forum that he was working to get the Built-In Atmo code back into the package.

The Atmo plugin for VLC works very well, capturing average colors from the top, bottom, left, right and middle portions of the video it’s playing (as seen in the screen shot below from AtmoWin) and outputting that color information to the Arduino/ShiftBrite LED modules. It’s pretty quick and there are a lot of options which you can set to vary how quickly the lights respond, if they fade slowly or if they adapt quickly to the video input. You can adjust the white balance of your modules, set a color for the LEDs to fade to in case you pause the video, and set a color that the LEDs will display once the video is complete.

The second option I tried is AtmoWin, which is for Windows only and in German. It takes a few minutes to figure out what all the stuff stands for, and Google translate may be helpful as well. I believe this software is written by the guy in the main project page. This software runs in your system tray and has several output modes such as Atmo-Classic, Dummy(shows what the program is sampling), DMX, Null Device, Multi-Atmo (run up to 4 Atmo devices on 4 Com ports) and MondoLight. The software captures the entire screen and is not limited to just a video window. It does the same 5 point capture pattern, but of whatever you have showing in your desktop. You can set the capture framerate (it defaults to 25). The response time for this software seems very quick on my computer. AtmoWin also supports multiple monitors and you can choose which monitor the system will capture.

One thing to note is that when running some games in full screen mode it cannot capture the colors. I ran Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in a full screen -window- however and it worked fine, adding some great effects to my gaming sessions!

This is the link to the main project page which provided me the information to build my own setup, make sure to check it out after watching my video below.

Fun3′s Blogspot Page – AtmoLight Clone

Arduino with Shiftbrites with AtmoWinX – Link to the YouTube video below in case the embedded player doesn’t work for you.

Long Optical Audio Cables (and optical interfaces)

JonC — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 02:48:12 +0000

I’ve been looking for a long TOSLink optical audio cable but I notice most of the consumer stuff is max 15 feet long. I really need a digital audio cable about 25 feet. I thought one of the major advantages of an optical audio cable was that optical could carry quite a long distance. Does anyone out there know why TOSLink cables have a limited length? I’d rather not run more coax cable in 2010.

I’m looking forward to the fiber optic linking systems Intel is working on for PCs and peripherals. They call it a hybrid system, silicon potonics, the merger of optics and silicon on one module.

I remember way back when when I was building my first laser in.. well, it was a while ago, it was a Heathkit voice communications laser kit(!). I remember thinking this would be cool to have fiber or something to link the two points so they wouldn’t have to be LOS (Line-of-Sight). Then when I was dealing with trying to wrangle in old IDE cables into a case with a lot of drives, or worse yet SCSI arrays back in the day, I thought things would be a lot easier with a fiber connector instead of friggin wires. And why not, fiber technology was pretty advanced, even back then!

It appears, though, that they seem to be coming out with new standards that are grandfathering their existing technology and standards before they are even released. As an example they just announced the Intel 50-Gbit/sec optical interconnect using their ‘silicon photonics’ technology which basically means the optical cables are directly attached to the chip, rather than the chip driving an output module which the fiber connects to. Just previously they were bragging about their 8-15-Gbit optical interconnect I guess this is similar to handling device I/O right on the processor rather than having an outboard I/O chip.

I think this type of technology will first lead to fiber optic connections that replace SATA, then instead of PCI Express, we’ll have our super-computers in a card (video processors) plugging into the motherboard for stability, some power, and the main connection will be a fiber link. Once we get past that stage you’ll start to see motherboards with fiber optics onboard and with optical ports between the processor and expansion cards. You’re socket whatever will become a socket whatever/O There will still be pin connectors in the socket, but you’ll also have optical I/O channels. The lasers will fire out the bottom of the processor and into the optical I/O ports built into the socket using micro-lensing technology and be distributed throughout the board.

Eventually your processor will just have a couple of bulky lugs for power and begin to resemble a really high-tech laser diode pump source. A couple of big lugs clamped down with the CPU and just a bunch of fiber optics integrated into the motherboard. This technology isn’t that advanced over what we have today, but I’ve not seen anyone who has fiber optics integrated into their circuit boards (as in a fiber running like a circuit trace) if you have, please comment and share.

The peripherals will still be primarily passing electronics between components still, but eventually they’ll begin to become more optical themselves to take advantage of the optical processing capabilities of the primary processor itself. The processor will advance ahead of the peripherals. By the time you have a fully optical processor, I suspect your accessories will still be using older electronics, but slowly catching up slightly out of phase on the development time-line.

So.. anyways! We’re like 10 years behind the curve on this stuff, get with it already! There’s tons of smart people on this, it’s just taking forever to roll out the new stuff. In the last 100 years we’ve learned to fly, gone to the moon, invented nuclear technology, invented computing and about a million other substantial things. I’d like to see a primarily optical computer developed in my lifetime and in consumer hands since I missed everything else!

Ah where was I? Oh right, digital audio optical cables longer than 15 feet.. What’s the deal?

Guan Li Catalina First FPV Flight (sorta)

JonC — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:08:11 +0000

I installed the FPV (First Person View) video and electronic gear in the Guan Li Catalina this weekend. It took a bit of time to install all the parts and then some friends and I took a quick test flight on Sunday evening.

Here’s some of the stuff I installed in the Catalina, all the pictures can be seen in larger versions by clicking on the gallery collection at the bottom of the post.

In the Catalina Itself: I used most of the Eagle Tree components inside of the plane. The only thing I left out was the airspeed monitor, thinking GPS would provide enough information. The GPS seemed to do fairly well, but I will try the standalone air speed monitor with pitot tubes and all in the future. It’s kind of a neat looking probe to add to the plane anyways.
Futaba R149 DP 72Mhz R/C PCM Receiver
Eagle Tree eLogger V3
Eagle Tree OSD Pro
Eagle Tree GPS v4
Eagle Tree Barometric Altimeter (more accurate than GPS)
WDR600 Camera
DPCAV 900Mhz/500mw Audio/Video Transmitter

FPV Ground Station: I made a simple lash-up ground station as I’m still waiting for the Eagle Eyes to become available for antenna tracking, and then I will need to build an actual FPV ground station. In the meantime I attached the 900Mhz video receiver to the back of the patch antenna with Velcro and connected the patch antenna to it. I then made an adapter from the Ultra Deans connector to the proper barrel power connector used for the receiver to attach the battery to the receiver.

Using more Velcro I attached one of my older Outrage XP 3s1p 2200 Li-Poly battery packs to provide the ~12 volts power to the receiver. The Trimersion video goggles connect to the Audio/Video ports on the 900Mhz video receiver. The video goggles have their own Ni-Mh 8 cell battery pack (9.6 volts) powering a 7805 linear voltage regulator I added to them. Unfortunately the portable video recorder did not arrive until today, so there is no recorded FPV video of the test flight.

DPCAV 8dBi 900Mhz Patch Antenna (It’s actually an l-com unit, but unless you buy in bulk, it’s cheaper from DCPAV)
DPCAV 900Mhz Generic Receiver (This is the one I modded with the new SAW filter)
2200mAh 3s1p 11.1v Li-Poly pack (12.6v fully charged)
Custom Ultra Deans to Barrel Connector adapter
Modified Trimersion video goggles w/7805 linear voltage regulator
Generic 2500mAh 7.6v Ni-Mh battery pack for goggles.

I tested the setup indoors and all was working well, but I needed to test it at the field. My friends Ollie and Bryn went out with me. Bryn shot some ground footage of the Catalina flying, while Ollie wore the Trimersion video headset to make sure that the video stayed clear throughout the flight. I flew the plane, of course It was a extremely gusty day, and we only achieved one flight on the Catalina for just a few minutes before I brought the airplane down. Ollie said that the video in the Trimersion headset looked great throughout most of the slight with only a minor fade-out of the video signal at a couple of points.

More testing will be done before I try FPV myself, and even then it will probably be with an eyes-on pilot and a spare radio attached with a trainer cord for redundancy. If I loose the video or control of the airplane in FPV for some reason the backup pilot can take over control of the aircraft.

Replacing the SAW Filter in a 900Mhz A/V Receiver for FPV

JonC — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 07:42:28 +0000

I received some more components in the mail today. Most of them were base station equipment, all from DPCAV.COM. The items I received were the 900Mhz patch panel antenna, a dipole 900Mhz omnidirectional antenna, 2 900Mhz receivers, some Kapton tape, a bunch of batteries I ordered for my Aiptek 8800 digital camcorder and A/V input capable recorder as well as 5 ECS-D480A SAW filters.

The first challenge was to replace the SAW filter on one of the 900Mhz receivers. These 900Mhz and 1.3Ghz receivers use a stock DSS (digital satellite) TV receiver module meant for set top boxes, the 2.4Ghz DO NOT need to be modified this way (lucky you 2.4Ghz owner.. oh by the way, be careful using a 2.4Ghz R/C system with a 2.4Ghz video transmitter!) The filter they include has a 21-27Mhz bandpass. The filters sit in the RF path behind the 900Mhz Rx circuitry if I recall correctly. The DSS boxes are setup for a dual channel LNB/LNA input and thus they have a larger bandwidth than required for our FPV stuff. By replacing the SAW filter with one which has a narrower bandwidth, we can get rid of excess video signal noise to provide a clearer video signal. Our video signal is only 4-5 MHz and our audio signal is just portions of that. The ECS-D480A SAW filter is a 17.6 MHz bandpass filter and will reduce noise and increase receiver sensitivity. Doing so can provide up to a 3db gain in receiver signal quality!

There are some concerns about this conversion. Some folks have stated that while the video signal quality has increased at range, the video tends to cut out more quickly when the aircraft reaches the extents of usable range. I have not seen solid proof of this, however I have seen what I consider solid proof (3 video links) that it does improve video quality and for me that is enough to perform the modification.

As I read these forum threads I see people saying their 40 or 45 watt soldering irons are not powerful enough to remove the SAW filter. One thing you need to consider while soldering/de-soldering large jobs is the mass of your soldering iron. Manyof these 40/45 watt soldering irons are very narrow and slender. There is not much mass to them and the heat drains quickly from them into the work piece. Temperature controlled soldering stations can account for the loss in temperature and will quickly ramp-up the heating element to compensate for the heat loss. Generic type soldering irons (plug goes from wall to the iron) do not have the ability. Radio shack sells a 40 watt soldering iron in the stores for US$8.79 which has a large soldering tip mass and body mass. This will deliver enough heat to de-solder this SAW filter with solder wick/desoldering braid, no problem. If you cannot source this a higher power iron can be used. Remember it’s about heat capacity, not wattage. Most soldering irons will reach the same temperatures, but may not be able to reheat as fast or do not have the heat capacity to properly melt solder. Too much power and you will risk damaging your Rx module or circuit traces.

So now with that out of the way, onto the actual steps of replacement. The pictures are by the steps and formatted somewhat small. You can click on each image to see an embiggened version.

This is the Receiver (Rx) module, you may recognize the shape and design, it’s very common.

Remove the four screws from the case and slip off the top cover, you will then be presented with this.

Use a wrench or pair of pliers to remove the nut from the RF output connector where the antenna connects and carefully remove the RF module from the case. If you break a wire here you will have to re-attach it, be careful and deliberate and take your time, it’s not a race.

Once you have remove the RF module, remove the cover plates by prying them up very carefully. There are sensitive components under those covers and you don’t want to damage them! The big round thing you see under the cover is the old SAW filter. You will probably see a BIG blob of solder between it and the metal shielding of the RF module. This is the hardest bit of solder to remove. With some -~extreme~- patience and the right soldering iron with soldering wick you will be able to remove it. Heat the blob with the soldering iron, if it doesn’t melt within several seconds your soldering iron may not be up to the job, run out to Radio Shack. At this stage I had to drive 30 miles round trip and spend $15 for a larger soldering iron and some soldering wick at Radio Shack (You’ve got questions, we’ve got blank stares!).

Once you have removed that giant blob, you will need to use the soldering iron and wick on the back side of the board to remove solder from the 3 pins on the underside as best as possible. At this stage the old SAW filter is junk, but be very very careful not to damage or melt the solder on nearby components. Do some zen, some deep breathing, steady yourself and be patient. Do not DIG or PRY or STAB at the solder joints no matter the frustration. That is not the way to learn soldering and it will damage things!

Wow! Finally, that stupid #@$) !@#$@ #@$ is out of there. It might have taken a bit of time using those artful and careful soldering skills, and maybe a pair of pliers to pull on it gently as you heated up the whole can real good but gosh darnit it’s out of there! Make sure you use the soldering wick to remove any excess solder in the three holes so you can put the new unit in. BUT to be sure not to mess any of the other parts up or you’ll be placing another order with your favorite FPV dealer. You should get a cotton swab dip it in some rubbing alcohol (grocery store, health aids, 90%) and wipe down the area really good. You’ll probably be surprised at all the brown goo that comes up. That’s the flux from the solder, in case you were wondering(some were, some weren’t ). Make sure you let it dry out good before the next step!

Hey that’s pretty sweet, you put the new SAW filter (can) in and put a new blob of solder on it’s side. You even made sure the tab on the new can was aligned with the mark on the board! It may not be as big and as inaccurate as those mass production shops, but it looks good, smooth and like a drop of liquid soaked in smoothly over the metal parts rather than a blob floating on the surface. Good job!

Now carefully go to the backside and using some fresh solder, make sure the two signal leads (they have narrow traces coming from them on the circuit board) are re-soldered well and clean. Then make sure the ground lead is also soldered well. To finish things up, heat up that pad right in the middle of the underside of the can and ad a tiny bit of solder until it all flows out nice and smooth.. not too much now.

Okay, now that you’ve done all that, and have taken pictures for your own blog or forum posts. Make sure you re-assemble the entire unit carefully. With this stuff, it may not be the newest technology, but it does require your attention and care.

As some additional resources I recommend the following links:

DPCAV.COM – SELLS BETTER SAW FILTERS

RCExplorer.se – Exchanging the SAW filter in a 0.9/1.3Ghz receiver for a better one

RC Groups – Replace Saw Filter on 900Mhz Receiver!
RC Groups – 900Mhz video receiver sensitivity improvement searching !(editor gasps for breath)
RC Groups – how to remove SAW filter from 900 rx’s?
RC Groups – To saw or not to saw?filter that is

Video of SAW Filter Replacement (by Vimeo user Ian, alternate method of removal of the old filter)

What do I need for FPV Flying – A Comprehensive List of My Own Choices

JonC — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:10:27 +0000

Hello folks, this is my introduction to my FPV configuration and some general FPV information. As you saw in the last post a nice video showing on-board recorded video, and also FPV video. I found that particular video after deciding on doing FPV and ordering some equipment, there are many great FPV videos on the net on Vimeo and You Tube. FPV is First Person View, which means you fly the model aircraft, boat or car as if you were actually inside of it. I have done on-board video before with a helicopter and camera rig. One person flew the helicopter while the other ‘flew’ the camera mechanical undercarriage and shot video but never FPV flying, it should be fun!

NOTE: all links in this post open in new windows or tabs, you will not be lead away from this site.

The systems usually consist of the following components in addition to the normal R/C and power equipment.

Small video camera on the vehicle
Video/Audio transmitter on the vehicle (usually 900Mhz, 1.3Ghz, 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz)
A compact On Screen Display (OSD) which merges vehicle information onto the video such as GPS info, battery info, motor, temperature, signal strength, battery consumption, etc.
Video receiver (sometimes two attached to two different antenna types for better reception)
Video display (television, video goggles, laptop, etc)

With these basic components above you can build and FPV flying/driving system. More advanced systems include features such as the following.

Head tracking for video goggles. The camera on the plane will pan and tilt in response to the movement of your head so you can ‘look around’
Diversity video switch or diversity receiver for switching between to the receiver which has the strongest signal
Digital video recorder for recording your flights, could be a purpose built DVR or a laptop with capture device
GPS system for OSD. The GPS allows the OSD to show location, altitude and speed. Some OSDs allow the GPS to be used for limited autopilot to return the aircraft to home and orbit in local airspace if radio signal to controls are lost and also for setting way-points and displaying them on screen like a satnav for a car, sort of!
Autopilot systems for planes are available on more advanced systems, but this moves into UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) territory and is not necessarily limited to first person piloting.

As you can see there are many options available. For my personal system I have gone with the following equipment (prices in USD on 3/25/2010)

Main Video Equipment

WDR-600 video camera from hobbywireless.com $139
900Mhz 500mw Video/Audio transmitter from dpcav.com (requires HAM / Amateur Radio license, see note below on HAM license) from DPCAV.COM $139
900Mhz A/V Receiver, Dual Output from DPCAV.COM $75
Trimersion Video Goggles from ‘SafeSeller’ on eBay (to be heavily modified) $100
Digital Video Recorder (DVR) not decided yet ~$100

Flight Data / On Screen Display (OSD) Equipment

Eagle Tree OSD-Pro from hobbyking.com $81 ( I already have an Eagle Tree eLogger v3 for my electric aircraft which integrates with the OSD-Pro well, so I went for this OSD there are other OSDs available for various prices)
Eagle Tree GPS V4 for integrated GPS functions with OSD-Pro from HobbyKing.com $80
Eagle Tree altitude microsensor V3 from HobbyKing (GPS provides this functionality, but nice for non-GPS setups) $30
Eagle Tree Airspeed Expander V3 from HobbyKing (GPS provides this functionality, but again, nice for non-GPS setups) $38

Video Transmitter and Flight Data Equipment Batteries

2 x Turnigy 500mAh 3s1p Lithium-Ion 11.1v 20C battery packs from DPCAV $13/ea (cheaper at HobbyKing for $8/ea but I was combining shipping from DPCAV. International HobbyKing shipping can be expensive)

Test Aircraft

2 x HobbyKing “Skyfun Jet w/Brushlet Motor” this is a knockoff of the small foam Funjet as seen in the video in the previous post but has received good reviews for crashable FPV fun. $64/ea

Additional Flight and Video Receiver Batteries from HobbyKing (for existing heli/biplane and new Skyfun jets)

1 x Turnigy 1800mAh 11.1v 3s1p 40C pack $16
3 x Turnigy 2200mAh 11.v 3s1p 30C pack $17/ea (1 for video Rx and also planes and helis)
1 x Turnigy 2200mAh 14.8 4s1p 30C pack $24

Progress So Far

I have received the video components (camera + accessories, 900Mhz 500mw video/audio transmitter, dual output receiver, Trimersion goggles) from DPCAV, HobbyWireless and the video goggles from ‘SafeSeller’ on eBay. All items arrived very quickly in good condition.

I experimented with the video goggles watching movies on my DVD/Blu-Ray player and also played with them a bit on the PC in BattleField Bad Company 2 (videos contain bad language). The head tracker works like ‘mouselook’ so it worked pretty well with that game, but ultimately the resolution on these affordable goggles is only 640×480 and it is very hard to make out targets you are shooting at.

Tonight I started hacking into the Trimersion goggles for my purposes. I will post a separate blog entry on these goggles and my progress hacking those over this weekend.

There is quite a bit of good information about them on RCGroups.com (create an account and search on ‘Trimersion’). Information such as hacking them for your own radio equipment, stereo (3D) vision, improving the existing built in video/audio Tx/Rx for you FPV purposes, if you wish, and so on. There are many other types of goggles of varying price as well and if you search for ‘FPV video goggles” on Google you will get many results. Another very good resource for FPV Information is FPV-COMMUNITY.COM there are many European posters who work with limited output power but have great solutions, great airplanes and a ton of great FPV videos. Make sure you bookmark the site.

HAM / Amateur Radio License (USA)

There are FCC regulations regarding all of the RF equipment you use. It is particular important to note that some video downlink transmitters will require an Amateur Radio license for use. Video transmitters which offer multiple channels to select from may not be permitted in the US since they can operate outside of the amateur radio bands(frequency ranges). You will find many dealers in the US only sell single channel video transmitters. Several years ago a dealer was cited by the FCC for selling Unauthorized RF devices.

It is your responsibility to determine if you require a license from the FCC in order to transmit on the frequencies you will be using, at the power levels you will be using. I will also cover more of this in a future post.

There is good news however, the Technician class license should be all you need to use higher power transmitters. To qualify you need to go to a local testing location with a drivers license or equivalent ID and $15 and take the test. I would highly suggest doing some studying on the material first though. The questions involve general knowledge questions, questions about electronics and questions about RF and basic practices. Most people should be able to pass these if they study. You do not need to know morse code. Once you pass the test your information will be sent to the FCC and your HAM callsign assigned to you, once you’ve got all that done, then you can legitimately use the equipment. $15 bucks to legitimately do higher power FPV is a good deal. This also opens you up to using different bands for your R/C Control radios and use specialized equipment without risking trouble.

While it is quite possible to buy and use the equipment without proper licensing, it is also illegal and threatens the general hobby and continued availability of this equipment to hobbyists. Those who are not able to self-regulate within a hobby risk the government taking over the regulation and making things very difficult for everyone who wants to explore this part of the hobby.

For more information please go to the “Amateur Radio Relay League – the national association for Amateur Radio” web site to find study resources, sites with sample tests and other information you may be seeking.

My Nexus One User Review

JonC — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:59:24 +0000

Well I went and dumped my old Samsung flip phone I’ve had for a few years in exchange for a Nexus One when they came out. I had been waiting for a good Android phone to come around that didn’t require me to switch providers, and the Nexus One finally came out and I bought one. It took a bit of work to get it through T-Mobile, I had to switch my phones to an individual plan and then buy the Nexus off the Google website. The phone arrived pretty darn quick and all I had to do was swap the Sim card from my old phone to the Nexus One and there I was with a shiny new smart phone.

UPDATE 4/29/2010: In case your curious, the Nexus One still does not have support for the multi-color ball, thumb ball, navi-ball or anything else you would like to call it.

I have owned smart phones before, a Palm Treo way back when, the Blackberry Storm through work, and while not a phone, I do have an iPod Touch which runs most of the iPhone apps that don’t require phone, camera or mic. I have also worked with iPhones for work. I really didn’t want to wait for Apple to distribute the iPhone outside of AT&T and likewise did not want to switch to Verizon to get a Droid.

I’ve had the Nexus One a few weeks now, and for the most part it’s a great little phone, I’ve not run into any ‘showstopper’ issue personally, nor have I really run into any functionality issues in general. It feels comfortable in the palm has a bit of a rubberized grippy backside so it doesn’t slide around and overall the user interface is very easy to get around. After spending a couple of hours one evening with it I was pretty comfortable with most of the features.

When you first turn the phone on it’s asks you for an existing Google account to link to. This is optional but I went ahead and set it up. It automatically imported my email, contacts and calendars, etc from Google with no hassle at all.

The phone works fine as a phone, my dad said it sounded a little ‘hollow’ like it was missing high and low frequencies off the mic. I was a bit dissapointed to hear about that. I haven’t tried it with a blue-tooth headset to see if that improves the way it sounds. It was clear, just lacked depth. When you hold the phone up to your face, it senses that and shuts down the display and touchscreen. When you move the phone away from your face it turns them back on.

The buttons are pretty straightforward with power on the top, and volume on the sides. Like the iPod Touch and iPhone the volume buttons can get in the way when in portrait mode, but it just requires a bit more training to hold the phone right so you don’t bump them. I don’t get a lot of use out of the trackball yet as I mostly use the touchscreen. I was told it was a multi-color LED under there, but so far I’ve not seen any apps that let you manipulate it so I’ve only seen it glow white. If there is an RGB LED under the trackball it’d be nice to be able to set different colors for different alerts. Right now when you have a new notification it just slowly pulses white every few seconds. According to a post on androidcommunity.com this is in the process of being remedied and the recent software update may have solved that.

The AMOLED display looks amazing and crisp for a 3.7″ display. The touch screen is responsive, however you have to be careful not to let the edges of your phone-holding-hand touch the edges of the glass part of screen or it will mess up interaction and make it seem likes it’s not being responsive at all. This is not so much a hassle, as just training yourself to hold the phone properly.

The camera works alright, the quality is what one might expect from a cell phone camera. The Nexus One camera is 5 megapixels and accompanied by a super bright LED for a ‘flash’. I’ll attach some photos from the phone to this post so you can see the quality yourself. There are some apps that let you use Android camera flash LEDs as strobe lights or flashlights, but the LED in there is not meant to be powered on for long periods of time in and such use may result in failure of the LED.

Additionally the Nexus One has Google’s voice recognition software which works well in my experience. While there will always be some things that just don’t translate well for speech recognition, for the most part it pics up things very well. If you click the mic button on the Google Search bar that is on the main apps page of the phone, it will google search your request. With the maps you can give it a command to ‘Navigate to

’ and it will process, then ask you to verify your request with a high success rate. You can also enter your SMS text messages by voice, though it’s a bit redundant to use a phone to do speech recognition in order to send a text message to someone.

The Nexus music player works fine for listening to music though there are no outstanding features from other players. The ability to just attach the phone to your PC and upload your music onto the SD card is great. I don’t think I’ll be using my iPod Touch too much in the future as this phone provides all of the same functionality of the iPod Touch

As of today I downloaded the update for the N1 and manually installed it using these directions. The update adds multi-touch to certain applications of the Nexus One, and is supposed to improve the G3 problems some people have been reporting with their phones, although the latest reports show there may still be some bugs to work out in that sector. If it’s a concern for you I would recommend doing a search about it and reading recent posts on the subject.

THE APPS

There are around 20,000+ applications available on the Android Market, it works pretty much like the iTunes App Store for the iPod Touch and iPhone. There are many free applications, games and other things available, and plenty of pay apps as well. I’ve found a few great apps and games so far and I’m sure more will come out.

There are some apps pre-installed in the phone. One of my favorites aside from all the basic tools is Google Sky. Google sky takes your GPS position and uses the compass and accelerometers inside of the phone to show you in real time where all of the stars are. If you sit in a room in your house and find the moon on your Android screen it shows you exactly where the moon is in relation to yourself. Very cool to play with.

The built in maps and navigation will let you find anything, and you can use the voice recognition to find locations as well. If you press the small microphone button and say ‘navigate to Radio Shack’ to the phone, it will pop up a list of Radio Shacks for you to choose. Same with other stores or businesses. Very convenient and easy to use.

Work Apps

Network Discovery by Aubort Jean-Baptiste is also free and lets you scan your local LAN or WLAN to find other devices and do port scans as well. It’s a handy little network tool.

Remote Desktop Client from Xtralogic is $20 but I think it’s worth the price. It’s an excellent remote desktop client, the screen works as a track-pad on a laptop. Rather than direct cursor positioning where you touch, you drag the cursor around by dragging on the screen. Additionally there’s a pop-up keyboard that lets you send extended key commands to the remote system.

ConnectBot by Kenny Root and Jeffrey Sharkey is a nice little SSH app although it’s not loaded with features, and may not be for everyone.

Personal Apps

Gmail Unread Count by Andrew Blom is free, and just replaces the gMail icon on your phone’s screen the gMail icon with the number of unread messages in a little red circle next to it.

Trapster from trapster.com is a great integrated app with live updates from other users as to the location and types of speed traps, traffic cameras and other troublesome things one might encounter while on the road. This app will probably be more useful when an actual Nexus car dock is released.

wpToGo from Roundhill Labs is free and lets you update your WordPress Blog from your Android phone. While I find phone entry for a blog is not convenient, I know others blog on the go and may find this valuable. Perhaps one day I’ll shoot a photo while at the flying field and write a short little article to go with it. Time will tell.

Foxy Photo Editor by DeckEleven Entertainment is a handy little tool that allows some basic manipulation of your photos. Take the photo and then modify or crop as desired. It lets you transform, rotate, touch up with brushes, title, add clipart, etc.

Utility Apps

Advanced Task Killer Free from ReChild works pretty nice. It’s a task manager app that lets you kill battery hogging processes on your phone that may be running in the background. There are a variety of task killer apps out there, this one had good ratings so I ended up checking it out.

Audalyzer and Wildspecta Mobile Lite, these are both free spectral analyzers which use the mic as the input source. While they’re probably not very accurate, they are fun to play with and might help you get some info you need in a tough spot.

Phonalyzr lets you see way more statistics than you ever wanted to about your texting and phoning habits, breaking your phone usage down by day and type of use, incoming and outgoing use, time, etc.

Games!

Trap! by Matt Wachowski is a fun and somewhat addictive game. You isolate a number of balls which bounce around the screen by drawing lines between them. By getting different multipliers and power-ups you increase your score. I’ve managed to score over 600k points on one level before, but I hear you can get into millions of points. It’s a good time waster for when you’re on a plane or what not.

Space Physics by Camel Games is another good game. You use your finger to draw lines and gears and wheels to move a ball from one location to the target, or multiple targets. It’s a good puzzle game that can absorb you.

Misc Apps

Barcode Scanner by ZXing team is free and uses the camera on the phone to scan bar codes and then run them through Google to find matches. It works pretty good with UPC numbers and other standard barcode formats to bring up results, competitive pricing, etc. This is more of a toy though, I don’t need a barcode scanner and search engine to tell me that if I walk into a Best Buy and see something, it’ll be cheaper online.

Summary

Overall I feel this will be a great phone for my personal use for several years to come. I don’t always need to have the latest and greatest toys on a constant basis, but when I do upgrade my devices and equipment I go for what I feel is the best option out there for myself and will last me at least several years. There are a ton of useful applications for time management and productivity as well as games, networking, social networking and other things out there to suit most peoples needs. One app I would like to see for Android / the Nexus One is one that uses the mic to determine the RPM of a running 2-cycle engine or frequency of a repetitive sound in numerical format.

Arduino Projects Have Slowed Me Down!

JonC — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:38:23 +0000

Sorry folks, I know I’ve been pretty slow to update the site, it’s just that I bought an Arduino Duemilanove development board , an Ethernet shield from sparkfun electronics and some MegaBrite, ShiftBrite and OctoBrite modules from MaceTech. I have some experience in programming the atmel Mega series of micro-controllers so it was pretty easy to get into working with the Arduino. The USB interface is great, it uses a USB serial interface and the board is powered via USB (OR external supply). You plug in the Arduino and then install a couple of drivers and your set.

The Arduino IDE is pretty flexible and easy to build with and it includes a built in serial monitor so you can send reports back from your little project. Additionally there are quite a few example projects and a reasonable resource base on the internet for finding out most anything you need to do whatever you might want to do.

My project is pretty generic, it’s a simple lighting system with LEDs. I chose the MegaBrite, ShiftBrite and OctoBrites because they’re already built and they’re pretty easy to program. They use a bit-shift register so in order to send data to 20 of them, you just stream out 20 sets of data to the set and there you go. There’s libraries for them so you don’t have to do all the bit shifting yourself. You basically just need to send the data to an array for LED position and RGB values (0 – 1023) and your set. I was very happy with how easy this was to setup, and the guy over at MaceTech has been very helpful with some non-common questions I had. The MegaBrite modules were around $10 each, the ShiftBrite around $5, and the OctoBrites a bit more expensive at $24. The arduino itself only cost $29.95!!

You can’t beat a deal like that, $29.95 for a completely programmable microcontroller development set, ready to plug and play (you could beat it if you built the programmer and other circuitry yourself, but.. I like things ‘ready to go’.)

I wanted to be able to control these LEDs via a serial port, and I’m a terrible computer programmer type, however I’m most familiar with PHP/MYSQL, etc. I originally downloaded the NetBeans IDE for Java and tried to write a Java control program. Trying to do serial communications in Java is a bit of a nightmare, because most of the libraries are old, unsupported or broken. Though there may be one way to do serial for Java pretty easily, I’ll cover that next.

I gave up on Java after a DAY of trying to find a working serial library. I resorted back to PHP to see what could be done there. I downloaded XAMPP from Apache Friends which is a complete web server, php, mysql, etc solution. Everything you need to experiment with PHP on your PC without installing Linux and other things. I had originally tried the php_serial class. It didn’t work, period and also there are some possible coding deficiencies discovered after reading various message boards. It is a good library to use if you want to communicate in Linux, but I wouldn’t recommend it for window.

After a bit more search I found some references to SerProxy, it’s basically a proxy server that works as an interface between your Windows serial ports and any programming language which can do TCP/IP network communications. There are pre-compiled windows versions available or you can compile it yourself. I found a few examples online and within minutes had my PHP application sending the control codes to the Arduino code I had written. It’s so much faster than php_serial seemed to be (long delays). It didn’t cost anything and it also supports 2 way connections in PHP under Windows, something that the php_serial class did not provide.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing with this little project of mine, as well as I am busy working on building a copper vapor laser. You can keep up to date with my laser projects over at my laser blog . Quite a few things to distract me from working on the house and such. This weekend though we will be working on digging out the base for the new concrete front sidewalk and I will be posting pictures and information about that so stay tuned!

Some Options for Sprinkler Timers

JonC — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:27:57 +0000

Having had to grow a new lawn in 2 areas covering around 2000sq ft we really needed some sort of sprinkler timer system. I had actually spent some time searching online to see what it would take to put an in-ground system in at one point. Although most of the components are extremely price friendly, there are a couple which are not. The first is the sprinkler system timer, and the second is the back-flow prevention valve which can run up to $300 in itself on top of the rest of your system. Add in the additional digging and modifying your plumbing, etc, it’s a lot of work and perhaps a job better after settling in for a couple of years.

Vigoro 3015V Water Timer / Sprinkler Timer (also known as a Melnor Electronic Water Timer 3015V)

We ended up going with some garden / home improvement store variety water timers / sprinkler timers that you just hook your hose to. The first one we purchased was a ‘Vigoro Model 3015v’ (same as Melnor) branded item which had a lot of programming flexibility, manual override and, in this package, the moisture sensor. The water timer without the rain sensor function is $26.30 at Amazon. (not the number of ‘review stars’ in the amazon popup when you hover over that link) The one with the water sensor is pictured below.

Overall this seemed like a pretty good timer. It has a lot of flexibility in the programming schedule. You set the current time (in hours only) and set the start time (in hours only). You then program how often the timer will open the valve in hours or days to water your lawn, and for how long it will do it each time, in minutes, or hours.

We used this unit at first on four oscillating fan type sprinklers. I noticed right away that the water pressure to the sprinklers was very low when they were ran and series (VALVE –> SPRINKLER –> SPRINKLER –> SPRINKLER –> LAST SPRINKLER) type setup. I bought a 4 way splitter valve and then split the hose 4 ways to the 4 separate sprinklers. This evened out the pressure much better (and is called a parallel configuration)

While the water pressure had improved with the 4-way hose splitter it was still weak, this of course is not the sprinkler timers fault but just additional useful information if you’re trying to water a large area with multiple sprinklers.

The rain sensor / moisture sensor did a reasonable job, and lets you adjust how sensitive to ground moisture it is. The setting varies from 1 water drop to 3 water drops to tell the system how wet you want your ground to be. If the moisture sensor detects that your lawn is wet, to the level you selected, the main unit will bypass any sprinkling times until your lawn dries out enough to require watering again. The rain sensor is great as it prevents the system from watering your lawn when it has rained recently, saving you money and possibly sparing you the dirty looks from your enviro-conscious-neighbors if your sprinklers happen to turn on during a torrential downpour!

Special Note: Attach your hose to this unit before attaching the wireless receiving antenna. Speaking from experience it is much more difficult to get the hose on when the antennas is attached!

Model: Vigoro/Melnor 3015V Water Timer / Sprinkler Timer w/Wireless Moisture Sensor
Cost: $24.95 (excluding moisture sensor feature)
Pros: Simple to setup, manual override, reliable, easy to read.
Cons: Splits hours evenly. a 6/noon/6 schedule is not possible, you only get a midnight/6/noon/6 schedule, and I didn’t want to water our lawn at midnight and I didn’t want to water too early in the morning, or too late at night like I could achieve with an 3 x 8hr schedule. This unit has received terrible reviews in general.

Orbit 4 Zone Water Timer / Sprinkler Timer

After messing with the Vigoro sprinkler timer and having the water pressure problems as well as the ‘watering at midnight’ problem due to limited timer configurations with that unit I decided to go to Lowe’s and see what they had in the way of a timer with multiple zones. Well, there wasn’t a lot available other than this Orbit ‘Complete Yard Watering Kit’. In all honestly it didn’t come with the 300 feet of hose or 5 25 dollar sprinklers so I’m not sure how ‘complete’ I would say it was. It did come with a 4 way valve manifold, the timer module and 2 electronic valves, expandable to 4 (additional valves are 12.95, mail order only from Lowe’s site and rarely in some stores).

This timer seems pretty well built, and it’s pretty easy to setup. It is somewhat the same parameters as the Vigoro module above with the addition of individual zones. As an added bonus, they seemed to know you did not want to water your lawn at midnight, and it allows you to set a schedule for 6am, Noon and 6pm, and to skip any overnight watering possibilities. GOOD IDEA!

With the addition of multiple valves, you have multiple sprinkler zones. I split the sprinklers down into 2 watering zones for the main peninsula lawn and set the timer to run both sets of control valves, one at a time, for 20 minutes during each watering period for the new lawn. It works great and reliably.

I like this timer much better, but it has it’s own problems as well. While the programmable portion of the timer is pretty great. The fact that you have to buy additional zone valves via mail order only is kind of a lame, but not impassable barrier. Additionally in manual mode it would have been a nice feature to be able to set individual times for each zone. With this module you can turn on one sprinkler zone for X minutes. Or alternately you can turn on all zones for X minutes. You cannot set Zone 1 for 10 minutes, Zone 2 for 20 minutes, Zone 3 for 10 minutes, etc.

Model: Orbit Complete Yard Watering Kit (Model #: 91591 / 27752)
Cost: Spotty Availability, cheaper version now available for around $49
Pros: Very flexible timing options and multiple zones. Expands up to 4 valves and is reliable. While discontinued the additional valves are still currently available.
Cons: You can only buy sprinkler zone control valves through mail-order. I have received and viewed some reports regarding the reliability of the reviewed unit in a poor light and in fact when I changed the batteries the unit died on the spot but in general Orbit has better product reviews than the Melnor products Vigoro re-brands.

Summary

I wasted so much time and money with these sprinkler timers that we might have been better off trenching and putting in our own sprinkler system. By the time we got everything taken care of working right, the amount of money spent on sprinklers, hoses, timers, watering at weird hours, etc could have just been resolved with a real sprinkler system with an indoor based multi-zone timer for a couple hundred more. Perhaps next year, things are working okay for now but not optimal. If you’re not able to do your own sprinkler system installation, then these may be the way to go, if you’re just being kinda lazy you may wind up regret it.

If you are looking for a short term solution for a sprinkler timer then I think these two models can provide you temporary relief. If you’re looking for something that is going to last you longer and multiple seasons, you might want to look at other sprinkler timers. I’ve found that while the particular multi-zone Orbit I reviewed has higher failure complaints, their smaller single zone units have a bit better reputation such as the Orbit 91213 or the Orbit 62001 which has been getting excellent reviews. If you want longer life from your timer, don’t leave it or the valves out over the winter. When you change the battery it may be beneficial to rub something like petroleum jelly over the rubber seal on the battery compartment to help it seal better. If you buy a unit that doesn’t have a sealed battery compartment, take it back.

If you liked this post, please see my other Lawn Related Posts and also my new article where I disassemble the Vigoro 3015v to see how the valve works.

I’ve tried to keep this post updated with recent information based on feedback from readers and information I find from other review sites and reviewers so that my readers can be better informed on their choices. I last updated this page on June 7, 2011. Best of luck with your lawns and gardens this Spring and Summer.