Under Control

My Turbulent Electronics Seem to Work!

Because my "studio" is a bit cramped -- i.e., cluttered with tools and detritus -- I've had to fly the fan box in the rafters and try to find a clear-enough area to put the sensors to test them:

fans at the top, sensors at bottom (see arrows if you can)

Here's the control board (the driver transistors are underneath the silvery heat sink which actually seems to work, and the little black rectangle just to their right is the PIC microcontroller):

Controller

On the left are the fan connections, each with an individual fuse and indicator LED. On the right are the sensor connections -- see more below. At bottom right is my failed attempt at a remote ON/OFF cutout relay. It works fine, however any bouncing around -- say driving over a bump -- makes it bounce around-ON, so I think I'm going to have to replace it with a regular switch. Which means we'll have to crawl under the ramp in the truck to turn the thing on and off. But only for a couple weeks...

I tested the sensors and each one seems to be correct. On top is a "PIR" motion detector which should see people milling around 30 feet out. Below are three IR distance sensors (Sharp GP2Y0A00K0F) which are supposed to work to 5 meters (15 feet), but will be reliable within 10 feet at least, so if anyone has the temerity to actually aproach the truck, we'll know about it:

Sensor Block

The fact that the PIR sensor works is amazing considering how much trouble it is to get a "Motion Detector" to work the way I want... The problem being that all of the easily battery powered Passive InfraRed (PIR) sensors that I had upon my hands didn't work very well in the sunny-windy outdoors (I'm looking at _you_ Parallax). This led me to futzing with various Porch Light Motion Sensors, where some did a reasonable job of not false-triggering outside [...remember your (or at least my) damn proch lights going on and off all night when it's windy? That's the problem, along with the bright lights of Santa Fe in general...]. Some of the porch sensors could be hacked to run on 24v DC -- which meant more power supply complications -- and some can't (easily). Then, the one I though I got to work croaked on me as soon as I assembled it with all the other bits'n'pieces. So it was off to the hardware store again (speaking of which, if you haven't read Neil Stephenson's description of Hardware Store Foraging, it's a must at this point.)

I swallowed my pride and bought a Heath/Zenith "Wireless Command" module (#SL-6030-BZ-A) for $28 smackaroos which runs on two AA batteries (power problem solved!), but only communicates by radio. After testing it outdoors and finding it to be very reliable I opened it up to find that I could connect across the built-in LED indicator and get a good 0-3v signal out. So with a bit of drilling and grinding it's mounted up top there.

Which leaves us with Power. I got a 100AH Sun Extender 12v battery for your basic off-grid use and added a 55A PowerMax three stage charger to top it up:

Power Central

I ran this whole kabodle for 5 hours yesterday at about 40% of peak load -- each fan sucks about  2.5A, so all eight use 20A -- by sequencing fans on and off in a multi-pattern. The transistors did not overheat and the battery did not die. In fact it didn't even make it to half-charge, so I think there'll be enough juice to go around.

Webstory

Here's a cute little article about the first photograph ever posted on the WWW:

Crossdressing, Compression and Colliders

Yup, that's CERN's own Les Horribles girl band from 1992. There's also a photo of them performing at a Nobel Prize celebration party that year and other ephemera. Unfortunately, none of the original band members were actual scientists, but they played them on TV.

This picture put the GIF mechanics in place that now enables us to see, not only Goatse, but everyone's best/worst/most-boring day at work. 24/7:

Forklift Fail

Bleeding Heart Liberal

The NYTimes just published an opinion piece by former President Jimmy Carter which unequivocally damns the entire country and our leaders' approach to global human rights. The main point:

While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile

The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

See the whole article at the NYTimes. Or, if you've used up your viewing credits, I have an illegal pdf here.

It's pretty depressing how we got from Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Carter to where we are now...

Moody Robots

In one of the founding posts for this blog (Media Art Was the Booby Prize) I described a hierarchy of system behaviors with which to classify and direct my bricollage, see: Taxonomy. Since then I've been around and around on the difference between Responsive and Interactive, and think I may have a hammer to apply to it...

Responsive, not to put too fine a distinction, responds to inputs. My doorbell example is a bit flippant (it's what you've come to expect, yah?), but we might also think of amoeba who shy away from noxious chemicals and most-all Kinect-based Video Art that I've seen.

Interactive changes it's response over time. Interactive systems have internal state that is influenced by external events, and, with luck, those external events are in-turn influenced by the system's responses.

Adaptive is further up the tree. It remembers changes it has made. Ideally changes which somehow improve response. But that's a little beyond me in this current iteration.

A simple way to make an Interactive system is to make it moody. In the case of We Are Experiencing Some Turbulence this could be a child's sliding scale of:

1. Asleep,
2. Bored,
3. Interested,
4. Playful,
5. Excited,
6. Tantrum,
7. Shutdown.

Which is interesting because the expressed states form a loop from shutdown back to asleep. So it could be implemented with a simple wrap around counter that is incremented and decremented based on how intense it's inputs are and how long they last. And, with no input, it can slowly loop through all it's behaviors so it's not just sitting around waiting to be stimulated.

Because things always go better with illustrations, here's one:

The Mood is a function of the Input over Time, and the Output is a function of the Input and the Mood. Inputs may have paradoxical effects when combined with extreme Moods, e.g., high intensity Input during a Tantrum could force a Shutdown of the Output, or low intensity Input in a Bored state might briefly appear to be Excited

Now to get to work...

Angels on Ariels

My VFD friend Terry is part of an Eldorado based motorcycle gang which sponsored a classic bike show on Father's Day, yesterday. He convinced me that I should clean up one of my poor neglected bikes and put it on show. Maybe even sell it.

I selected the 1952 Ariel, Demeter, as being the most unlikely thing to be duplicated at the show, and I was right. Despite all the years in the mouse-ridden shed she cleaned up nice. In the process I found cracks in the front fender stay and kickstand which goaded me to put on the new fender I've had hidden away for 10 years and fix the kickstand. Which was actually kinda fun, I forgot what putzing around with the bikes was like. Maybe I'll get the BST out again after all...

So here she is at the show all tarted up:

Right next to a 1951 Vincent:

I bought the Ariel because it was made the same year as me and I couldn't afford (nor find) a 52 Vincent.

A guy kept cruising by and quoting a song lyric: "Angles on Ariels in leather and chrome..." and I kept smiling as if I recognized the reference. I did, however, remember Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", which encapsulates the minimalist romance:

1. Girl meets Motorcycle;
2. Boy gets Girl;
3. Boy dies;
4. Girl gets Motorcycle.

in the line:

Says James "In my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl.

When I got home I used the power of Google to find the Ariel quote, and lo it is from the deathbed scene of same song;

I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome,
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home.

Which always brought a tear to my eye. But this time running down my cheeks as well, I suppose because I have a handshake deal to sell my Ariel, executed as we were loading her back on my truck.

Anyway, it was a great show. Who knew there were so many nice non-Harley motorcycles in New Mexico? And nice Harleys as well, but in a minority. And I've always loved those Indians:

Found It

Seed Pods

Yesterday I wandered into the fire station after an abortive call and there, behind the ambulance, were a few of these guys waiting for a breeze:

full scale image: http://www.etantdonnes.com/ISEA/grassPod.jpg

So I guess they are early summer denizens -- seed pods from a local grass -- rather than fall fellers.

They are nature's perfectly adapted model for my packing pellets, running around on roads and parking lots looking for a place to stay. If only I could collect enough of them... They also apparently get stuck in dog's ears causing untold misery.

Turbulent First -- build-out

I had the truck for a couple days and got everything installed. It all seems to work.
You can see the report here:

Rear Window (thanks Hitch)

Now I just have to finish it...