Filed under: Seattle, Slice o' life ]]> http://davenunez.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/snowpocalypse-2012-thursday/feed/ 1 davenunez http://davenunez.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/snowpocalypse-2010-wednesday/ http://davenunez.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/snowpocalypse-2010-wednesday/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:25:02 +0000 davenunez http://davenunez.wordpress.com/?p=2485 ]]> No update for Tuesday, because it was a bit of a bust. In the morning, most of the snow had gone, so I went to work. At noon, it started snowing quite a bit, so I started driving home – as did everyone else. It took almost 45 minutes to drive what is normally a 10 minute drive. It was snowing in earnest, and I was having some trouble with traction on starting. I stopped for petrol, and had trouble getting through the snow on the pavement, and the windscreen wipers were going full speed.  Then, I went home, which is 0.9 miles (measured) away. There was no snow at all at home. Amazing. What a difference 0.9 miles makes.

And so it continued – none of the promised snow appeared. The temperature crept towards 40. Disappointed, I went to bed.

Something must have happened overnight, because when I got up at 8 there was two inches of snow on the ground, and it was snowing quite nicely.  It continued snowing a little all day, and we ended up with about 4 inches on the ground. Temperatures held around 32, so it is all quite crunchy and icy. Looks like another snow day tomorrow, when it is due to start raining, which should clean it all up.

Filed under: Seattle, Slice o' life ]]> http://davenunez.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/snowpocalypse-2010-wednesday/feed/ 0 davenunez http://davenunez.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/snowpocalypse-2012-monday/ http://davenunez.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/snowpocalypse-2012-monday/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:10:01 +0000 davenunez http://davenunez.wordpress.com/?p=2479 ]]> We are in the middle of a bad (for this part of the world) set of winter storms. Yesterday we got about 2 inches of snow, and very low temperatures overnight that added ice to everything. I (and most people), worked from home. They are saying up to 7 more inches will be dumped between now and Wednesday morning, so let’s see. Some pics of the house:

During the middle of 2010, while she was in Cape Town, I decided that if we couldn’t find the shelves, perhaps we could build them. The shelves we had above our desks were a very nice material – solid wood planks, but made of smaller pieces which gives a sort of mosaic effect of textures. Plus, they were the same material as the desktop themselves, so they matched very nicely. I decided that was going to be it. Here is how it ended up:

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I used three shelves (both her shelves, and one of mine). The design is simple – one shelf for the top, one for the bottom, and a third cut for the partitions (I had Paul cut the partitions for me with his table saw, because my jig saw would not cut straight enough, and barely dented this stuff). By pure luck, it worked out that a shelf was long enough to make four cubbyholes that were basically square. Once it was built, it was cool but a little ordinary, so I added a single door on one of them. The door is 3mm MDF, with ordinary hinges, and held shut with a cabinet closing magnet. The whole door is then sprayed with black spraypaint to become a blackboard.

Mounting this thing was interesting. It was extremely heavy (probably around 6 or 7 kilos). We already had bulkier than necessary wall brackets screwed into studs to hold the original shelving, so I removed one set and simply set this beast on the other. After some pulling on it and piling it with books, it seemed to hold fine, so presto.

Last year on a trip to Fry’s, I saw a little machine called the Atari Flashback. It was a little box shaped like a VCS, but about a quarter of the size. It comes with a dozen or so built in games, but no cartridge slot, so I lost interest – I wanted a machine that I could play all my existing carts on. Still, the idea of a VCS that was like a NOAC was intriguing.

While Steve was visiting over Thanksgiving this year, we entered a major retro gaming binge. While he was trying to finish Contra, I did a little more reading on the Flashback – it turns out you can add cart slot to some models (the Flashback 2, but not easily the 1 and 3 models). Quite a few people have added a cartridge slot to it (see here and here).

Unlike these mods, my goal was to demake the Flashback – take this modern beast and put it through reverse evolution until it became a vintage VCS once again. I had a VCS light sixer body in great shape, and wanted to stuff the flashback into that. Externally it would be a real VCS – it would use the original joystick ports, power port, switches and cartridge slot. Internally, it would be the Flashback. The only exception would be it would output composite video from the Flashback instead of the old crappy RF.

Time to hack. I picked up a used Flashback 2 on eBay for $20. I tested it and it worked great. I opened it up and discovered something interesting. In a fit of passive-aggressive engineering, the folks who made the Flashback PCB left instructions on exactly how to wire up the cartridge slot, right on their PCB. Very handy.

The Flashback electronics are actually quite tiny. Everything, including joystick ports and switches,  fits on a board about 7 inches long by 1.5 inches wide. As you can see below, the whole Flashback (bottom PCB) is much smaller than even the main board of the VCS (top PCB). What a difference 30 years makes…

The plan was to keep the main VCS board with the cart slot, joystick ports and power socket, plus the PCB with the switches, and of course the huge aluminium chassis to hold everything together nicely. To begin, I wanted to be sure that I could wire up the original VCS switches to the Flashback PCB (the tracks were pretty thin). That seemed to work out fine, after a couple of attempts – although I started to get an inkling of how many cables would be involved. Here is the Flashback running, but controlled with the VCS switches (notice all the green and yellow cables I added):

Then came the important question – will it all fit into the VCS case? I found enough space on either side of the main VCS board, provided I cut some of the switch PCB – no problem there, as that originally held the voltage regulator for the VCS, and we were going to use the regulator from the Flashback anyway. Out came the Dremel, and after some grinding, there was enough space.

Next was wiring up the cart slot to the Flashback board. I used IDE ribbon cables to try and keep things tidy. Using the handy hints left by the Flashback engineers, it didn’t take too long. Did I mention that there are a lot of cables? It’s 12 from the switches, 2 from the power jack, 9 from each joystick, and 24 from the cartridge socket – 56 in total. It got a little spaghetti even using ribbon cables in most places.

A quick test showed two shorts, which were taken care of. Then a final test with everything closed up, using Yar’s Revenge of course.  Runs beautifully!

From learning avionics, to weather, to air combat maneuvering, Microprose sim hint books, it’s all there.

This year, your gift is the lost Ben Heck podcast roll up of all the Christmas intros. This includes:

• How the Jack (Thompson) Stole Christmas
• Video Pirates save Christmas
• It’s a Wonderful Half-Life
• Mel Gibson’s The Nativity

All in a handy 25 minute MP3 file. Currently offline at the podcast site, so this is the only place to get it! Load it into your listening device, and enjoy the season.

I found a great device called the RediRad over at Eckler’s which allows you to inject your MP3 player into an AM radio by induction. The missing piece is where to put my Zune so it doesn’t slide around. Given I had a new set of Dremel attachments (especially the routing table), my new Blade Runner and a bunch of MDF left over from other projects, I decided to make a cradle for the truck. Here it is:

The idea is that this part attaches to another which is bolted to the truck dashboard by a a bolt with a butterfly nut so you can adjust the angle. The Zune slides in and out via the top, and the bottom left corner is open to admit the stereo jack. One interesting feature is the red button near the top left, which is needed to press the volume/next-prev track button on the Zune:

The problem here was having a button which remains attached to the cradle, while allowing the Zune to slide in and out unimpeded. The solution is to have the button attached to a strip of tape which is stuck the inside of the cradle. The Zune in the cradle overcomes the tendency of the tape coming loose when you press the button, and the tape prevents the button from falling out of the hole in the cradle:

And here it is installed in the truck. Works great!

As with a lot of older flight sims, there are a lot of keyboard commands. Frankly, looking at your keyboard while you fly breaks presence for me. This is the reason why people buy HOTAS controllers, after all. But of course, you can’t get all your controls into a HOTAS setup. For commercial flight simulators (like FSX), there are many dedicated controllers like Saitek‘s Multi Panel or Radio Panel, but there is really nothing comparable for combat sims.

So time to build a set of custom controllers for SF2. I realized that part of the coolness of the Saitek controllers was that they look like the real thing. So I did a little research into combat aircraft panels from that era. Here are two representative ones:

This is part of the defense panel from an F-4. Black panel, white line breaking up the controls into groups.

This is part of the input panel from an A-6′s DIANE computer. Again, black with white sans-serif text, and again big, chunky controls (to be usable while wearing flight gloves). In general, everything is kind of lumped together, but grouped using text and likes on the panel. So this was the look I would try to reproduce in my panel. On top of that, I wanted to keep the entire project cost under $100 (the cost of a typical Saitek panel), and it had to be easy to setup/teardown on my desk. Finally, it had to be plug-and-play; no messing with software, loading profiles or calibrating anything. It would use the IPac2 Distribution box to interface to the PC.

I decided that the controls I would build would be an armament panel, radar control panel, and some miscellaneous controls (gear, flaps, etc). The idea was to cover as many of the common aircraft functions as possible between HOTAS and these new panels; sim-only controls (such as time compress, the map and radio controls) could remain on the keyboard.

The project: Custom controllers for Strike Fighters 2

Because this project was intended to have a clean look, planning was more important than ever. I began thinking about how many game functions to map onto the 32 available inputs, and on what type of physical control to surface them (rotaries, buttons or toggles).

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Once that was cleared and I had the count of how many of each count I needed, I bought them at Jameco. I then carefully measure each one to plan the layout on the 5″ enclosures:

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Picking your parts early is important so that you can measure and lay things out correctly.I began by choosing a good box – ABS plastic, basically 5″x5″, which I found at Skycraft Parts & Surplus. I also used three types of control (bought them all at Mouser):

• Rotary pulse switches, which allow a different input for clockwise and counter-clockwise turns (with suitable knobs).
• SPST Pushbuttons [OFF-(ON]
• SPDT toggles [(ON) - OFF - (ON)], which return to center, and give you a different input when pushing up or down

In order to plan the layout, I would need something more accurate than my chicken scratchings. I used Scribus (an open source page layout editor) to do an accurate plan which I could print at 1:1 scale. Because the plan is digital, you can play with many arrangements and think about how things will work together without risking any materials or parts. In the end I finished with this arrangement:

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A huge advantage of using page layout software like Scribus is that you can print out the layout and use it directly as a template to drill with etc. Once the layout was finalized, it was time to create a ‘decal ready’ version:

Download my Scribus 1.3 file. Notice how a little circle was left to indicate where to drill. Incidentally, the font I used is Miso, which is free.

This version was then printed onto decal inkjet paper, overlaid with a transparent, self-adhesive film to protect it from spills etc, and then stuck directly onto the enclosures. Here they are ready to drill:

Now we drill. The different controls required different size holes (which are measured from the electrical parts directly). The most interesting were the buttons, which needed a half inch hole (12.7mm). To do this in plastic, you need to use a spade bit, which is a mean looking implement:

When it is done with the hole, the spade bit leaves behind this amusing looking wormy thing:

Although my bits were new and sharp, they dis leave a slightly ragged edge on the decal. This is not really a problem, as each control has some form of lip which covers this up later.

Now that all the holes are drilled, you can attach the controls themselves, in preparation for soldering.

Attaching the controls is fairly straight forward – screw them into place. Be careful in tightening them though, as most buttons/pots have either plastic or aluminium threading, which will pop easily under a lot of force (and then you are stuck with a button/pot you can’t use). Once they are all in, solder all the common poles together in series, and then put one cable to each control. Buttons get single cable, but the rotary switches and toggles get two apiece. I used a ribbon cable from a (very) old 3″ floppy disk. These cables are compact and solder quite well, so work nicely for this kind of project. Here is one completed:

Notice that the back of the box (black bit above) has had a rectangular slot cut out (with Dremel) to allow the ribbon cable to pass through. I then capped the cable off with a DB9 plug, so that I could plug into my IPac 2 distribution box. Due to the number of controls in a box, each of them had two DB9s wired up. To finish off, I added two strips of self-adhesive non-slip rubber tape to the bottom of each box (I had this left over form an automotive project). This prevents it from moving around the table as you use them, and also allows the ribbon cables to pass under the controls. Here they are ready to test:

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Now for the setup. I plugged them into the distribution box. Quite pluggy:

I then fired up the IPac programming utility and set it up. Because the IPac 2 has flash memory, it keeps its programming even without power. That means I don’t have to re-program each time – just plug and fly.

This is how it is positioned – between the throttle and keyboard. Notice that The ribbon cables of the box closer the the desk edge pass under the other box, and up to the distribution box. This is another advantage of using ribbon cables instead of bundles.

Testing went very well – after entering the new key bindings into Strike Fighters 2, I was off blowing things up. The chunky buttons and switches really fit with the level of technology presented in teh game. Having the rotary switches especially makes for a very nice experience for things like radar mode and range. This project cost about $40 for the control panels (the rotary switches are a little expensive – you can save probably $15 by using toggles instead), and about $50 for the distribution box (which includes the price of the IPac). Well worth it, especially given there is nothing like it to buy off the shelf. And of course, you can use this for any sim that takes keyboard inputs (including the old classics for DOS, if you are running them inside DosBox in Windows).

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