CounterMoon.org

It's been a long, slow winter. It's cold; that means I'm handling wood for the furnace, the opportunity for work is less, and it's just so cold to work on the trailer.

There are, however, two changes on the horizon:

1. New power supply. The old one was very strictly 12.0VDC, the new one should work from 6-30V, so the computer will be up while the power's off, and almost certainly part of the time after un-dock.  I really look forward to exploring that.

2. Non-USB dongle for the sensor network. This means the process control stuff can run as a non-root user, making software packaging easier and more secure.

I'm really hoping to get to this, but today I have to scrounge up money for medicine.  :(

I thought my daughter was kidding me when she brought home a turntable. Sure, we have a bunch of old records we really can't replace, but ripping vinyl to disk is costly and/or annoying.

I mean, The Smithsonian has one made in Japan with 7 lasers (and no needle) that touch the record, but it was $140,000! Surely something for home use would be out of our league or hard to find.

Well, that's what I used to think.

The much-hyped Solar Impulse airplane just completed its first runway test, paving the way for a 20-to-25-day trip around the world next year. Conceived by Bertrand Piccard, the single-pilot plane successfully used its four solar powered motors to taxi around the runway. If all goes according to plan the plane will be able to fly day and night without fuel, signaling a bright future for solar-powered flight.

At long last, I see an "AirDweller"!  :)

Once you have an onboard computer, how do you make it connect with the outside world? That's the sensor network. The core technology is from Dallas Semiconductor and is called the "1-wire" system.

A whole line of sensors, the size of discrete transistors, have just three lines: power, ground, and signal. With it, they communicate along what amounts to be a network's serial line. This opens switches, reads temperatures or humidity, counters, or displays to an LCD. It's quite an invention.

Each unit comes with a unique serial number. When the bus is quiet, it announces it's there. Software in the server takes note and starts keeping tabs on each one.

Sound complicated? Really not!