Rosetta swung by (literally) earlier to pick up some speed before heading towards Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. ESA have interesting information on their site here. With some amateur observations visible here. All very cool.
Category Archives: Technology
Electricity Usage.
I’d been meaning for ages to purchase something to measure power consumption in the house. Earlier this week, a work colleague reminded me about it, so I went and purchased one. My Current Cost Envi arrived just before 8am this morning (thanks Mr. Postman) so I hurriedly plugged it all in before going to work.
This evening after dinner I found the data cable and plugged it all in.
[3383512.421973] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
[3383512.580255] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[3383513.033716] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
[3383513.034024] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
[3383513.034271] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
[3383513.034276] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core
[3383513.146668] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for pl2303
[3383513.146703] pl2303 1-2:1.0: pl2303 converter detected
[3383513.146930] usb 1-2: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[3383513.146942] usbcore: registered new interface driver pl2303
[3383513.146946] drivers/usb/serial/pl2303.c: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor driver
Excellent, the device was recognised to begin with. I found this web page by Paul Mutton, describing how to generate graphs from it with RRDtool. Some minor modifications, courtsey of “Q” and we have a result.
To quote from Paul’s page:
Then you can sit back and be amazed at how much electricity you waste when you leave a computer on to monitor how much electricity you are using 🙁
I may not be as useless as I thought.
From Paul Watson. I might be able to make it to the 17th or even 19th Century (8/10). Unlikely, but a bit of fun nonetheless.
Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio.
Some great High Definition video and information here. Bill Brown, WB8ELK mentioned these guys during his very entertaining speech at the DCC. He is hoping to do a “long duration” flight in the relatively near future, hopefully Amateur Radio Operators at this side of the Atlantic can assist with telemetry reception and even payload recovery.
Satellite Transponder
Anyone got a bit of space on a satellite for one of these puppys?
Very impressive engineering (for an “Amateur”), now if we could find a way to attach a few antennas and chuck a few into orbit.
Netopia Cayman PSU Fault?
There was I, browsing away, minding my own business on Friday evening, when all of sudden my Netopia Cayman lost sync. I tried rebooting it a few times but no joy. On reboot, it would respond to a few pings and then stop. I rang Eircom Saturday morning and after going through all the questions, eventually, they said they would have a replacement router out to me by Tuesday at the latest.
I asked a friend of mine if he had a spare router, which he did, but he suggested that I first try replacing the PSU, as he had a router display similiar symptoms previously and it turned out to be the PSU.
Turns out, that the PSU is where the fault lies. I plugged the router into the shack power supply and all is well again (As an aside, I now know that it uses 0.3Amps at 14.0Volts).
Twittering using Morse Code.
Yes, you read it right.
A massive project to bounce voices from Earth to the moon and back to another spot on Earth will be launched June 26. Several former astronauts and other famous people have signed on, and so can one lucky Wired Science reader.
We’ve secured a spot for one Tweet to be bounced off the moon, so send your most space-worthy 140 characters to @wiredscience or e-mail betsy_mason@wired.com. The winner can go to a moon bounce station to personally send the message to the moon.
Read the full article here. Thanks Jeff for spotting it. No doubt about it, it is a big (literally) project, and the article does a very good job at explaining it
EI100CQD
EI100CQD was a special amateur radio call-sign issued to the Howth Martello Radio Group (EI0MAR) at the vintage radio museum to commemorate the first ‘radio initiated’ sea rescue. Tony (EI5EM) is the operator seen in the clip.
The first sea rescue by radio
Today, it’s taken for granted that if you are at sea, and in distress you can summon assistance by doing one of the following:
- press and hold the red button on your DSC equipped VHF Radio (if within range of land)
- if your VHF radio isn’t DSC equipped, you can call on VHF Channel 16 (if within range of land)
- out of VHF range? if your vessel is large enough you could possible get assistance using your MF Radio (DSC or Voice)
- or you could use a Satellite Phone or EPIRB
None of this is particularly difficult, yet many vessels still go to sea daily without any of these safety features on their vessels. They then depend on the radio that is their Mobile Phone when they are in trouble.
Any of the above methods of communication, once used in a distress situation will immediately bring into play many air and sea assets in order to render assistance. However this wasn’t always the case.
The “first rescue of a ship at sea by radio” was used was on January 23rd, 1909. It was mostly good luck that led to a successful outcome. It made a hero of the radio operator Jack Binns, but it also led the shipping companies to come to the (incorrect) conclusion that all subsequent collisions would have the same successful outcome.
Amateur Radio operators still use the “CQ” call today.
Google and privacy.
I knew this already, but as Jeff says, seeing some privacy issues presented as simply and starkly as that does make it a little scary.