Category Archives: Technology

Green, Technology

Power hogs.

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I flirted with measuring the power consumption around the house last year, but got side tracked.  Now that we’re getting a 17.5% increase in Electricity prices, I think its high time I revisited this area. Co-incidentally, I happened to be running the TV ‘stuff’ through a Kill A Watt meter for the past week.  Total  consumption was 2.25kWh (approx €0.33).

I’m going to slowly go through the house and get a handle on what everything consumes.

The PV panels I put up are silently working away.  Unfortunately ‘operator error’ reset the counters a while back, and I’ve not been as diligent since. However, in the time between the 27th May and the 28th of June, the panels produced approximately 1500Amp Hours, 36,000 Watt Hours (1500 x 24), 36kWh or about €5.25 worth of electricity.

Amateur Radio, Green, Technology

Ugly or not?

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slievenamon.jpg

Which is it? Personally, I think they are fantastic.  The are a lot nicer looking than some of the other structures visible from the same spot, and far more functional.  What really surprised me though was how quiet they are in operation.  The traffic moving along the road from Kilmeaden to Portlaw was easily able to drown out what I think was the noise from them.

Last Monday, Tipperary Amateur Radio Group were on top of Slievanamon (the Mountain pictured behind the wind turbines), participating in the Spring Leg of the Irish Radio Transmitters Society’s 2 Meters Counties Contest.  After some generator trouble, we got going and spend an enjoyable few hours up there (pictures), making approximately 57 unique contacts in 24 counties. It was great to see so much activity on the band.

Last week I was in Innsbruck, Austria, helping Miguel at the Tridentcom conference.  There was lots to take in and lots of folks to meet, too much in fact. I briefly managed to get outside for a look around and take some pictures on Tuesday evening.  The rest of the time was spent either attending technical sessions, or continuing technical discussions afterwards.

Getting set up for the contest was a technical challenge of a different kind (one could consider it therapy almost!).

Computing, Technology, Television, Work

Software Defined Radio

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This is very interesting.  Who knows, it may soon be possible to have all the different wireless technologies available on one chipset, all presented as just another ‘ethernet’ device (or maybe many devices.   If  there was an  associated hardware signal to indicate ‘oops.. we’ve had to change networks’ or some other smarts, it would make things very interesting in the whole arena of Terminal/Node Mobility for Internet connected devices

Amateur Radio, Computing, software, Technology

TM-D710E

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As a follow-up to my previous post the Kenwood TM-D710E (E for Europe) is available and shipping. Now there is another question waiting to be answered, is it any good in KISS mode? No one seems to know for sure, but the buffer size has increased. Ok, so they left out Smart-beaconing but the radio is apparently firmware upgrade-able, which means that the potential is there to do upgrades depending on user feedback.

Coming back to KISS mode, invariably. In general we tend to (at least I always have) run the the serial port of the Radio Modem (TNC) at a higher speed than the radio channel, this reduces latency in getting data from the computer out to RF, and the combination of large RAM buffer and RTS/CTS handshaking means that everything happens as efficiently as possible and no buffers overflow.

The predecessor to the TM-D710, the TM-D700 (and TS-2000 and TH-D7G2), all share a common “TASCO” TNC implementation. The problem is that its buffer is quite small, and it seems not to have RTS/CTS implemented. This means that in KISS mode its very easy to overflow the buffer in the TNC, which causes it to lock up completely.

I recently installed a Linux version of the Winlink TelPac (Packet to Telnet) software on the Packet node I maintain in WIT, and over the last few days, for AREN purposes, I have been testing it with Airmail, which works great.

Not having the good sense to leave it alone, I thought I’d try and get the TASCO modems working with Airmail. After many power-cycles of the radio, and much pulling of hair, its now working.

Now, this isn’t for the faint hearted, and, to be honest, for a system to be deployed ‘in the field’, I definitely would NOT recommend using the TASCO TNC in the Kenwood radios (TS-2000/TM-D700/TH-D7) with Airmail , leave them running APRS, like they are designed for.

Anyways, it involves running Airmail, pointing it at a Virtual Serial Port. The HW Virtual Serial port connects to Airmail to AGW Packet Engine linker (AMPE) , which, in turn connects to AGW Packet Engine and finally on to the radio.

After some hints by Demetre, I followed the instructions with AMPE, and it all seems to work, but by any stretch of the imagination, its a nasty, nasty kludge. I’m guessing that the reason it works, is that the virtual serial port software does some kind of flow control, but I really have no idea.

My advice, use a real TNC!

Computing, IPv6, software, Technology, Work

Mobile IPv6 on the N770

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Following up from my earlier post. To save someone the trouble of building MIPL for Linux for the N770, you can find a Linux kernel here and mip6d here.

I’ve been trying the kernel out using the following command to upload the kernel:

flasher -l -b -k zImage-su-18-200730

And powering on the device, the mip6 kernel gets loaded (until the next reboot). Once it boots, its possible to copy mip6d onto the n770, as it appears as a USB storage device. Install X-Term, write a mip6d configure script, and off you go (I’ve not tested with IPsec yet though)!

I remain unconvinced about the usefulness of the n770/n800 type devices. They may be usefule for some remote control applications, although I’m not sure, more testing (using IPv6) is needed ;).


	

	
	






	
	

				

			Green, Technology
		

			
5.25 Volts

		

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Thats what the 4 x AA pack is reading at 22:25 IST.  Obviously the pack wasn’t fully discharged, but still, thats not bad for zero cost charging (lets not get into the argument about the cost of manufacturing the solar cell). It will be interesting to see how long it takes to recharge a set of depleted cells.

	

	
	






	
	

				

			Green, Technology
		

			
Battery Charger.

		

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Have you ever gone to the drawer looking for 4 batteries for something or other, only to find a) you don’ t have 4 of any similar type, b) you have no idea if they are charged or not. I have, and it’s always annoying.


I came across this kit last week and ordered one from Neil.  I’ve just stuck it together and put it on the kitchen window, it should get some sun before I get up in the morning.  The Voltage is currently reading 4.96 on the battery pack.  It’ll be interested to see what they read at breakfast time.


It should be possible to leave them in the window all the time, and then I will always know where I have a ‘fresh set’.  We’ll see!