Nova Scotia Adventure 2010

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Some people have religion,  Some people have sports,  some people have addiction, Some people have friends,  Some people have lives…I have adventure.

After two summers of  riding in the western US, we decided to take a different heading, and see Nova Scotia.  

It’ s really a shame I didn’t keep a journal along the way, but the pictures tell a good enough story on their own.

My good friend Matt joined us for the trip. We started out on Friday night August 20th 2010, and rode to Matt’s moms house outside of Syracuse NY. It was mostly in the dark (which I hate). Matt took us down some of the bumpy and rustic back-roads which he grew up riding dirt bikes on. Needless to say he was a little more comfortable than I was…

Tuff Guy poses

Nova Scotia Map and ST13

Serious, at Matt’s Mom’s

Getting ready to leave Matt’s

And until I can get WordPress to cooperate,  here is the trip…in reverse:

About

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Troy Rank is an Electrical Engineer,  Adventurer, and lover of all things a 2 wheels and technology.

Resurrecting the Zombie Tractor

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Last year I picked up a little plow-tractor to get rid of the snow in the driveway. It’s kind of an interesting exhibit of US manufacturing abilities from the 1960s. It has a 2 cylinder 690cc briggs and stratton boxer motor. Most importantly it pushes snow really well because it weighs about 9 tons.  About  Halfway through the winter died. I checked everything, carburetter was fine, ignition seemed to work fine. I was stumped. After talking to some friends at work I decided to checkout the keyway on the flywheel, to see if it had slipped the key. Sure enough, it spun so, such that the spark timing was off. I managed to damage the flywheel while removing it and in turn damaged the starter gear. I found a new flywheel in the summertime. After 8 months of sitting like a half-eaten-zombie in my barn, the snow was starting to fly again, and this is the story of the Ressurection:

There it is,  taking up room in the barn and blocking the stairs for 8 months….

No flywheel, about to take off the starter to  replace the gear

Crappy, destroyed starter gear

Shiny new starter gear

Starter back in, Flywheel back on and… it smoked, it screamed, it ran …..IT’S ALLIVEE

Bodywork back on, and out to pillage for BRAAINS!…

As much fun as it is to restore this relic of a different time, and as much as it is incredible that 40+ years later this thing will even work at all, it also makes me wonder why we’re still using gasoline engines for things like this. It’s such an overly complicated, oily, smokey, loud system and to do what? Push snow around… If I have any more trouble with it I will convert it over too electric drive in about as much time as it took me to do the work in this post.

Episode 1

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The original audio for this episode [49:23] has been lost. Show notes preserved below.

Show Notes:

Guest: Greg Crist

Theme Music By:

MCLars: www.MCLars.com

YTCracker: http://www.ytcracker.com/

Email to ebikenerd@troyrank.com

Special Thanks to Chris Gammel and Dave Jones for the mention on The Amp Hour. I’m a big fan. Be sure to check out their show!

The Amp Hour

How to get a free LCD Monitor

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Step 1: Find a monitor in the dumpster at work

Step 2: Plug it in

Step 3: Hmm… the backlight doesn’t work

Step3: Take it apart

Step 4: Measure the input to the high voltage transformer, while being careful not to vaporize yourself on the 750V line

Step 5: Crap… ridiculously noisey

Step 6: Look at capacitors on the bus, notice that they’re bulging and leaking

Step 6.5 : replace 450uF 25V Caps with 450uF 50V caps

step 6.7: turn back on

step 6.8645988884: works like new

Step 9: Replace your crappy, 12 year old CRT

The only thing that’s badd now is frog and toad

Dance Master 5000 – Halloween 2010

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Over the past 15 years  I have had maybe a total of 4 Halloween costumes. Halloween is no doubt my favorite holiday and it was time for something new.

Halloween 2010: an excuse to build something electronic.

Lately I’ve really wanted an excuse to play around with the Arduino boards. I really love that whole movement. I’m pretty hardcore as far as electronic design goes, so I was a little apprehensive about sinking some cash into a development board aimed at ‘beginners and artists’. However, I found some “Shiftbrite” units (I2C shift register controlled, tricolor LEDs) from Adafruit.com and since these would make a great costume,  and since there was some arduino sample code that would save me hours of register programming, I picked up an Arduino Uno and 6 shift Brites.

After soldering the headers onto the shiftbrites, I connected it up to the UNO board. I did however melt one of the LEDs in the process. Damn unregulated soldering Iron…:( After downloading the Arduino IDE, I loaded the sample code,  compiled, and loaded into the Arduino. Within an hour [while listening to podcasts] I was up and running.

They weren’t kidding about the Brite part…

Next, I got a huge box from work, cut it down and added some decorative paper (actually Kerra did all that) and mounted all the junk in the box.

I also added a switch for mode changing and a bunch more little green LEDs to take up the rest of the idle ports on the Arduino.

The final result:

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