Silicon Valley Redneck

Professionalism

When writing technical process documentation, and doing a walk-through to ensure that the steps in the documented process match the actual process in every important detail...

...It is nonetheless considered good form to omit steps along the lines of "Remove kitten from modulator subchassis."

Sometimes, the original purpose is important

So, I mentioned the dinky Geiger counter built around the stylish SI-29BG tube.  Happens a friend had a stash of the ubiquitous and cheap SI-3BG, which has a reputation for low sensitivity, but why not hook one up and give it a try?

It's about the same overall dimensions:

But, wait.  Let's have a closer look.

Er.  Is that internal structure what I think it is?

D'OH!  The actual sensitive volume is the interior of that tiny little coil of wire inside the big glass envelope.

Which might account for not-so-good sensitivity.

OK, let's have a test.  With both tubes at 400V (because that's what the Probe-O-Zap is currently programmed for, and it's in the plateau range for both tubes), and a couple-years-old, uncalibrated, 1 µCi Cs-137 source at 10 cm:

SI-29BG gives around 380 counts/minute.

SI-3BG gives one count per several minutes.  If I hold the source right up against the glass, I get around 50 counts/min.  (Doing that with the '29 gets around 600 counts/sec.)

So, the SI-3BG's reputation for low sensitivity is well earned, and an inevitable result of its design.  So, we may ask, why was it designed that way?

We may ask.  I don't offhand know the answer.  It's probably out there somewhere, in Russian.

But, I can speculate.  Best guess is that it was designed for cheap little alarms to be scattered around nuclear installations, and if they started registering more than a couple of counts per minute it was time to get out of there right now.

It sure wasn't designed for monitoring radiation at human-safe levels.

Yipe.

Just when I thought life might be stable for a little while....

A friend and business associate has just been diagnosed with a serious illness, and is likely to be more or less incapacitated for TBD beginning TBD.  Yes, there are serious blanks to be filled in next week, pending a more detailed diagnosis.

This leads to a flurry of activity to get as much work as possible wrapped up and delivered in the next TBD, and to make arrangements for keeping the business on track for the TBD following that, and to make contingency plans, and....

And I'm involved in TBD% of this, so things will be Considerably More Hectic Than Previously Anticipated.

Meanwhile, I'd picked up several business leads in the past week, and need to be following up on them.  Some might turn into actual business almost immediately, while others are clearly at least a few months off, but still need cultivating.

Posting may be light.  Or heavy, depending.

It that a cat peeking out of the bag?

Infosec lesson: if you're really trying to keep a project under wraps, don't take it to the Maker Faire and tell everyone about it.

I stopped by the Atmel booth (yes, Atmel had a booth there, as did a few other established tech companies) and chatted with Paul Rako, who now has a blog post up identifying my Long Skinny Mystery Item: it's a Geiger counter!

Specifically, it's a USB Geiger counter, shoehorned into a form factor that allows it to fit tidily behind a specific Russian tube, the СИ29БГ or SI-29BG (which any interested party could figure out in a moment from the photos, so there's no harm in my mentioning it now).

The board respin should be turning up in my mailbox momentarily; while OSH Park is a dirt-cheap (and good-quality) fab service for this sort of dinky board, the 2-week turn time for 2-layer boards is not conducive to a rapid development cycle.

I'll be carrying the assembled specimen (and maybe a bare board of the respin) around later today at the Design2Part show, just in case of picking up any better ideas for packaging the gadget than my .375 Weatherby notion.  Also, there's a lot of info to be gathered this afternoon for completely unrelated projects both current and upcoming.

As far as turning it into an actual product... I still need to do at least some sort of market study, and determine what the supply of that particular Geiger tube looks like.  No point launching a product and then discovering that there were only 237 pieces of the key component available worldwide, nor in cornering the market on that component and then finding that only 14 people actually want to buy the product.

Back from the Maker Faire...

On my feet from 0915 straight through to 1800.  Saw lots and lots of Cool Stuff.  gathered some brochures; talked to a lot of people; exchanged business cards with a few of them.

Drooled over the 3D printers (cash situation remains such that I'm not whipping out my credit card just now).  Turns out that dual-extruder model from Type A machines that Maker Shed had listed back in December had the beta-test nature; they're planning a proper dual-extruder model for late this summer, and it'll be available as a retrofit, so if the cash situation improves (or the need escalates) I might just get the base model for starters.

Found some companies that are coming out with products more or less similar to things I had in the works... but also confirmed the continuing existence of some gaps that I'd been looking to fill.  So, some of my products-in-development rate further development, with a bit of priority.

And!  I found a potential solution to an upcoming component-availability issue.  More on that later, maybe.

Dang!  There was, now as I think of it, a product I saw in the morning and intended to buy in the afternoon - a cute mold-making kit, Just Because - and somehow didn't get back to.  Oh, well: I did take a brochure, so I suppose I can order one.

For now, it's time to rest.  And have some dinner.  And rest.

Catstrato

Yes, we took the li'l fuzzballs to the spay & neuter clinic today; dropped them off at 0730 (plus a bunch of filling-out-forms time), and retrieved them around 1630.

Predictably enough, there was a nonstop chorus of squeaks from the back seat all the way there.

Apparently, Southmoon just wouldn't hold still for the pre-anesthetic exam, so I had to sign a waiver.  Second time she's been to a vet, and both times she's been a terror.

On retrieval, they were all awake enough to be sitting up in their carriers and looking around, but only Top Hat was awake enough to be squeaking and trying to claw her way out.

It's a little quieter than usual around here this evening; Huckleberry seems almost back to normal, but the other two are resting (after some moderate scampering an hour or so after they got home).

Oh, and the post-op instructions said freshly-neutered males should use litter boxes filled with shredded paper, so I ran a couple of daily fishwraps through the shredder, replaced the litter in the front litter box... and, when Southmoon got home and saw the shredded paper, she freaked out.  Oh, well: Huckleberry didn't freak out, and he's the one who's supposed to be using it.

Putting in a good word

"Small metal shoe horn" had been on my shopping list for a week or so now; it's not a big enough item to buy from Amazon (maybe $2.50 plus $4 shipping), and I hadn't found such things in, e.g., the shoe nor foot care departments at Target.

So, I figured, I needed to stop by a real shoe store, sometime during their business hours, which is a bit awkward when my usual shopping time is a bit before 10 AM.

This afternoon I made a hardware run, which put me in the neighborhood of Beck's Shoes, so I poked my head in... and left a moment later with a couple of freebie shoe horns.

It's not like I'm a regular customer; while I have bought shoes there from time to time, the last time was at least a decade ago.

But, next time I'm in the market for real shoes, I'll probably try there first.

And another!

Another purple envelope arrived today, but that's not really the topic (that'n is a little-bitty 4-layer design for playing with in background mode: a range-boosted 802.15.4 radio module).

No, today's topic is a board that came in a couple of weeks ago, and I just got it (mostly) working, with a couple of patch wires because Careless*.  Still needs a barnacle tacked on, because I changed the design after the board was out to fab.  Also needs AVR firmware installed (probably Arduino bootloader plus a small sketch), and a connector that should be arriving Wednesday-ish.

It's my first home-baked Raspberry Pi Crust!  I'm being coy about its function for the moment, as this is meant to become a product, but it's a cute little rascal, and I should be making connections with a corner of the prospective market at the Maker Faire this coming weekend.

There's also a Beagle Cape version in the works, along with a tidied-up respin of the Pi Crust, in the next month or so.

* When you're knocking out board designs in an afternoon, and not on a deadline, and prototype fab cost is under $10, convening a $2500 formal design review Just Ain't Happenin'.  Also, those design reviews never seem to catch the sorts of errors I had on this board anyway.

Ya know what's wrong with newspapers nowadays?

If you use newspaper to protect the carpet around the litter box...

...and don't change the newspaper on a regular basis...

...it will eventually become shredded...

...and resemble kitty litter.

Just cleaned up the newspaper shreds in the hallway.  And the stuff that was hidden under them.

No wonder there was a Smell that didn't seem to go away with normal litter-box cleaning.

And I've replaced the paper with plastic, which should be less shreddable and also protect the carpet better.

Department of DUH

This morning's Murky, front page, above the fold:

Famed race in crisis mode

Sailor's death leaves officials reeling as the investigate why boat capsized on mild day

...

The America's Cup found itself in crisis on Friday, with questions about safety - and even the storied event's future - swirling a day after a celebrated sailor was killed when the Swedish team capsized its 72-foot catamaran during practice on a mild day in the bay.

Er.

Highly competitive event.  High-performance, experimental boats.  Teams pushing the boats, and themselves, to the limit.

And you expect this to be perfectly safe?

What color is the rubber in your cell?

What a revolting development.

Well, I got the USB end of the Probe-O-Zap all built, and set up so's It Oughtta Work, and....

And, while the FT201X chip has been known to work with my office workstation, the lab Linux machine happily enumerates it but doesn't recognize it as a serial port.

Because the lab machine is running kernel 2.6.32 is why.

Because it's still on Debian Squeeze, as was the shiny new Stable version a couple years back.

And that old kernel had never heard of an FT201X, what with the part just having come out last year.

And so it's time for the ol' apt-get dist-upgrade, and chewing up vast amounts of bandwidth the next few hours.

In other Probe-O-Zap-related news, I've been pondering how to package that little board and its Mystery Component, and had pretty much settled on sticking it in a mold and pouring in brightly-colored polyurethane potting compound.  Hmmm, the mold could perhaps be made of Teflon, with a nice slick hole bored in it.  Lessee, it needs a 1/2"-ish cylindrical-ish section, then a tapered step down, then a 10mm-ish bit.  Be nice if the cylindrical stretch, being a couple inches long, had a bit of a draft angle.  Now, where might I obtain a suitably-profiled reamer for the task, and what'll it cost to have it made?  Aha!  Inspiration strikes!  The profile I'm looking for bears a striking resemblance to (digs out old reference book) a .375 Weatherby cartridge.  So, all's I need is a possibly-stock chambering reamer!

(Brownells has one in stock for .375 H&H, but the shoulder diameter is too small.  Unless I taper the PC board, which is plausible.  Clymer doesn't seem to do .375 Weatherby.  Oh, well: board, encapsulation, and caliber choice are all subject to further negotiation.)

Update: Midway turns out to sell .375 Weatherby reamers (with a 30-day lead time).  Choice of slightly-undersized sizer-die reamer or exact-sized chamber finishing reamer.  I assume either of these will cut Teflon.  And, given that they're made for cutting tough grades of steel, probably last for a great many mold cavities in Teflon.

Here's one I can play!

Roaming Fire Hydrant has a poll: "My P-38 is..."

Accompanied by a photo of the dinky folding can opener whereof a copy resides among my pocket keys.  Just in case I encounter a can that needs opening, and lacks a pull-tab.

It's been there since... hm.  I remember not having one handy one day in college, and laboriously opening someone's emergency canned food in the computer lab with my pocket knife (the one I normally carried back then had quite a sturdy blade, but wasn't really much of a can opener).  I must have added the P-38 during my backpacking days, so probably around 1987.

But... I hear you cry... why was I carrying around all my keys on a backpacking trip?  I wasn't.  I bought a few P-38s; one went in my key case, and one went in the small-stuff box in my backpack.  The others are probably stashed with the spare backpacking-related stuff.

Volume

So: I look at the planned respin of the Probe-O-Zap, and figure I can shoehorn the revised & updated (and slightly more complex) design into 1.875 x 0.475 inches.

Now, how about a quick online quote for, say, 100 pieces, with a not-especially-fast turn?  Preferably panelized for more efficient assembly?

Hmph.  Even without panelization, Sunstone wants several dollars per board, in hundreds.  Sierra Circuits and PC Fab Express, at least using their easy-quote form, won't touch anything under 0.5" wide, and with that adjustment they're still only a little cheaper than Sunstone.

Given that a pile'o'boards on a 2-week-ish turn from OSH Park would run about $1.50 per board, with easy ordering... maybe I'll get in touch and see about quantity orders, and whether they can be delivered in panelized form.  And also talk to an NPI assembly house over in Fremont, that might have a favorite fab service.

Or, I could try the usual vendors' full-service options.  Which I've always assumed were even more expensive, but maybe it gets better in hundreds.  Or get in touch with an overseas fab.

Not that I'm making commitments at this point, not yet having done a market survey nor secured a steady supply of the Mystery Component.  My supplier claims to have at least hundreds available at a good price, but a single run of 100 units probably isn't worth the trouble (best guesstimate, it starts making sense at around 1000 pieces in the first year).

Update: (a) yes, OSH Park can do what I want; (b) a regular PCB manufacturer can do the same thing, cheaper, if I'm willing to order maybe 1000 pieces at a whack, which is not the case at this point, but perhaps in a few months, if the component situation proves favorable and the product really takes off.  Near-term, likely case is 10 panelettes with 20 little boards per.

Compatibility issue

This here optical mouse, Logitech model M310, doesn't work worth beans on cat fur.

Huckleberry will just have to find another place to park himself.  The mouse pad is for mice.

Besides, he's lumpy.

Hoo-hah!

Sometime last year, while I wasn't looking, Son Of Mission: Impossible finally came out on DVD!

And it hasn't sold out yet.

Not that I was totally impressed with the series back when it was on TV, before being sent off to the top-security vaults - it did have a tendency to cannibalize the original series, and make multiple episodes out of plot elements that were all packed into a single old-series episode (sorry, no specifics right now; this is a vague recollection from Back When) - but it was still pretty good, and vastly better than most of the drivel in the Vast Wasteland.

Anyway, the DVD set will be on its way shortly, so I'll be able to watch the series again, and perhaps be reminded of what was good, and what not-so-good, about it.

Oh, and if memory serves, I didn't even get to see the whole series when it was on TV.  Something about episodes being bumped to make way for feetball games and not re-shown at any time that I heard about, or just not being carried by the local station, or whatever.  I hadn't even realized, at the time, that there was a second season.

Skiffle? Scuffle?

Yeah, I finally got around to seeing Skyfall.

Capsule review: feh.

Expanding on that a little...

The story line was incoherent.

A lot of the visuals made no sense, unless maybe you'd read the script, and I'm guessing not even then.

Everything about computers, and just about everything about firearms: does the phrase "not even wrong" ring a bell?

Seriously, "tracing the encryption signal"?  Or, a super-expert trying to defeat the exotic security features on an enemy's computer, with it booted up and plugged into the damn internal network?  Rather than leaving it turned off, pulling the hard drive, and hooking the drive up to a Linux (or BSD, or whatever) system that won't be running any of the special security code?

And that business about the depleted-uranium pistol bullet... riiiiight.  Not only does such a thing make basically no sense, but, if it had hit Bond intact?  Neat little round hole, like an FMJ only more so.  And that clown with the machine pistol had to be carrying at least his own weight in ammunition.  Somewhere.

Technical details that make no sense, plot elements that make no sense, general incoherence: we're talking Roger Moore-era quality here, only without the benefit of being funny.

Afterthought: an incoherent story line is nothing new.  Fleming's stories generally made some sort of sense, if only because they're been subjected to the editing process for novels.  The Hollywood writers, though, seem to be basically coming up with excuses for protracted chase scenes and exploding helicopters, and occasionally shoehorning in a mandatory plot point. ("Oh, yes: we need to get rid of a long-running character because the actor is retiring.")

Got another purple envelope today

Containing three of my latest purple board - yes, the one that goes with the mysterious East European item - and a purple sticker.

Update: assembled the right (i.e., Eastern-facing) end of the board this afternoon, and spent an hour or so playing mad scientist with this, various bench instruments (power supply, pulse generator, scope, voltmeter), and the Mystery Item.  It works!  Next up: populate the MCU and a few other parts, and throw together the basic operating firmware.  Then, the left end (USB interface), and some rinky-dink Ruby program for demo purposes.

I expect to be turning this into a Genuine Product (actually, 2 or 3 closely-related products) sort of June-July-ish, assuming an ongoing supply of Mystery Items can be negotiated.  Watch for an announcement.

Update, Sunday afternoon: MCU is now controlling the interface section (in a rudimentary way, as I'm missing a small but important component at the moment), and taking measurements.  Another few hours should have the dingus fully operational.  When those few hours will be... well, I've got a busy week coming up.

Update, Thursday lunchtime: hardware is now fully armed and operational.  I'm sending measurements back to the host PC via the FT201X.  Just need to implement the rest of the firmware features, and it'll look remarkably like a Product (modulo packaging and suchlike details).  This afternoon, though, there's Real Work to be done.

Sticker shock

Ran a few errands this morning.  One of them was to REI, in search of a couple of pairs of good hiking shorts, what with my seriously stepping up my morning walkies.

Gah!  They had a few styles of shorts on display.  Pretty decent ones.  Starting at $60.

Summer shirts, likewise: some really nice ones to be had, at $60 and up.

Not this month.  Maybe when the Really Big Project pays off, which should be the proverbial Any Day Now....

At last...

I'd long been wondering when Grant would get around to this one:

On the latest Mythbusters - the JATO-car "This time for sure!", which deviates ever further from the original yarn, while retaining the Impala - he's finally hooked up a computer-game steering wheel and pedals to the RC box, to allow driving the 1:1-scale RC car like a car.

There's still the matter of having a totally separate radio-command system for firing the rockets, but I'm guessing that's a COTS secure system made for HPR or possibly blasting.

Oh, and on the Science! front?  They keep bandying about a conversion factor for thrust to horsepower.  There's no such thing.  The units are non-equivalent.  Thrust is force (pounds, Newtons, dynes: mass times acceleration, e.g., kg*m/s^2); power is force times distance per unit time (horsepower, Watts, BTU/hour, e.g.: kg*m^2/s^3).  Yeah, you could assign a rocket a horsepower rating based on fuel consumption or (almost equivalently) heat output, but that ain't how horsepower ratings work (though if you used BTU/hour instead, it would make sense: treat the rocket as a heater).

And in the department of I could'a told you that: if you're going for maximum range with your rocket car, and you're not giving it fins like a Cadillac (nor RCS, nor engine gimballing, nor active aerodynamic control surfaces, nor any other way of keeping it pointed straight), best results will be obtained by timing Brennschluß for just before the car leaves the ramp.  Not a couple of seconds later.  If memory serves, they'd already seen the nose-comes-down-leaving-the-ramp effect (because Gravity, duh) in at least one earlier episode (possibly involving an old TV show about hazardous ducks or something), so it should be no surprise that the thrust vector, immediately post-ramp, would be Highly Suboptimal.

All the news that fits...?

What with the Internet being quite large, I'd expect virtually all news to Fit.

And yet...

Running errands this afternoon, maybe 1315, heading south on the frontage road along 101, I saw twinklies atop the Fair Oaks overpass.

'Twas a fire engine, with nothing visible for it to be responding to.  Police cars were pulling up.

The next two overpasses were also populated with emergency vehicles, lights atwinkle.  Cops and firemen were looking north along the southbound lanes.

There was another contingent by the highway, just before the next exit, where I got off 101 because traffic was getting obscenely slow.

So: something had cops and firemen watching the highway.  Best guess: funeral procession for a cop or fireman.

Home again, and check Google News, and the Murky's web site.  Try various keywords.  Try browsing categories.

Nothing.  Not a peep.

Seems to be a complete lack of local reporting.  (And now, at 1730, I hear sirens (fire type).  If I checked the "local" news for what's-going-on, I'd no doubt learn of wildfires hundreds of miles to the south, and a terrifying manhunt even further to the east.)