All about hobby

Inside every A23 (23AE) battery is 8 LR932

2011-06-05T20:46:00.004-10:00

The A23 battery that I just bought an hour ago.

I just like to do this stuff because its easier this way other than looking for the store that selling LR932 button cells battery, all because A23 battery is popular among car remote alarm key and LR932 is not that common, yeah, because there are hundreds of button cells type battery in the market today.

Dremel Minimite 4.8 Volt battery.

2011-02-06T19:52:00.012-10:00

there are so many good devices that come with crappy battery, and very unfortunate I have many of them, one device I already mentioned it on previous post, its tribander multimode portable transceiver, the amazing and the only one of its kind, YAESU FT-817ND.

now I want to show another good device with its lame battery, dremel minimite.

I like this rotary tool so much, it does many thing, and for such useful device, dremel has it with proprietary ni-cad battery (and only 700mA in capacity), which is very old technology in today world.

look, how crappy the stock charger is, basically it just a transformer, two rectifier diode, one capacitor, and one LED, and they call it a charger :), once time I left my battery attached on this charger for almost 2 days, lucky me nothing happened.

it turn out replacing the battery on this dremel is easier than I thought, look on couple of images below, you can see how easy it is, hopefully I can replace it with Lithium battery someday, but for now, change the battery with NiMH with 2600mA, is way much better compare to original version.

take a look on the screw driver that I put inside dremel original battery, if you hold one of that battery right now, you can figure out by your self, and that the way you take out ni-cad battery from its case.

note, need 4AA battery holder for modification.

picture after the battery break apart, and I cut white battery holder in two, I just need one side as the battery terminal.

battery ready to be assembled, one side of 4AA battery holder, 4 hi-cap NiMh battery (its 2600 mAmp, compare it with dremel original, NiCad 700ma )

battery after its being assembled, now everytime I am running out of the battery, I simply can replace it with another set of battery.

1W stereo audio amplifier on USB.

2010-12-03T20:27:00.009-10:00

Today computer all comes with sound card on it, bad part, on many models (DG31PR intel mobo is one of them) its really low power output (probably only a few mWatt), unable to drive even a small speaker, in other words, it is designed only for headphone, or need additional audio amplifier for louder sound.

after looking around on the semiconductor chipset handbook, I found that TDA7053 is decent enough for this purpose, it has 2 lines with 1W each, and only need 5Volt to drive the circuit, so, yes, correct everyone, I can power it using USB port from computer.

another bad news after another, I cant find TDA7053, only TDA7052, its a 7053 cousin, only with 1 line, so to make it stereo, I need 2.

if we look on the schematic below, its really easy to make only need couple additional component to build this small audio amplifier.

and here is my build, nasty and spartan :D, black cable is for 5V DC coming from computer USB port, and copper color cable is the audio input from sound card, I will try to clean up this and put the circuit on small box later, but for now, I am more than happy, as my DG31PR intel mobo now capable to drive medium speaker with this.

Upgrading Memory on Sony Netbook Series, VPC-W model

2010-12-03T19:49:00.006-10:00

This idea first came up as I have a spare 2Gb DDR2 Laptop memory that can be used on my sony netbook, mine is VAIO VPC-W211AX/T model.

I thought adding memory would be easier as I look on bottom side of this netbook, there is a big cover that easy to open (only has 3 screws on it), after I open it, I was surprise, its only has an access to hardrive, not the memory.

and then I was assuming the access to the memory should be under the keyboard, then I tried to look the screw that hold the keyboard, after guessing around, found these three screws that hold it.

finally, after I removed these screw, the access to memory is wide open (but be careful with keyboard ribbon cable), replacing the memory was the easiest part on this process, its only has one slot, so basicaly I had to remove the old one (1Gb Memory) and replace it with the 2Gb memory.

hopefuly those picture above will save you some time when you upgrade your Vaio Netbook memory.

United Airlines In Flight Entertainment system, hey its linux

2010-11-29T02:41:00.003-10:00

hey its linux, I saw this while the system booting when it started, linux is rock :D

Radioshack RC battery for FT817ND

2010-11-29T02:24:00.009-10:00

Got some nice deal on local Radioshack, the quick charger and 1600mAh battery was on sale for just $10, nice... I modified it to work with my FT-817ND Yaesu, change the battery connector type to the smaller ones, as the original connector on yaesu its really damn small and hard to get, I changed it to different type, the purpose of the connector replacement is to accommodate quick battery swap and put the empty battery to the charger.

People may ask, why I did this ?, the reason is this radio able to charge the battery with its own internal charger, but it need 7-8 hours to complete the charge, with this quick charger, it took only 30 minutes - 1 hour, huge difference.

below are the pictures, you can get the idea from it :

Originial MacOSX.tif file

2010-11-26T03:37:00.008-10:00

in case you guys are looking for original Mac OSX tif file that usually stored under /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/Resources/ below is the file, btw, this file is the one that appear on the "About This Mac" logo panel.

Bluetooth serial for Yaesu FT817ND

2010-05-24T12:10:00.009-10:00

I build this for just around 20$ compare if I bought the "standard" bluetooth to serial converter, which is always have price tag around 70$.

comparing with if I buy the standard one, I can make it small size, but sure, I had to deal with couples of SMD devices, 2 transistors, couples R and C and one step down regulator MAX1726 (Yaesu FT817ND ACC port is 5 Volt signal, and the bluetooth module need 3.3 Volt signal and 3.3 Volt VCC, so I need 2 step down, from Yaesu supply voltage 12 Volt to 5 Volt and to 3.3 Volt, and for 5 Volt I just use the regular 78L05 ).

the only cons is the speed only 9600bps, but its acceptable performance.

bought the module on ebay, at store called sureelectronics, and its comes with simple schematic :

this is the module physical appearance :

and this is my finish setup.

at above picture I use CTR-remote for PPC from http://www.lynovation.com/

CB Frequency and Channel list

2010-03-31T14:30:00.009-10:00

Frequency in MegaHertz (MHz)

CHANNEL	FREQUENCY	CHANNEL	FREQUENCY
1	26.965	21	27.215
2	26.975	22	27.225
3	26.985	23	27.255
4	27.005	24	27.235
5	27.015	25	27.245
6	27.025	26	27.265
7	27.035	27	27.275
8	27.055	28	27.285
9	27.065	29	27.295
10	27.075	30	27.305
11	27.085	31	27.315
12	27.105	32	27.325
13	27.115	33	27.335
14	27.125	34	27.345
15	27.135	35	27.355
16	27.155	36	27.365
17	27.165	37	27.375
18	27.175	38	27.385
19	27.185	39	27.395
20	27.205	40	27.405

The full CB band is 440 KHz wide. Channel 19, frequency-wise, is the bands "dead-center" channel.

Gadget Narcissism

2010-03-29T04:04:00.002-10:00

Instead of taking picture of me, I like to take a picture of my gadget collection, its called The Other Way Around Narcissism, well some of them is no longer on my daily use, mostly because of I replaced with the newest device, like jornada 720, boy I love that thing, but I now replace it with nokia N810, better screen and of course, better OS.

and that nokia 6310i, first nokia with worldwide GSM band and a bluetooth, I dont use it anymore, but wait, I use it once time ago when I entering the facility where camera is not allowed, thanks I still has this no-camera-phone ... :).

Diamond head from the oahu sky.

2009-11-29T02:44:00.001-10:00

just want to share this nice picture taken by my wife.

Bushnell 15-55x21 Monocular

2009-09-30T10:23:00.006-10:00

I bought this one on ebay, from china seller, and honestly I am not sure this one is really for busnell product lines, as I saw on other china/HK seller, they selling this without brand on it, so I just assume, some china manufacture try to build one descent small monocular but end up no one like it not even want to put label on it, so lets say this monocular as Busnell Reject :-).

here are some picture of it :

by looking on the lens, we can tell that the coating is just barely there, its at minimum level, that explaining why the quality of the image that it produce is just average, I still can see some color distortion, especially on the maximum magnification (55x),

but hey, for that ebay cheap price (around $20, including shipping from china), with higher magnification compare to the other store, what we can expect ?, anyway, the size is just 1.25inch in diameter and 4inch long, so basically there are so many limitation, and try to build small monocular, with good lens and high magnification probably will end up with three or four digit $ price, nobody I believe will buy such device except the government which want to equip their intelligence agent with such device.

final word, this monocular is a piece of optic gadget that nice to have, build with a good material, easy to carry, come with the carrying case and deliver descent closer image anytime I need it.

Golf Ball Retriever Antenna

2009-09-08T11:06:00.009-10:00

This is what I call 15 dollars antenna, I am dirt cheap, especially after spent $$$ on my yaesu FT817ND, so spending another $$ for antenna is quite too much, :-D.

I was looking around about a month and finally stuck to this Walmart Golf Ball Retriever, it is telescopic and made from aluminium, and if it fully extended, the length is about 15 feet, almost close enough for my 10M band requirement, so this is how it look :

<----- the one on the left, to became something on the right ---->

I am choosing gamma match to feed the antenna because of availibility of the matterial, even for the gamma match, I made it using plastic straw combined with aluminium foil, really dirt cheap I am. :-D

I include two photos below for that gamma match making,

on the picture if you notice, there are 2 coils that basically compensate the length of this 15 feet only ball retriever to work on 10M band (and CB band as well), I use the calculation from this page, Electrically Short Half-Wave Dipole.

the result is very good, SWR is around 1.2, and with 5Wats FT817ND reaching another island is easy (I live in Hawaii), and on the right time, I able to do DX to mexico, its really fun, but I cant put this antenna permanently outside because of its constructions, well how long it can be for plastic straw to survive outside ? :-D, so as for now, I mount the antenna on tripod.

here is my gamma match constructions, really poor man DIY :

Yaesu FT-817ND Freeband mods

2009-09-08T10:29:00.007-10:00

I recently bought Yaesu FT 817ND transceiver and really love this small rig so much, even better, I did some modification to make it transmit on all band, originally it only able to transmit on amateur band frequency only, this is the range that I have now :

1.8 - 33 Mhz

33 - 56 MHz

140 - 154 MHz

420 - 470 MHz

My Yaesu is US version, 2008 build, so applying modification through software is no longger possible, I had to open it and reach the jumper inside of front panel, and for this model, originally it has J4001-J4004 open, J4005-J4007 close and J4008-J4009 open, and to able to change it to freeband, I have to mod jumper by opening J4005, closing J4008 and J4009

here is the picture to locate where the jumper and the way it numbered :

take a look my other project, Bluetooth serial for Yaesu FT-817ND.

Meade DS-2090 Refractor Telescope at Costco with 4mm Plossl upgrade

2009-08-30T09:23:00.024-10:00

Last week I bought this $199 telescope on costco, prior buying it, I did some research on Internet, google and Meade website cant find it, its DS-2090, with 90mm aperture, 800mm focal length with f/8.8 focal ratio, and equipped with SmartFinder, it seems this is not an "official" product of meade, so it just being made for such reasonable price for some reasonable reason, their official product on this range is DS-2080, it is 80mm aperture and f/10 focal ratio, 2 plossl eyepieces and has price tag $299.

I read somewhere after googling, that some one bought Meade Reflector telescope on walmart at sale price, around $199 and got "unofficial" product as well, and worse part base on his review, its come with hyugenian eyepieces, which is in telescope astronomy world, that is the least technology one can possibly have in this field, no one really want to use it anymore.

Anyway, I give my self a try, its costco anyway, if I dont like it, I can return it for whatever reason within 30days, so I bought it and opened it, here is the contents :
- 90mm Refractor Telescope
- 5 eyepieces, MA or Kellner types (phewww....), with focal length : 6mm, 12mm, 17mm, 20mm and 25mm and its storage case
- All other accessories, SmartFinder tripod and controller, red dot finder, Autostar Suite CD, Manual.
- 8 AA battery for the controller is NOT INCLUDED.
- all made with good quality material, not a plastic, except a 90 degree diagonal mirror which it has plastic case.

For $199, thats pretty much a bargain, especially with a SmartFinder capability, and those 5 eyepieces (Although MA, but for focal length above 17mm, that is still a good choice), and this has 90mm aperture compare to what official meade product has, which is 80mm, so it has 10mm more in collecting the light, so $100 less with slight better aperture.

ok enough for all description, I want to test it to see into planetary system, so at night I point it out to jupiter, and wow.. with that 6mm MA eyepieces, the jupiter look blurry, with only around 6mm in diameter, hardly to see those color pattern of jupiter atmosphere (and dont ask about jupiter red eye), that really disappointed, and with 12mm eyepieces, all I can see is clear bright jupiter in about 3mm size, without detail, and its 4 moons, left picture is from hubble telescope, so that is just for my reference, not my expectations for this telescope :-D

and about our moon, with this telescope, by looking on its size, no one will doubt about its capability to see moon surface in detail.

All in all, I am still thinking whether I want to keep it or return it to costco, my kids love this telescope, but with such performance, probably I can dial down the expense for just 100$ or even less by getting smaller telescope just for moon watcher, I am not a full time or even quarter time astronomer, in fact this is my first telescope that I ever buy, so get that result on jupiter surprising me in different ways, one way is I know the result will not as great as telescope that planetarium I once visited has.

Anyway, I move forward with another test, right now I am waiting my order for 4mm plossl eyepiece from Agena Astro store, its GSO brand and only $29, with free shipping, some people wrote reviews that this GSO plossl eyepiece outperform most MA/kellner eyepiece and will help on such level of magnification and increase the contrast, so I am expecting to get that jupiter red eye with this eyepiece, will update with the result later.

UPDATE on 4mm GSO Plossl (or Super Plossl as it says on many websites)

Sept, 20th 2009, its been about 2 weeks after I have this 4mm GSO Plossl eyepiece, this eyepiece basically give 200x magnification on this telescope compare to 133x with stock MA 6mm eyepiece, I tried to use this on many occasion just to check on Jupiter, because I want to see its atmosphere texture, and the result is quite good, and I am not too satisfied, but still its impress me, having almost 70x on more magnification compare to 6mm, for sure it might decrease the brightness of the jupiter, but I think this is the power of Plossl compare to MA, the image that I got is just as dim (or as bright) as 6mm eyepiece, but bigger and more texture visibility, but again I was not that impressed.

therefore upgrading from 6mm MA to 4mm Plossl is just it, I mean, thats it, on positive side its look bigger, with same brightness, and little bit upgrade on watching jupiter atmosphere texture.

and for negative side, this is the only negative side I have, its 4mm, the hole is just 4mm for my eye to look in to it, I dont wear eyeglass so it doesnt matter for me to put my eye really close (I mean, really close is the eye might be only 1mm near the lens :-) ), and this is because the eyepiece only has 6mm on eye relief.

so for the suggestion, spending $29 with that "few improvement on result comparing to effort peeking on 4mm hole" is not worth to try, I might suggest people to go directly with leap jump to the Meade 5000 series eyepiece (5.5mm) or probably goes directly to vixen NLV (2.5mm or 4mm) for better watching experience, as both type of eyepiece offering longer eye relief, and for sure, the hole for us to peek in to it is not 4mm, its probably 8mm or more.

anyway, I kept the telescope and the 4mm plossl eyepiece, I wish I can just spent another $69 on Meade 5000 eyepiece or $169 for that vixen NLV, but $29 was the reason I spent on GSO at first time, although the satisfactory result is average, $29 is my level for now.

.

Comtech CDM-IP 300L with Net SNMP

2009-03-14T18:05:00.003-10:00

Getting eb/no status on Comtech CDM-IP 300L using SNMP is really straightforward, its easy and the only problem for me at the first time is finding the right MIB for this specific modem, and here is the link on Comtech website http://www.comtechefdata.com/flashupgrades/legacy/legacy.asp

I am downloading file Framer II under CDM-IP_550_300L_V133.

here is the step :
1. extract file CDMIP_Framer_II_133.zip.
2. copy only these 3 files, fw10174-2d.mib fw10174-4b.mib fw10174-8-.mib to Net SNMP directory on linux machine, mine : /usr/share/snmp/mibs
3. execute the command : snmpget -v2c -On -c public modemIP cdmip300LRxEbno.0 or in numeric format snmpget -v2c -On -c public modemIP .1.3.6.1.4.1.6247.6.1.7.3.0
4. The eb/no result is in numeric 3 digit format.

new mac mini is out.

2009-03-10T16:11:00.003-10:00

I wonder for almost a year what will be mini mac look a like ?, and this march 2009, its out, and much of the new features are what I expect, but only one thing that is not there, its expresscard expansion.
Many dont see what is the expresscard expansion really give a benefit, but per computer architecture design, having expresscard expansion is a plus plus compare to just bunch of USB port, because USB is just a Universal Serial Bus, compare to expresscard, which is true expansion slot/bus to give more powerfull feature on the computer.

but anyway, its good to see this new mini mac now already include RW drive as default, no upgrade needed, and the best of all, now it support dual display, which is a BIG plus.

here is complete tech spec for $599 price.

120GB Mac mini (MB463LL/A)

Processor 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
L2 cache 3MB shared
System bus 1066MHz
Memory 1GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; supports up to 4GB

Hard drive 120GB Serial ATA4; 5400 rpm
Optical drive Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 128MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory2

Ports One FireWire 800 port (8 watts); five USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps); mini-DVI output; VGA output (using optional adapter); Mini DisplayPort

Audio Built-in speaker, combined optical digital audio input/audio line in, combined optical digital audio output/headphone out

Networking Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit)
Wireless Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi (802.11n)3; built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)

Got socket(PF_PACKET) failed: Too many open files on airodump-ng

2008-08-25T03:27:00.004-10:00

Ever got that error : "socket(PF_PACKET) failed: Too many open files" when using aircrack-ng during cracking your neighbor Wifi network ?.

I am not sure what is the problem, initially I suspected the low signal caused this, but that wasn't always the case, so instead looking what is the cause, I write small sh script to solve this problem, basically the script continues checking the Linux process for any airodump-ng, and when there is no airodump-ng in process, start another one, here is the simple script to accommodate this issue :

#!/bin/sh
i=1
while [ $i -le 100000 ]
do
  echo "$i"
        [ `ps -ax | grep airodump-ng | wc -l` -lt 1 ] && ./airodump-ng -c 11 --bssid 00:1a:70:82:7b:28 wlan0 -w output1 &
  i=`expr $i + 1` 
sleep 3
done

you can change that 100000 value, or make it loop forever, and change that option "-w output1" with any value with specific path, like /var/temp/output1

happy cracking.

Hacking Pharos GPS 140

2008-02-29T05:35:00.009-10:00

If you guys one of the people who unlucky (or lucky) enough to have Pharos GPS 140, here is one trick that you can make this device more interesting.

I don't want to review the pros and cons about this device, but having the specs like this :
- Running WinCE 5.0
- Plenty of memory
- SD card slot
- MS ActiveSync through USB interface to PC.
are enough already for me to utilize this device more.

Initially I able to load a lot of WinCE software to this device by copying directly via SD Card or MS ActiveSync, but the problem was, how I can load or execute the application ?

After looking on directory structure, finnaly, I able to use VideoPlayer button (three button on the left side, middle one), to run one of my application that I create.

this program aloha.exe is simple application which I created using eVC, and I copied the file to \MyFlashDisk\MPlayer directory, and rename it to mplayer.exe, (be carefull to rename original mplayer.exe to mplayer1.exe), just inform me if you already deleted the original mplayer.exe, I will give you my copy. :-)

here is the screen snapshot of that "New Interface"

so now, original Media Player is accessible through this interface, in additions I put 4 other Launcher button.
- Explorer (WinCE Explorer)
- Acrobat Reader (this device is cool for ereader) (put application on \MyFlashDisk\gpsapp\adobe 2.0\acrobat 2.0\reader\acrord32.exe )
- OziExplorer GPS for WinCE / HPC (put application on \MyFlashDisk\oziexplorer\oziexplorerce/exe )
- Resco Filemanager for WinCE /HPC (put application on \MyFlashDisk\mplayer\resco.exe )

maybe you are wondering, why I should add another GPS application to GPS already device ? ok, this is because the Pharos Ositia Software only work in US and Canada (and few part of europe), and sometimes I use this GPS to another country which is not supported yet, so I use OziExplorer GPS, which is very good for people who like to create their own map or own POI.

If you like to have aloha.exe source program because you want to have your own button launcher, here is the link : http://allabouthobby.blogspot.com/

Green Cellular BTS

2007-04-10T00:05:00.000-10:00

Ok guys, this is not about hobby, but for me this is a cool thing, picture above is what I call "Green BTS", I thought that is a real palm tree, but it turn out that its all about cover, the tree, the leaves, the branches, the color all are human made, even the antenna, the color is green, the engineer really went on detail.

I think this is the way we should build our infrastructure, :-)

by the way, the location of this "Green BTS" is on this google map, close to Waikele premium outlet, HI, US.

Freemason Chiper Code.

2007-04-05T05:12:00.000-10:00

Hey guys, if you have an interest to make secret code for writen communication, this old chiper (back from 13th century, used by masonic knight templar) seems simple and interesting, just want to share my info.

USB Charger Schematic diagram

2007-04-04T15:38:00.001-10:00

for more detail visit infoanda/hobby

If you a bit confuse about how to pin out the USB connector, where is pin 1 and not 4, here is the picture :

4 pin USB A / USB B / mini-USB jack connector at the controller, aka your Computer USB port.

4 pin USB A or USB B plug connector at the peripherals, USB Device, aka your Mouse, your keyboard, your USB Flash Memory.

USB pin assignment as follows :

Pin 1 -- VCC (5 VDC)
Pin 2 -- D- (Data -) typical cable color is White
Pin 3 -- D+ (Data +) typical cable color is Green
Pin 4 -- GND (Ground)

and if you guys want to order PCB online, try this site, www.pcb123.com

1 Cell Lithium Charger

2007-04-04T02:26:00.000-10:00

Figure 5. The MAX1879 high efficient Li+ charger for 1 Cell (3.7V) type battery

The MAX1879 initiates charging in one of three ways: battery insertion, charger power-up, or external manipulation of the THERM pin. CHG\ LED turns off when the on/off duty cycle falls to 1/8, and charging terminates when the on-chip counter times out. Key safety features include continuous voltage and temperature monitoring, a programmable charger time-out, and a 8mA precharge current mode to charge near-dead cells. Automatic detection of input power removal shuts down the device, minimizing current drain from the battery. An overall system accuracy of 0.75% ensures that the cell capacity is fully utilized without cycle life degradation.