• After a bit of use, I found that the camera button servo motor was stressing out the slim bit of wood that was meant to hold it in place.  In the end, I went back out to the shed and redesigned a more robust servo motor holder.  The new mount is easily holding it in place:

As the project About page says, I had volunteered to photograph some local beetles for a Native Orchid wasp propagator study we where doing.  Some native wasps lay their larvae in beetles that live underground.  Our mission is to try and identify the species of wasp that is parasitising local beetles and to identify what kind of beetle it is. 

In November, I was given the first vial of beetles that had been collected after dusk.

Ok, D-Day. Time to dig up my Press-n-Peel PCB transfer film and Ferric Chloride.

In the mean time I added a jumper to the circuit design so I can disable the buzzer if it became too annoying.

In Part One of this project I developed a test circuit that proved that it would all work. In Part II, I actually redesign the bread boarded prototype into the final product.

After the near mishap with the last GPS bush walk, I have pondered how I was going to monitor the battery power usage. This blog is my first go at it.

Back in March 2006, I went to run the PC for something, and realised that it would be really handy to have a power distribution board. This would allow me to quickly unplug all the different modules.

This is what I came up with. It's still not built, as I will make the PIXAXE-28 controller board at the same time, since this one is pretty small.

Here is the schematic diagram of the board:

Here is the PCB board layout:

Well, it's been a while, but the SWASC wheels (propeller?) are still turning.

This afternoon I have been discovering how to use a Freeware GIS mapping program called MapWindows. At the moment, it pretty well does all that I need a GIS program to do.

I was running Drupal 4.6.x.  Upgrading took a while to work through the process, but it wasn't too bad.  Managed to loose all the pictures after I had upgraded, because I was playing around in a new module and I wondered 'what would happen if I...'.   Opps, you loose the link to the photo's.  Ok, lets restore from backup and try again 

Ok, this has had me stumped for some time, however, writing up the last blog, I had a flash back to the tourist Amity Brig down at Albany. The steering ropes and windlass are all out in the open, so the kids and dad's love to peer over the edge and see how moving the wheel makes the rudder turn.

This is my go at it. Well, at least it's a start.

I was concerned about the how well the Mark-I might turn with the motor mounted midship of the boat, so I decided to build a small 30cm model using 25mm PVC tubing. Out came the scrap pieces of MDF and hot glue gun. I had a CD-ROM drive lying around, so I dismantled it, and extracted the head positioning motor. Part of the case was cut up to became a dodgy looking propeller. The shaft was constructed from two 25mm nails, soldered together.