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While I am looking forward to the upcoming conference and some holidays, this also means I will not be able to work on the Mark I.  See you in two weeks time.

I am heading off on a conference soon, so I thought it was about time I had a go at Ghosting up the 512MB CF card. Using Barts Network boot disk, I made a ghost of the drive. This all went well, with no errors reported. As a safe guard, I also modified my 'config backup' script so it used scp instead of rsync. After backing up all the config files to my main server, I then uploaded them to the subversion repository for safe keeping.

It's been a power weekend.  I cut out the walls and assembled them together.  It would have helped if the base had been a perfect rectangle.  Oh well, just plane off a few more mills! 

During the week, I played around with ExpressSCH, a electronics design package.  As a test, I laid out my initial PICAXE test circuitry.  It comes up better in the original size.

Wow, I am a convert of using PICAXE chips They are so easy to use!

The PICAXE-28X CPU chip arrived yesterday from Altronics.  When I get some time over the weekend, I will have a go at programming it :-)

It only runs at 4MHz at the moment.  Later I will see if I can overclock it to 16MHz.  I am interested in seeing how fast I can do Anologue-to-Digital (AD) converstions, as I have some other projects in mind as well, that could use it if I can get running at around 120 conversions per second.

It's called "on the job training".  While updating the Subversion repository with the latest files, I managed to switch two directories around.  Oops.  Had to export one of them, revert back, and add it back in.  The beauty of a Content Management System like Subversion is that nothing is really lost :-)

Anyway, it's all up too date with the latest files etc.  Mainly my MyGPS, servo and gps code files and some PICAXE pdf's. 

Might have to order a PICAXE-28X tomorrow!

Arrived back from Perth late Friday afternoon, after a fun filled 3 days with Ross, doing all the holiday things.

Like visiting electronic and hobby stores as well as Battery wholesalers.  I picked up a 12V 28Ahr SLA Battery to run the Servo and Motor, and a 7AHr SLA Battery to run the electronics.  I also picked up some other batteries (7AHr and 4Hr), to repair some old UPS's.

We also found a "$6.00 All you can eat" Indian restaurant.  We ate way too much!

I had a problem, where every image I added would be displayed full size!Turned out that even though the ImageMagic 'convert' program could convert JPEGs, the image program actually seems to use the GD JPEG resize function.  I hadn't compiled in the JPEG libraries into PHP.  Turns out I had to download the latest JPEG source code, compile it, and then re-compile PHP with the --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/bin/ switch.  I then had to redo some of the pictures, so it could add in their thumbnails. 

I have purchased a 2D Honeywell 3100 Digital Compass.  This uses a TTL RS-232 voltage level, so since I need to connect it to a PC, I will need to make up a converter curcuit using a MAX232CPE chip.  I have one here, but I think it's stuffed (from a previous experiment some years ago).

I will pick up two more in Perth next time I am up there.  I will also purchase the batteries, Hall Effect Sensor and battery charger. So much to do, and so little time :-)