Sprouting hops

All four rhizomes have produced sprouts.

Ease of Use

I'm trying to teach myself that doing things which will make my life easier are worth doing.

I finally put in a bit of organization to my CO2 tubing setup in the kegerator. This will make carbonating a lot less of a hassle.

Hop rhizomes in the ground

For the second time, I will attempt to grow some hops.

I took a few improved steps this time around. First off, I didn't leave the rhizomes in my fridge unattended for 11 months. Second, I did some research beforehand and feel I've planted the rhizomes in the appropriate soil mixture. I have a compost pile which has turned out some great looking compost, so I was able to mix that in with some slow releasing fertilized soil.

Here's a picture of the 4 mounds (the Flickr picture is tagged for historical purposes with the hop types). I planted Fuggle, Willamette, Cascade and Golding.

PID Temperature Controlled Solid State Relay

Ok, it's just a simple sous vide setup. Nothing really unique about this setup; lots of examples out on the web as to how to do this.

I purchased my PID controller from Sure Electronics (it took awhile to show up - almost 3 weeks - but it is very easy to setup and configure; the directions were comprehensible) and picked up the solid state relay from Amazon. An outlet and extension cord from Home Depot completed the necessary supplies and within about 20 minutes I had a test setup fully functioning.

I'm using an old crock pot as the water bath. I may try to find a hotplate that heats up a bit quicker at some point in the future.

[Edit]: I picked up this hot plate from Amazon. I've used it twice with no issues; it heats up quite quickly.

Now it's time to find some food items in the house to try out...

Micro Project: Online temperature sensor

I've decided to start creating micro projects to help keep the Arduino learning and playing from coming to a stand still. The project from three weeks ago was to get a temperature sensor reading the temperature in my basement, and then making the value available online. Using the one wire DS18B20 temperature sensor, I was able to easily read the temperature. I purchased an Ethernet shield for the Arduino a while back and was finally able to make use of it for this project.

Here is the code that is running on the Arduino: https://github.com/jimgeisler/TemperatureServer

The picture shows two DS18B20's hooked up in parasitic mode, although the code is only ever reading and saving the last value in the chain of sensors.

I then built a PhoneGap app for my Android phone that does a REST call to the Arduino to pull the value. Here is a screenshot of the very simple interface:

Working around the FIOS router's limited NAT table

I was having some issues getting consistent results from the ActionTec MI424-WR wireless router from Verizon. I brought up the situation with one of my buddies and he recommended simply turning it into a bridge and use whichever router I like (since I have the Cisco Linksys E1000).

Using the following relatively simple instructions I was able to get everything setup in less than 5 minutes or so. So far everything has been running extremely quickly, and consistently, from what I can gather. I'd recommend putting in the time to try it out.

DSL Reports: How to turn the ActionTec M1424WR into a network bridge

Tweeting Doorbell

I started this project back in June, hoping to accomplish two main goals: learn a bit more about microprocessors/sensors/RF and keep the dog from barking when the door bell rang. Since training my dog wouldn't have allowed me to buy fun toys and play with different sensors and RF, I decided to rig up a door bell detection system.

The detection system uses a doorbell tester, which has a tiny light bulb that lights up whenever the doorbell is connected. This attaches right to the existing system. I then used a photocell as an input to my ATMEGA168 (with Arduino bootloader). I didn't want to mess around with transformers quite yet, so this optical/electric coupled circuitry did the trick.

Here is a shot of the photocell I used to detect when the doorbell tester lit up:

Here is a shot of the photocell rigged up inside the doorbell tester:

A little while ago I had put together an "Arduino" from scratch, essentially just exposing the inputs and tying in the necessary supply connections to the ATMEGA168 microprocessor. Here is a quick video of the project.

And a few shots of the arduino board:





Finally, here is the system attached to the doorbell wires. I have an enclosure that covers this system up. You can also see the RF transmitter that I use to send an RF signal and alert the receiver (which does all the tweeting / text messaging).



All that is left to talk about is the receiver system sitting by my Mac Mini. This system detects the RF transmission and pushes a message out through the USB serial interface. On the Mac Mini I have a python script running which waits for the message on the USB serial port and then sends a text message to my wife and I, as well as tweets to twitter.com/geis_door.

I welcome the Saab to the 21st century

I've been putting up with a lack of auxiliary-in with my 2005 Saab 92x for 5 years too long. In an effort to remove another pain from my ass, I decided to move to a better solution than a battery-powered wireless FM modulator.

Although it still is not idea, I decided to put in a wired FM modulator that ties directly into the antenna input to the head unit of my Saabaru.

The installation was quite simple. I've removed the head unit before, so most of my time went into finding a power source for the modulator. Luckily, the cigarette lighter was easily accessible and the connector was removable, allowing me to work on connecting the modulator power cables to the cigarette hookup in a more spacious area.

A shot of the modulator already plugged into the stereo's antenna input.



Wiring up the power wasn't very difficult. I soldered the connection to guarantee a quality electrical connection.



The end result leaves a switch just to the side of the driver seat. This is also where the audio cable connects.



As a next step, I'd like to connect a BlueTooth audio module so that all wires can be hidden and the transition is seamless. It just depends on whether the cost is worth the minor increase in convenience in this case.

Wired FM Modulator: Scosche FM-MOD02 FM Modulator (Amazon)