I trust everyone had a good holiday? Traffic on the list pretty much
dried up. I suspect my absence had quite a bit to do with that.
When it rains it poors: On Christmas day my wife and I arrived at my
in-laws with gifts in hand and found a note saying mom-in-law had
been taken to the hospital just before we arrived. Her temperature
was 89 and she was in a semiconscious state. At the same time, the
political situation at my day job has grown to the point that the
local paper is running stories about it. This directly impacts my and
my job. It appears it will get worse before it gets better and I will
become a very busy boy for the next several months. Today I was told
a friend of mine from high school was beat to death by her husband
who then made their two children, ages 3 and 6, clean up the blood.
I do not like this time of year.
As you might imagine I haven't had much time to update the website.
Lyle sent me a couple of good stories to put up and I see there's
some email waiting for me from some list members.
I did get a new LCD for the dash. Just the other day I got this unit
in the mail: http://www.phanderson.com/lcd106/lcd115.html
I haven't even plugged it in yet but it seems like a good value at
$35. It seems well made and solid and the feature set is pretty
darned nice. I grabbed this because I like the idea of displaying
your voltage in larger type with amperage and odometer or what have
you in smaller type to one side.
I stumbled onto http://frontpanelexpress.com awhile back. They have
a free program that enables you to design panels for your computer.
That's the part that holds your cooling fan and ports. Think of them
as a smaller and cheaper version of http://www.emachineshop.com
Front Panel Express is much more limited in what they can do but then
again, they make panels and don't suggest that they're a full machine
shop like emachineshop. So, I measured my ADC 6.7" and my gearbox
and set about designing a plate that would hold the two together.
The process was dead simple - just put the holes in the software,
tell it what kind of plate you want and click the go button. Two
weeks later the plate shows up.
I haven't had a chance to see what went wrong and where yet but the
holes are in the wrong places. I'm not sure if I did something wrong
in the software, measured wrong (most likely), or Front Panel Express
drilled them in the wrong spots. Dang it!
Assuming I measured wrong, the only reason I'd do it again is for
convenience. My design is so simple, just five holes of three
different sizes, that it only makes sense to make it at home for 1/4
the price. On the other hand, they can do some nifty engraving so it
might make sense to go with them for more complicated designs like
the dash board cover since it will have square holes, d shaped holes
and other goodies.
So, that's what I did over my holiday break. What'd you do?
Mike
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