Today's song is: Lifestyle ... Derulo and Levine

Covid19 has altered many lifestyles around the world. If I was in Bangkok at this moment I would be sitting out covid in my apartment except for runs for food. The entertainment places are still closed and I suppose the BTS would be somewhat risky so getting around would be a problem.

Here in Canada many of my plans fell apart. I was planning on driving out east with Thavorn and Jaidan and visiting the Atlantic provinces this past summer. Of course that never happened. I was also planning to do some camping and canoe camping in Algonquin Park. Then again I was going to book some time at Mount Tremblant and introduce Jaidan and Thavorn to skiiing and the mountain village. Not happening.

We were also planned on visiting my 2 sisters fairly regularly and that is not happening. Ditto for my friends, or just getting out to a sit down in Timmy's, Starbucks, or browsing the books at Chapters.

So, my lifestyle has been altered dramatically, but not as much as the past 10 years when I embraced minimalism and embraced being a bad boy on the wildside in Thailand. I don't miss owning a house, 2-3 cars in the driveway, keeping up with the Jones, etc.

I do miss a motorcycle, my friends, coaching basketball, and travellingwhich I can solve once covid19 gets diminished. My motorcycle arrives this month.

Meanwhile age is catching up. I strained my achilles tendon running on the treadmill and altering my walk has strained my lower back as well. Apparently the achilles takes at least 2 months to heal. Bummer. 

Some motorcycle pics. I always like a touch of red on my bikes:

What's in store for my lifestyle down the road. For the next 4 years we will live with my sone Jordan, with perhaps a trip or two of 3 months in Thailand, probably June-August. At the end of the 4 years, Jaidan will be in going into grade 6 and we will probably spend at least 6 months in Thailand as we build a house for Thavorn in her village. I will home school Jaidan during that time.

After the house is built, we will spend 9 months in Canada a year and 3 months in Thailand. Or 6 and 6 with 4 months of home schooling. Time will tell. You don't want to plan too far ahead at my age :-)

TTYL

Proud of my Mule

 Today's song is: Proud Mary ... Tina Turner

I am proud of my RC controlled mule. Mainly because I built it from scratch with my own drive train and steering mechanism. Also because it is very fast. It is driven by 2 lego L motors geared up running on a NiMH 9.6 volt battery back. However, it can be improved.

I am using a Raspberry PI to control it which is okay, but I use an AdaFruit Crickit board to drive the motors and it is overkill for what I need and has one inherent problem that is, it can only drive motors up to 5 volts dc. That means I then add on another Cytron motor board to drive the 9 volt Lego motors. I also have an issue with the 9.6 volt battery pack as I can't tell how much battery is left. I could add a small volt/capacity meter but that means another small addition. I like to adhere to the KISS principle.

My plan is to keep the Raspberry computer, but perhaps downgrade it to a Raspberry PI Zero W from the Model 3B+. Why, because it is cheaper, and does the job, as well as being half the size.  I am then going to add a WaveShare Motorboard that sits ontop of the PI zero and is the same size, and can drive the Lego motors at 9 volts and potentially up to 12 volts (more on that later). The more volts, the faster you go.

The final new addtion will be a 12/5 volt USB Battery Pack. Most of the USB battery packs only pump out 5 volts to charge phones. The one I found by TalentCell has two outs, one at 5 volts and one at 12 volts. I could (undecided), run the PI Zero off the 5 volts and the motor board off the 12 volts. Best of all, it has 5 leds that show the status of the battery so I know when to recharge it.

All of the above makes everything much smaller and simpler. I should be able to get it all hooked up in a week as the parts come in, unless I fry something.

Meanwhile in Covid land we are surviving and today is a snow day and Jaidan is at home and working hard om Math and Reading. Thavorn is drying pork to use with this week's meals. Thai, her daughter has managed to get herself kicked out of school in Phang Na for truancy. Not sure, what will become of her, but probably nothing good.

Some more picks of the existing mule.

TTYL

Covid Update

 Today's song is: Mood .. Bieber et al

Jaidan is back in a regular classroom and my days are free again, so, maybe, I will post a bit more.

A bit of a setback with my latest mule as I fried the microcontroller that was powering it. $60 up in smoke.  I decided to go all in and order a Raspberry Pi as a controller and a motor hat. Way more expensive so I will try not to fry them.

Meanwhile I have decided to optimize my programming desk and here is a pic of it.  The motorized desk is important for anyone coding for more than 8 hours. The dual monitor setup is required for productivity. The left monitor can be recorded (both video and voice over) for documentation/training. The device with the green light is the Hauppuage Rocket which records to my 500 gig ssd drive on a push of the big red button. 

I have a Amazon Echo 5 (gift from my daughter Jaime) with a display for quick info on anything from weather, amazon deliveries, and trivia. On the right are my headphones for listening to YouTube tutorials. My mouse is a Logitect MX Master which is ergonomic to prevent RSIs.

The laptop is a Lenovo Think Pad with 16  gigs of memory and a 500 gig ssd internal drive. The coffee mug is large size and a present from my son Jordan.

Meanwhile, back in Bangkok, the bars are shutting down and many will never reopen. The coup born governmnet is still under reporting covid and does very little testing. The government still believes the tourist will come flocking back but that will probably never happen post covid, and if so, defintely not befoe 2022. A whole generation of bar girls has seen their lifestyle yanked out from under them and are back in the hinterland bored out their tree. The Thai economy is probably back to circa 1995 but the government has yet to realize it. Thailand has priced themselves out of the main tourist market and prices will have to come down and government bureaucracy needs to make it easy for tourists to visit.

 

Do I miss Thailand? You bet. The normal loso Thai are great people (okay, not all) and deserve a better life. The student protests looked promsing but the government are locking up the leaders now. A 60 year old lady was sentenced to 40 years in jail for posting a video on Facebook. Governments around the world have to do something aout this by applying pressure to Thais in power but little seems to be happening on that front. I suppose our government officials enjoy their cheap seafood too much.

TTYL

Latest Mule

 Today's song is: Anyone ... Justin

For my latest mule I went to the 2011 Lego supercar, the 8070. It is the largest car I have and was somewhat motorized. Of course I could not leave it alone and I applied my latest electronics which features a color display ala Tesla.  This was the original with a working V8, hood, doors, and truck that open and shut. No wheels driven and no motorized steering, and of course no remote control.

My version has bluetooth control via my phone and features 2 L motors and a servo motor all running off a 9.6 volt NIMH rechargable battery. I am waiting on new motors from China which are about 25% more powerful so this mule should move. I was able to keep the motorized doors and front hood but had to give up the motorized trunk to make room for the baeery and electronics.

Some pics:

The 2 L motors will attach out back, but that will change :-)

Working V8 and gears to drive doors and lids.

My electronics, microcontroller on left, motor dirver on right.

Green battery underneath.

Profile is clean with minal wiring showing.

The dimensions are 58.2 x 37.8 x 8.7 centimeters

I am quite please with how the electronics are integrated into the design. I could shrink them by another 50% but I like my display and push buttons for testing all the functions.

We are also enjoying the winter weather and are sledding in the backyard and building a snowman. Jaidan loves the snow and Thavorn finds it 'beautiful'.

TTYL

Franken Mule

 Today's song is: Need for Speed

Jaidan has always wanted to drive my Lego vehicles but they are too fast for indoors and don't hold up well to crashing into things. We are also locked down for months to come so we both need forms of intertainment. I thought, 'What better than racing on an indoor track?'

For that to happen, I had to come up with 2 vehicles, similar is style, size, and speed. I came across this vehicle for Jaidan on Amazon.ca. It is an off road buggy, powered by Lego's latest motor control system which is finally bluetooth. This gave me the opportunity to learn about the new system as well as get one vehicle out of the way.

Definitely not cheap at $179 CDN but what the heck, we have to survove the monotony of the lockdown and designing courses and racing will be fun. This will be Jaidan's vehicle.

As for me, time to design my indoor Franken mule. I had already canibalized the Lego corvette and I had a Lego XL motor that I wanted to explore. These motors are slow but very torquey so the vehicle has to be able to handle the torque on startup and also has to be geared up to increase the speed of the vehicle.

I am verry pleased with the design and Jaidan drove it all over for half an hour this morning. It is controlled by a hand held bluetooth controller that came with my Icarus car form China that I am not currently using because I replace it with a Buwizz.

So far, it is pretty strong and about the same speed as the Lego buggy that will arrive on Monday. Unlike Canada Post, Amazon delivers on time :-)

TTYL

Canada Post

 Todays song is: Little Deuce Coupe ... Beach Boys

I have been waiting on Canada Post's Xpress Delivery (within 4 business days) since Dec 29, 2020. It is now January 8th and Canada Post says they are busy. Do you think they will refund me back my $12. I doubt it as there is no accountability.

My test mule was waiting on a smaller BlueTooth module but I got bored and decided to clean up my current test mule and so I did. It turned out pretty well as my electronic components are locked down with Lego and crash protected with a bit of a roll bar. 

I am pretty sure this car will hit 30 km and hour and if I lose a wheel at that speed then it will probably flip and I don't want to write off the $35 component.  Now, I just have to wait for some nice weather for a speed run.

Jaidan's online class (grade 1) went well this week and that kept me pretty busy monitoring him. He came up to speed during the week and worked hard.  The bad news is the provincial government has gifted us with 2 more weeks of online learning!

Some pics:

Motor driver board protected by Lego

Lights surround the Cirtcuit Playground bluetooth module.

Beneath it is the crickit addon that is really not necessary, but

has lots of sensors I will make use of.

Nice clean ass end

Direct gear drive axle. I will probably reverse one motor for symmetry

Wires are routed under Lego. I really should shorten them all, 

but I am waiting for parts from China. (cheap)

Worm gear driven steering, my design

Underbelly is fairly strong and tidy, first speed run will test it.

The two drive motors. I will reverse one. Why not, something to do.

Under view of steering mechanism.

Two electronics boards sitting on top of NIMH 9.6 volt rechargable.

Roll bar is now installed

TTYL

Latest Mule

 Today's song is: Get Your Motor Running .. Get Out on the highway .. Looking for Adventure!

I continue to work on developing a test mule for my Lego motor driven cars. In the beginning Thavorn built expensive Lego cars and I attempted to motorize them. Making them move with one motor and controlling them with expensive gadgets imported from Hungary worked but I have this need for speed and control that was not satisfied.

Lego cars are really designed to look nice and sit on a shelf. The structures, particulary the gear differentail and drive train are made of plastic and have problems with heat due to friction and structural regidity. I resorted to strong elastics to hold everything together.

I also have 5 cars and I wanted to explore developing the electronics myself rather than pay upwards of $200 to firms in Hungary to control them. I had developed my first mule, controlled by Adafruit circuit playground and crickit drive board. I used a 10 volt NIMH battery pack to drive the motors which are rated at 9 volts but can take up to 11 volts without a problem.

It looks like this:

It is based on a Lego Corvette set that sells for $69. The electronics cost me about $70 which is much better than $200. It is also fast, but too powerful for such a small vehicle. I drive it with 4 gears and start it off at half speed to overcome the inertia before accelerating. If I apply full power from a stop it tends to pull itself apart. There is also a need to tidy up the wires and shrink the electronics down.

I decided to build another test mule with direct drive on the rear weels and switch from a rack and pinion steering system to a worm drive. I am using the original electronic boards but new ones arrive soon that will cut the price and size in half while maintaing the functionality.  Both vehicles are controlled via bluetooth on my mobile phone. I wrote the python code that motivates the car.

My new test mule now looks like this. It is twice the size of the original and at least twice as fast!

It is also muck quieter as there is no differential and less gears whirring around, and did I mention it is fast. I can only drive it at 50% inside as it crosses the room in about a second. I look forward to testing it outside. As I adapt the test mule to its new electronics I will keep you informed.

Staying amused and busy in Covid lockdown, TTYL