“It is not how long we spend with someone that matters. It's the effect of that encounter that makes the difference.”
Mimi Novic
The final moments of the year pass - and what a year! So much travel and such healing after the "interesting times" of 2017. Many visits with family both here and elsewhere. So many friends staying with us, and so many times that we were hosted. Thank you everyone for you contributions to tertiusactus - a third act worth every moment!
“The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.”
Sydney J. Harris
We have made reference to the clock project before (here, here and here), and now with some summer time on our hands we have been working away at shaving superfluous bytes off the original poorly conceived code in order to accommodate the marvelous AtMega88A chip (AU$0.80 each).
And it's working beautifully with the basic premise as follows:
sleep all the time (100μA, most of which is PIR sensor)
wake up if heat is detected (i.e. a human) and display the time and temperature
wake up if slide switch to set clock is toggled, and use buttons to set clock time
So even though it looks like a dog's breakfast at the moment, the result is lovely and we'll chuck it all together in a nicely soldered package soon. Perhaps even make a PCB to save on soldering.
Cut the red wire!
The "fun" part of the project has been making the cradle AVR programmer which makes uploading code and therefore development such a breeze. We've made a few of these now for different chips and damn if they don't just work and make life so much easier. More power to the soldering iron we say.
Atmega88a being programmed by USBasp
Now we build the actual clocks and hopefully it will work well "out of the box".
To reinforce that it is really Christmas time, we had a visit from this little fellow today. Hey mate - enjoy the best the season has to offer!
“One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”
Jeannette Walls
As we hurtle towards 2019 there are some nice days around Christmas which include activities such as catching up with family and friends. Local gatherings have more meaning now that the faces are familiar, and we all talk about the weather, the hay, the fire season, the grandchildren (or grandpuppy if that's the case).
It has been 1102 days since arriving on the island and it is amazing what we have learned, including most important of all how to slow down and enjoy. It reminds us of holidays where we go from full work to full relaxation and several days are "wasted" as we dart hither and thither as if still in the daily grind of employment. Here in Tassie it has taken at least a year or so to understand the importance of doing nothing - mindfulness indeed!
It is not all relaxation though as we started making homebrew in November and finally after six weeks of less than mindful waiting we have opened the first one!
Looks like beer, tastes like beer
The result is a lovely crisp hoppy IPA with a punch like a heavyweight champion - perfect for watching cricket and "wasting" time during summer. Speaking (er, writing) of watching cricket, it remains quite cool here in Tassie despite the heatwaves assaulting the mainland. So de rigueur for staying comfortable is a blanket with legs.
Headless dog blanket
We hope that your festive season is just as relaxing - and that you enjoy your friends and family with presents and more importantly with presence.
“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink”
George Orwell, 1984
We've been hearing a lot about end times lately, but it is certainly not new to wish for the end to personal responsibility and to hand over the gift of this life to someone else - and indeed the story of one of our most famous end times cults of the last four hundred years makes for fascinatingly faithful fare (sorry for the always annoying alliteration).
At the time of the ascendancy of the Münster Anabaptists, the signs for impending doom were generally accepted and of course the resultant bloody rebellion was the most awful news for the women in that society - first subjugated and sexually enslaved by their own men of faith, then violently dealt with by mercenaries hired by the local expelled bishop. Gosh, surely that couldn't happen again? Well, except for maybe Jim Jones or David Koresh or, er, OK so maybe we still need to be vigilant!
The apparent contradiction of some of the best conditions on the planet, together with the rising spectre of climate change and the ever-present threat of economic instability can lead to some interesting contrasts, all inflamed by the cauldron of the internet (accountability anyone?)
And speaking of contrasts, whilst our north island compatriots are facing temperatures of around 40 degrees at the moment, this morning we were collecting cherries in our raincoats, and then returned to our house where the fire has been on for the last 24 hours or so!
Yes sir, yes sir, three buckets full
Smelly Kelly loves to be involved all the time with what the humans are doing and so she actually stole some cherries to have for herself - not to eat apparently, just for decoration in her "nest".
What cherries?
So cozy is it inside at the moment that our little birdy type friends cannot stand being out in the rain - or maybe it is the faux berries on the Christmas decorations causing a bird brain fade?
Anyhoo, grateful are we for the cherries, the fire, the cozy puppies, the crazy birds and of course for life itself - may it not end soon despite the ongoing gloomy forecasts!
My favorite power food is Greek yoghurt and honey.
Misty May-Treanor
After heating up some ordinary supermarket milk (boosted with two heaped dessert spoonfuls of powdered milk) to just pre-boiling, we rapidly cool it down in an ice bath to room temperature and then inoculate it with a couple of spoonfuls of yoghurt from the last batch. Pop it in the EasyYo container for just over 12 hours, cool in the fridge and voila - surprisingly good yoghurt. Cheap and easy(yo), our favourite combination!
OK so we dug in to test it, making a heart shaped dent!
We've been to a couple of TFS run sessions lately, just to find out what to do if a conflagration looms on the horizon. Conclusion? Run away!
The circle of learning
It seems strange sometimes to think about a big fire on the property - we've often had our fireplace in action right up to around Christmas, and sometimes back on again late January! Just today, after a marathon session mowing and then slashing in the paddocks, down came the rain to alleviate the heat and humidity. Thanks Tasmania - we like the cool stuff.
With Anthony and Kym both at home at the moment (well done holiday season), we are looking forward to completing many projects around the place - helped by our many visitors? Time will tell, and it would be nice if the weather co-operated. As Christmas looms we are looking forward to a full house and even fuller stomachs.
“How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!”
Benjamin Franklin
Bunnings currently sells Solar Lights at $1 a pop, but they throw an insipid light and have a paltry 150 Mah NiMh battery that gives little joy hardly commensurate with the importance of the season. So we felt a little "pimp my light" session coming on, which happily coincides with great success on the joule thief front. A typical joule thief oscillates like mad, producing voltage that is suitable for an LED, in that it flickers so fast that the human observing is convinced it's a solid lamp. Our $20 oscilloscope reports a frequency of around 140KHz:
Crazy oscillations
So recently we've been wondering if we couldn't wring the last out of our batteries in a more productive manner. Obscure Russian web page to the rescue, and our reworked circuit has been tested and found wonderful for producing a solid DC current that is suitable for flickering LEDs (which contain a small IC). Indeed the exciting news is that we are able to sustainably power our favourite Attiny13 microcontroller, which has interesting possibilities for the future (watch this space).
So all is now in order for a retrofit of the Bunnings light - firstly, cut out the existing circuit and change out the anaemic 150 Mah battery with a more respectable 2100 Mah version. Then replace inadequate generic solar garden light circuitry with our modified version based on the QX5252 chip.
Out with the old, in with the new
Before you can say "stable DC current please" we have the new circuitry in it's old housing and ready for lashings of hot glue.
Not dodgy looking at all!
Finally we can close it all up and gaze upon a Christmas landing strip that Old Nick will be no doubt chuffed to visit come late December. Here is the new trace via the oscilloscope...
Stable as, Bro!
And if you are wondering what is the point of all this, here is the result before suturing as well as the view that Santa will get from above.
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title."
Juliet channeling Bill Shakespeare (R&J Act II Sc II)
“Birds will always sing a song for those that they love.”
Anthony T. Hincks
A very loud bird has taken up residence in the tree on the southern side of our house. And when we say "loud" we mean the following:
We think it is a grey shrike-thrush (pictured), but really we have no idea - maybe it's a relative of big bird from Sesame Street! The local birdsong, frogsong, etc is amazing - so many different species and such a wonderful backdrop in both colour and sound to our lives here. Speaking of colour, here is Kym with a lovely bowl of new season strawberries straight from our garden, and also a wonderful vase filled with flowers reflecting the season.
Thanks Spring!
This weekend we hosted Peter from Canberra who, like most visitors, slept, ate, drank, laughed, conversed and ultimately left refreshed and reinvigorated for the daily challenges of life - thanks Peter we loved having you here. Take care y'all and if you can identify the songmeister above, then please let us know.
"Beer. It always seems like such a good idea at the time, doesn't it? What's worse is that beer seems like an even better idea after you've had some beer."
Steven Hall
The looming festive season and tonnes of thirsty travelers due on the doorstep has galvanised us into a fermentation frenzy. The bug was planted (pun intended) with a tilt at yoghurt making using the previous culture as a starter. Although that project has had limited success at this point, there was enough encouragement to prompt the great homebrew IPA experiment, helped along by many youtube videos, the odd online forum and the friendly folks at Country Brewers. So on Sunday we cracked open all the packets of goo and powder and plant extracts and popped them into an impressively professional looking bucket to get the following living brew.
It's the yeast we could do
Within a few hours the pot was bubbling away, filling the air with pungent hoppy goodness and making the rudest noises. We shifted it a few times to find the best spot, and it's now sitting in the bathroom, contentedly gurgling to itself. If all goes well we'll be bottling in a couple of weeks and then welcoming Santa with a nice frothy cold one about the time he does his Southernmost run.
Not to rest on our laurels, we then built a GBP from scratch. We have made ginger beer before, using the frightfully useful CWA cookbook and relying on wild yeasts found on sultanas. This time round we actually stumped up for some champagne yeast and even as we type the plant is happily churning away like some ginger infested lava lamp. In about a week we can bottle that and then a few days after it should be good to drink.
Years ago we solved the problem of exploding glass bottles by not using any glass bottles! Twenty four 600ml bottles of water from the supermarket is around $6. The water is used in the production stage and then the bottles are re-used by filling up with the ginger beer and sugar mix in preparation for in-bottle carbonation. If you squeeze the sides in when filling, the bottles expand quite safely and the resultant brew is quite refreshing (and this time around most likely alcoholic thanks to the commercial yeast).
Also on the weekend we gained another goat - Genie joined us for a bleating fest in the vain hope that the constant complaining might bring back our three wanderers who haven't been seen in these parts for about two months. Come back you obnoxious Capra aegagrus hircus, all is forgiven (almost - Anthony's ankle still hurts).
“10 square meters of heaven is worth far more than 100 square meters of hell.”
Khang Kijarro Nguyen
Not to harp on too much about microcontrollers (but we will nonetheless), it seems that although most nerdy humanoids would be content with what is available in standard packages such as the Arduino Uno or Arduino Nano, we find ourselves once again drawing perilously close to the edge of insanity and playing with some freshly arrived Atmega128a chips. They are lovely little things, about 14x14mm - and pack an impressive array of stats, including a whopping 128Kb of Flash, 4Kb of RAM and 4Kb of EEPROM. They are also dirt cheap, arriving from 中国 in a pack of 10 for just AUD $12.39. The bummer is they are damn small and not mounted in anyway useful for programming or deploying. So the first hurdle is soldering the chip onto a custom PCB adapter.
Steady hands and comically large magnifying glasses are the key
Courtesy of the Android App Magnifier on the trusty Nokia we were able to zoom in to check the final soldering for nasty shorting bridges.
Lovely connections between pins and tracks
The next problem was the actual programming. After hours of scouring the interwebs we found that we need to use a USBasp serial programmer and then upload ONLY using the menu "Sketch" and "Upload using Programmer". Even then there was one last barrier, and that was that the otherwise marvelous MCUdude MegaCore was not able to recognise the normal pin designation of, for instance, PB0. So using the pin number instead (in this case 8 as shown below) worked fine, and then it blinked, and all was right with the world <sigh>.
The winding way to blinky success
The Nokia is also doing a great job of capturing the hilariously fuzzy and loud bumble bees that have recently reappeared after their winter hibernation. They aren't native, but they are a welcome addition to the garden this time of year.
Large, furry and cute
The raspberry patch is also teeming with bees at the moment, and so we are anticipating a magnificent crop for the jam cupboard, if they make it past the hands and mouths of the pickers - yum yum!
Reading is what people did before YouTube, and I love retro stuff!
Toby Turner (Born: March 3, 1985)
An early Arduino board contained the Atmel Atmega8 chip. As posted previously, this has around one quarter of the grunt of a modern Arduino Uno R3, but we have been exploring these as replacement chips for the clock project in order to cut costs (not really true - the costs are minimal) but also as an intellectual exercise, because the chip is slightly brain dead by modern standards. Whenever you see links to work being done in this area the most common response is along the lines of "But why, it's an old crappy retro chip!" It looked like our retro version was doomed when we couldn't get the chips to program, and we toasted a few into what seemed like oblivion with our BootLoader incompetence. So worried by their lack of response we ordered a high voltage chip re-fryer from Estonia (yet to arrive). So after many pages of reading, and many hours of youtube (some of it about puppies - we got a little distracted at times) we have arrived at a solution that works for us! These are the steps that worked:
Unplug the USBasp serial programmer and swap to the regular usb connector, selecting the following options, and program until you drop
Now we can restart the clock renewal project without the Frankenstein style wiring spaghetti that characterised programming the Atmega8 on a separate breadboard (including bent and broken pins from the constant shuffling to and from the programming shield). Nice!
Meanwhile the spring works goes on, and it seems that after mowing the lawn then retreating for a nice cup of tea just results in a time delay large enough that the lawn needs mowing again - so that's a bit of a pain!
Here is a nice pic of the dogs looking adoringly at Kym who is filling up one of the bath tubs that the sheep access for water.
Come back - we love you, we love you
Of course the worse thing to happen for the sheep would be a full grown puppy to use their newly refreshed water trough as a bath - right?
Isn't this the normal way to drink out of bath?
That cheeky girl gets away with so much - well, what's the point in being a puppy if you can't be just a little bit indulged from time to time.
"I tell you, the good old egg is the foundation of daily life. Stop the first man you meet in the street and ask him which he’d sooner lose, his egg or his wife, and see what he says!"
P.G. Wodehouse
As promised, here are pics of our three new girls - April (spotty), May (large lady) and June (petite-ish lady). They are about a year old, and lay flawlessly white gorgeous eggs filled with golden orange goodness.
April, May and June - nice ladies, good eggs
Speaking of three new girls - Karpov, Fisher and Tal were shorn today and look magnificent in just their undies, well, see for yourself. Our shearer Corey reckons they're rated 15/10 for condition (his polite way of saying they are a bit fat we think).
Bald ladies, no laughing or pointing
And also on the topic of good eggs, here is our grand-puppy Ella trying to crack one of the mysteries of life.
"And if the world went to hell in a hand-basket as it seemed to be doing, you could say good-bye to everyone and retreat to your land, hunkering down and living off it."
Jeannette Walls
The weekend can bring such joy! For instance one might receive from a neighbour fresh caught local trout. Then a sojourn into the wilderness to source three new girls for the coop (hello April, May and June - photos to follow). Further some wandering out among the orchard blossom and then a meal fit for the landed gentry.
Spot Kym on the balcony surveying her Queendom
Blossom now, cherry later!
All the local goodness on one plate
Interesting question from Oskar at the beach recently with our two dogs and one horse.
"Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness."
Michel de Montaigne
The original clock project is about to receive a major overhaul. Firstly the code for that clock is a mess - it doesn't do interrupts at all well, so the user has to hilariously wait for a full cycle to complete before the clock wakes up when the slide switch for "set time" is toggled. This leads to a dreadful disquieting delay where you have to wonder if the little blighter is going to respond to a simple and necessary request. The code overhaul also comes at a time (pun intended) when new chips have arrived from 中国 in deepest darkest Tasmania - the ATmega8. We believe it was the original chip used in the Arduino, followed by the ATmega168 and finally the ATmega328 which is what the clock project has used previously in a standalone version. Why change chips? The ATmega328 is going up in price, currently around AU $19.01 for 10 pieces, whereas the ATmega8 in the same form factor is around AU $9.29 for the same quantity. The interesting (!) part of the revamp will be whether the new code will fit in a "smaller" chip - the ATmega328p has 32k RAM, 2048b SRAM and 1024b EEPROM, whereas the ATmega8 has "only" 8k RAM, 1024b SRAM and 512b EEPROM. Won't it be hilarious if the new code is too chunky to squeeze into that space? Although it is true that our recent dabbling in the dark arts of avr assembler might help shrink parts of the code. The start of the project involved the usual ubiquitous "blinky" code (the AVR equivalent of "Hello World") - i.e. can we get any code to work on the Atmega8? Well within 5 minutes it seemed we had bricked the first chip whilst trying to burn a bootloader on the assumption that it didn't come from the factory with an installed bootloader. However, it did come with a bootloader and now wasn't talking at all. Quite a few hours of reading and a fair bit of swearing over the next 3 days resulted in finding and following the definitive guide to ATmega8 bootloading (thanks ElectroNoobs), with just the one twist in the tail. We didn't want an external 16Mhz crystal oscillator driving the chip, but rather we would prefer the internal 8Mhz oscillator, since in the clock project the timing aspect is taken care of by an external DS3231 module. But we set up the oscillator anyway, just to establish lines of communication:
New bootloader installed and functioning
Following the resurrection after the requisite three days of uncertainty, the next step was to reload the bootloader via the avr isp programming shield and re-burn the chip with the appropriate settings (internal 8Mhz) as shown below:
So many options - but the 8Mhz is the key
Finally a little blinky magic and we are back in action.
But why always with the stupid blinky? Well, it's easy to establish if there is communication with such a simple program. It's visual if you don't have an oscilloscope, and timing is easy to check to see if the fuses have been set properly. Oh, and it's pretty. So now onward to rewriting the clock code, but first a little relaxation and reflection with Oskar at Kingston Beach - noice!
You'll reach into your wallet to brandish a photograph of a new puppy, and a friend will say, 'Oh, no - not pictures.'
Caroline Knapp
Yesterday at the park Kelly was chasing a ball (surprise) when she missed the visual cues relating to fencing wire and tried to grate herself. Ouch! So we have a cut tongue, lip and we are missing a bit of a tooth (again). You have to wonder at what point she will have at least a working knowledge of situational awareness? She's fine (sort of), but my do we not need these heart in the mouth moments at our age. Look out soon for a photo of Kelly completely covered in tape and bubble wrap ready for her daily constitutional.
Ignore me at your peril
Speaking of pain and suffering - here is a link to three months of our lives as we recently revisited assembler programming using the attiny13A as inspiration. With a couple of overseas buddies cheering from the side, it has been a firkin of frustrating fun making the damn thing and we wish it well on it's voyage to publishing obscurity. Check this out: completetime: in r16, ADCSRA andi r16, 0b01000000 ldi r17, 0b01000000 eor r16, r17 brbs 1, completetime in r16, ADCL in r17, ADCH ldi r18, low(threshold) ldi r19, high(threshold) cp r16, r18 cpc r17, r19 brbc 2, ledon
Yikes! A well deserved lie down and a cool cloth on the forehead must surely be in order.
I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.
Barbra Streisand
We're not sure how good Barbra Streisand is at electronics, but details certainly caused a half-day delay recently when we first encountered the phenomenon of wire "ringing". The project seemed quite simple - make an attiny13a output to a common anode 7-segment display. It started badly when two of the displays died in early experiments due to a lack of a current limiting resistor. Finally after a bit of fiddling about, the code was working well outputting the required hexadecimal numbers from an Arduino Nano test-bed. But every time we shifted (pun intended) to the attiny13a, weird extra signals led to faulty inconsistent errors in the display. The lack of reproducibility was excruciating - and even weirder that an attiny85 behaved perfectly in the same circuit! Was it the individual chips? The circuit? The gods of electronics and their capricious cosmic interference?
Spot the smoothing resistors and capacitors (plus short traces!)
Nope - it was wire ringing in the circuit. As the display was on one breadboard and the chip on the other, a combination of 10 cm connecting wires (too long!), no resistors in line with the 74HC595 shift register (47Ω), no decoupling capacitors (47μF and 0.1μF) to filter the signal and just enough differences between the specs of the attiny85 and the attiny13a to be crucial. So the final product worked, and it was so satisfying and frustrating at the same time that it has been set up on the breadboard ever since. It is fired up from time to time amidst much sighing, shaking of heads and clucking noises. Or, as Kym would say, "That's very nice, dear."
“I believe when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade...and try to find someone whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.”
Ron White
You are not supposed to be able to do the whole citrus thing up here in the hills, what with the cold and noticeably wild winter weather (altogether alliterate). Despite that, and maybe due to optimistic naivety, we parked a lemon tree by the fence in the garden when we first arrived.
As a couple of semi-retired scientists, we added two big thermal masses close by in the guise of black solar absorbing compost bins. The theory was that even in the midst of winter there might be few hours of re-radiated warmth from the big yellow.
Like warmish dwarf vaders on guard
The other bit of conventional wisdom is that it takes a few years to get fruit. So it was a bit of surprise to see a proto-lemon on the tree this week.
Well hello yellow
All this is quite wonderful, but not as wonderful as fluffy puppies and besotted dog dads.
