With the deepest respect for fortune tellers and the palm reading academies around the world, I will do my best to get a clear sights of the times on our doorstep. As I polish my Atmegas for a DIY year, I think the following I/O’s will make a difference to how the world spins:
The oil prize has dropped significantly, revealing the old and worn cogs of the industry
Russia are rattling their sables and expanding territory
The western lifestyle is out of style, we have too much stuff, and take up too many resources
But these headlines go into the Economists yearly crystal ball, enough eyes looking at these.
My garage is no longer a black hole. In outer space, a black hole brings back light with a long series of uncomfortable side effects. Overheating, explosions, and there is no way you can control what direction you are going when the dark turns to light. My garage lights up when it sees the brake lights on my car, and guide me to the same spot every time. My garage can even communicate over Bluetooth.
One of the biggest questions that arose this christmas was how does the brain store information. We are familiar with digital disk drives, new flash drives, magnetic cassette tapes and laser burnt disks. But what is the beautiful, analog and human way of storing enormous amounts of data?
Thanks to everyone for reading and contributing to my blog. It has been fun climbing mount geek with followers and comments. Please join me in 2015 as I will learn more about geeky stuff.
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 580 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 10 trips to carry that many people.
The oilfield is known to be a conservative industry, and in drilling and well we often say that new technology has slowed things down and reduced efficiency. I can’t think of any other industry where technology improvements has been for the worse over decades, so I wonder if it can be something wrong with how we work.
I think the drop in oil price is our que for cheaper, smarter, faster and safer operations in the hunt for the black gold.
Luckily, my wife can almost never be blamed for any of our car incidents. If she were to cause some trouble, I would probably stigmatize her and blame her for being a typical woman. I would say she is stressed out over normal traffic and putting on makeup in the rear view mirror while driving. She would feel very bad, and probably try to camouflage the dents with mascara or whatever black she has in her purse.
She makes a mess inside the car, though. She believes the car is an extension of her purse, and throws bags, receipts and extra pairs of shoes everywhere. But that can easily be cleaned out.
I run into poles in parking lots and my own garage.
And this is where the AVR is coming to my rescue: I’m making a device that turns on the lights in the garage for me when it sees my brake lights, backing in.
When it is rainy and dark (the average weather in Bergen) the rearview mirrors cover with rain drops, dispersing my visual rays into a blur. The garage opening is a narrow black hole. You might think that this black hole has so high gravity that it sucks the car in, but no, the only mass in there is a set of spare wheels and years of dust.
I think the garage was built sometime in the medieval, when people were tiny and families didn’t travel much. I might be wrong about history, but the garage is small. Leaving little space on either side or in front of the car when it is parked and the gate is closed. So I need light to see. Automatic lights.
I could of course switch on the lights when I’m out opening the gate, but that would be a change of routine. And the brain is rigged to celebrate lazy repetitiveness in the daily operations, and punish any attempt on changing. Try brushing your teeth with the hand that normally just hangs around while teeth get their daily shampoo, and you will feel the backlash from the hub. I might be able to turn on the garage light every time I open the gate, but I might also end up forgetting to put on pants or bring the kids. Not something I’m willing to risk, so I make something new and slightly useful to do the job.
The brain loves creativity. Learning new habits takes rounds and rounds of repetition
You got the concept? I back up to the garage, a light sensor sees my brake lights, and turns on LED strips in the garage to illuminate my path of easy parking. No more expensive and embarrassing repairs on the car or the garage.
Of course there will be an AVR controlling the lights, and I will use a Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) to see the brake lights. The PCB layout will be similar to my shelf light project, but this time I will use the Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) in the AVR. The ADC turns the resistance readings from the LDR into a number, and I can set a threshold for when to turn on and off the LED strips (which I will mount in the garage. Also, I will add a serial connection with a bluetooth device to help me calibrate the sensor, and perhaps add more features later on. It will run of grid power with a 12V DC converter in the socket.
Landing a thousand projects 