LVB Trackers - Family Night

Did some prep work to build 10 button assemblies. Once they are done we can start Tracker assembly. Decided I spent 3 evenings in a row working so I went back upstairs to be with family. Family time is important and I will work it into the timeline. Also accepting offers for help but I caution you I am very pickey about how things get done. Thanks.

Amazing

This time of the year it's slow at work but this year it's scarey slow. Fortunately I have a project in my other office that will keep me busy for a few days in between interruptions.

Early this morning Sue and I were discussing last nights completion of 10 LCD cables for the tracker project. Sue said she thought I built enough cables last year to last for a while. I told her that over 100 trackers were built last year depleting the supply of LCD cables and button assemblies built just before Hamvention. Thinking about it I couldn't beleive I built 100 LCD cables at one time so I went into blogger to find out cause I pretty much bolgged every day during that time. So in going back in blogger time I was first amazed at how many blogs I had written. Quite a few. Not too hard to read. And I found out that 90 LCD cables were built just before Hamvention. I read thru several blogs reminising the past and was shocked that I wrote so much about falling asleep inplace. That definetly proves that the pap machine I'm using now is helping. I do feel tired at times if I get to bed late too many days in a row. But staying awake is no longer an issue and I feel better now than I did back then almost a year ago when writing those blogs.

Back to work.

LVB Tracker - More progress

After a distracting weekend and getting tied up Monday and Tuesday got back to the workbench. Soldering iron is broke so one of Sundays distractions was troubleshooting and ordering parts. Hope they arrive tomorrow... I will need it to build button assemblies.

Tonite we got downstairs and settled in around 7 pm.... With the soldering station broke I decided to build LCD cables. By 9:30pm finished with 10 built. Not too bad considering I got the TV working and had recorded shows playing in the background.

Building trackers is a big burden on my free time (when I'm not working for a living) but when I get into building it's a great escape that takes me away from the realities of having way too much to do.J

10:54 pm. 73's

LVB Trackers - Wednesday update

As you know I have too many things to do! Today the dsl equipment for a local restaurant I support came in. So after eating dinner there we proceeded to install the Gateway... that's what they call it now. After redoing the wire the gateway sync'd with the dslam in the central office. Now at&t has this web admin program that has to run before you can get online. What a pain in the butsky... a million questions later it started to work. I got so frustrated with it I let my wife finish.

Then we spent about 3 hours trying to get Outlook to send mail. Half that time working with tech support setting and verifying the same things about a dozen times. Then they said something wrong with Outlook and sent me to a support group that wanted money... our call ended. I googled the problem and think its the old email authorization issue. You cant send email from an at&t account unless its authorized from a admin web page. We'll deal with that tomorrow.

So you guessed it... NO TRACKER PROGRESS TONITE.

Did get a check in the mail from AMSAT to pay for most of the parts... THANKS MARTHA for the fast turn around.

Good nite

1:17am

LVB Trackers - Tuesday update

On a roll...

Voltage test, mount/flash pics install USB module. The boards are ready for assembly!

Drilled out 10 lcd displays and soldered the idc connector. Lcd displays are ready for assembly.

Was very tired today so we'll shut down now and get some sleep.

9:07pm

LVB Trackers - meager progress

After a very stressfull evening at a personal level I did manage to get the 10 circuit boards cleaned. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

LVB Trackers - Weekend update

Sunday evening. All parts have been mounted on the 10 pcb's that are on hand. Next the flux needs to be cleaned from solder side of the boards. Then the 5 volt regulators on each board will be tested... why? cause we had a bad one that took a pic, max232 and lcd display to the garbage. Then the pics need to be inserted and flashed. Finally USB modules need to be plugged in.

There are 2 lcd cables from the last build so we will need to build 8. Found 5 button assemblies and wires cut for another 3-4. So we are in good shape to build 5 button assemblies.

Folks we are making slow progress but progress none the less. If anyone would like to help and you enjoy building electronic stuff and are an impeccable builder who focuses on detail and would like to help... please let me know. mike@wb8cxo.com

73's and have a great week!

9:23pm Sunday evening

LVB Trackers - build update

The LCD displays arrived from Matrix Orbital this past Wednesday. They need to be tested to verify that they are Japanese font type. We now have all the parts needed to build complete trackers...

I have decided to spend more time with my family NOW instead of resigning myself from the project which is what usually happens. This will simply be a balancing act that will more favorably give the family more time. This will also include spending more time with friends either online or on the air. At least one of them wants me to dump the project. But I told him, I don't quit! Fortunately I can participate with the online chats while I'm working which is what I did last evening. That worked out well and I made significant progress.

Currently there are 10 boards in build. Transistors, connectors and the voltage regulator are all that is left to finish assembly. Next they need to be cleaned, voltage tested, pics installed an flashed, USB modules mounted then they are officially finished. That should get done today.

The next step is a little more involved. There is a button assembly and LCD cable that needs to be fabricated. The last time (just before Dayton last year) I built at least 50 at a time over the span of a week or so. Only a few assemblies remain and since we are behind schedule just enough assemblies will be built to finish the ten trackers currently in build.

Time to walk the dogs. More later...
Posted Saturday morning around 9am.

LVB Tracker - Monday Evening

LVB Tracker - back to work tomorrow

Here I sit in front of the computer... a great time waster, if you let it. And breakfast has not happened yet! My 2 week vacation is over and it was a waste like all the rest. All of things you just can't get done while working for a living I can't seem to get done when I'm not. Course there seems to be many more distractions now that I'm older. Dunno if it's age or not but not a bad thing to blame. Computer failure 5 days ago didn't help things either. Helping a young kid get a website started didn't either... I'll never go there again!

So anyway. I'm gonna start building trackers now. All the morning distractions besides breakfast that I have to deal with are done so I'm gonna start.

Enough said... time to work!

11am

LVB Tracker - main PC is down

It finally happened. The hard drive on my main pc started to fail Tuesday. This pc is critical to the support of building trackers. So I installed a new drive and reloaded the OS. Wednesday added to old drive and chkdsk hammered on it for about an hour and half. I was able to recover most things off it including emails and browser profiles. Pictures, documents and downloads too. More than I'll ever use on the new drive. I really need a file server but don't want to spend the money on a store bought one. And don't have the time to build one or research the do's and don'ts of doing so. But with the rash of laptop/desktop failures we've had last year we need something. Having PC's has become a second job with piss poor pay!

The TS-2000 sat on top the pc so that got taken down. No satellite ops since Wednesday. This morning Randy K7AGE was on Twitter. He's trying to work the satellites from Rochester. Thinking he might be on I went downstairs to find another place for the TS2k where it wont be disturbed so I could work satellite whenever I needed/wanted to. Eventually found a place but by the time it was finished I missed the HO68 pass and most SO67. The pileups are massive so the FM satellites are almost worthless to all but the patient and talented ops. Then there's Doppler on the linear birds. I was just tuning around on VO52. I don't think most ops understand how to properly set up for Doppler. I'm using MacDoppler and it seems to do it all automatically. Tuning adjustments are adjusted for in the program. Most stations seem to drift around the transponder. But the ops who know what they are doing, tune them once then sit back just like the low bands, awesome to see but its rare. Like everything else, folks just don't pay attention to details.

Last night I ran into some pics I wanted to look at. Actually some were negatives and some were prints. Got out the scanner and scanned them in but the rest of the family was too key'd up on new years stuff. A waste of time in my mind. I got stuff to do. Did go upstairs at 11:30 for them.

So today we'll finish the scanning and try to get the pc buttoned up. The old drive is running good but something is hitting it once every few seconds. Dunno if that is normal or not. Gave up looking yesterday but did notice a lot less network activity once Bit torrent was un-installed. So don't go there. Need to get email working again.

A tracker owner sent me his tracker for repairs. I put it on my G5500 and it seems to be ok. I did notice that the usb module seemed to be partially unplugged and noticed that if you pushed down on the usb cable you could totally unplug the usb module. I always felt we needed something... now I know we do. Nylon fishing line tied around the module and the socket with a drop of glue to hold the knot I hope will do the trick. So LVB Tracker support, now that we have over 200 in the field, is starting to ramp up. Didn't think about that when I volunteered to build these things. duh.....

Also, all the parts ordered weekend after Christmas are here now. After I get the bills ready to send in for reimbursement we'll start building, if not before. Got to get the money. My American Express balance is scary.

Think I discovered a fix for the SatPC32 SDX/virtual com port driver problem I was having. There is a utility called FTClean that will uninstall the drivers including registry remnants. I ran that then reinstalled the latest driver using the plug-n-play method where you show the computer where the driver info is. Seemed to work. So far since yesterday. This is also becoming a support issue since all the AMSAT NA trackers are built with the usb option. I will use this method for every driver upgrade.

Again we wasted precious time telling nobody who reads this stuff what's going on.

Back to work.