Proform Tour de France Exercise bike

I bought a used Proform Tour de France exercise bike to replace a homemade version exercise bike.  Not knowing much about it I decided to take a leap of faith for the low used price of $400CAD (regular $1999?).  

Proform Le Tour de France exercise bike.

I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality of the bike.  It seems sturdily built and allows very high resistance settings, something missing from my last bike.  It is very quiet when pedaling owing to its magnetic resistance, belt drive and narrow flywheel.  It has a nice incline function to enhance the experience, so I feel like I am actually going up a hill (or down).  Thankfully, it was in good condition and nothing was broken. 

The first task was to replace the seat.  I comes with a wide seat on a non standard mounting system.  So, I found a similar shaped rectangle of steel and welded on a length of scrap seatpost I had salvaged from an old bike. 

The other negative to me is the handlebars that came with the bike.  Very "gym" bike style -- my preference is for some nice road drop handlebars, but with the integrated incline and gear buttons, their replacement will be a bit more work.

My first few rides have been, well, a bit boring. I watch TV and try to keep my heart rate up for the duration.  But it leaves me wanting more and I think the capabilities of the bike are not fully exploited.  The bike has some Tempo and Interval Apps. But it seems all they do is set some targets for your watt output.  And you can program interval training limits into the bike too, but again it seems a bit simple.  There is a Bluetooth connection that allows the use of an iFit app but I'm not really up for the monthly subscription.  And it seems the iFit app is a bit like watching a movie of a bike ride.  It doesn't really take into account the effort you put into the workout.  

So, what to do with the bike? Can it be connected to Zwift? Could I write my own simple workouts for the bike?  Maybe upload a GPS file of my favorite ride? It might be time to look inside and see what makes it all tick.

Hacking the exercise bike

Bye, bye, FM radio

 I have a Samsung A50 smart phone.  I used to listen to the radio while in the garden with some wired headphones and the Nextradio app.  One day, my phone announced an update which I dutifully downloaded and surprise, surprise the radio no longer works on my phone. 

Well, that sucks.  Permission has been elevated for FM steaming in Android 11 so Nextradio doesn't even attempt to work.  Nextradio is bankrupt so what are the chances of a fix for the FM tuner app?  And a search through the app store finds hundreds of "tuner" apps that are really just internet streaming apps.  Which use data or wifi.  And suck.  Why is this so hard?  Why does everything just get pushed to a pay model, or subscription.  How can my phone lose features through an update?  Have you ever taken your car to the mechanic for an oil change and then found that your radio or headlights don't work?   Of course you haven't.  How can tech suck so much?  And suck even more as time passes. 

I subscribe to Spotify.  I watch YouTube and Netflix.  But sometimes I just want some plain radio.  Which is now gone from my phone. So screw you Android/Samsung. I'm going old fashioned FM tuner in the garden from now on and wearing a pair of analog headphones.

Philips Speechmike. Upgrade nightmare.

 I recently installed some windows updates on my wife's home office computer.  She does dictations with a Philips Speechmike USB microphone to Dragon dictate software.  The Philips microphone seems good quality but wasn't cheap ($400Cdn).  Upon reboot, I was greeted by a popup saying "new firmware available for your microphone" and the choice of "install now"or "later".  

Oh, I wish I had clicked "later"...  but I clicked "install now"...  So a dialog pops up with a green bar flashing back and forth urging me to not unplug the microphone as the upgrade can take several minutes.  So I wait.  And wait. And wait.  Then I notice that the Philips microphone software says that there is no microphone connected.  And the drop down menu to select the microphone cannot select the microphone model.  Troubleshooting suggestions are not helpful like saying the USB may not have enough power or that it might not like a specific port.  What the heck?  So I wait.  And wait. And wait.  Finally I bite the bullet and unplug the USB microphone and try plugging it back in with no result. 

The microphone is gone and doesn't show up as a device in Windows.  So I try it on a different computer with Linux.  No evidence of the microphone in dmesg. The USB functionality doesn't exist anymore.

So what happened?  Info is sparse online but it seems a failed upgrade can brick your device.  Who writes a firmware upgrade like this?  Is there no failsafe? I was relatively uninvolved in the upgrade (just click once), there were no warnings that this could ruin a $400 microphone.  Fortunately, my wife has an identical microphone that was not being used at work.   So once we plugged the new one in, the computer recognized it immediately indicating that it was not a driver issue caused by the update.

But is there a way to fix the old microphone?  The hardware still works, it seems as though just the firmware is missing or corrupt.

Opening the microphone reveals....  not much.  Some buttons, lots of test points, maybe a jtag connection.  Down at the bottom is the brains of the system, an NXP2364 chip.

Arm7 with on board flash, blah, blah, blah.  Not sure how Philips disabled the USB functionality with a bad firmware upgrade, but there you go.  

So, where to from here? I will try to access a windows 7 computer to see if older USB drivers magically fix the connectivity.  Maybe there is some way of forcing a firmware upgrade via some of the test points.  But seems unlikely...  so maybe this is just junk.

Aluminum can counter.

The Can Counter.

This is an old project I put together from old junk and parts I had lying around.  The motivation for this stems from my involvement in our local elementary school's bottle drive.  We collect cans and bottles from the local community to raise money for our school.  We sort the cans and bottles and then count them into bags.  Beer cans are 288 per bag, pop cans 288 per bag, plastic water bottles are 150 per bag and small juice boxes are 360 per bag.  Sometimes we can collect almost 10000 pop cans, beer cans, juice boxes and water bottles -- that is a lot of counting!

I've always hated the counting, so when I found a treadmill lying on the side of the road near our mailbox, I knew what I could make.  A can counter!  (As and aside, my neighbourhood isn't really so trashy, I think someone thought that maybe someone would want a free treadmill).

Free treadmill!

The can counter idea is simple - the cans are accelerated along the belt and then shot through a beam.  When a can breaks the beam, we know to count one can.  The beam is created by an LED shining on a photoresistor; an Arduino takes continuous analogue readings of the resistance.  When the resistance changes we assume that a can has broken the beam.

It was all breadboarded and then put in a fancy box.  The trick was to build physical guides for the cans to get them to line up in single file and to get the belt driving at a reasonable speed.

It actually works pretty well as you can see in the video.  Total budget was about $5 - I had to buy a belt to connect the motor.  Everything else I had lying around.

The video shows that the cans can be counted as fast as you feed them.  Much faster than by hand.  And it is quite reliable -- certainly counting cans manually, people get distracted and miscount.

Some problems with the counter which I couldn't be bothered to resolve.
1.  The motor is an old furnace fan motor, maybe from the 60's.  I might have been 1/3h.p. once but now is about 1/100 h.p.  So it can barely drive the treadmill and tends to stall.  I guess I could buy a motor, but that would increase my budget!  I think it puts some big emf spikes into the circuit too, which tends to mess up the LCD display sometimes.  Oh well, the price was right on the motor (free).
2.  If the cans are really, really close together, they might count as one instead of two.  But I think some creative coding could probably figure that out.  Or maybe a mechanical solution to introduce a gap to separate close cans.
3.  It can't count plastic bottles at all.  The beam break system doesn't work with plastic; it sees right through it, or counts the bottom, then the label, then the lid -- three bottles where there is only one!  Tightening the code to count only variations that last for a certain time might work.  Or add another beam from the side and compare values or a different colour that sees plastic better or.... I don't know, it would require more research than I care to do for a free, low budget project.
4. The hopper to feed the bottles onto the belt never really worked.  But then again, the budget was low ($5) so I didn't use anything other than scraps of plywood or cardboard for the hopper.  Again, a bit of money and time and it could have a pretty effective hopper.  I envision a top feed hopper with a powered paddle at the bottom to agitate the cans and feed them onto the belt! 

Protecting Our Cherries from the Birds!

I didn't see many bees in the fruit trees this spring, but I guess they must have been visiting the flowers because we have a bumper crop ripening on the tree.

Cherries ripening June 22, 2018.

Of course, the birds are a real threat to edible fruit (robins seem to be the worst).  The tree is about 8m high and I'd be happy for the birds to eat the high, out of reach fruit, leaving the lower fruit for me.  But, I know that they will peck, sample and destroy all the cherries if given a chance.  So what to do?...

Previous years I tried aluminum pie plates, scarecrows, CDs, holographic tape, scare eyeballs and blue survey tape to try to scare the birds.  The performance of these options was poor to say the least.

The best solution was using a motion sensitive sprinkler to scare the birds.  It worked but wasn't ideal.  The motion detector really didn't see the birds and the only way to scare the birds from the fruit was to dial up the sensitivity to the photocell to enable the sprayer to work constantly.  The water use was excessive and the deterrent not terribly effective.  Also, the sprinkler used a fair number of 9v batteries.

Last year I decided to make my own sprayer deterrent.  I attached an irrigation solenoid valve to an impact sprinkler head and then I programmed an Arduino Pro Mini to activate the valve every 60 seconds.   I also built a photocell into the circuit to ensure the system only fired during the day -- the birds aren't a problem at night!  The new system worked well, but was only effective on the lower branches of the tree because the sprinkler was stationed close to the ground.  And the birds figured out the timing of the valve and would attack in the lull periods immediately following the sprinkler activation!  Smart birds!  The whole system was powered by adapter, so I saved a few batteries.  And the activation time of the sprinkler was shorter, so water usage was less than before.  But it still needed improvement.

This year I decided to upgrade, and added a second impact sprinkler/solenoid valve.  I've built a tower of irrigation pipe with sprinklers at 2m and 4m levels aimed into the tree.  The Arduino code now fires the sprinklers independently and at random intervals.  The lower sprinkler and upper sprinkler are also randomly chosen to fire randomly.

Irrigation valve and sprinkler head.

So far the birds seem to have trouble figuring out the cycle and the cherries are ripening nicely without bird losses.  The sprinklers use about 250ml each activation.  So daily use should be about 100 to 150litres.  I figure that I might water the tree anyway so this water goes to good use making larger, juicier fruit. 

Future improvements might be to reduce firing frequency during certain times, because feeding pressure seems to be higher in the mornings and evenings, mid day sprinkler activations could be reduced.  I intend to etch some boards and build a few more as I've got 4 more cherry trees on our property that are unprotected.  This year is looking like a bumper crop, so much so that the kids are going to set up a stand to sell some cherries.

Many years ago I saw a bookshelf design on the cover of Fine Woodworking.  I'd been wanting to make the bookcase for many years now, but I didn't really have the materials available.  Last year however, I got some nice vertical grain douglas fir from a friend -- all thick stuff, 12/4 and the like, but with a bit of resawing on my bandsaw I was able to get the required panels for the backs and sides.  I even got the shelves cut from the fir and had a bit left over.  Thanks Sid!
Here is the end result which displaced our old, MDF cd racks.

First blog

I just thought that I would start a blog.  Just because.  So here it is...