Thunder T680

Jan 162011

The Thunder T680 Multifunction Charger / Discharger

This is a review of the Thunder T680 multifunction charger / discharger I recently purchased. I purchased the Thunder T680 from Hobby-Partz over the Internet for $39 USD (with free shipping). The information below is just my ramblings as I learn the ins & outs of LiPo & NiMH batteries. So please remember, I’m just learning this stuff and there may be bad assumptions in my opinions below. Still, I’m hoping this is useful info for others learning.

Note for the picture at the right, the charger is performing an automatic discharge / charge cycle on the NiMH battery pack (six AA NiMH batteries). The display is blinking the “C” in the “D/C” field which means we’re in charge mode. The charger is currently appling 1.5 Amps through the pack using 12.33 Volts. So far in this charge cycle the charger has sent 97mA into the pack over 4 minutes 23 seconds.

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Autonomous Traffic Control

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Mar 052010

Below is a post I made to the DOT (Department of Transportation). If you think it is a good idea you can vote for me on the DOT web site. Here is a link: http://opendot.ideascale.com/a/dtd/31667-7039

Following is the text of the idea:

Much effort will be spent making vehicles more efficient in the future. This is a very good thing for both the individual, and the government. However, very little effort has been expended to make our traffic control system more efficient. Two are two reasons for this. First, it has been historically difficult to interconnect traffic intersections with a central control facility. Even after all the connections are made, maintaining the infrastructure becomes daunting, and expensive. Second, many cities are a patch-work of many different authorities, each with differing agenda’s and budgets. Continue reading »

Simple Python Wii Mote Test

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Nov 252009

WiiMote

The Wii Handheld Mote seems like a perfect input controller for testing stuff. Interfacing the Mote should not be that hard since it simply connects using Bluetooth. Well, it should be simple, but I spent several hours sorting this out. I wanted to use Python since that almost always seems the simplest to me. There are several Python ways of interfacing to the Mote. After several false starts, it seems “cwiid” library is the simplest. Still, I had a really hard time understanding their example script. The example script does some fancy Python stuff that was a bit over my head. Finding documentation is also an issue.

However, once I got streaming Wii data, all my frustration melted away. To get started on Ubuntu, use the package manager and look for “python-cwiid”. It installs all the stuff that is needed to get started. Continue reading »

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