Upgrading the Clod

Uncategorized | Posted by Dr. J
Dec 30 2011

A Tamiya Clodbuster is a fantastic monster truck, but it’s handling leaves something to be desired. It tumbles over at the slightest turn and the stock all wheel steering setup mostly results in the back steering more than the front. To mitigate the tumbling I decided to install a 4 link suspension kit and ended up buying a CPE 4-Clod set.
CPE-4CLOD
This set by itself can’t be mounted on a stock Clodbuster chassis, but CPE’s website clearly states what you need to completely assemble the set. The bag in the top left of the picture are the additionally required parts and the other object is a program card for the brushless speed controllers I have mounted in the Clodbuster chassis to replace the original brushed ESC.

There were no instructions including in the set, so the first thing to do is figure out how to attach the links to the chassis. Turns out it’s not that hard. First thing to do is figure out what’s needed to attach the link to the chassis.
CPE-4CLOD

The bolts and nuts are not included. I used standard M3 bolts and nuts.

After a little while I had the lower links attached to the chassis like this.
CPE-4CLOD

On the inside of the chassis sits a little metal plate where the stock ball ends were screwed into. This plate has M3 screw holes in it, so the bolts drive into it nicely and make sure the links are held tightly in place.

The upper links are slightly more difficult to put and keep in place.
CPE-4CLOD

Here it’s necessary to screw the nuts on the bolts to keep it in place, but there is very little room to do so. But as you can see I made it and now all links are securely attached to the chassis.
CPE-4CLOD

After that I mounted the stock shocks to the upper links using the clamps from one of the additional parts bags.
CPE-4CLOD CPE-4CLOD CPE-4CLOD

The bolts that came with these clamps were American M3 hex bolts and those are not compatible with standard European M3 hex drivers, so I replaced those with the same M3 bolts I was using for mounting the links.

The upper links can then be attached to the C-hub on the Clodbuster axle. The lower links, however, cannot. For the lower links a hole has to be made in each C-hub to mirror the holes that are already there. After a while it looked like this.
CPE-4CLOD

With both axles mounted it turned out that the stock steering link is a bit too short for this suspension setup.
CPE-4CLOD

But this problem is solved by mounting a larger servo horn at a 45 degree angle. For now the end result looks like this.
CPE-4CLOD
CPE-4CLOD

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Third place!

RC | Posted by Dr. J
Sep 18 2011

Just a tiny little quick update.
2011-09-18 16.36.50
I finished third at the ERCE Open Club Competion race day 7 of 2011 on 18-9-2011 in the mini class with my Tamiya M-05Pro ^.^

Yay me!

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Unit ready!

RC | Posted by Dr. J
Aug 25 2011

Apparently building an RC aircraft out of Styrofoam from scratch isn’t an awful lot of work. Only 3 evenings and a partial afternoon got the job done. So here is the final part of the construction of the Mikey’s RC F117 pusher prop jet.

After the second tail fin was attached, the only thing left was mounting the electronics. First I put on one servo, then measured up how it was sitting and then attached the other one exactly the same.

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The I mounted the ESC on a piece of Velcro, so it can be easily removed.

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I put the receiver on the other side of the fuselage. The other little device you see there is a v-tail mixer. A cheap and easy solution if you don’t have a transmitter that supports v-tail/delta mixing.

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I had some Y-leads and the servos had too short wires, so I took apart the Y-leads and made them into extension cables to attach to the servos. Then I taped all the wires to the wing.

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And then it’s done!

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I think the Concorde from Mikey’s RC will be my next aircraft project.

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Construction started… (part 2)

RC | Posted by Dr. J
Aug 24 2011

Construction of the aircraft is going swiftly as it isn’t as much work as I initially expected.

This time I started with the motor mount. It’s made of a square piece of foam with a transparent piece of plastic on each side for strength and so the bolts and nuts have something to hold on to.

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Then I cut out a pair of wing stabilizers. These are needed for extra air stability as well as to improve the stiffness of the wing.

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These stabilizers only improve stiffness in one direction, while the other direction can still have a lot of flexing going on. To mitigate this I glued some bbq skewers on the back of the wing. A single bbq skewer wasn’t long enough, so I taped two together. Glued that on the wing and then covered it up with tape.

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Now I took the rear of the fuselage and glued 2 blocks of foam to it to make it easier to glue it on the wing standing up, without having to support it with some more bbq skewers.

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While the glue on the rear of the fuselage was drying up I cut out these two triangles to use as angle leads to attach the tail fins.

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And then I put the rear of the fuselage onto the wing.

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I let this dry up for a few moments and then I put on the first of the two tail fins. At first I wanted to put both on at the same time, but this proved to be quite difficult, so I scratched that plan.

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This has to dry up good, before I’m going to put on the other tail fin.

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Construction started…

RC | Posted by Dr. J
Aug 23 2011

A few months ago (has it really been that long?) my friend z0r from Necrosoft.nl pointed me to Mikey’s RC. At this site you can get several building plans for scratch build polystyrene RC aircraft. So I bought some polystyrene foam boards and put them aside and did nothing with them at all.

So finally, after some months, I decided that it was time to actually start building a plane. I already printed the plans for the F117 pusher prop jet, so I cut it out, taped the parts together and taped that onto one of the foam boards.

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After which I cut out the wing.

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Then I did the same for the fuselage.

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And the tail fins.

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The plans point out that the fuselage has to be reinforced by small bbq skewers, but that looks a little to flimsy for my taste. So I decided to do it slighly different. Instead of bbq skewers I cut out a small board and with incisions to fit the fuselage into and glued that together.

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While this is drying up I went to cutting of the aelevons from the wing. These parts are called aelevons, because they are a mix between ailerons and the elevator. This plane doesn’t have separate ailerons and elevator.

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Now it is really important that the aelevons will be attached in a way that is both strong and durable and flexible. There are several ways to accomplish this, but I think it’s best to take a whole lot of tape, cut it into small pieces (I used 16 pieces of tape for each aelevon) and stick them together in reversed pairs. This method gives you pieces of tape that are sticky on top on one side and sticky on the bottom on the other side. Like this.

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Then you can stick the tape pieces on the aelevon like this.

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Notice how I attached the tape pieces that are on the bottom to the top. This ensures that they don’t get stuck between the wing and the aelevon, but it’s quite a pain to get them back to the other side once the other tape pieces are stuck to the wing.

After I attached both aelevons to the wing I cut out the hole for the motor and prop. On this picture you can also see how the aelevons are now attached to the wing.

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The last picture for today is a mockup shot of the wing with the fuselage on top and the motor mount (which is nothing more than a square piece of foam) at the hole for the motor.

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Next time we eat an airplane!

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Thin Server

PC | Posted by Dr. J
Jul 30 2011

Living with your parents has several important benefits:

  • It’s cheap
  • Lots of things are always already done before you get to them
  • No mortgage/rent

However, there are also disadvantages… For example, my parents don’t like it when I let a high power computer run 24/7. One thing I’ve wanted for a long time though was a computer that I could leave running 24/7 to take care of nightly downloads, serve as a NAS and FTP server. So I thought “whatever can run on a Windows XP computer can also run on a Windows XP Embedded thin client”. So I went out searching for a second hand high end thin client and I found a HP T5720. It runs Windows XP Embedded out of the box, has a 1Ghz x86 compatible CPU and 512MB DDR RAM. I connected a 500GB USB harddisk to it, installed FileZilla FTP server and uTorrent on it. Configured FileZilla to run a TLS/SSL encrypted FTP service and configured folders and bandwidth settings in uTorrent, configured my router to enable access to the FTP service from the internet and I’m all set. So now I have FTP server/torrent downloader/NAS that needs only an estimated 30W which my parents found to be acceptable :)

Thinserver 01

Thinserver 02

I connected the screen, mouse and keyboard as an emergency provision. In case the “Thin Server” is no longer accessible through the network, I can switch on the screen and use the keyboard and mouse to fix any problems. I’d like to see anyone fix any problems on one of those consumer class NAS things you can get these days without network access.

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The new stuff chronicles #21: Hail to the king baby!

PC gaming, The new stuff chronicles, Videogames | Posted by Dr. J
Jun 24 2011

Duke Nukem forever was announced over 13 years ago by 3D Realms and finally, on june 10th (june 14th in the USA) it was finally released and I hoped to get the limited Balls of Steel edition immediatly at it’s release… Well… I did get the Balls of Steel edition, just 2 weeks overdue… However, it is the PC DVD version, which is already becoming hard to get, while the PS3 and XBox 360 version are available nearly everywhere. That shows where a first person shooter belongs. That’s right, on the PC!
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It’s the box and all the goodies inside the box displayed on my desk in front of my TV/Computer screen. I especially like the little statue of Duke, the art book and the comic.
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The statue, poker chips, card game and dice already got a nice a location where I will not lose them. The last pic is me holding Duke’s statue. As proof in case people don’t believe I actually have it. The t-shirt on the picture is the official “Hail to the king baby” shirt which everyone got who visited the “Global Ass Kicking Tour” prior to the game’s release.
me+duke=awesome
After this picture was taken I got the shirt. I was wearing a suit, because I went there between 2 job interviews.

People may have noticed that this game is actually receiving mostly negative reviews. Like 5.4 on Gametrailers and even 3.5 on Gamespot. Mostly arguments like “dated” or “dumb AI” are used. Well yeah, the game looks dated. But it still looks good. Texture resolution isn’t really high, which results in some blurry textures and overal design looks like it’s a few years old overall. The bright side, however, is that this game runs better than most other recently released games. I agree that it would have been better if this game was released a few years earlier, but it wasn’t, but who really cares? I don’t… It’s a fast paced old school slug fest starring one of the most iconic video game heroes of all time. Fuck man, it’s Duke Nukem, save us!

The gameplay gets a lot of negative attention as well. Enemies run straight for you and mostly die with a single well placed shotgun shot, or the teleport and jetpack all over the place, but that is what this game is all about. It’s old school run and gun gameplay wrapped in a somewhat modern package. I say somewhat modern, because it’s, yes, dated. I, for one, love the gameplay style of this game. Just like I loved Serious Sam all these years back. Don’t think, just shoot… Just my kind of game.

What I’m trying to say is that all these so called video game critics are all full of shit and should be ignored in this case. I understand that the current generation of young gamers isn’t interested in a game like this with all this semi-realistic bullshit like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor lately, but any fan of old school first person shooters like Doom, Quake and mostly Duke Nukem 3D won’t be dissapointed by Duke Nukem Forever and should consider buying this. Yes buy it! Do it now! Encourage Gearbox and 2K to make more Duke Nukem games in the future, save this hero’s reputation and deal with these shithead reviewers once and for all. HAIL TO THE KING!

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The new stuff chronicles #20: New RC stuff

RC, The new stuff chronicles | Posted by Dr. J
Jun 03 2011

My employer didn’t renew my contract, so I was looking for a new job and a few days ago I got the good news that I am being hired anew as a system administrator! So to celebrate this I thought that I deserved some new hobby stuff. So I went to the store and got myself een HPI Blitz 2WD short course truck and a new transmitter, a Spektrum DX3S, as well.

I think that the Traxxas Slash is the most popular 2WD short course truck available, but it has one very big problem. And that is it’s center of gravity. The chassis plate of the Slash is extremely high, causing the truck to flip over very quickly in tight corners. Other brands have made their own versions of the short course trucks and HPI came up with the Blitz. The chassis is based on the E-Firestorm 10T and is much lower than that of the Slash. At first I wanted to get a kit that I could assemble myself, but that would either bring me to a Team Associated SC10 or to the HPI Blitz Pro kit. The SC10 is a very nice truck as well, but it has a structural weakness at it’s front. One bing smack on the ground after a jump nose down and the front suspension arms come right off. The Blitz doesn’t have this weakness. The Blitz pro kit of significantly more expensive, so because of that I decided to get the Blitz RTR pack instead.
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I have to add that the truck looks much better in real life than on a picture ^.^

To control this beast (as well as all my other RC cars) I decided that I wanted a new transmitter. The Acoms Technisport 2.4Ghz is nice, but I want something that has more configuration options and the built in telemetry of the Spektrum DX3S is simply cool.
DX3S
Besides all the extra options that this transmitter has when compared to my old one it is notable how much lighter this one is. Even with the batteries installed it’s still lighter than the Acoms without any batteries. It also needs only 4 batteries instead of 8, so now I have a set of spares in case the batteries run out :)

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Updating a Samsung Galaxy Apollo I5800 to Android 2.2

Other | Posted by Dr. J
May 16 2011

Finally… After a whole damn lot of time, Samsung finally decided to release the Android 2.2 update for the Galaxy Apollo I5800. A lot of people are having trouble installing the update though and a lot of googling and a lucky hit after an entire afternoon got me as far as finding out that updating with the phone connected to a Windows 7 machine isn’t going to work. I tried to run the updater on the Windows 7 installation on Centurion 4 times and it failed every time. The update starts running, then hangs, phone reboots, nothing has changed, Kies (Samsungs crappy desktop software) crashes when the phone is disconnected.

The only solution I could find was to try running the update on Windows XP. Luckily I created a dual boot on Centurion with Windows XP recently to be able to play One Must Fall: Battlegrounds. And guess what… It worked. I don’t know why it doesn’t work on Windows 7, nor do I know if it’ll work on Windows Vista, but I do know that it works on Windows XP and I have to say that this update is a must have for anyone who has a Galaxy Apollo. It makes the phone faster and smoother. It gets the Android 2.2 task manager, so you no longer need any third party crap to take care of resource consuming apps that you don’t need to be running all the time and it has new sweet looking icons. We always need more sweet looking icons ^.^

However, it’s not likely that everyone who owns a Galaxy Apollo is somewhat of a tech head like me. Most tech heads who have Android phones have the more high end models like the Galaxy S or HTC Desire HD. This probably means that not everyone who owns a Galaxy Apollo and runs Windows 7 on his/her PC will know how to build a dual boot setup, nor do they want to. But there is also a second, probably more convenient way of getting XP running and updating your phone: virtual machines.

A virtual machine is kind of like a PC running inside your PC. So you install a program like Microsoft Virtual PC, VMWare Workstation or Virtualbox. The first and last being free and the middle one being rather expensive. Virtualbox will be your best choice. You can get it here. Just install the program using the recommended settings (or change some settings just for the sake of it) and then use the wizard to create your virtual machine with the recommended settings. For the purpose of this firmware upgrade it won’t need any more. When the virtual machine is created, all you need is a Windows XP installation CD or ISO (or perhaps both) to mount in the virtual machine to start installing Windows XP on it. Don’t worry about having to activate it as you will only need it for a few minutes. Installing the machine will very likely take more time that actually updating the firmware of the phone. I strongly recommend using an ISO image, as this is a lot faster than using a CD.

The virtual machine will need an internet connection for this to work, so make sure the machine gets a network connection. The default settings are usually good.

When Windows has finished installing, you go to samsung.com from within the virtual machine and download and install Kies. By default a newly connected USB device on the host system will be redirected to the virtual machine if the virtual machine window has focus. So after installing Kies, simply connect your phone to a free USB slot and it’ll be picked up by Virtualbox and loaded into the virtual machine. At this point the phone will connect to Kies and Kies will automatically display the firmware update message and you can proceed with updating your phone. Good luck.

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The new stuff chronicles #19: custom built RC airplane

RC, The new stuff chronicles | Posted by Dr. J
Apr 14 2011

The plane that is still featured in my previous post has left us. The last crash was fatal. The motor was blown, the tail ripped to shreds and both wings kind of broken. So I decided to go to the local RC hobby store, get a cheap hand thrown free flight airplane, get a lot of tape, a new motor, an ESC I still had lying around and modify it for RC flight. This is the result.

As you may have noticed, these pictures are quite a bit bigger than my other pictures. There are two reasons for that: 1. I didn’t feel like resizing them to my usual size and 2. at this size there is more detail ^.^

I haven’t tested it yet, so I have no idea if this Frankenstein abomination is going to fly or just fall to the ground. What concerns me the most is the size of the elevator. I might have to remove it and create a larger one for it to be effective. I also think the rudder is rather small, but I don’t use that anyway.

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