Twistedshck reno

Well I am finally finished setting up the shack, I Have an 8 x 8 foot shed (2.4 x 2.4 mt) that I is my hacking space. It had been set up on unpainted or treated pallets made from pine as the floor about four years ago, needless to say they had started tp rot. In my defense I had just bought the shed and didn't have anymore money left at the time for a decent floor.

So zipping along four years I had funds and the weather was clearing up her in "Sunny" Victoria Australia... Time to work on the shed again. I had organised some plastic heavy duty pallets from a friend that had been used to move lead acid batteries so are up to the job of supporting the weight of my tool boxes. A couple of sheets of 9mm 5 ply on top and the floor was sorted.

Now for storage and work space, I go on to eBay and by chance found a desk that was 2.1 x 2.1 mt in an L shape, perfect size with a couple of inches to spare, so I placed a bid on it and in turn won it :)   so I had a desk with an inch thick top so it wouldn't bow with some weight on it for the shed I was wrapped.

So with everything I needed I started cleaning out the shed to get it ready for the transformation this took me 3 weeks of sorting and culling (between the shed and small backyard I took 3 6x4 foot trailer loads of rubbish to the dump.

I gathered a few friends and my sons to help me on the day, we started about 10 am and just picked the empty shed up of its floor in one piece and moved it out from the old site. The by 1130 we had the old floor ripped up and had the site leveled with the new floor being laid by midday and then we put the shed back on the new floor and had it finished by 2pm.

A bit of mucking around to get the desk into the shed (had thought about pulling out a wall) and it was all finshed but for moving all my electronics and tools etc back in which I had done by 10pm that night.

It has taken me a few weeks of shuffling things around but am pretty happy with it now.

Anyway here are some pic's of it..

 Right side of the twisted shed

with some charts on motorcycle

systems and functions

 I have a few toolboxes in total if you

include the filing cabinet I use 

for my power tools I have six of them

check out the shed spec's below for details

of what is hiding in all the toolboxe and

other hiding spots around the shed

 Laptop with second monitor on top of

the toolbox, I display my multimeter on

here as well as images from my microscope

Clock in the background made from an old

fan and an old school clock. In the front is 

the pulse jet that Mick and I built..

 Microscope with camera adaptor

and laptop Dell D600 running Debian

 My old valve shortwave receiver, the empty area

here is going to be for a 19 inch rack I am

building for my rack mount equipment, the valve

radio is there to size up the space for the rack

The "stack" ofelectronics including 2

oscilliscopes a SW reciever and Digital TV

An indian motorcycle, Tux, death

and a dragon slayer sit atop.

The bottom of the stack with power supply

13.8v, mixing desk and darkroom light

Shed Specs

• 6 toolboxes containg over 1500 tools including tools I have made
• 2 Oscilliscopes 1 Dual trace
• Digital TV
• Floor Space arranged for sleeping area (When I am in the dog house)
• Air matteress and sleeping bag
• Portable Gas stove for making coffee :)
• 2 Stratos Racing seats for chairs, one on castors with swivel base
• Durst B/W Enlarger and darkroom equipment
• Canon FTb 35mm SLR
• Bench Drill Press (outside under tarp on top of filing cabinet with power tools)
• Asst power tools (My most used is my Dremel Multipro and dremel multi stand)
• 350voltDC / 6voltDC valve  ( vacuam tube) project power supply
• Microscope
• 100's of Assorted components for electornics from valves/tubes to arduinos
• Ollivetti lettera 32 type writer
• 48 volt Weller soldering iron
• 2 digital one HT analog multimeters
• Lubrication free 2.4hp compressor (no oil when dusting electronics)

My New Desk

I got a New Desk....


Purchased this on ebay in the last week, a large desk for the shed, I hope the measurments are right, it was advertised as being 2.1m by 2.1m and the shed is 2.2m by 2.2m so it should just fit in fingers crossed.

The plan for the shed is to make it less workshop more home office with an electronics workbench, I am also going to go from having desk around three sides and only a small corridor down the middle, to having just this desk, to make up for the reduced desk area I will be putting shelving up along the back of the desk all the way to the roof.

I am going to empty the shed, put down plastic forklift pallets with 7mm ply on top, I am going to have to pull a wall out of the shed and build the desk in place then put the wall back in as I wont be able to turn it to get it in to place.

Here is a photo, thanks to Dan who sold me the desk as this is his pic

HTC Tattoo and tethering

I hooked up the HTC in tether mode tonight, I had to go to settings and switch it off then on manually but then it shared the connection over the phones 3G, cool now I dont have to buy a 3G modem for internet access when I am out, there is also an app in the market to share the connection over an adhoc network so I might give that a try in the future..

An Android Smartphone the HTC Tattoo

I have been playing with my HTC Android phone for a week or so now and thought I would jot down my thoughts on the phone over the next few weeks, things like how it rates going from symbian s60 v3 to Android 1.6 and what a 'budget' phone brings to the market.


The Processor is a  Qualcomm running at 528 MHz The phone runs Android 1.6 with the HTC SenseUI on top. A really nice feature is the seven desktops this UI gives you, Makes for a nice uncluttered home screen.

It has 512 MB of ROM and 256 MB of RAM, the size of the phone is also great for me as I ride a motorbike and wanted a smaller phone to keep in my jacket when riding. The phone is 10.6cm long 5.5cm wide and 1.4cm thick at its thickest point and it only weighs 113 grams.
The screen is small but quite clear, a little hard to read in full sun,it is a resistive screen , a few people see this as a bad point but I like it as I use a stylus on devices like the tattoo with smaller screens.

The phone has a d-pad instead of a trackball, great for using as a joystick in my opinion and buttons that are well laid out and it is fitted with a standard 4 pin 3.5mm socket for handsfree units and normal three contact headphones. The bluetooth media is great in full stereo on my TDK bluetooth headphones, as clear as the on board for me and the on board isnt bad. The tattoo is also fitted out with the following a GPS, 3 axis Accelerometer, 3 axis Compass, WiFi, 3G, and FM Radio to round out the package, not bad for a budget phone.

It doesnt run the latest offering from google and as of writing it is stuck at Android 1.6, there was some buzz about 2.1 coming to it from HTC but I am not holding my breath.

Even though this phone may seem crippled on RAM and processor speed, it runs surprisingly well with 1.6, and snaps along quite nicely even with a few apps and widgets galore running, I am running a task killer to free it up as needed and that works well.

Well thats enough for this post, I will follow up with more of my thoughts on the phone in the next few days..

A geek and his Android Phone

Well I went a got an Android phone, it is a HTC Tattoo running android 1.6 with HTC's Sense UI on top, I actually like the Sense UI.. For a budget phone it is great, it cost me AU$210 with postage.

Updated script for DFM offset

I have updated the script to calculate the offset for a reciever or transmitter, taking the frequency directly from the local oscillator results in a mix of the tuned frequency and the offset frequency that gives us the Intermidiate frequency. we need to add this off set to a frequency that we want to tune to.

So for instance if you want to tune to 531khz a broadcast frequency in the AM band you would need to add the offset (in my case 455khz) to the required frequency, now you tune the radio watching the DFM until it reaches in my case 986khz (531+455).

If you have tuned in to a station and dont know the frequency you take the displayed frequency on the DFM and subtract the offset to give you the actual tuned frequency.

The script takes your entered values and displays both the minus and plus offsets and then starts again, use ctrl c to exit the script as it just runs in an infinate loop.




#!/bin/bash
# 
# Filename:- dfm.sh Ver:- 0.0.1.2 
# Copyleft 2010 Mark (Hiddensoul) Clohesy
# shed.twistedsouls.com
#
# Linux Bash Script to add and subtract a given offset (OFFST) 
# from an entered number, it is used to calculate the frequency
# of a radio reciever or transmitter by adding or subtracting
# the offset of the local oscillator. ctrl c to exit       
#
OFFST=455
#
for ((;;))
do
        echo -n "Please enter Valus to offset in Khz:-"
        read -e KHZ
        MKHZ=$(($KHZ - OFFST))
        AKHZ=$(($KHZ + OFFST))
        echo;echo -n "Minus Offset Frequency:-" $MKHZ "-Khz"
        echo;echo -n "     Entered Frequency:-" $KHZ "-Khz"
        echo;echo -n " Plus Offset Frequency:-" $AKHZ "-Khz"
        echo 
done
#
#EOF

Scipts for Digital Frequency Meter conversions

Here are a couple of little BASH scripts one to convert the displayed value of a DFM connected to a reciever, it subtracts 455 from the displayed value to give you the frequency you are tuned to. It is called dfm, you can change the offset to suit your reciever


hiddensoul@hiddenslap:~$ dfm 986


Entered Frequency:- 986  khz
Tuned Frequency:- 531 -Khz

Second is dfm-tune that lets you input the required frequency and it will give you the displayed frequency to tune to on the DFM by adding 455 to it,




hiddensoul@hiddenslap:~$ dfm-tune 531


Required Frequency:- 531  khz
DFM Displayed Frequency:- 986 -Khz

The 455 is the generated frequency to bring the RF up to IF, most radios use 455khz but it may vary as I said you can always change the offset to match your reciever/transciever If you dont know the off set tune to a known station, eg a local AM broadcast station if your rig covers the broadcast band, then subtract the stations frequency from the displayed value on the DFM, this will give you the offset you need for the scripts.


Not much and anyone could knock them up in a few minutes, but it makes my life easier, copyleft do what you want with them..

First dfm

#!/bin/bash
#Enter walue in khz on command line following the command dfm eg dfm 986
#Calculate tuned frequency of reciever by subtracting 455khz from
#Displayed Value on Digital Frequency Meter
AKHZ=$(($1 - 455));echo;echo -n "Entered Frequency:-" $1 " khz";echo;echo -n "Tuned Frequency:-" $AKHZ "-Khz";echo;echo
#EOF

second dfm-tune


#!/bin/bash
#Enter value in khz on command line following the command dfm-tune eg dfm-tune 531
#Calculate displayed frequency of DFM by adding 455khz to required
# tuned frequency of reciever
AKHZ=$(($1 + 455));echo;echo -n "Required Frequency:-" $1 " khz";echo;echo -n "DFM Displayed Frequency:-" $AKHZ "-Khz";echo;echo
#EOF