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OBDII and the Bravo
02 weeks ago
by admin
in Technology
Car dealers are rip-off merchants, and the manufacturers are no better. My current car requires that a dealer reset the service interval warning and the light to tell you it needs an oil change as its variable oil change intervals, apparently it just *knows* when its time. While my experience with Fiat dealers has been pretty bad its no worse than that experienced by other manufacturers, its just the problem in Scotland that one company has the market pretty much sewn up. So, in my wisdom I have decided to get the technology to allow me to reset the cars service counters as well as get a whole pile of information about that cars ECU with which to arm myself with, for whatever purpose it may be necessary, who knows… to be honest it’s just interesting knowing how long the car travels between DPF regenerations and being able to flash dashboard warning lights on and off at a whim. Why? Because you can!
So to cut a long story short I bought myself an OBDII/ELM27 interface which connects to the car and allows you with the correct software to get information from the cars various systems and do updates like forcing DPF regenerations or resetting service counters, that kind of thing. The software was the recommended Fiat ECUScan (http://www.fiatecuscan.net/) which works well. They even let you try it out first to make sure you can connect properly to it before you fork out the 50 Euro for the licence. That’s what a dealer will charge just to connect your car to their equipment to read fault codes so it could pay for itself pretty quickly.
So, interface arrives from Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005Q68E0G/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00) and all seemed well, until it refused to connect properly. A quick search of the Fiat ECUScan site revealed that there is a common problem with Chinese made ELM27 interfaces that means that they do not meet the OBDII standards. Would you believe that the removal of a 100 ohm resistor from the motherboard by means of knocking it off with a watchmakers screwdriver fixed the problem completely.
So I now have a working interface.
There are a few nice Android apps out there as well which let you use this to get information from the car and do things like work out how accurate your speedometer is compared to GPS, or work out engine power and 0-60mph sprints (for the boy racers amongst us). One of these is Torque (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.prowl.torque&hl=en) They offer a free version but the retail one is only a few pounds to buy.
Flying around
02 weeks ago
by admin
in Leisure Pursuits
This weekend was spent joyriding with my wee brother Neil. He just got himself his pilots licence and was eager to take Fiona and myself up for a spin. There’s a bit of sibling rivalry going on as well as my other brother Mike got his pilots licence a few years back and has taken us for flights when we have been across visiting him in the USA.
So we turned up at Dundee Airport and Neil went and filled in the paperwork required before they would let us loose on one of their Piper Warrior 3′s!
One thing that seemed different was that there is a distinct feeling here in the UK that they are a bit more concerned with safety than in the US, it seemed like there was more paperwork and more regulation hoops to jump through before we could depart, unlike in Texas where they throw you the keys and off you go! Well maybe not quite that gung-ho but you get the picture.
So this was Neil’s first flight with passengers and Fiona was also visibly concerned about what was going to happen, having flown with my other brother and almost coming a cropper with a plane landing the wrong way at Houston Executive airport and not maintaining radio contact (we spied it pretty late, it was close!) it would have taken something pretty spectacular by Neil to reduced our confidence in him.
The route was planned to take in Alyth, Blairgowrie and across to Bankfoot then on to Edinburgh via Dunfermline, over the Forth Bridges then up the Fife coast to Largo where we would heard north to do a flyover of RAF Leuchars airbase then on to Broughty Ferry and finally land again at Dundee. All in all it took us an hour to do the route and we got some great photographs and videos on the way.
Now all we need to do is arrange our next trip!
Arcade Construction Project
02 weeks ago
by admin
in Leisure Pursuits
I’m working on some pages detailing how I constructed my first arcade cabinet. These will appear steadily as I get the process written up over the next few weeks. It doesn’t sound like a big job but as you write you remember so many of the little intricacies of the job, and which of these are actually of benefit to anyone undertaking a similar project.
They are still a work in progress but you can start reading them now from the links at the top of this site or by clicking here.
Lake Conroe
0Another part of the tour of Texas in April was a trip up from Houston to Lake Conroe to hire a speedboat and have some fun larking about in the water.
Brazos Bends Park in Houston Texas
0On the day before my wee brother Mikes wedding we decided to go away and leave him to get on with whatever he had to do and visit Brazos Bends Park just outside of Houston in Texas http://www.brazosbend.org/.
On entering the park you are confronted with warning signs about not going into the tall prairie grass or going near the water with small children or animals. This is primarily because this part of the world is pretty inhospitable when it comes to nasty snakes, biting insects and alligators (The American gator Alligator mississippiensis). Alligators and crocodiles are impressive in that they pretty much look like nothing else on the planet today, their dinosaur like skin makes them totally unique. I guess that’s what happens when you are so adept at what you are doing the evolutionary pressures back off a bit and let you be one bad ass of a lizard, well not quite a lizard but the name comes from the original Spanish name ‘el Legarto’ which means lizard. I guess the early American settlers were not au courant with biological taxonomy and you can’t blame them for thinking they were some sort of lizardy demons.
Anyway, I digress, so off we all went on a trip round one of the paths at the park in search of some alligators, which we duly found and took videos and photographs of.
These beasts are wild and you have to watch out, they are known to take small children and dogs and have a pop at any adult who strays too close, or gets too close to their young.