sirius

(Mostly) successful project

Posted on by grahams

For many months now I’ve been putting off a project on my car, and I finally decided the time was right the weekend to get it done.  Between my GPS, Sirius Radio, and iPod, I was having serious contention for the sole (“cigarette lighter”) power connector in my car.  After a few weeks of using a crappy 3-way splitter (and having it get knocked out by several passengers), I decided to do some wiring work in the car.

All of these devices operate on 5VDC, so I bought a Mean Well SD-25A-5 power supply with the intention of burying it in the dashboard.  Spotlight tells me that this order was placed on March 1st, so that should give you an idea of how long this project has been nagging me.  Originally I put it off because we were getting the old place ready to go on the market, then our move, then the oppressive heat of summer…  It finally occurred to me that if I didn’t take care of it soon, I would delay it further because it was too cold out.

So on Sunday I decided to finally crack open the dashboard and fire up the soldering iron.  Building the cables and harnesses went pretty smoothly, and after removing the dashboard (which I have done before), I was able to do my first “lap test” of the power supply and made sure that everything was running off of it.  Fortunately, from a Sirius radio past (which ran on 12VDC), I already had a 12VDC line coming out of the stereo wiring harness, so that made testing very easy.  That, though, was “always on” power (so I could pause the radio with the car off while I ran into a store), so I removed that harness and wired it to a switched feed.  After reconnecting everything and making sure it still worked, I disconnected everything from the power supply and started preparing the more permanent runs.  The Sirius is on a mount on the dashboard, so I was just able to sneak the power for that out between the trim and the dashboard.  But the GPS required a hole to be drilled.  I did a decent job, but it wasn’t as clean as I wanted…  I’m going to find one of those car seat plastic repair kits they used to advertise on TV to clean it up a bit…

After finding a decent spot for the power supply to live, and reconnecting all of the wires, I gave it one last test before sealing up the dashboard, and everything was hunky-dory.  I reconnected all the dashboard switches to the dash trim and popped it back in, screwing the few screws which hold it all together.  I was satisfied with a job well done.

Until the ride to work this morning, when I quickly realized that my turn signals didn’t work at all…   I got really angry, setting the stage for a bad day at work, and then when I got home I grabbed a flashlight, screwdriver, and hopedI could quickly figure it out..  Turns out than when I reconnected the wires going to the hazard switch, I accidentally put it into a dummy spot on the dashboard instead of hooking it up to the actual switch.  I’m kind of surprised that the turn signals are dependent on the hazard switch, but whatever…  Everything seems to be once again working, including my new modification.

I didn’t bother hooking up power for the iPod, since I rarely use it in the car and the traditional power socket is now completely free for it’s use.  I think at some point I’m going to put a USB connector somewhere in the dash which could power any USB device (including the iPod), but for now I’m very satisfied.

Warranty Fortune Smiles Upon Me

Posted on by grahams

I had a great time in Rochester for the CSH Welcome Back Party, but I think I might be skipping future Welcome Back parties… More and more of my friends are leaving Rochester, and I know fewer and fewer people who live at CSH. I think this realization comes to all alumni, but I guess I finally hit the sweet spot. It seems that each year I spend more time in Rochester catching up with my friends who are visiting from out of town, and less time doing anything with the house. It occured to us that if all we are going to do is hang out with each other, we can pick a place that’s a bit more fun than Rochester… :P This decision doesn’t effect Fucked Up Movie Night, however, so I still plan on being at CSH once or twice a year.. Of course, it’s very possible that next September I will change my mind and end up in Rochester anyway, so this could all be bullshit.

I have had great warranty luck lately… First off, Apple recalled both of the batteries I have for my Powerbook. This worked out fantastically, because I was just getting annoyed by the diminished capacity of the two recalled batteries. Around the same time, I got an email from Sirius saying that due to supply shortages, my warranty exchange on my Starmate Replay (for a scratchy 1/8″ audio jack) was being upgraded to a brand new Sportster 4, which is a much nicer radio. I got that in the mail the other day, the only sucky thing is that I have to send back all of the original equipment for the Starmate, so I had to rip out the old antenna and install the new. I had the Antenna wire hid very nicely through the trunk, and under the molding on the passenger side of the car, so I had to reproduce all of that again. Also, the Starmate ran on 12V DC so lopped off the lighter adaptor that came with it and hardwired it into the cars power inside the dash. I can’t exactly return that, and the new radio runs on 5V DC, so I will take some kind of hit on that..

and I have been trying to finish up all of the lingering projects around the house. She started staining the doors the other day, and I masked off the bathroom to finally prime and paint it. After it’s painted, the bathroom needs baseboard and door trim, and all of the old radiators still need to be painted. I want to finish all of the woodwork this weekend so we can finally clean up the apartment fully…

Weekend et. al.

Posted on by grahams

Had a fairly laid back weekend…. Friday night I just stayed home with , who had a nasty cold (probably the same cold I had, although we had thought she had dodged that bullet). Saturday morning I decided to mount my Sirius radio in the car. It had been flopping around, kind of propped up in the ashtray while I waited for a nice mount to arrive in the mail (the radio came with a suction cup mount as well as velcro, but both those choices seemed ghetto). This mount required me taking the dashboard trim off, which was made easier by employing the dash trim removal tool I got with the new mount kit, but still sucked. I thought I could mount it without removing the car stereo, etc, but that was false hope. With the car stereo removed I was able to hide wires much easier, so they just pop out of the dashboard next to the mount. I also replaced the cigarette lighter adapter that came with the Sirius with some hard-wired power that tied into the car stereo’s wiring harness. I wired so the Sirius always has power, so that if I have to run out of the car quickly but want to finish what I am hearing I can pause the radio (it has a 45 minute live buffer) and shut the car off. I also moved the Sirius antenna from the trunk to the roof, as I was getting annoyed that the wires would move and get tugged whenever I opened the trunk. All in all it took me about 2 hours to finish the job, which includes running back up to the apartment to solder the power leads into the wiring harness, so it wasn’t that bad. The only downside of the experience was that it was pouring rain, so I did a lot of crawling around the inside of the car to avoid getting drenched.

Sunday we caught The Matador with the film club, which was pretty funny. A bunch of us are headed to Rochester after work on Friday for the first FUMN in ages… I’m really looking forward to that (but not particularly looking forward to the drive…).

1-09-06

Posted on by grahams

This weekend was fun… Flew the helicopter, convalesced, watched “New York Doll” (highly recommended). I’m feeling quite better, seem to have dodged the mega-congestion I usually get after the sore throat phase of colds, I’m only slightly congested today.. Got my first dose (aside from the radio tests he did last week) of Stern on Sirius on the ride in this AM, which was cool… George Takei is an awesome choice as an announcer, his voice is fantastic.

Plague-ridden

Posted on by grahams

Last night before bed I noticed the beginnings of a sore throat, so I popped back some Cold-Eeze. Around 5:00am I woke up with a terrible sore throat, and got up to get some water as well as another lozenge. I went back to bed and tossed and turned but couldn’t fall back asleep, so around 6am I decided to just get up, shower, and get to work. I got to work at 7:15am, which I believe is a new record for me at Goodrich.

I cancelled my subscription to Audible subscription yesterday… I had the plan where you get 1 audiobook and 1 subscription a month (which I used for Car Talk), but I haven’t been listening to the audiobooks during my normal commute, so they’ve been piling up.. I still love their service, and will eventually buy books piecemeal once I plow through my backlog, but the subscription is a bit too much in this age of podcasts… Not to mention Howard Stern… :)

Yesterday I bought a Sirius Satellite Radio receiver for my car with my Christmas cash.. I hadn’t been listening to Howard very reliably during my commute because my commute was just long enough to get two blocks of commercials and one block of content, which was pretty frustrating… I had been eyeing Sirius for a year or two now, but Howard is definitely what pushed me over the edge.. The best part was after I installed it in my car, I turned on Howard 100 and they just so happened to be doing a studio gear test at that moment with most of the crew, so it was like a little preview show. I’ve heard rumblings that the show will still have commercials, which would disappoint me (and probably cause me to drop my subscription, if they were overbearing), but hopefully they won’t be there (or at least won’t be bad). I figured the price of the Sirius subscription is less than what I was paying each month for Audible, so it’s a bit easier to justify. The other reason, besides Howard, was that without listening to the Radio anymore I was discovering less new music, so hopefully this will rectify that as well.