Reversing camera

After looking at all the various options for a reversing camera, Amazon had a monitor and small reversing camera for a tiny £7. Not expecting a huge amount, I ordered it.
Really quite good. The camera is small and mirrors the image correctly. It even puts coloured lines on, but they aren't that useful, even though they've had a go at parallax correction; the start of the red zone varies from 30cm on the ground to around 10cm at the bumper.
Installation was interesting with the cable provided with the camera. A combined power and video with a phono. The power cable has a smaller 2.1mm barrel plug. The umbilical from boot to car is a bit tight, but a bit of water based conduit lubricant sorted that. Then snaking it through the car is fairly straight forward. I was a bit time constrained, so the monitor is loose in a change tray, and the lot is powered off a cigar plug. The camera is about 20mm diametre.  It is readily obvious sticking down about 20mm from the trim above the number plate. It doesn't protrude at all.  I could have hacked the plastic panel that it sits on, next to the plate lights, but it would still be visible by about 10mm.
Works well and I can just see the tow ball and the bumper about a metre either side at the closest, and about 3-4m away up to 1.2m high.
Another hour or so spent trying to find the reversing light wiring.  The lamp is set into the bumper on the right side. You can't replace the lamp or get the fitting out without removing the bumper. Thanks Renault. You didn't learn from all the negative feedback received when you so 'cleverly' required the removal of the front wheel on the Laguna? to change the headlight.  The wiring (pink + black at the light), it turns out, snakes inside the bumper, picking up the reversing sensors and the fog light, then comes inside on the left side. From the installation manual for the tow bar, it looks like the fog light and stop light are hard wired from the front. The reversing lamp is too. The connector is just by the rear left passenger door - remove the trim that starts in the boot - 4 screws. If you already had a main dealer install the tow bar, then expect all the clips that hold the panel to the car to be broken too. Thanks Renault. €400 well spent for a waster in a grey boiler suit who can't be arsed to go to the stores and get a handful of clips. Well, it's not written in the instructions. I note the instructions are pictures with no words, so that might explain it.
The cable from the camera was split out and + & - wired up. The -ve to a handy chassis bolt and the positive to the reversing wire - purple/white (not pink, thanks Reno) I think, pushed into the connector and tyrapped it. A 800mA fuse protects it. I might put in a delay timer to keep the camera on for a few seconds after coming out of reverse, as there is a 1.5mm permanent power feed there too protected by a 20A fuse if the tow bar instructions are correct - feed for the trailer canbus unit (1/4" faston). Reverse signal was not available there, despite there being 5 unused terminals!
The voltage on the rev light was 11.5 during normal use (battery about 12.5v) After splicing int he camera (about 0.3A) it dropped to 11.35v. The cable to the monitor is very thin and it was about 10.9 there. The pair operate ok down to 9V and below, but there is a bit of line break creeping in then.

The delay timer I added.  Simple RC circuit, transistor and relay

Hedges cut

East side annual cut. About 80m. 3 hours. 2 trailer loads of bramble etc.

MT-09 auxilliary power connector

Those nice people at Yamaha live in the real world. They know you're going to hack in a supply for your GPS or mobile, so they've already installed a fused (2A) connector and put it under the RH fake air intake. Just pop the centre out of the 2 plastic clips, accessed from the fork side, then the single hex bolt. Ignore the 2 hex bolts holding the grill mesh in place.
The connector is supplied with mating half, but no pins. These are readily available from the USA, which to order 2 costs around £15 delivered. I couldn't find anything on the Yamaha site; they sell the normal hack adaptor with spade connectors to go direct onto the battery.
So, time to hack something together.


The pins started life as a cheap automotive pin crimp. Ampliversal ones are too well built to use. Remove the red cover, squash the hole a bit so that it fits the aperture in the mating half, the file a notch, and cut it to length. I did it at about 7mm, but try 9mm. Solder some wires on and push it in until it clicks. You're supposed to have waterproof ferrules too, but just push the original ones back in. Then mate.
You can get waterproof connectors on ebay, but I just used a standard 2.1mm barrel connector which I tuck back under the air intake. It's what I had on the old bike for 11 years and it never got wet or rusted.  I've got a flying lead from the tank bag to a small 12/5V adapter. It's about 80% efficient, meaning the 12V x 2A = 24W from the bike can supply 24W / 5V * 0.8 = 3.8A@5V plenty for even the thirstiest products.

I then made the USB adapter.
I forgot to take pictures as I went, but the shot below gives you an idea

The pcb is a generic switching regulator, normally around 5 for £1 delivered. Takes up to 28V in and delivers up to 28V ish out.
I set it for 5.25V, as most branded USB adapters I've tried give out around this, or a bit higher. I had a spare USB socket, which I soldered to the PCB by flattening out the through hole tabs. Short the middle pins together to make it simulate a DCP (dedicated charging port - see https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/4803 for a factual description of how to make your USB appliances draw more than 0.5A, or see pretty much any hobby site for rants abouts Apple's 'secret' wiring etc, etc) I did note in testing that my Samsung tablet would only take 1.2 - 1.4A with shorted pins, but would go to 1.51A with 300 + 100k resistors wired +5/0V to the shorted pins.  It was fairly unscientific and for all I know it just needed less current at some times when it was charging. The official charger showed 1.8A. Life was too short to get too technical.  All I want is a charger for the phone or GPS etc on the bike if I'm caught short.
The picture is taken during a soak test at around an amp. I say 'around' as the little meter thingy is about 10% accurate on amps, and 5% on volts.
A SMD LED next to the socket gives you power on indication with the plug removed.  A piece of heat shrink finished it off.  I didnt fit a fuse as the bike has a 2A. 
Through the heat shrink, it feels like the chip is running at about 60C, which is pretty good considering there is no airflow. The chip, a MP1584, has a maximum dissipation of 2.5W, which IIRC gives a practical limit of around 5V/1.0A before the chip shuts down as the die hits 150C, assuming 14V in, 85% efficiency
5W out, 5.9W in = 14V@0.42A. Vd = 14-5 = 9V x .42 = 3.8W dissipated.  Oops. Working that back for 2.5W gives 5V@0.66A
Perhaps I should have left the D+/D- floating to limit the draw to 0.5A
A soak test for an hour at 1A has been OK, so I guess the heat shrink is radiating a bit, plus the USB plug will be an external heatsink.

Cut the hedge

The hedge that runs across the back of the house is about 40m. It used to be kept in shape by the cows that lived here before us. I've always cut it back every spring. When we planted the fruit trees we measured the planting holes from the hedge. It was last year that I realised that something was up. The NW boundary had grown and got hacked back a good way. Now it was the turn of this hedge. Removed around 1m in the NW corner and around 1.8m in the NE corner. More cut and scratches than I care to mention. 

Salomon ski boot custom liners

Used a SMD heat gun 20mm nozzle, 110C, fan 7 (almost max) Measured temperature as 110C at 3cm.
Only wanted to expand shin area, so heated this at 3cm for about 10 mins.  I reckoned that full expansion was locally achieved in a few minutes. Measured an increase from 17mm at cuff to 20mm, although after re-fitting and cooling this was down to 18mm, but felt very snug.

From a number of posts, cooking temperature for liner (no footbeds) is 90-110C for 10-15 mins, convection or fan oven.
Refit footbeds and fit into shells.  Jump in, buckle up on a medium setting and don't move for 10-15 mins.

Digital tyre pressure gauge

In a fit of spending, I bought a digital tyre pressure gauge. Now I have accuracy, I have dilemma.

This gauge reads 2.35bar, old faithful reads 2.6, tyre inflator reads 2.5bar.

It's a small error - say 10% between them all.
Out of a desire to not break something and leave it alone, I opened up the gauge. It's got markings that suggest you could display more than just bar/psi. It's a Shineway pcb and uses a cr2032 battery. No ID on the pressure sensor itself.
It has a tempting box marked R9. Putting a 1k resistor on there reduced the pressure reading from 2.3b to 1.3b. Whether this was a fixed offset of a linear change throughout the range (ie slope) will have to wait until a fit of enthusiasm to play. Or until I stand on it and it breaks.
For now I'm going to assume it reads under by about 0.5b (or round up the result)

The car was serviced about a month ago. The rear tyre should be 2.1 and it reads 2.1 on the digital and 2.4 on the silver old faithful. Front should be 2.3 and read 2.25, old faithful was 2.7. The original battery, a 2032 was not enough at 2.8V to make it work. A 2025 fits ok.

Tyre inflator & power supply

For a good number of years I have been nursing a £3 12V tyre inflater. It wasn't particularly good when new, but was much better than a foot pump.  I've variously replaced the piston, gauge, pipe and tyre attachment. Then the entire pump when I 'found' one without a case.
I must have blown a seal as it now takes 10 minutes to add 0.5 bar.
So I bought a new one.  There seems to be a few basic designs re-labelled.  I found a nice-on-paper Black and Decker one, seemingly a one-off.  Mains and 12V. Around €50. The reviews were awful, particularly in America. The main fault was that if it worked at all on mains on receipt, it failed pretty soon afterwards. Whilst I'm not adverse to a bit of power supply repair, it was occurring too often. The next one on the list was an AEG KD 7.0 with a digital display and auto shut-off, which was being sold for €44 on French Amazon. German amazon had 6 'good' condition ones for €12.
So I bought that. The main review complaint was noise. I also bought a rubber boot mat (who'd have thought a Audi A4 2003 boot is the same width (and twice as long) as a Captur, which worked out €15 cheaper than the Captur specific one, with the advantage I can use the extra length to protect the bumper.
The pump swallows power. At least 10A to start and 9A to run. I could have taped 2 5A/12V bricks together, but I had an old AT PC power supply. This is plated at 9A/12V. It delivered 11.2 V.  Loading the 5V rail with a 6.8R resistor got this up to 12.1V (A 4.7R got it to 12.2, a 2R to 13.5V, but the resistors were getting large and dissipating a lot of power ~13W) Snipped off all the old connectors, put on a big cigar socket.  Works well, and it's in a nice steel case.
The inflater is a tad noisy, but will add 0.5 bar in 30s. The one thing I don't like, which seems common on a lot on inflaters, is the tyre connector is screw on, rather than clip on. I could replace it, but it isn't too bad, and at least it doesn't pop off. The original cardboard carton was battered (now in a skip) but other than that it was sealed in a plastic bag and was clean. Amazon used wins again.
I do have another problem, though.  If the inflater reads 2.5b, the 'old faithful' stick gauge reads 2.6b and the new digital gauge reads 2.35b. On average, the inflater is correct....