Shiny

Shiny. 9km delivered.

medianav 5.2.8 (April 2016 - latest version 6.0.3)
LG SW LAN5200WR1 5201 5210 open source.

New trailer

Neptun gn102/n7-202. Advertised at 117kg & confirmed on scales
Stored on end in the garage.
The accessories add around 16kg (15.2kg)
3 clamps (0.7kg), 
jockey wheel (4.6kg) 
2 props (1.9kg ea)
chocs (0.23kg ea) 
lash points (40g ea) 
winch 3.3kg + bracket 0.7kg



The additional side panels are 25kg
Stored on end. The joists are at 2.8m

Hoist, strop & shackle. The strop is around 25mm angle iron. The hoist has no brake on unwind. The trick is to lower the A frame, lock the hoist, the move the trailer body to meet the a frame. Lock the body to the A frame and then lower again.
The hoist is mounted onto the A frame using an Armco right angle bracket.

A close up of the locator. The trailer comes with plastic coated steel lugs which forces the trailer COG slightly back when it's on its end. A piece of 25mm angle with a welded stop forms a useful locator. A similar arrangement on the other side. 
The lugs are largely useless as they slide on a concrete floor. Fine on gravel, or a rough, ridged concrete slab.

Mice, rats and other vermin

We've had unwelcome visitors since the end of December. At first we had the romantic idea that it might be a squirrel sized creature we get in these parts, a stone marten or la fouine, but a web cam showed that a rat was indeed enjoying the warmth that a real fire and lots of insulation can provide. As the loft has 350mm of insulation, the rodents can run around under this lot without being seen. Apple was the best bait.
However, the quandary was how the rats were getting in. I blocked a few holes in roof vents, but quickly realised that they were getting in through the enormous gap created by every single roof tile where it meets the gutters. So around 320 doors over a distance of 65m. The next problem to solve was how they were getting there.  As all our drain pipes connect together and run the 70m to the road, there was a chance they were like err a rat up a drain pipe?  I'd already fitted grills to a lot of the down pipes to stop leaves, so a few more went in. The only other route is along the pergola.  The rose has been growing and had reached to roof this year.  As we can't stop rodents scaling the plants, we were going to have to block the holes created by the roof tiles.

Foam was the first idea, but most foam breaks down under UV exposure, and there is little space to get purchase with the foam. The solution in the catalogue of tile supplier looks like a comb in 1m lengths. Being (presumably) made of gold and platinum, this was not a cheap option. Google turned up some copies which were ordered for around €60. As you have to remove the last row of tiles to install it, this was not the quickest of jobs, but 5 hours saw around 1/3 of the house done. The bulk of the time is spent on the corners as the hip tiles can't be removed without starting at the ridge. The next time consuming job is moving the working platform around.
There was no evidence of rodents until the corner adjacent to the rose and pergola. Being small, the mice had a nice path on the wall plate.  The rats strolled in over the covered terrasse.
Going further along the south side, I noticed a fair amount of mouse droppings. 5 hours toil saw the last of the house protected and the first few metres of the 2 gullies had grilles fitted with the remaining 10m (of 70m)
If possible slide the tiles towards the ridge avoiding the combs then into place; this stops the combs jamming the correct seating of the tile.  A wooden chock holding the tile above out of the way helps.

To date we've caught 3 rats which went, in their mobile 'home', to stay with their friends in the forest a few km away. Having caught all the rats we'd seen on the webcam, there was still noise from the loft.  This turned out to be mice. The interweb has may reports of rats being hunters of mice, so whether we had mice to begin with, which the rats followed, or the mice moved in just after the rats is anyone's guess.  3 mice were caught very easily, but the scratching continues, but nothing on the camera. At this point the main entry point is blocked, but the rodents could still run around the gutters to find another door. Rain is preventing further work.
Having moved the camera to the area of scratching, we have another mouse.  A lazy, or possibly well fed with a good stash. It runs over the trap which I've put adjacent to the scratching and it shows a little interest. 
update. This mouse, no 4 is now caught and released. No 5 is very camera shy. Today's cocktail for its delectation is Camembert (what else, it's French) cashew nut, cat biscuit and the firm favourite of apple.
15/3. A further update! The mouse was a rat, but it ignored the trap, baited with prune. I found that one blocked hole in the gable was re-opened, so blocked it with steel mesh.  That night there was a noise from the garage.  I opened the door the next day. The rat has not been heard or seen since. Hopefully that is now it.  All traps and camera removed.
21/3 Heard nibbling again, and a look outside showed 4 fingers missing off a comb. I shoved some metal mesh in that hole (the most inaccessible in the entire roof) and set the rat trap with apple just adjacent. Within a day we'd caught one, but no more nibbled combs.
Looked like a young female. Have re-set the trap and we'll see.
Below is a shot of one of the rats inspecting one of the home made traps. As an idea of scale the hole it's in is 76mm diameter. All the rats were about the same size - say a body of 200mm and a similar length tale.
The trap on the right was the only success and was a hole with a wire taper reducing the diameter in a cardboard box. The photographed rat decided the best way to get the bait (apple & cat biscuits) was to chew its way in. Twice. Got a steel trap after that.
The next trap to the left is a see-saw, but it's too small.  Didn't know how big these guys were...
The trap on the left was a electric remote release. Rats are very inquisitive, but not a single rat entered.

October 2022 and the rats are back.  Very enthusiastic this time. So noisy I thought it was probably a dormouse.  It turned that they were rats and the noise was the breaking open of snail shells.  We have a fair number of snails up against the house and the rats have been taking them to a warm place to eat. The little shits have found unblocked holes around the ridge where it meets the gutter. Blocking these holes and setting a trap got us a mouse and 4 rats. However, the last one, 3 months on, has worked out it can chew its way in and out. The combs are plastic and down the west face there are now more holes than comb. Even if I didn't block the new holes, it cut a new one. I found one supplier of aluminium combs in Belgium, but I reckon a rat could nip these off. 

Jan 2023. I eventually remembered brick reinforcement mesh. 

65mm width is readily tacked on, once the old combs are removed. A pleat is required to fill the hole. I also put some mesh behind the roof vents, but it's pretty unlikely a rat would expose itself climbing up a roof. 11 vents in all.

Just over 4 x 20m rolls did the job. 

July 2023. Well, what d'you know. Rats and mice will exposed themselves in a roof valley. Having collected 2 rats, 1 wood mouse and 6 mice (5 in one trap) this week, I'm now busily filling the gaps around the tiles in the valleys. They did mostly have plastic combs, and 1 large hole had been cut. The significant thing was how shiny parts of the valleys were, polished by the rodents coming and going. Finished the 5th roll and took 5.5m off an old roll I've had a long time.

23/7/23 Rats have been busy. Saw 2 inside last week, and they have ignored the trap. However, we've heard them. It the most inaccessible corner of the roof, they have managed to displace 5 bits of mesh. Mesh that is push in place as it cant be nailed due to the proximity to the ridge, and the tiles can't be removed. A bit more reinforcement today might fix them!

220V LED light strips / rope lights

Feeling in need for a bit more light under the kitchen cabinets, I bought 1m of LED lights from ebay.  Where else?  It was worth the 10p, unlike the 0.5m 'power cord' which was a further £10 and I'd need to cut the plug off and extend the wires.
The spec was the usual vagueness for 'quality' products and is 60 led/m (5050 leds) IP66 - waterproof!.  Digging around a bit (there was a RoHS cert to con you into thinking it was CE marked, lol) the manufacturers site stated 12W/m
There was a bump in the cable and I was suspicious that this did something. A look at the rope showed that the LEDs  are not wired to take AC, so I identified the +ve terminal and put ~50VAC through a full wave rectifier 49VDC (8A one from the scrap box, but 0.5A is fine assuming it's rated for mains). This caused the LEDs to glow. Putting a full 240VAC gave a good brightness. Power consumption is around 10W.
DC volts measured 221V, DC current 27mA, which works out at 6W.  Why the disparity?  Probably the fact that the DC is not smoothed, so the meters are averaging a bit. The peak voltage would be around 240 x 1.4, so say 330VDC.
You have to get the correct polarity, but is shouldn't harm if it's the wrong way around.

I've read that these no-name and often found strips will lose about 1/4 of their initial brightness if run continuously for 2 months or 1440 hours, or a year at 4 hours per day. This is because the LEDs are no-name items, maybe even floor sweepings, or simply driven too hard. Part of the problem is the materials used which go opaque. If you want a nice system to light your house you'll need to dig deep and look for the likes of Philips etc.

If you've found this blog post and think you could also save £10, you need to understand what the technical terms are. Don't post a question asking me to explain, 'cause I won't. Darwin rules.

And the finished article fitting nicely into a surface mounted switch. A 0.8A fuse was chosen as I have a surplus. The connections are mad by pushing 1mm tinned wire 10mm into the rope.
In use, the brightness is a long way from a 12W fitting. Maybe 6W is closer.

JVC KD-WR90 Cassette Deck VU meter

PCB marking H.E.C H13A V LT-1112 Sharp F6139

4 LEDs stopped working on one channel of the VU meter (right channel, bottom 4 green). The PCB markings only gave one hit to something similar https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/pioneer-cassette-player-wanted-vu-meter-pioneer-ct-s99rw-display/ The display bar graph is almost identical. This led me to Sanyo chip IR2E28. The only datasheet didnt have a compatible model, as mine goes from -20 to +9dB. Mine also just has the classic black blob protecting a printed on processor of some type. You can see the LEDs lighting through the single sided PCB, so they must be early SMD type printed onto the PCB. The white diffuser block is held in place by the usual hot stamp/leg melt meaning removing it will need another method the re-attach. Small screws or superglue. No space for hot glue.

The blob has 15 tracks to the LEDs. 14 leds and common anode to +V. I think it must be multiplexed to ensure a consistent brightness, but that would only need 9 tracks, or even 8 (4 leds + 4 commons). I started exploring simple comparitor circuits to just drive the bottom 4, so scraped a few tracks to ensure the existing LEDs are ok. I used a 10k to +V (13V, not a typo, taken from service manual) and discovered that the -20dB led had failed. In replacing this, the remaining 3 started working. I haven't stopped to reflect why this might be. 

For me, the easiest method to replace the LED was to remove the corner and slide a new LED in. There is a bezel (~4mm) where the PCB fits into the front panel so any mod has to take account of it. The replacement LED was an old bar graph type from the 80s, so the colour and current draw was likely identical to the original. I did cut the top off the led, and sand off the larger white side and trim the sides. This lit the new 'top' face well enough. On reflection it would probably have been quicker to remove the diffuser and solder in a smaller rectangular one that fed up inside. Newer SMD LEDs take little current and are very bright, so I doubt it would have looked right.

You can't tell the difference once installed. Finger's crossed more LEDs don't unbond.

Winter tyres

We had the first frost a few weeks back, but it's not been that cold.  This week the temperatures have dropped and the trend is getting colder.
Snow tyres on and chains in the boot.

New data cable

A cat 5 cable I pulled in alongside the main supply cable 3 years ago has been losing cores over the years.  I'm now down to 4 cores, 2 having failed together last week.  It was supposed to be underground grade, but the sheath was weak and I'm pretty sure it was torn in places when I pulled it in. I use this cable to monitor water usage (70m supply pipe so I want to make sure it's intact) electricity use, and to monitor the letter box.

New build properties require a number of underground ducts from the house to the road.  These are really useful when it comes time to change a cable.
For telecoms use, 2 ducts are laid.  1 has the phone line, and the spare has now got a new data cable, a cheap CCA cat 5.  I checked the sheath and its intact, put plenty of lubricant in the duct and the first few metres that popped out the other end are undamaged.  I didn't pull in another draw wire, as these invariably wrap around the pulled cable and make pulling in a second cable more prone to damage both, plus extra stress on the new cable.

I havent removed the dodgy cable, as it will be wrapped around the heavy supply cable in another duct, and would likely just snap.

I have another duct to the gates which has the dodgy cat 5 cable in, but this was pulled in with the power cable so very little stress.  So far.