Netduino Thoughts

I picked up Netduino a couple of months ago but didn’t find any time to play with it until the holidays. As somebody who has done a few projects with microcontrollers (most recently Atmel AVRs) and as a C# design team member, I found it to be an intriguing idea – to be able to write code for the microcontroller in C#, and to be able to debug it with Visual Studio.

The executive summary is that it works pretty well overall. Once you’ve installed what you need, it’s just a matter of plugging the netduino into the computer with USB, starting up VS, creating a project, and you’re off and running – or debugging.

There are some deployment issues from time to time; the deploy will hang and you’ll need to pull the USB out to power-cycle the netduino and try again. It’s also possible to temporarily kill the netduino if you do something unsupported – like use unsafe code – and you’ll have to use the micro framework tool to reset the netduino. So don’t do that.

Upsides:

  • It works pretty well. You write code, set breakpoints, and it all runs on the microcontroller.
  • VS works the way that you would expect it to.
  • The hardware support appears to work as expected, at least the SPI and button interrupt handler that I used worked fine. Once I remembered to hang onto a reference that I passed to the interrupt handler.
  • Purportedly, it’s all open source, so you can add new code if you want.
  • Floating-point

Downsides:

  • There is no JIT solution, which means the IL is interpreted. 48MHz, even with 32 bits, is not a lot of horsepower to be running a managed environment. Which means it is *slow*.
  • The C# language is not a good fit to the kind of things you want to do with a microprocessor. Properties, which are pretty much free due to inlining on the desktop, are not free at all on the netduino. The expression-evaluation rules – where all calculations are promoted to int – are not great when you actually need to deal with bytes. The advantage of C# on the desktop (and on the phone, to a lesser degree) is that the runtime takes care of a bunch of things that don’t matter. But on the Netduino, you often care about those things.
  • No timer interrupts. At first I thought that this was a deal-breaker, but it turns out it doesn’t matter – the execution speed and the non-determinism of the GC means that you aren’t going to be using the Netduino for real-time stuff *anyway*, so the timer interrupts wouldn’t be very useful.
  • At $35, it’s fairly pricey, though not really much pricier than an Arduino. With Arduino, however, you can pull the chip (at least if you have the DIP version) and replace it for a few dollars.
  • The community is a bunch smaller than the Arduino one.

Summary:

If you’re a C# developer and you’ve never played around with microcontrollers, the Netduino is a pretty good introduction, and is capable of handling a lot of simple projects. If you’re an experienced microcontroller developer, if you need speed, or if you’re trying to do anything real-time, I’d recommend looking elsewhere (Arduino or just a raw AVR).


Sous Vide Smoked Turkey Breast

For Thanksgiving we had a Turkey Breast competition; a traditional smoked turkey vs a smoked turkey that was smoked for a few hours and then finished in the Sous vide cooker.

I removed the breasts from the bone for the Sous Vide variant; this was mostly because I use a rice cooker with a  separate controller and the whole breast wouldn’t fit into it. On Tuesday night, I mixed up a brine (very roughly, 3/4 cup of salt to about 1/2 gallon of water, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, some cracked peppercorns, and some other spices) and both of them got put into the brine. The separate breasts were a lot easier to deal with because they just went in a ziploc bag.

In the morning, started up the smoker (a brinkman electric that I’m not that happy with), and put on the turkey. The traditional one had a thermometer in it so that I could check for doneness; the others would come off early enough that I didn’t need to track their temperature. The wood was a mix; mostly apple chips, with a couple of chunks of mesquite to add another flavor (make sure to be careful not to use too much; it’s easy to to far with mesquite and poultry).

Then I do the usual smoker thin; replenishing the wood every 30 minutes or so.

After 3 hours, the two separate breasts come off, go directly onto a cookie sheet and then straight into the freezer. They are ultimately destined for the vacuum pack, but I need to freeze the juices so they won’t ooze out into the foodsaver when I pack it.

After about 9 hours total, the breasts hit 152 degrees on the smoker and I pull them off. I carve them off of the bone, and they go into the freezer to cool for an hour, then into the fridge overnight. The others get vacuum packed.

Thanksgiving morning the vacuum-packed ones go into the cooker with the controller set to 148 degrees. The others go into the oven at the appropriate time.

 

Verdict:

The sous vide version is slightly moister, the traditional ones have slightly better smoke flavor. The difference in effort is significant, however; it’s *so* much easier to just smoke the breasts for a few hours and then pull them off and finish cooking them. It’s also possible to freeze them and then finish cooking them a few months later.


Why you should take ski lessons

To be honest, I was bored. Bored with skiing.

Before you exclaim “inconceivable”, a bit of explanation is in order.

My wife and I took up skiing in our mid-20s, and having an athletic background, we looked for help. Our series of lessons with Martin at Snoqualmie Pass got us out on the slopes and able to ski their intermediate slopes, and in the years afterwards we went on a few ski vacations with friends. In that group, I thought I was fairly good; I’d been reading a few skiing books and working on technique, and from what I could tell I was better than average for the group.

I slowly progressed a bit more, so that I was able to ski blacks… as long as they were groomed blacks. I could see the skiers – the *good* skiers – skiing the ungrooomed snow, skiing the bumps. My attempts in those areas weren’t very successful; I’d end up traversing back and forth across mogul fields, and I’d still usually fall in the turns.

I was bored with what I could ski, and frustrated when I tried to ski other stuff.

And then something wondrous happened.

Our daughter got old enough to take ski lessons.

She did one season at Snoqualmie while we watched from the side and (gasp) shared a ticket. We learned two things that year; we didn’t like the instruction she was getting at that school, and we were very bored skiing the slopes at Snoqualmie.

So, it was back at Stevens for the next season. And we decided that we would make it a family thing and sign up for adult lessons at the same time. We checked out a few schools and chose Olympic because the program looked good and they had an end-of-season party.

The lessons I took gave me a whole new set of tools, and it took me to a lot of different places around the mountain. I progressed more that year in lessons than I had in the past 5 years of skiing. Over the next few years, I skied new areas. The long and steep bump runs off of 7th heaven. The steep but open runs off the backside. And then finally, Corona bowl (a steep bump run with a very tight entrance) on the backside, and double D (a run steep enough that the snow can’t create high bumps because it slides off).

And the boredom was gone. Stevens is a lot bigger when you can ski the steeps, or the trees between rock-n-blue and hoot.

That year, our instructor (one of the level 3 instructors who teaches for Olympic) suggested that if we wanted to keep progressing, we should consider become instructors with them.

And so we did, and a couple of years we’ve been teaching beginners, and attending some very good clinics.

Finding a School

There are lots of options for lessons. If you’re a beginner or intermediate, a series of lessons over a 6 or 8 week period is a great way to improve. If you’re an advanced skier, you’ll probably want to look for a specific camp – a one or two day lesson that is focused on a specific set of skills.

About the author

Eric Gunnerson is a Level 1 certified instructor who has been teaching level 2 students the past two years (yes, it’s confusing, there are 3 instructor levels but 9 skier levels), and is going to try for his level 2 this year. He teaches for Olympic Ski School at Stevens Pass.


New additions

There are two new additions to the Gunnerson household.

It is a bit sad as your friends get old, but eventually you reach the point where they are old and tired and it’s just better to replace them.

So, this weekend we completed an adoption, and we hope the new member should be friends with the other members. It’s pretty large for a pet at 3330 pounds, but it’s more stout than fat, though it’s a bit down on power compared to it’s sportier brother.

Five cars is too much for three drivers.

Anybody interested in a 1996 Subaru Outback? One owner, comes with snow tires and wheels.

 

We also have a second addition.

When you’re buying used, you sometimes have to settle a bit, and in this case we weren’t able to find one with the “full tail” option, but we did manage to find the all-important 4-paw-drive.

 

Her name is Cleo.


Vignettes of Europe

(All pictures © Various Gunnersons)

The wife, daughter, and I spent the last few weeks in Europe visiting family and taking a much-needed vacation, with stops in Frankfurt, Barcelona, Bavaria, and then back in Frankfurt. I considered writing a travelogue detailing our experiences, but have instead decided to inflict on you a few Vignettes (literally, “small Vignes”) instead.

Air France

The strength of the stereotypes that Europeans have of each other are a bit strange to someone who resides in the (mostly) egalitarian west coast of the US, but they do at times have more than a grain of truth in them. For example, the German beer is very plentiful and very good, they do drive very fast, etc.

So, knowing what you’ve heard about France, what would you expect from the French airline experience? I expected food and service that were better than the majority of the US carriers and a more relaxed attitude, and that is pretty much what you get.

What you also get is the French attention towards some details and a marked lack of attention towards the sort of efficiency that we take for granted in the US. Or, to put it another way, if you type “On-time arrival” into babelfish, the French translation is “does not translate”, but they do give you free access to a large library of films and free champagne (though I’m not sure if it is méthode champenoise or not).

Nowhere is this attitude more obvious than the Paris airport, which manages to nurture your spirit through beautiful design while draining you of your desire to live through an utterly exasperating layout and what appears to be intentionally misleading signage.

The amateur etymologist in me was pleased to discover that the phrase “Of all the gall” was coined after a particularly taxing visit to Charles de Gaulle airport.

Barcelona

Finally, a chance to use my three years of high-school Spanish. I haven’t tried to speak Spanish for years, so I didn’t expect to be able to converse at all, but I was hoping that some of the vocabulary would be stuck in the parts of my brain that isn’t devoted to 1980’s Air Supply lyrics (“Lost in love, I’m so lost without you…”). I found that I did remember a lot of vocabulary, but unfortunately it would have been more useful to know what “Soldaditos” or “Mejillones” was on the menu at the Tapas place than to be able to ask for directions to the library (“¿Donde esta la biblioteque?”). Oh, and some of the phrases are in Catalan rather than Spanish, so even if it’s something you knew in Spanish you may not be able to read it. But in most cases we could get a menu in “Ingles” and in the others we muddled through.

Barcelona is a cool city; there are a lot of historical sites, some cool architecture, a decent zoo and a somewhat boring aquarium. And the food is good if you like seafood.

And there are the beaches.

We stayed in a small apartment in Barceloneta (literally, “pure Barcelona”) that was 82 steps up but half a block from the beach, which was excellently renovated for the 1992 Olympics and offers pretty much all that you could want in a beach; lots of sand, warm water to swim in, and vendors wandering around selling water, beer, Sangria, temporary tattoos, hair braiding, and 5-minute massages.

There is one part that is a bit disconcerting. If you were raised in Everett, Washington in the 1970s, you probably spent some time watching Canadian TV late at night hoping to catch the occasional bit of female nudity, and there is nothing in your upbringing to prepare you for the sudden lack of a swimsuit top on the woman who just 5 minutes ago was fully clothed (at least in the beach sense of the term) on a towel nearby. The European attitude towards nudity seems much more healthy than the American attitude towards violence, but it’s still a bit surreal.

And that’s on the “family-friendly” beach. There are purportedly other beaches with a still more relaxed attitude towards swimwear. Though in the spirit of full disclosure, it is important to note that this attitude is not limited to a specific age category, so one may see body parts that are, in all honestly, but left unseen.

German Breakfast

After a night in Bavaria at a GastHaus (literally, “Bed & Breakfast”), the first day we descended the stairs for our morning meal.

It was the quintessential experience of a German breakfast; a room with 4 tables decorated in Bavarian style, baskets of the exceptionally underappreciated German bread and platters of cheese and meat. Couples and families sat at the tables and conversed quietly in German, while the radio on the side table provided light background music (“Like a virgin… Touched for the very first time…”).

No, I am not making this up.

Castles and Palaces

When you’re driving around, you’ll see signs directing you to the Schloss (actually, to the “Schloß”), which can be one of two things.

It might be a castle, which was built as a fortification for military purposes. Or, it might be a palace, which is a royal residence that is generally of no military significance. Or, it might be a palace built on top of a castle.

We saw quite a few castles and palaces on the trip. Here are my ratings:

Heidelberg Castle

Featuring not just one but two moats, nice views of the valley, different parts built at different times and honest-to-goodness ruins, Heidelberg is everything that you expect a castle to be, and it isn’t very crowded. And there’s a comedy-sized wine cask (Heidelberg Tun) in the basement, with a capacity of 58,000 gallons.  Make sure to take the tour.

Rating: A+

Linderhof  Palace

Linderhof is the answer to the question “If you were a king who wanted to get away from it all, what sort of residence would you build?” It’s compact, with nice gardens and built at the base of a hill so that you can see the whole thing, a cool cascading waterfall, and, as a bonus, a grotto with a heated pool. Take the tour to see the inside, though be prepared for a lot of Wagner, since King Ludwig and Richard were BFFs. Oh, and they let you take pictures inside, which is not true in some of the castles.

Rating: A+

 

Nymphenburg Palace

A very large palace on huge (3-4 sq km) gardens. I wasn’t terribly excited with the interior and I’m not big on gardens, but they have a separate museum (the Marstallmuseum) that contains hugely ornate carriages, sleds, bridles, and other horsey-related stuff. That was a big hit with the horse-enabled members of the entourage.

Rating: C overall, A if you like gardens or like carriages and other horsey stuff.

 

Neuschwanstein Castle

Neuschwanstein gets top castle billing in Bavaria, but having done it a few times, it’s not my favorite. It’s not fully finished, and while some of the rooms are very nice, the crowds get in the way and they herd you through on a very organized tour. Because it’s up on a hill there are no real grounds associated with it, and there is no photography allowed inside.  If you want to go, plan on getting there early, and consider taking the horse wagon to the top rather than spending 45 minutes walking up to the castle, especially if you have kids.

Oh, and it’s a palace, not a castle. And it actually looks like this.

Rating: B

 

Hohenschwangau Castle

The ugly stepsister of Neuschwantstein, I found it to be just okay. If you’re coming to see the Neu, it’s worth the time while you wait for your ticketed time, but I wouldn’t journey to see it.

Rating: C

Loreley

While in Germany we took a boat trip down the Rhine, which included a trip by Loreley (“Lurking Rock”), a large rock at a tight part of the river which is world-renowned for the murmuring sound that is said to be the echo of the name of a women who hurled herself from the rock. Which I can kindof understand because there’s not much going on in that part of the river, though the rush to take pictures of the aforementioned rock (see below) was a bit perplexing.

Any murmuring sound is drowned out by the sound of river traffic and cameras, but we were treated to many of those around us singing a popular German song associated with the event. My German is pretty much non-existent, but luckily they provided us with a rough English translation:

When I think of Lorelei,
My head turns all around.
She’s gentle as a butterfly,
She moves without a sound.

She calls me on the telephone
She says be there by eight.
Tonight’s the night she’s moving in,
And I can hardly wait…

The Rhine tour was pretty nice; you can sit on the top of a boat and drink while the scenery goes by. If you can manage it, set things up so you only go one way and you go downstream; the upstream trip takes much longer.

Eagle’s Nest

If you read WWII histories like I did, you may remember Berchtesgaden as the place that Hitler went to get away from it all. We went to the Eagles Nest while we were there, a historic hiking destination at the top of one of the more pleasantly-sited alps that was made accessible as a present for Hitler’s 50th birthday. You can either drive or bus up to the starting point from the valley, and then you buy a ticket to take a 6.5 km E-Ticket bus ride most of the way up the alp (25 MPH through tight corners with sheer cliffs on one side), at which point you disembark, walk a hundred meters or so in a tunnel, and take an elevator 182 meters to the top.

The top lookout has a nice restaurant inside and a casual one on the terrace, and they you have access to the top of the alp which has views all over the place.

It can be a bit of a drive to get to, but if you’re in the Salzburg area, I definitely recommend it.


Tour de Barcelona

The late days of August are happy days for the recreational bicycle rider. The hard training days of spring and the hot days of summer are past, and the wetter weather, annual off-season fitness loss and weight gain have not yet intruded on the consciousness, so one can either just coast along or enjoy crushing the shorter, easier rides de jour.

It was supposed to be a vacation; from work, from home, and from my less-than-stellar cycling season. But, one can take the cyclist out of the country, but one can’t take the country out of the cyclist (I’m not quite sure what that means…), so a week into the trip I found myself once again astride a bicycle, ready for another challenge.

Etapa Uno: Plaça St. Jaume – Plaça de la Seu

Since I have a limitations both in time and desire for training, I approach rides analytically; I study the route, the elevation map, try to find out what the weather will be like, and then I can figure out where the hard parts will be, where the easy parts will be, and then ration my efforts accordingly.

That’s going to be problematic this time, because:

  • I’m on a rented bicycle that I have only ridden from the rental location to the start of the ride, a distance in excess of 30 meters.
  • I lack my usual electronics to measure heart rate and cadence. In fact, my mount lacks a cyclometer of any kind.
  • My only information about the fitness and skill of the other participants is from a quick study of them before the start. My guess is that I’m okay, but having been passed uphill by a 70-year-old guy on a Schwinn older than I am, I know that appearances can be deceiving.
  • I don’t have my usual food, hydration drink, or supplements; all I have is one small bottle of water.
  • I have no map, nor do I know the elevation profile or even how many climbs there will be.
  • The remnants of high-school Spanish have not been terribly useful so far, and anyway many of the locals prefer to speak Catalan.

But, I’m a big proponent of turning the challenge dial to “stupid” (that’s what I tell people – in reality I only ever really turn it to “a bit on the far side of comfortable”), so I’m up for it.

Given that this ride is in Europe, it seems fitting that it follows in the spirit of the randonneur rides that I have done; there is mechanical support available if needed but participants are expected to be self-sufficient otherwise.

We start off without much fanfare. I latch onto the back and struggle to follow; the speed of the group is a bit shocking and there are spectators clogging the route. As I swerve to avoid the more boisterous ones I am reminded of the crowds usually found on slopes of the Col du Galibier. The pavement is variable; smooth through one section, pavé the next – when they built these roads “make them smooth for cycling” was not at the top of the list, but the list did have  “¿Esos ciclistas, qué cuido si consiguen daño?”

I discover that I can keep up with the group; while the fit of the bike isn’t what I’m used to, I have plenty of power in my legs. I think about trying to work my way forward in the group but decide that it’s probably not worth it.

It seems like only a few minutes have past before we pull into the first control point. On the randoneeur ride that I did a few years ago, you might have to answer a question to prove that you were there, but on this ride you learn something at each stop, and presumably you will later be asked to recall specific information to prove that you were there.

Etapa Dos: Plaça de la Seu – La Sagrada Familia

After just a few minutes I head out on the road again. I learned at the last stop that the big climb for the ride is coming up on this segment. The pavement has gotten better and the number of spectators has dwindled. I have some attention to spare to look at the sights and even to take a picture or two:

Then we come to the climb. I’ve only been on one ride in the last two weeks and haven’t touched a bike at all for the last week, so I’m wondering what sort of legs I’ll have. It turns out that they feel great, and the hardest climb of the ride is quickly dispatched and I roll into the next stop soon after. Time to learn what I’ll need to know at the end, and think about food. I settle for the water on my bike; the other riders who are with us have different ideas of on-ride nutrition, and I see everything from sunflower seeds to ice cream being consumed.

The crowds have returned, but they are better behaved than the early ones and we can easily move around.

Etapa Tres: La Sagrada Familia – Plata St. Sebastià

Since we climbed up to the last stop, it’s no surprise that we will now descend for a bit. Along the way we pass some nice sights:

After a technical section bordering a wild animal preserve, our route takes us through the Ciutadella-Vila Olimpica. It is an honor to be travelling streets that were travelled by the sporting elite in 1992, and the group responds by organizing a tight double paceline:

A fast smooth section, and we’re at the next stop.

This stop reminds me of the RAMROD deli stop; the majority of the ride has been dispatched, and the riders take a few minutes to relax knowing that all the hard work is done, and to have some food and drink.

Etapa 4: Plata St. Sebastià  – Plaça St. Jaume

After sitting perhaps for a bit too long, I head out on the final leg, a winding technical section that brings me back to the starting point, and the Tour de Barcelona is done. And it’s time to head off for a bite to eat and some well-earned refreshment.

Summary:

Overall, this was a nice ride to do. The vibe was a little less hardcore than the rides that I’ve been doing the last few years, and the route selection was nice. The food stops were what you would expect on a rando ride; if you wanted food you could find it. There were of course no Dan Henrys and the course directions were pretty much nonexistent, but in reality following the people who knew where they were going was trivial, so this didn’t cause any problem.

Definitely recommended.

Statistics:

Distance: 9 km?
Riding time: 58:35
Total time: 3:45
Elevation gain: 33 m ?
Calories: 150?


RAMROD 2011 Ride Report

Those of you who know me won’t be very surprised to find that this report got away from me a bit. If you get tired of the details I recommend skipping ahead and looking the mountain and waterfall pictures. 

July 26th

As I write this, it’s the Tuesday before RAMROD (Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day), and I’ve just gotten back from my last taper ride, a “challenging” 10-miler with perhaps 200’ of elevation gain

I’m a bit apprehensive because this year has been disappointing from a training perspective, and I think I have fewer miles in my legs at this point than any year in the last 5. A long ski season, a very wet winter and spring, and some family issues conspired to put me behind where I would like to be. And on top of that, I’ve been having some shoulder and neck issues that are limiting my time on the bike.

Did you catch what I did there? I bet you didn’t. You *thought* that I was merely describing my cycling-relating challenges for this year, providing an intro to what promises to be a very pedestrian narrative (In the “unremarkable” meaning of the word, not the “walking” sense… (I hope…)). I *was* doing that, but I was doing something far more important.

I was establishing my excuse.

The artful establishment of an excuse is what separates the experienced cyclist from a beginner. Notice how I’ve fixed in your mind that there are several reasons my conditioning might be suspect, and, most importantly, the majority of them are NOT…. MY…. FAULT….

If, it turns out I run into issues later in this ride report, you will recall the excuses, and not attribute any of those issues to a) my lack of cycling talent, or b) my well-documented aversion to training pain. And the most impressive part is that you will do so, despite me having told you all about this, because you will remember the most important thing.

It’s not Eric’s fault.

If you have a pencil and paper handy, I suggest you write those 4 words down and circle them.

So, anyway, I’ve been at RAMROD the past three years, and despite a lot of work and a whole lot of time in the saddle, I have never completed the ride.

In 2007, I trained well and rode well, but was unable to finish the standard course, because there was a road washed out on the south side of the mountain and the ride didn’t actually go around the mountain.

In 2009, I felt pretty good and was also unable to finish the standard course, because the road as still closed, but we did get to visit Packwood and ride up Cayuse pass in 100 degree heat. So, that year I technically did ride around Mount Rainier in one day, but didn’t really do RAMROD.

And last year, last year was a fiasco, where I didn’t come close to finishing the course.

July 28th

2AM

I roll over, shut off the alarm, get out of bed, pull on some sweats, and head into the kitchen. Pre-ride meals are very different for many people; I’ve settled on half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of water. A friend of mine (who insists I protect his anonymity, so I’ll just refer to him as “Brett”) typically eats what can best be described as a Denny’s Grand Slam. As I get ready, I’m happy that I got all my food and clothes together the night before, because I don’t have a lot of mental capacity right now. I get dressed (lots of chamois butt’r in the shorts), and then start to get my stuff together. I grab my bike bag with shoes and everything in it (7 Hills of 2007 I forgot my shoes), grabbed my food and two bottles (one Nun, one accelerade-based) out of the fridge (STP 2006 I forgot my bottles, so everything goes in the fridge), and head for the door. Right before I leave I take a picture:

A secret

On the way to the ride I’m a bit apprehensive. I’ve already shared with you my excuses – which I have come to terms with – but I didn’t tell you the whole story. I keep track of my resting (sitting) heart rate to track my overall fitness; earlier in the spring it was about 48, but in the past few weeks it has been in the 42-44 range. That’s pretty good – not as fit as I’ve been a few years ago (when it was <40), but pretty good.

Tuesday morning I wake up really tired, and head to work. While I’m in a meeting, I check my heart rate, and find that it is 62. That is bad; it means that something weird is going on, probably some low-grade virus. After work I’m planning a last taper ride, but it takes a lot of effort not to just lie down and sleep. The ride makes me feel a bit better, but I don’t really feel comfortable on the bike. Those of you who paid attention in English Lit have probably identified an element of foreshadowing.

I show up at the school (at 4:05; I could have slept in another 30 minutes), pick up my packet, and head inside to warm up, and to watch others eat their giant breakfasts. I put my number on my jersey, and then read through the route to make sure I know where I’m going. That’s a bit of a joke; the course is very well marked and you pretty much just have to remember to turn left.

At about 4:40 I head back out to the truck, and start getting ready. On go my arm warmers, leg warmers, vest, and shoes. Carried with me:

  • Camera (my new Canon S95), smart phone (Windows Samsung Focus), and tic-tac container of ibuprofen and salt capsules go in the bento box.
  • Wallet and keys go in my tail bag (it already has a tube, patch kit, inflater, pump, and a couple of gels).
  • Jersey gets 5 refills of Accelerade in snack ziplocs, a bunch of nuun tablets in a ziploc, a bag of jerky, a bagel, and a package of power bar bites.

I head to the start line and wait for the start. RAMROD takes tracking riders seriously; right before you start they tear a tag off your number so they know you’re on the course. And we start:

Enumclaw to Eatonville: 33 miles

I pull out with my sunglasses in my pocket (‘cause it’s dark) and spin along for the first few miles, my eyes tearing from the wind (I wear contacts). I’m shivering and my feet are very cold. My toe warmers are doing much to keep my toes warm, though to be fair they usually work better when they aren’t in my bike bag in the truck, so I shiver, zip up my coat, and start paceline shopping. I’m fine riding alone in this section, but riding in a group is more fun and helps you save energy. If you have my level of training, you need to be very careful; there are some fast riders in RAMROD and it’s easy to jump in a paceline that is too fast and costs too much energy. A few groups go by in the 23-24MPH range, which doesn’t fit into my budget. After a few minutes a nice one goes by at about 19MPH, and I hop on the back (at RAMROD just hopping on is acceptable behavior). It’s great for about 5 minutes, but it turns out that the guy who is at the front is also shopping, and he grabs one at 23MPH that comes by, the middle part breaks off, and I slow down. A few miles go by and I find myself alone; for 20 minutes I enjoy the views, until I finally catch up with a guy, grab another small paceline, and roll into the Eatonville rest stop. I grab a blueberry biscuit scone thingy, and mix a new bottle of accelerade.

Even though this is a “flat” part of the course, we climbed just under 1000’ getting here.

As I’m getting ready to pull out, my associates Tristan, Francis, and Michael pull in. They are riding together and generally faster than me, so I say hello and head out; I’m sure to see them soon. At least my feet have finally thawed out.

Eatonville to the Park entrance: 25 miles

The first real hills show up here; a few short climbs in the 7%-8% range and then a steady 1-2% climb for the rest of the section. I’m awake but not really feeling much zip, but I find a small group to ride with.  We keep an unimpressive but steady pace, and I spend some time talking with a woman who is on her first RAMROD. After a while we pull into the food stop before the park entrance. I have a cookie, some cheese nips, and take a couple of ibuprofen (my neck and back are already hurting), and a salt capsule (I’ve had sodium issues before). I run into Michael and chat for a minute; he has dropped back to ride his own pace, which is very likely faster than my pace.

Before I head out, I take off my vest, fold it up, and stuff it up the back of my jersey. I’d rather be without it, but we’ve been through a lot together, and my team car is nowhere in sight.

I’ve picked up another 1300’ of elevation gain, and we’re now sitting at a bit over 2000’ of altitude.

Paradise Climb: 17 miles

We ride a mile or so from the food stop, and then enter the national park. Volunteers take down our numbers (so they know where to look in case somebody doesn’t show up), and we start climbing. Which isn’t really correct; we’ve been climbing since Eatonville, so it’s more of a continuation on the last section. The first few miles are tame, 1-3% grades, but they aren’t as easy as the should be. People start to pass me.

Then the grade kicks up to 5%, and we start the meat of the climb, and I’m pretty miserable. I’m having trouble making any real power, which means I’m stuck in a my lowest gear, my back hurts and my neck hurts. There’s a saying that applies to situations like this, which goes by the acronym HTFU. So, I HTFU, and keep climbing. Large groups of people pass me. This is a bit disheartening, but not that surprising; since I left at the start of the ride, the only people who I could pass are those who went out too fast in the first bit and are hurting more than I am. The total population of that segment numbers 1, and we talk for a while before he pulls off to take a rest.

As I climb, I do a few calculations in my head.

I’m climbing at about 6 MPH, which means it takes me 10 minutes to travel a mile. The gradient is 5%, which means that for every mile I travel I gain about 250’ of elevation. I have a couple of thousand feet to climb, so it’s going to be 2000/250 = 8 miles, and at my current speed it will take… way too long to think about right now. So, I keep climbing. (For those playing along at home, the answer is “8 miles at 10 minutes per mile will take Eric 80 minutes to climb”).

At about this point, I remember that I have my camera with me, and resolve to stop and take some pictures along the way. That’s a great way to take a break without looking like you are taking a break.

Rocks. I have never seen such beautiful rocks!

 

I only have to ride up 1/3 of that

 

Reader participation – Choose your caption:

1) Mt. Rainier is a stratovolcano rising 14,411’ into the air. In the language of the Puyallup tribe, it was known as “Talol” or “Tacoma”, meaning “pretty big hill”.

2) Please make it stop!

 

After this picture, I take off my arm and leg warmers, which seems to help a bit.

Wait. So you can *drive* up here? That wasn’t in the packet.

Pretty. (This one is actually at the crest of the climb.)

As continue to climb, a strange thing happens. It’s 60 degrees out in the sun, but it has been unseasonably cold this year and snowed very late, so there are some shaded sections that still have a considerable amount of snow off to the side, and the temperature drops into the 40s whenever we get near one of those. We’re also starting to get enough altitude to notice the lack of air; at 4000’ there is about 10% less oxygen than at sea level. There is also 10% less nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and argon.

Finally, we crest the top, where there are people with cowbells (I think – there were people there directing us, that much I am sure of. Perhaps I imagined the cowbells. In retrospect, I’m less than certain the rodeo clowns were real). The park service doesn’t let the ride go all the way up to Paradise any more, which means that we get shortchanged 550’ of climbing. I’m okay with that. We head over to the water stop at Inspiration Point.

Cyclists being inspired

Looking back at the data from this section, in the 17 miles I climbed about 2800’, and it took me almost exactly two hours, for a climbing speed of 2800/120 = 23 feet per minute. Which is *slow*, even for me – I’d expect something more like 30 feet per minute. Along the way I stopped 7 times. But I made it, and now I just have a short climb, a long and ugly climb, and then a 30 mile slog left.

In case you were wondering, the climb from Eatonville up to Inspiration point would probably rate as a Category 1 climb in the TdF, though you could argue for Category 2 because it’s really not that steep.

That puts the total climbed around 5100’.

I grab some water and mix a new bottle of nuun. It’s actually cool enough that I put my vest back on for the descent, just like the do on the mountain stages of the grand tours.

Descent to the food stop: 8 miles

Now it’s time for some fun. It’s sunny, the food stop is coming up, and it’s all downhill.

Reflection lakes. Like a tourist I stop at the first pullout, and miss the better one slightly down the road.

Except for the one picture stop, I ride it straight through, and it’s a delightful descent; the pavement has a fair bit of tar patching but is generally pretty good. The ramrod map says that this is 13 miles, but it only shows up as 8 on my GPS. That calculates out to about 26MPH average which seems about right; there are a couple of tight turns that I did pretty slow, and I was generally in the low 30s on the descent (trying to go aero when your back is hurting is a bad idea). I pass 3 or 4 guys, get passed by the same amount.

The scenery is just what you would think it would be; gorgeous.

I do make a mistake; I should be hydrating on the way down to try to get back some of the fluid I lost on the climb.

Somewhere on the descent, this happens.

That’s pretty good; I might even buy that one.

The food stop is crowded; I have some potatoes with salt and a cookie. I skip the fruit because I have problems with fructose when I’m riding. I head out to do the next climb, and short one.

Backbone Ridge: 3 miles

I’m refreshed from the descent, and this climb isn’t that bad, in the 4-5% range IIRC. Partway up there’s an overlook and I stop to take a picture; you can tell how much farther away we got on the descent. I take a picture of a motorcyclist, and then head out to continue climbing.

That turns out to be the only stop I make on that climb.

When I talk to people about climbing, I always tell them that steep climbs (like Zoo hill in Issaquah) and mountain climbs (like the one up Paradise) will change how you look at hills. It certainly happened here.

Backbone ridge is about 700’, which is a decent climb in Bellevue terms, but I’ve just gotten settled in when I’m surprised to see the checkpoint tents; it’s taken me 22 minutes to finish the climb and I don’t feel bad.

The checkpoint staff write down our numbers as we roll by, and we head out for another descent.

Backbone descent: 5 miles

This has the makings of another great descent; 5 miles with a decent pitch and no traffic, and it would be, except for the fact that the pavement is bad. As you start the descent there is a sign that says "warning: bad pavement”, and people telling you the same thing, in case you didn’t remember the warning in your ride packet.

They’re right. There’s a combination of frost heaves that push the pavement up a couple inches, ridges that fall off, little sinkholes where the pavement has dropped away, you name it. The organizers have done their best to mark them, but the lane is often in partial shade and they can be a very hard to see. I move around a lot to find the best pavement and stand on my pedals to use my legs as shock absorbers for the stuff I can’t avoid.

It’s challenging but still fun, delta the odd jarring jolt when there’s something I didn’t see or can’t miss.  I do get to do a couple of bunny hops, but I’m trying to be conservative, so it’s not fast, only the mid 20s.

Which brings us to the Cayuse pass climb.

Cayuse Pass: 323 miles

It’s really not 323 miles, it’s only 11 miles long, but at 6% it’s steeper than Paradise, and I have 93 miles in my legs already. At least I know the climb from the 100 degree inferno RAMROD of two years ago, where we climbed the whole pass from Packwood.

I’m a bit disappointed at the intersection where we pick up the pass; it seems that such an important spot would warrant a decent sign (“Cayuse Pass: 11 miles”), perhaps with a parenthetical warning (“(abandon hope all ye who enter here…)”), but all we get is a very tired sign with a conspicuous blank spot.

As I’m putting my camera away, a woman rolls up to and asks, “so, which way do we go?”

Left. We go left.

The first part is fairly flat, but immediately I notice something troubling. I don’t remember if it was like this two years ago, but the surface is chipseal. As chipseal goes, it’s pretty good (they used small round aggregate), but it’s rougher than asphalt and has more rolling resistance, so it’s not what you want to see at the start of this kind of climb.

Soon enough, I’m on the 6% section, and rolling along at right about 6MPH. I’m feeling adequate, which is a bit better than Paradise, and I ride on. I don’t do time estimates because I know it’s going to be a long climb. Nicely, the organizers have arranged for some sections to be air-conditioned; there is enough snowmelt on the side that there are periodic waterfalls cooling things down. Here’s one that I stopped at:

I was not the only one to stop and enjoy for a while; it didn’t come out great in the picture but this one looked like an art director had designed it, a nice fan of water that spread out, and then a small second waterfall into a pool.

The climb is unrelenting; you are riding on the side of a hill, so it’s miles and miles with a hill on your right, a valley to the left, and only slight turns left and right, all at a highway-engineer mandated 6% gradient.

7 miles later, there’s a water stop, and I fill up my bottles (one water, one Nuun). I’m having a hard time drinking enough, but I’m still trying to eat (power bar bites and jerky) to keep my energy up. I take another short stop after getting my picture taken exiting the tunnel, and then ride up to the water stop at the top.

This was going to be a picture of the sign that said “Cayuse Pass, elevation 4675 feet”, but somebody hit the sign and broke it off, so you’re stuck with this. Oh, yeah, we go left again (If you want an extra 800’ of climbing, you can climb to the top of Chinook pass and then come back down again).

That little trip to the top added another 2450’ of elevation to the day, putting the total somewhere around 8200’ total. And down we go again.

Descent to the Deli Stop: 14 Miles

Another nice downhill is the reward for all of our suffering. The first 8 miles is about 6% gradient, and goes by in 15 minutes, with an average well above 30 MPH. The road is pretty nice and the hardest part of the ride is done.

Deli Stop: 0 miles

RAMROD offers custom-made sandwiches at this stop, though you have to wait for them if you ride the speed I do. I do get an ice-cold Diet Coke from a volunteer while I’m in line, and before long I have a ham and cheddar sandwich on whole-wheat bread with Grey Poupon, tomatoes, and lettuce. I grab some chips, and as I’m walking out the other end I hear my name called and look up to see my friend Bret (obviously of no relation to the “Brett” I referred to earlier) sitting down. I’d assumed he’d be long-gone by now given how my day has gone, but he didn’t start until 5:30 and has been taking his time as well. One of the other guys there has been on some of the Eastside Tours rides that I’ve led (and I’m terribly sorry I’ve forgotten his name), so it’s a bit of a reunion. I would have taken a picture but my bike is like, 30 feet across a sunny parking lot and I’m sitting in a camp chair in the shade, so it’s not going to happen.

I finish my sandwich and chips. I’d love to sit here longer – we all would – but we all want to finish things up, so we decide to ride down together.

Enumclaw: 30 miles

The official RAMROD description says the following about the last section of the ride:

These last miles are gradually descending or rolling except for one final, fast descent down Mud Mountain Dam just 5 miles from the finish in Enumclaw.

This is an edited version of the full description, which continues, “…but it won’t feel downhill because you are virtually guaranteed that there will be a nasty headwind”. I’ve done this descent half a dozen times, and there’s always been a headwind. This ride did not disappoint; we could already feel a headwind on the descent to the deli stop, and we were all happy to be in a group.

The ride down is most 1-2% downgrade, with a few flat spots and few slight upgrades. On the downhills we were doing low 20s, but on the flats it was an effort to stay at about 17MPH because of the wind. Even sucking a wheel in the back was no picnic. But, the power of the paceline asserted itself and we made it down pretty quickly – 92 minutes for the whole section, or about 20MPH average. It’s mostly relaxing except that they have rumble strips right on the line between the road and the shoulder, and if you hit that at 20MPH, it rapidly gets your attention. I’m also dehydrated but neither the water nor the Nuun I have is sitting well, so I just suffer.

Once you get near to Enumclaw you head down and descend Mud Mountain Road, which would be a fun descent if you weren’t so tired and if there weren’t a very tight turn at the bottom. I make it down without doing a Jan Ullrich imitation.

And at the bottom of the descent, you’re done.

Ha ha, not really. You *think* you are done, you expect to be done, if the world was a fair place you would be done, but in fact, you have another flat 3 miles in the wind. Then finally, you come in to the clapping and cowbells of the finish. As we roll to a stop in the finish gates, I yell, “Ice Cream!” as loud as I can, and as soon as the volunteer pull our “off the course” tickets, we head over to the ice cream truck. I get a lime bar and we head to sit in the shade on the grass.

And so ends RAMROD 2011, and this very tired rider heads to the showers.

Statistics

Here’s some data directly from my Garmin.

Distance 148.9 Miles
Ride Time 10:35
Elapsed Time 13:01
Ascent 8311 feet
Calories 11734

For the ascent value, you could accept the Garmin training center value of 9156’, or the Garmin connect value of 9228’. Figuring elevation gain is a bit of a black art, and everybody gets different values.

The calorie value is, to put it kindly, a work of fiction. With how I was feeling, I doubt I was putting out more than 500 cal/hour on the climbs, and probably less on the flats. That would put me somewhere around 5000 calories for the ride. Running a model,  I get 1500 calories for the Paradise climb, and perhaps 1200 calories for the Cayuse climb, which makes 5000-6000 a reasonable estimate for the day.

Analysis

Overall, I’m satisfied with my performance on the ride. A ride like RAMROD is right on the edge of what I can do given the amount of time I’m willing/able to devote to training, and if things go not so well, I’m going to have days like I did. Honestly, my feeling not-so-great probably only had a 10-20% effect on the day.

This is my third time entered in RAMROD, but I’ve put off getting a jersey because I’ve never completed the full course. I no longer have that excuse. But I think I’ll try to get a 2010 one because it’s prettier:

 

Epilogue

As you can tell, I like writing trip reports; if you added up the time that I’ve spent on it it probably comes close to the time I spent on the ride. I like the writing experience, the challenge of trying to convey something about the experience to others who might be interested in trying it, and to those who don’t ride as further evidence (and at this point I should probably just be honest and say “totally redundant evidence…”) of my willingness to do rides like this. I’ve always said that everybody should do something that others look on as just a bit crazy.

And I also wrote them for my mother and the rest of my family, so they could keep up on what I was doing.

My mother passed away on Memorial day this year; her decline and death were the family issues that I referred to in the intro. Long rides are one of the things that give me perspective, and it was fitting that my longest and hardest ride of the year would be on Rainier, which was one of her favorite places to visit.

Though, to be honest, she always preferred Sunrise over Paradise, and I’d have to agree; Sunrise is my favorite place on the Mountain. But, at 6400’ of elevation, it’s quite a climb to get up there…


It’s Alive! Alive I tell you!

Previous posts contain more information and pictures.

After a bunch of work, the EL Snowman is up and running, and it’s pretty nice. Here’s a video, though the video looks jerky on the faster animation rates (the actual animation is smooth), and the colors are off (the hat is blue and the arms are yellow).

The controller construction took about as much time as I expected. Here are a few shots (the full gallery with higher-resolution shots is here):

This is an early-stage view of the board. The 40-pin DIP socket for the 8515 microcontroller is on the left, and the series resistors for each channel of the 16 channels (connected to port A and port C on the 8515) is next to it. I have 4 of the 8 16-pin sockets hooked up – each will hold two triac relays.

The blue wire is 30-gauge wirewrap wire, nice and flexible and heavy enough to carry the 5mA it takes to trigger each relay.

Sixteen triac relays, AQH2223. You drive them with 5mA of current (5V and a dropping resistor), and that gives you a bunch of isolation between the microcontroller and the inverter that drives the EL. There are cheaper options but I had one on hand and could verify that it worked before I ordered them. About $2 each.

The back of the completed board. Functional, but not even close to pretty. So why does it look like that?

Well, there are a few options for construction:

The nicest option is to do a PC board. That’s a fair amount of work for a one-off project and I would have to deal with the turnaround time for creating the PCs and probably having to iterate to get the design to work. If I was doing something that required high-speed signals, it probably wouldn’t work with this sort of messiness, but we’re only talking a few KHz maximum here.

A second option would be to do a wire-wrapped board. I’ve done a few wire-wrapped designs and they work pretty well, but wire-wrapped sockets are *expensive* – about $2.50 each for a 16-pin socket, about 10x what a solder-tab socket costs.

So, that leaves point-to-point wiring. One technique that I use here to connect passive components (such as the resistors here) is to use a hand wire-wrap to wrap a piece of wire-wrap wire around the lead of the passive component. That isn’t sufficient on its own (wire wrap sockets work because the leads are square and the wrapping actually creates a gas-tight weld to the socket pin), but with a tiny bit of solder you get a very clean joint.

I’ve built 5-6 projects using this sort of construction, and they’ve worked well over the years.

 

The completed board in the project box. We have, from left to right:

  1. The EL wire inverter, potted in epoxy (it comes that way). It takes 12V in.
  2. An LM7805 linear regulator and filtering capacitors to give me 5V for the microcontroller.
  3. Above that, a small capacitor to provide some load to the inverter when all segments are off. I also connected a 3’ extra length of white EL wire to provide some load and to act as a pilot light. EL inverters don’t like operating without a load on them.
  4. The bank of 16 triac relays. The ribbon cable is wired in pairs – you have a switched wire from one of the triac relays, and then a wire that goes back to the inverter. The common wires are joined together and become the green wires that head back to the inverter.
  5. The empty socket for the microcontroller.

 

Here’s the completed display with the back spray painted white.

 

And a disturbing picture of the back. For each of the animation frames, I had to join 5 segments (two arms, 3 balls) together with the ribbon cable wire for that channel, and there was no nice way to do that (though there certainly could have been a nicer way than what I chose), so that’s the ugly yellow shrink wrap which is then sealed with hot glue.

 
The mess during the construction. The display was done in a different room.

Code

The code is written in C. I started out the project using CodeVisionAVR, a nice IDE that has a *very* useful wizard that will make the initial setup of the processor easier – code like this:

// Timer/Counter 0 initialization
// Clock source: System Clock
// Clock value: 7.813 kHz
// Mode: Normal top=FFh
// OC0 output: Disconnected
TCCR0=0x05;
TCNT0=0x7D;
OCR0=0x00;

So I can just choose 7.813 kHz as a refresh rate rather than figuring out that I need to set TCCR0 to 0x05. That’s a big timesaver.

The big disadvantage of CodeVisionAVR (beyond that you have to pay for it) is the way that they handle licensing. When they release a new version, they’ll send you a email with a link to the download site and the decryption key for that version, but they don’t keep additional versions around on their website, so if you don’t download the version and miss a later email, you are SOL – the decryption key doesn’t work on the version that’s available on the website. When my laptop cratered, this was pretty annoying – I couldn’t download the version that I bought from the website so I had to pay for an update even though I didn’t care about the updated features. And when you do install a version, you have to send them a code in email, and then they send you the key that unlocks the product so you can finally use it. Their turnaround is pretty fast but it doesn’t help when you want to use it *right then* – you need to wait overnight, typically. They do have great tech support, and if you’re dealing with unfamiliar AVR variants the code wizard is a big timesaver.

Anyway, while I was waiting for my new unlock code to show up, I tried the AVR studio/gcc combination, and decided to stay with it for this project. The language is slightly newer (I can write “for (int i)” instead of having to declare “I” earlier), though programming is a bit more time consuming with more UI actions (there may be a way to make this easier).


Juggling Snowman Update…

I’ve put in a fair amount of time working on the snowman and have made some good progress, though weekends are now a bust since last weekend and next weekend are full of ski instructor training.

Getting all the EL wire segments fabricated was a bit of a challenge – there are 48 of them, each with either the EL wire or the attached wire a specific length. I had some of the wire go bad on me (arc between the corona wire and the middle wire) so I had to re-order some of the stuff – I think its possible that it got over-driven by the inverter I’m using, so I switched over to using my tiny AA powered one to test out segments. I also make a long section of white that will be the pilot segment – the inverters don’t like running without a load.

Thanks to somebody with burning man experience, I found out a good way to finish off the wires. Before you put the heatshrink tubing over the wire, put some hot glue around it and then put the tubing on and shrink it while the glue is still hot. This fills in the area around the corona wires and gives you a generally more robust connection. I did the same at the far end, and the act of doing it seems to prevent arcs as well (hot glue is a better insulator than air.

Then it was a whole lot of hot-gluing. The circles and head go on first, followed by 8 arm segments on each side, followed by the 24 ball segments. Sometimes they are on top of other segments. The result looks like this:

 

Yes, it’s very, very messy, with all 48 circuits visible.

Yesterday I spent the evening running outside every 20 minutes to add another coat of spray paint (krylon plastic-specific paint). I suggest wearing a good respirator even if you are outside – I didn’t when I was younger and now get an intense headache if I don’t wear one.

Tonight I drilled holes and routed all of the wires through the the back and then fixed a few segments of wire that needed a bit more glue. I may add more glue to all of them to make it more secure. I tested all 48 segments and am happy to report that they all work. Here’s what it looks like now:

Next up will be to group the arm and ball segments together. Each frame has 5 segments – 2 for the arms and 3 for the balls in the air. When they are grouped together I will have 8 frames and 8 other segments. Then it will be off to do fabrication of the controller.

AFAIK I have all of the parts for that now. I had originally planned to go with raw triacs (and had even ordered some) but decided that since I was dealing with a fair amount of voltage I’d use something with isolation. I ended up using the same Panasonic AQH2223 SSR relays that I used in my last project – there are some cheaper options now but I had a couple extra of the AQH2223s in my parts box and I could verify that they will work for this application. They are designed to be driven from 5V so that will work out just fine.

I’ll also get started on the animation software. The offspring has giving me a few ideas for things to do.


Holiday Lights 2010 – Snowman

We got the lights up this weekend. Well, most of them – one of the main ones (see pictures here) happens to be on the gate on the north side of the house, and this year we are replacing a deck on that side our only access is through the gate. So… the 14’ high 12’ wide tree of lights is staying in storage this year. Sigh.

I am, however, in the midst of working on a new project – a juggling snowman.

I wanted to try something different and had been looking for a project to do with EL wire. EL wire is a little like a flourescent light – there is a high voltage alternative current that excites a phosphor that puts out light. The natural color of the el wire is an intense aqua color – the different colors come from the plastic jackets around the el wire, which means the colors are a slightly different intensity.

To create the drive current, you need something that can put out about 120VAC at 2KHz or so. That means you need an inverter to take the DC power and create the high-voltage to drive the wire.

The downside? Well, the most annoying downside is that there is a center conductor on the EL wire, and then two tiny wires (corona wires (no relationship to the beer)) that wrap around the core. Not just tiny, really really tiny. Take a piece of stranded 22 gauge wire, and separate the individuals strands. The corona wire is much tinier than each of the individual pieces. And I have 48 separate segments to attach to wire, which took me 8 hours or so. After that, each end gets a bit of hot glue and the some heatshrink tubing.

The design will attach to a 2’x4’ piece of 1/4” plexiglass I bought from TAP plastics. To figure out where everything will go, I took a piece of paper and did the layout of all the elements full-size onto it. The plexiglass goes on top of that, and then all the pieces of EL wire will get hot glued to the plexiglass.

It looks like this:

Here’s the main body lit up:

The aura around each of the wires is the light reflected off of the white paper that is underneath the plexiglass. I like the effect, so I’m going to paint the back of the plexiglass white.

 

And the hat, one arm, and one ball.

 

The round ball is red but renders orange on my Canon because of the spectrum of the light. The dots around the circles are where the hot glue holds the circles down. If you look closely at an enlarged version, you’ll see that there are 8 yellow arms coming down – those are the 8 positions of the arms on the right side. The quality is poor because it’s shot at ISO 12800 on my 7D.

Here are the vital stats:

  • 16 channels of animation.
  • 8 channels devoted to the snowman’s body.
  • 8 channels devoted to a 3-ball cascade juggling animation.
  • atmega8515 to control the animation (way overkill but I had it lying around).
  • Panasonic AQH2223 logic-level triacs for switching.
  • EL wire and drivers form elwirepros.com.

For software I’m going to adapt the code I wrote for the 15 channel big tree light display, though it will be simpler because I’m not implementing dimming.


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