1202 ALARM

"We're the Sweeney son and we haven't had our dinner." (Image by Bill Walsh)

Short version... Just over 2 years ago I purchased a wood-burning stove (actually multi-fuel) at a good price and we had it installed as a dry stove (i.e. no hot water). The stove actually had a back boiler, but at the time we couldn't afford the plumbing work and were quite happy to use it as a living-room fire. Now this was no pot-belly job. If you know me, you know that about once every 5 years I take the head staggers and this was a classic version (the last one was buying the MR2 sight-unseen and bringing it back from England). This stove is huge. It weighs 240kg (that's a quarter ton in old currency) and at full tilt can reach 500 degrees C inside and generate 21kW of heat, enough to run at least 10 radiators. So 2 years passed and we had saved money from using less oil (a lot less) and thought we'd get it plumbed-in. This cost the raw part of £2k and is a beautiful piece of work, all done in copper pipe. So the plumber came to commission the whole thing and water sta...

I bought a USB-to-Serial converter a while back to play with that had the large standard USB plug (rather than a socket). These modules have a CP2102 chip on board which uses the 3.3V standard so the only issue I had with it was a level change problem from 3.3V to the 5V I'm using with my 16-series PICs. I turned up a very neat bi-directional solution using just one MOSFET and 2 resistors for each channel (see above). Even though the transistors are surface mount(i.e. tiny) this was easy enough to build and the USB converter now works a treat, so much so that I bought another one with a micro USB socket which I think would be more use mounted into an actual project. Not only that, but early indications seem to show that this version doesn't have a problem with the voltage level shift and is working quite contentedly with the 5V PIC circuits. I've been communicating with these units using the Gambas2 programming language under Linux. Gambas2 is similar to Visual Basic al...

I got around to taking the screen out of one of the LCD units to see what could be done with it. For a start the actual screen is 6.2" (according to the serial number and a ruler) not 7" as on the manufacturer's website, but that's no bad thing. It turns out a 6.2" screen is just the right size to fit in a double-DIN car radio slot, which prompts all sorts of ideas. It also turned out that there were 2 circuit boards, a big one with an audio amplifier and some power supply circuitry and a small one for the actual screen. Essentially the screen will operate with just a 4-wire connection (9 volt, GND, Video and Video GND). There is another connector for options (screen mode, colour and brightness), but with nothing connected to this the monitor defaults to perfectly use-able settings. In the photo I have it hooked to a PC via a VGA-to-Video adaptor. The computer is running Tiny Core Linux (my new favourite distro) in 640 x 480 mode (I think). It will go down to 320...

This started life as a plug-in countdown timer I got in a clearance sale at CPC. After taking it apart and removing the 13-amp plug and socket parts I was left with a the guts of an immersion heater timer that can be set between 5 and 50 minutes in 5-minute steps . The relay was rated for 20A at 240V so it could certainly handle the heater current, so I set about blanking off the hole where the socket was and then glued the back of the timer to a standard blanking plate with Araldite. I drilled a hole through the middle of the blanking plate, added a 3-way terminal block and voilá, an immersion timer for less than £5 to compliment my £5 central heating timer. Now there is no danger of the immersion heater being left on for more than 50 minutes and if you need hot water for washing dishes that's just one press.

When I re-fitted the PAS pump it was deceased, kaputt, had gone to the great pump house in the sky. I got another one on eBay for £145 delivered, fitted it and all was well. Power steering for the first time in 2 months, which felt weird. The whole job cost about £250, a lot less than the £1000-plus I had heard people were paying Skoda for the same work. The day after that the engine started acting-up, losing power under load once you were up to 30mph or so. A bit of bodging and I narrowed this down to the EGR valve, which has been temporarily put out of action until I get time to clean it out this weekend. Off to MOT and it failed on... a leaky rear shock absorber! With all the other things I'd forgotten to check them. Critical mistake becuase with a clean and rub down it might have passed as the leak isn't too bad yet, more of a smear. Anyway I got a second-hand shock for £10 up at Traynor's in Malusk so that's Saturday taken care of. Good thing is I have an excuse to...

Power steering hydraulic fluid leaking out of the end of the steering rack (with the gaiter off showing track rod joint) Power steering pump back in place.