Kalahari/Kgalagadi 2012

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With all my work pretty much on track, I took two weeks off to get out a bit. First a few days back in the Cape catching up with some friends, then a bus trip later to spend some time with my girlfriend in the Northern Cape, where I had the opportunity to travel 1.6km below ground. Certainly the lowest altitude I’ve ever been at, or expect to ever reach.

We then joined up with my parents, and later the rest of my gesin and some other family for a seven day trip to what is currently known as the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park, previously known as the Kalahari Gemsbok Park.

S.Africa – Botswana

The stage opens at an odd looking building that is split right down the middle (including the parking lot outside) to indicate the South Africa/Botswana border. Large sections of the park reside on both sides of the border, and it was with the formation of the Transfrontier park that a border post was established here allowing one to travel extensively in the park.

Our trip consisted of a night in TweeRiveren, three nights camping at Nossob and two nights in the lovely (unfenced) Kalahari Tented camp. Most days consisted of a game drive or two, including trips between the camps. Although the roads are bearable, certain sections have fairly bad corrugations. Made me thankful we were in a rental and not my own car.

Gemsbok

Although there are no vehicle restrictions in the park (a small fiat and Toyota Tazz were spotted deep into the park) and roads are passable, a more comfortable ride would be had in a vehicle more suited to off-road driving. The major advantage with these vehicles is the added height, enabling one to see over the bushes and grass that line most of the roads.

The most prolific species we saw was probably the Springbok, followed closely by Gemsbok and Wildebeest. They are in no short supply. Ostriches, Kudu, Eland, Hartebees and Giraffe are also to be seen, depending on where one travels.

Giraffe

The park also plays host to Lion, Leopards and Cheetah, but there is no guarantee of seeing any of these. Birds however! Birds are everywhere. Every drive we made included multiple sightings of Kori Bustards, Secretary Birds and Pale Chanting Gosshawks (abbreviated to PCGs). Along with the PCGs are a wide array of other raptors. We saw several species of Eagles, Owls and miscellaneous Hawks and a Vulture or two.

Martial Eagle – Bataleur – Verreaux’s (Giant) Eagle Owl with Hornbill prey in claws

We were there in the middle of July. Some snow storms down south (the N1 outside Beaufort West was closed) led to a few extremely cold nights. Most nights went negative, making it very difficult to get up some mornings. I believe -5 deg C was the lowest temperature we measured when on a drive. That being said we also had some amazing weather. First few days were slightly cool, but our last few saw most people breaking out the shorts as temperatures hit close to 30 deg C.

Pale Chanting Goshawks – Sparrowhawk? – Glossy Starlings attacking our potjie leftovers

Our most exciting aspect was probably our multiple Cheetah sightings. On our trip from TweeRivieren to Nossob we stopped alongside a group of cars to view a group of several Cheetah off in the distance, barely visible without binoculars. The next day while trying to make out a leopard in a tree (I don’t count this as a proper sighting), five cheetah (we assume the same ones) made there way out to a waterhole.

First Cheetah Chase

The exciting part came the next day when we witnessed them on a short-lived hunt on a herd of Springbok, which was unfortunately unsuccessful. Later that evening they tried again at waterhole by Nossob, also unsuccessful. It was fascinating to view a herd of Wildebeest, who were nearby band together and chase off the group of Cheetah (now down to four members). Later that night they were spotted just in front of us on a night drive.

Cheetah being chased off by Wildebeest herd

We saw, what we think was them, once more on our last day heading out shortly after they had finished a meal on a baby Eland which we found several hundred metres from them.

Leopard that we saw

Our camping at Nossob was quite pleasant. Electricity is turned off between 22:00 and 06:00 at night, and the use of communal ablutions means you’re not always guaranteed a hot shower, I had one or two showers which were just bearable.

Ground Squirrels are quite common, especially at Nossob

Kalahari Tented is absolutely beautiful, with individual building/tent combos situated 50-100m apart from each other overlooking the river bed and a water hole. This unfenced camp can make one quite nervous, especially at night when doing a quick dash from one hut to the next.

Springbok – Wildebeest

We had an amazing time there, and were very fortunate to see all we did, even if we managed to complete miss all the lion. We saw enough Lion spoor to keep a tracker busy for days though. So they are there :) Our night drive from Nossob was very pleasant, saw a Brown Hyena, several owl, the Cheetah and several other interesting animals which are more readily viewed at night. The drive was made enjoyable by our knowledgeable and friendly guide Anna, who wasn’t disheartened when she mentioned how one never sees Caracal or Cape Foxes during the day, only for us to tell her how we’d seen both species the previous day.

Southern White-Faced Owl

One is free to drive through the park between sunrise and sunset (07:30-18:00 while we were there) and each camp has several morning,day and night rides available. The experience of lying in your tent, in the freezing cold and hearing Lion’s roar (what sounds like right outside) in the dead silence of night is something incredible, and a sure occurrence, especially at Nossob.

On a side note, we hired a VW Kombi T5 tdi. I’m not sure which specific engine it had, but I’m quite sure I stalled less times while learning to drive than I did driving that vehicle for 7 days. I’m not sure what exactly made it give up so easily, but as soon as the revs dropped below 900, the engine would just die. This happened quite often on the dusty roads when slowing down to look at something, not being able to hear the engine over the noise from the corrugations. Besides that it was a very comfortable, reliable vehicle and the high seating position lends itself for game viewing.

Eastern Cape Rally Championship 2012 Round 2

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Last weekend I took a drive out to the tiny town of Loerie, EC to go checkout the 2nd round of the EC Rally champs organised by the Algoa Rally Club. The event took place just two short weeks before the popular national VW Rally on 13-14 July 2012.

The Parc Ferme for the day was at JC’s Pub in Loerie, which hosted the service park as well. It was an early morning start of 8AM, with the intention of finishing off with plenty of time for everyone to make it back to PE for the rugby.

The rally had a smallish turnout of 10 vehicles, but some tough routes lead to the retirement of 4 of the vehicles by the end of the 10th stage.

The first 2 stages were tar stages run on the van Stadens pass. These were run twice each before moving onto the 3 dirt stages on the farm roads around Loerie, which were also run twice. I was fortunate enough to grab a ride with one of the organiser to different points on the stages to get some photos.

Once again I unfortunately don’t have the final results, but I’ve been told there are plans to get the club’s website back up to date. Although I didn’t get many great shots, it was still a nice day, and the lack of rain during the event was a nice change from the previous rallies I’ve attended. That being said there was still a fair amount of standing water from the previous weeks rains, which surely had an impact on the retirements.

I’m a bit sad that I’m not going to be around for the VW Rally in two weeks time, as this draws a far larger field, including some of the Polos and Runxs that compete on a national level. The rally will also be included as rounds 3 and 4 of the EC championship. More info on the VW Rally 2012 can be found here.

You can see a full gallery of the photos here.

Velvet Sky Refund

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At the beginning of February I booked two very cheap tickets home to Cape Town for the weekend of the Pick n Pay Cape Argus Cycle Tour which I was set to ride. I happened to book them with Velvet Sky. I hadn’t previously flown with them, but people I had spoken said they were as good as the other low-cost airlines, and the tickets were about half the cost of the next best offer.

At the end of February newspaper reports started coming out about Velvet Sky being in a bit of trouble. Some flights were being cancelled, but then they seemed to get going again, before halting flights once more. Apparently they’ve been having a bit of financial difficulties, but they kept on assuring passengers that they’d be up and running soon. So it wasn’t till the week preceding the Argus that I get an e-mail from Velvet Sky stating that my flights have been cancelled.

They attached forms where you could apply for refunds, and I immediately filled them in and sent them back to Velvet Sky. I got tickets with another carrier and enjoyed my weekend. A few weeks later I hadn’t heard anything from Velvet Sky. So I sent them an email as they had indicated that one could expect a refund within the next month. The response I got stated that all there bank accounts were frozen, and that as soon as the court proceedings they were busy with were completed, payouts would commence. Another month later still no news.

Some time in April, Computicket refunded several million Rands worth of tickets to passengers whose flights were cancelled and had booked their flights through Computicket. I had unfortunately bought my ticket direct from Velvet Sky. But there was hope.

I had read in a few newspaper articles where reporters suggested attempting a “Chargeback” process on the transaction. I’m not fully sure what it’s all about, but it boils down to that all transactions made with a credit card have the ability to be reversed if one can prove that you did not receive the product/service that you paid for. It has something to do with the new Consumer Protection Act.

I’m not going to bore you with all the details of my dealings with Absa trying to get this right, I’m just going to post the necessary data. This is the statement I got from Absa, and apparently all the banks are sticking with it.

We refer to the recent news broadcasts and speculation pertaining to Velvet Sky.

Local banks have raised their concerns regarding cardholder rights pertaining to chargebacks. Internal discussions were held and Nedbank have come to the following conclusion: Velvet sky is still in operation, as no liquidation proceedings have taken place at this stage. Should the issuers feel the need to raise chargebacks for services not rendered they will be required to supply all of the following documentation to validate the chargebacks raised.

The documentation must consist of the following:

•             A cardholder letter.

•             Proof that the cardholder attempted to obtain a refund from the merchant but failed (a reference number for the call or an email from Velvet Sky confirming a request for refund submitted).

•             Ticket or booking confirmation of the scheduled flight that supposedly did not take place.

Please take note of the following :

•             Chargebacks may only be raised after the expected date of service has lapsed.

•             Return flights: only a partial amount will be accepted for the leg of the flight which did not take place.

If all of the above conditions have not been met, Nedbank will re-present the chargeback as invalid supporting documentation supplied.  Each case will be reviewed to validate whether it meets all of the above requirements.

I was slightly worried because I didn’t have any proof that Velvet Sky actually received my specific forms. I assumed they did, because I e-mailed them, but they did not reply or give any reference numbers. So I decided to just give them everything I had.

I created a folder dedicated to this process. I wrote out a full letter explaining when I purchased the cards, when I received cancellation emails, when I applied for refunds, everything I had that involved communication with them I listed. I also attached pdfs of every e-mail I sent them and every form I had filled in. I also mentioned occasions when I had phoned Velvet Sky.

Last week Friday after several backwards and forwards emails, I had compiled all this data and sent it in to disputes@absa.coo.za (the official e-mail for card disputes). Today (4 working days later) I got an e-mail from Absa saying that I had been refunded the full amount.

They do note however that

the merchant bank has 60 days (local merchant) and 45 days (international merchant) to respond.

If the merchant bank presents the transaction and provides us with the necessary documents, your account will be debited with the amount concerned. In event of the above, we will let you know and provide you with the documents concerned.

Velvet Sky didn’t give me the service, and haven’t paid me a refund, so I don’t see how this will happen.

So in the end I got my money back :) I was adequately satisfied with the e-mail communication with Absa, and will admit that I was quite surprised that I got my chargeback so soon after applying for it. Note that you must apply for an Absa charge back within 120 days of the failed service. Other banks may have shorter or longer periods.

An Achieveing Weekend

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Last year was the first time I really got some experience in embedded programming. I’ve subscribed to Hack a Day‘s RSS feeds for the past few years, so a source of ideas and motivation is never lacking. I bought an Arduino to play with a few years ago, but obviously I wanted to get to a point where I didn’t need an Arduino for each project I work on.

Last year I took an Electronic Design course (most frustrating and enjoyable subject I’ve ever taken) in which we were introduced to the Renesas family of microcontrollers. Specifically we used an R8C mounted on a breakout board for ease of use. Through the course we got to play with LCD screens, Serial and I2C communication, communicating with motor drivers and some other useful bits and pieces. We were also taught about registers, interrupts and some other important aspects of design.

The Renesas would then have been the obvious place to start on my own projects, but the chips need a Renesas specific programmer that costs upwards of R1000, so I never took it any further. However, back in 2010 of Hack a Day did a great 4 part tutorial in getting up and running with the Atmel AVR range of microprocessors which I had bookmarked with the intention of one day delving into. The benefit of these is that an ordinary Arduino can be used to program them.

Over the past year or two I’ve also ended up picking up a couple odds and ends which have just been lying around since their acquisition, one of which was a Sure Electronics 24×16 LCD grid. So end of last year I finally get round to ordering some proto board, a few sockets and microcontrollers.

Now several months later I’ve finally got round to putting some stuff together. Conway’s Game of Life has always interested me, with it’s simple rules, it’s fairly straightforward to program. A grid of LEDs seemed like the perfect place to give it a run.

I visited quite a few websites in my search to get some code for this display. The display runs on an HT1632C driver, and somewhere along the line I came across a library to make it work, and some accompanying Arduino code. The library has the comment

Updated for the HT1632C by Nick H

in it, and the Arduino code

By Joel Simon, Based off LED Pong Clock by Nick Hall

I’ll update with links as soon as I figure out where exactly I sourced them. After getting it running nicely on the Arduino I set about adapting the code to run from one of my Atmega168PA microcontrollers that I’d required.

This first required a bunch of work getting avrdude and winavr up and running, all thanks to scszy’s tutorial and references. But after that it was fairly straightforward. I started off by programming my Conway’s game of life, which after a while I got running quite nicely. At the moment there is an option to manually specify a starting grid in code, but I just let it run by randomly generating a field and running from there.

After that was going I hooked up a MCP9701T-E/LT thermistor to an analogue input. The specs aren’t great, and nor is the performance, but I was at least slightly chuffed with my soldering of this SMD component onto my proto-board. I was quite surprised to see how quickly and how varied the readings from this unit are. I still need to get a proper thermometer to do some type of calibrating, but readings change several times a second one and half degrees up and down. This might be due more to voltage supply, but I haven’t investigated much.

I then proceeded with a push button so I can have a bit of input. My intention is to eventually have this with four different screens to choose from. The first one with the time and temperature. I want to see how accurately I can work off one of the built in clocks, as the microcontroller doesn’t have an RTC. I’ve also got a GPS unit lying around which I want to try to connect so as to be able to update the time every now and then.

The second menu will display the day and date. I have a stationary bike and a Polar heart rate monitor unit that I want to give a try as well. I’ll grab a reed switch and a magnet to put on the back wheel of my bike as a second speedometer and try get my RMCM01 Polar OEM which is a SparkFun product (Sparkfun apparently no longer sell the RMCM01 individually, but it can be bought ready to go) I sourced from Netram. These will displayed when active on the third menu. And the fourth menu is my Conway’s Game of Life. And I want to build some kind of housing for it, even if it’s just a nice perspex front.

I’ve done a mockup so far which can be seen in the video below:

I’ll do a new post with source and schematics at a later stage once I have the rest of the thing setup and working nicely. I just posted this now because I haven’t written anything in a while and I felt like it.

I’ve also reaffirmed my knowledge that I get far more work done at night, as most of this was accomplished between 23:00 and 04:00 on Friday and Saturday. I think there’re just less distractions.