Medallion, Tour de Stellenbosch

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Yesterday I took to the road once again, riding a ride I’ve probably ridden more times than I have the Argus, the Mushroom ride, or as it’s more officially known the Medallion Tour de Stellenbosch . I’ve also just realised that blogging from my phone isn’t as eaay as I’d hoped, thus the hanging link.

In any case, I always enjoy the ride, and yesterday was great besides one or two concerns. Firstly being the start time. The 100km started at 6.30, which is great. Then the short route started at 8, also fine. But only starting the medium (62km) ride at 8:30 is ridiculous. I, being unseeded, ended up only starting at 9, as its getting warm, and, slightly dishearteningly, as a large proportion of the long riders are returning.

The other issue being that as we arrive to start, we’re told our ride is being cut short by 5kms due to roadworks. How difficult would it have been to just add a small loop around there to keep the distance up. The roads outside of Stellenbosch wind and crisscross so often, they could easily have got around the roadworks.

I won’t even go into what the rides cost these days compared to a couple years back. I’m just glad i pre-entered and didn’t have to pay the effective R195 late entry fee.

This was also the first race that I rode without my transponder :) so it wasn’t even timed after all that.

/me

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note: the actual title of this article is “/me ‘greater than symbol’/3 Logitech” but it appears WP sees this as some kind of html code, so…

I’ve always been a fan of Logitech products. They make good, hardy and elegant/pretty looking hardware. I’ve had my current wireless mouse/keyboard set for the past 5 years without any problems. And so it was with great excitement that I purchased a second hand set of Logitech 2.1 speakers about a year ago. They were a great set of speakers, and a massive upgrade from old cheap standard “comes with the PC” speakers I had been experiencing the last 10 years.

Suffice to say, I never knew what I was missing in terms of sound until I had listened to music through these speakers, and these are fairly entry level speakers from Logitech. In any case, it made beautiful music and pumped a previously unheard amount of bass out. That was until about three days ago when I got back from class turned on my music and nothing happened. I check all the plugs and connections in my PC and I notice that the power light is off, even though it should be on.

So I follow the wires back to the sub. A beautifully sealed wooden box. I unscrew all the screws I can find which results in a small opening on the back of the case in which I can look in. I do a quick multimeter test and it appears as though the transformer isn’t putting out any current. That’s ok, but I can’t get to the transformer, and can’t get any of the electronics out to test components. I look in and can see that all the planks have been glued together, to give a lovely, no nails, no fuss (for assembly) product.

My only option really is to try split the case down one of the joins. I manage this down the one side, damaging the fascia quite noticeably, But find to do one of the other sides is going to be virtually impossible. 10min worth of trying has me splitting the wood in places it wasn’t supposed to. So I went and bought myself a hacksaw :D

A lot of sawing and dust later and I find myself with a plank of wood with a fairly large transformer attached to it. I still can’t take most of the electronics out as the wires attached to the speaker are too short and are soldered on every where. Pull out the soldering iron, which decides it no longer wants to work, take it apart and decided I need a soldering iron to fix it. To fix my soldering iron in any case.

So that’s where I am at the moment. Sitting with a broken speaker set, broken soldering iron, and my Headphones need some soldering work themselves. But what am I to do…

I miss music in my room.

Audi – Built in FM Transmitter

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Instead of replacing the head unit of my car I decided to rather just get an FM Transmitter. I ended up with a cheap one from ebay, one that looks like this. It has a USB port to charge things from and a 3.5mm male audio jack to plug into MP3 players, cellphones etc. The only problem, is that the cigarette lighter in my car is located just infront of the gear lever, this gets in the way and the wires there annoy me.

This got me itnerested in building it into the car. I eventually decided to make use of one of the “button” covers in the row of buttons. I have two blanks, so went about mutilating it to achieve my goal. It wasn’t as easy as I had hoped, the blank has a hole lot of junk on the back, but I sawed and ground it off to be left with just the right amount of space to mount a button, a female 3.5mm audio jack and an indicator LED.

Original Blank on the right, and my modified one on the left, hot glue and all

I trimmed the power lines going to my radio just behind it, and added two connectors so I could easily plug in and remove the fm transmitter if need be. It’s more convenient and also a bit safer/neater than soldered wires all over the place.

I added two wires with clips from the radio’s wiring harness for power.

One unfortunate thing, is the way I put everything together, it required me to push the FM transmitter through the hole of cover. This was problematic as it was too large. In the end I discarded majority of the case, and wound some insulation tape around the circuitry just to protect it. Not what I had wanted, and not particularly neat, but it works.

Neatly in place above the radio. USB, LED (off), 3.5mm audio plug and power button visible

Hooked it all up and it’s up and running. The FM transmitter is a cheap one, not that great quality and only transmits on 2 set frequencies, but it does the job. I have found however that the 5V it supplies for USB isn’t that great. My GPS doesn’t seem to like charging from it, although my cellphone is fine. I think the current may be rather limited, so may look into repacing that part of circuitry at some stage.

With a GPS plugged in to charge and the 3.5mm audio plug in as well. LED On