From back in March 2022 at Burnsville Pro-Kart
Category Archives: Blog
Alpine iLX-F409 Halo9 9″ Touchscreen w/ Android Auto & Apple CarPlay Install in 1988 3rd Gen Camaro
Here’s a finished installation of Alpine’s iLX-F409 9″ Halo9 Multimedia Touchscreen Receiver w/ Bluetooth, SiriusXM, Hands-Free Kit, Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, HDMI in/out, and rear backup camera, in a 1988 Third Generation Camaro. The iLX-F409 is among a small handful of receivers that install in a single-din slot, have a permanent (non-mechanized) touchscreen, and support Android Auto.
For installation in a third generation Camaro, the following parts were acquired and installed:
– Alpine iLX-F409 Halo9 Multimedia Receiver w/ Sirius Tuner: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B…
– Crutchfield Single DIN mounting kit for 82-92 Camaro (already had this per previous Kenwood receiver installation)
– Parking Brake Bypass Module for Alpine: https://www.ebay.com/itm/265100742220
– Composite Backup Camera w/ Hidden Rear License Plate Mount: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B…
The background wallpaper on the receiver is customizable, and the 80s retro cyan and magenta Camaro background was designed in Photoshop by yours truly.
Wiring Details that I noted on my car (yours could be different, so proceed with caution):
Alpine System Colors === Camaro Wiring Harness Colors
REMO (Blue/White) === Power Control terminal on amplifier AND Blue on Parking Brake Bypass
REVERSE (Orange/White) === Light Green on Transmission (Reverse Switch on Gear Selector) and Red Wires on Backup Camera
P.ANT (Blue) === Red (Power Antenna)
PARKING BRAKE (Yellow/Blue) === YELLOW on Parking Brake Bypass
ACC (Red) === Yellow (12v IGN switch)
BATT (Yellow) === Orange (12v all the time)
GND (Black) === Black (Ground) AND Black (Ground) on Parking Brake Bypass
Green === Yellow Left Rear+
Green/Black === Dark Brown Left Rear-
White === Light Brown Left Front+
White/Black === Light Grey Left Front-
Gray/Black === Light Green Right Front-
Gray === Dark Green Right Front+
Violet/Black === Blue Rear Right-
Violet === Light Blue Rear Right+
=========
Parking Brake Bypass:
1 BLACK wire on Bypass to radios black wire (radio ground wire(-))
2 BLUE wire on Bypass to BLUE/WHITE STRIPE wire ( remote turn on (+)) on Alpine Radio
3 YELLOW wire on Bypass to YELLOW/BLUE wire [Parking Brake(-)] on Alpine Radio only
4 GREEN wire on Bypass NOT CONNECTED
=========
Automatic Transmission Switch:
Left/Driver side of transmission body, 2 prong plug, underneath shifter.
Dark Blue: +12v Ignition
Light Green: +12v when in reverse (connect to REVERSE on stereo and red wires of backup camera)
A 5 1/4″ floppy drive connected with USB?
Yup…that’s a 5 1/4″ Floppy Disk Drive, connected via USB to my computer. This board called a Greaseweazle reads the raw flux transitions from a floppy disk and recreates them as disk drive image files for modern computers. I just found disks full of music, sound files, and BASIC source code that I haven’t heard or seen since 1991, lost deep in formatted-over disks on an obsolete media that was impossible to read. Until now…If you have any IBM-PC formatted 5 1/4″ disks that might have some memories on them, I’m your guy.
Next, I need to work on reading old Apple ][ disks.
A 5
Tired of Daylight Saving Time? It could be worse…
Listening to an old WCCO radio broadcast of the Fridley tornadoes on May 6th, 1965, I found myself a little confused. Not at the fact that they used repurposed military radars in attempt to figure out where rain and tornadoes were coming and going and using movie cameras to animate the radar echoes, but rather at a time announcement by the WCCO broadcaster. “It’s almost 5 minutes past 9, Central Standard Time. 5 minutes past 10, in Wisconsin.” Say what again? Was Wisconsin in a different time zone in those days or what?
It so turns out, that a nationwide uniform time act was still a year away from being enacted, and states and even portions of states either observed or didn’t observe daylight saving time. At that time, Wisconsin observed daylight saving time, and Minnesota did not. If you were heading to a restaurant in Wisconsin for supper, you’d have to leave an hour early to make your reservation. It was also very possible, if you lived on the border, to be able to make two appointments at the same time, if the first one happened to be in Wisconsin.
The antics didn’t stop there. Just days after that WCCO radio broadcast, you had an even better excuse for missing a bus or being late for work in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The two cities couldn’t agree when to start daylight saving time. Minnesota state law designated May 23rd as the day to turn clocks forward, but St. Paul’s City Council decided to make the move on May 9th instead, in line with the majority of the nation. Minneapolis decided to go by state law and fell an hour behind St. Paul on the second Sunday in May.
The hilarity of the situation wasn’t missed on the Minneapolis Star newspaper, as they wrote “Sewage rolled into the Minneapolis/St. Paul Sanitary District plant from St. Paul on daylight time, but left on standard time. If you called a cop, he arrived to take care of your problem on standard time. But if you needed a fireman, he showed up on daylight time. Two clocks were set up at the Northwest Orient Airlines registration desk to aid employees in informing passengers about flight times. Warren Phillips of the United Airlines desk said, ‘We just ask people what time it shows on their watch and give them directions according to that.'”
Having perhaps forgotten that bit of history, the Minnesota legislature just this week is calling for the confusion to resume again…by breaking with federal standards, and once again considering staying with one time year-round. Instead of Minneapolis/St. Paul having 2 different times, it could be Duluth and Superior, Stillwater and Houlton, and LaCrescent and LaCrosse this time around.
If the absurdity of it all didn’t make you fall back in your chair, then rest assured at least your clocks will be. They’ll fall back, mostly on their own, tomorrow, November 7, 2021.
— Brian Klier, Rice County Skywarn
More reading:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUW3r5BlVrU&t=428s (1965 Twin Cities Tornado Outbreak [WCCO AM 830 Coverage] Pt. 2)
Highway 60 drive from Wabasha to Zumbro Falls and beyond in an ’88 Chevy Camaro
One of my favorite Fall drives in Minnesota. Running the gauntlet on State Highway 60 from Wabasha to Zumbro Falls and beyond with very little traffic! Enjoy!
New Bruce Smith Field Scoreboard
This is going to be so cool! I’ll have a training session tomorrow on this, and then I’ll be running this system live for the first football game of the year. Thanks to the Faribault Booster Club and all its sponsors.
Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display Technical Overview
For those of you that REALLY want to know the inner details behind my Vintage Light Display project, I made a technical overview video. You might be sorry you asked.
Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display Clock
There was a reason that CBS and other television networks used these type of displays on game shows when they had bright studio lights to contend with. The light is piercing from these!
Tonight, I got 22 wires soldered on 22 pins to mate with a Molex connector on the back of each display. Both digits are now directly connected up to the relay board. The software I developed can display an arbitrary 2-digit number, and then count up or down from that number until it reaches 00 or 99.
This has been a cool project! I’ll probably try to make a more detailed video in the future on the parts I selected and how all this works together.
Check out how this display worked on “Classic Concentration” hosted by Alex Trebek in the late 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1izUPd87wmw
Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display
Logic and software I wrote is all good! The correct plug didn’t come for the displays so I’ll have to hook the rest up later, but this is super cool!
A relic and mainstay of all classic 80s gameshows…
Initial Test of a Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display (Light Bulb Matrix), common to television game shows of the 1970s-1990s.
This is one of two Display Systems 19S-8 eggcrate displays that I purchased from Surplus Sales of Nebraska. I plan to integrate both into a working count up/count down timer powered by a ESP8266 microcontroller module and a couple of relay boards.
This eggcrate display uses a common 28 volt DC power source on one pin. Then, depending on which pin the ground is connected, will light each of one possible digit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 and $. It’s also possible to display strange characters by connecting multiple grounds between pins.
I plan to use a single 150 watt 12 volt DC power supply to power dual boost controllers that will output the needed 28 volts. The 12 volts is still needed for the relay boards. The ESP8266 module will be connected to a 5 volt DC output from the relay board.
In both displays, I only needed to replace one lamp upon receiving them. The lamp is a common 1820 mini-bayonet style incandescent.
It’s December 7th.
It was a sobering experience for Bethany and I to be on a ship in Pearl Harbor in February of 2013, but absolutely nothing compared to what people experienced here on today’s date in 1941. 9 quarts of oil still float to the water’s surface from the USS Arizona EACH DAY as a permanent reminder of the sacrifices made here 79 years ago. Bullet holes etched in the hangar glass on Ford Island are still visible today, telltale marks of the strafing from the Japanese Zeros. Let’s not forget the sacrifices military personnel and civilians made through World War II to lead our country and our allies to victory, allowing us all to continue to live the freedom we all take for granted from time to time.
2020..a year to be thankful for
2020 was a year to be thankful for.
“Oh really?” you might ask. What was possibly so good about this horrible, pandemic year?
I believe that 2020 taught us that the simple bonds are the most important. Bonds between one and their family, between one and their friends, and between one and their spirit. Helping one another out, enjoying simple times together when able.
It was the freedom, rather, “society’s permission” to explore a little out of our comfort zones. To pivot around in our lives which many of us may have been guilty of being complacent in. Each one of us found something new about ourselves to help build us into that person we want to become.
Grace. We know that not all of us have had a smooth go at it. And given these unique times, we’ve found the strength to be more flexible with our fellow man.
On a personal note, I can say that I am thankful for a short recovery from my injury back in June. It is a weakness of mine to not ask for help when sometimes I need it, and to those that offered that help, whether through task or encouragement, I am thankful for you.
2020. This year, we have more to be thankful for than ever.
Return the shopping cart…
The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.
To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore, the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart. No one will find you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart. You gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.
A person who is unable to do this is an example of someone who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. It is an excellent indicator of an individual’s ethics and moral philosophy.
Be the person who, in your life, does things because they are the right thing to do.
— Unknown Author
The First Computer Bug
The First Computer Bug…
In 1945, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator. On the 9th of September, 1945, when the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F. The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. The entry reads: “First actual case of bug being found.”
Grace Murray Hopper, who lived from 1906-1992, found the first computer bug while working in a temporary World War I building at Harvard University on the Mark II computer where a moth had been beaten to death in the jaws of a relay. She glued it into the logbook of the computer and thereafter when the machine stops (frequently) they say that they are “debugging” the computer.
The very first bug still exists in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. The word bug and the concept of debugging had been used previously, perhaps by Edison, but this was probably the first verification that the concept applied to computers.
Searles MX in Searles, MN from back in June of 2008
In 2008, there was a natural terrain motocross track in Searles, MN near New Ulm. It was open for a few years and was always a good time.
Google’s Role in Social Distancing
I thought this was interesting! Google is taking anonymized, aggregate data from Google Maps for public health officials to understand responses to social distancing guidance related to COVID-19.
Here is the data I pulled for the state of Minnesota. It looks like in general, 38% less people are travelling to work, 35% less people are travelling to grocery stores and pharmacies, and 58% less people are travelling to restaurants, cafes, and shopping centers. Rice County seems to be doing slightly worse at sheltering-in-place compared to the average in Minnesota, except in the travelling to work and parks categories.
Source: COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports (https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility)
The more you know!
The more you know!
Does a USB drive get heavier as you store more files on it?
Believe it or not, they get lighter. USB drives use Flash memory, which means the the ones and zeros of your data are stored on transistors. When you save data, a binary zero is set by charging the float gate of the transistor, and a binary one is set by removing the charge. To charge it, we add electrons, and the mass of each electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000091 grams. This means that an empty USB drive (which mostly holds zeros) weighs more than a full USB drive (which has ones and zeros). Add data, reduce the weight. However, you would need to weigh more USB drives than exist on the planet together at once before the difference in weight became easily measurable.
Believe it or not, they get lighter. USB drives use Flash memory, which means the the ones and zeros of your data are stored on transistors. When you save data, a binary zero is set by charging the float gate of the transistor, and a binary one is set by removing the charge. To charge it, we add electrons, and the mass of each electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000091 grams. This means that an empty USB drive (which mostly holds zeros) weighs more than a full USB drive (which has ones and zeros). Add data, reduce the weight. However, you would need to weigh more USB drives than exist on the planet together at once before the difference in weight became easily measurable.
(source: Dr. Peter Bentley, sciencefocus.com — https://www.sciencefocus.com/…/does-a-usb-drive-get…/…)
Not All is Doom and Gloom with COVID
All joking aside for once, if there’s one thing I can say about all this Coronavirus “craziness”, “pandemic”, “panic”, “crisis”, “precaution”, “stupidity” (pick the adjective you most relate to), it is this: People are forced to think out of the box for solutions to problems they never thought they’d encounter, and this is NOT A BAD THING! It shakes up the status quo and forces people out of their comfort zone.
People will have to educate themselves on using technology to get work done, instead of forcing mostly unnecessary (and potentially hazardous right now) in-person meetings.
Businesses owners will have to remain agile and adapt their business models on the fly. Especially now, as bars and restaurants are being forced to close. They have to. Otherwise they have no choice to close and layoff all their workers.
Yes, the stock markets are down. If you are on a long-term plan to retirement, it’s going to recover no problem. This is an opportunity, not a crisis. Make the best of the hand you’re dealt now!
Above all, don’t sweat the small stuff. So, you may need to use a fabric cloth instead of a paper towel. So you may have to meet a new neighbor to borrow a couple of eggs. The world survived many centuries without all the modern conveniences we take for granted now. Use it as a way to learn history, and use it as a way to learn something new.
Nearly nobody has framed this event as a positive one. Yet, with a slight change of mind, there can and will be good things that will come out of this that will help us, and will help the country grow stronger. Get ready for a wild ride guys! This is no doubt a story people will be able to tell their grandkids about. 
