The McKenzie’s Blog…

I’ve been searching the net for ages looking for the wiring diagram of the 12VDC power cable for my Respironics REMstar Plus CPAP machine.

Not having any luck at all on the net finding the information I needed to build a cable, I’ve finally broken down and paid £26.00 (including shipping) to buy one.  I’ve wanted a DC cable mostly so that I could a) go camping without the need to have a tent pitch that was powered (extra cost), and b) be able to power my CPAP should we have a prolonged power outage at home (fairly low risk of this, but a risk none the less).

Click on the image below to see the full sized one.  This is a page from the manual that came with my cable.

Basically, should someone have posted something like:

To make your own Respironics Shielded DC Cord, Part number 1001956, you will need the following:

• 1 x 2.1mm (5.5mm outside) X 15mm Coaxial DC plug
  Such as: Maplin’s Part number HH61R (www.maplin.co.uk)
• 2-3m of suitable wire for a max of 7amp DC (depending on your CPAP model)
• 2-4 Clip on Ferrite suppressors, such as Maplin’s part N89AB
• 1 x 12VDC cigarette plug, suitable for upto 7amp DC

The construction of a DIY Respironics CPAP DC Cable, model number 1001956 is quite simple.  Wire up the cigarette plug to the DC plug that will go to the CPAP, be sure to wire the tip of the cigarette plug (Positive 12V, I suggest a multi-meter to confirm this in your car or battery pack you intend to use) to the centre connector of the 2.1mm DC plug.  Wire the negative to the other remaining connections. 

At both ends of the cable, as close as possible to each of the plugs, leave not much more then 3-4cm of cable “exposed” put a couple of the clip on ferrite RF suppressors.  These are quite important as they will ensure the dc is free of RF (Radio Frequency) or Electromagnetic noise.  These, should they get into the machine, could cause damage.  You can likely get away without them, but frankly for the extra £5 it will cost for these it’s worth saving your £500+ CPAP.

That’s all there is to it.  I really hope people find this useful, for some reason there has been a black hole of info about these cables, and I’m not sure why.

**DISCLAIMER** This information has been provided purely for theoretical and personal information.  I will not, nor can not, be held responsible if you are not competent enough to build this simple cable and end up damaging or destroying your CPAP.  I’m pretty sure in the wonderful lawsuit happy world we  live in it’s also most likely a violation of your warranty to attach a home made DC cable to your CPAP machine.  You have been warned, don’t come crying to me if you blow something up, also, don’t ask me to make one for you.  These are beyond simple to make.

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I’m going to try and keep a log of my various walks and travels, as recorded by the GPS in my phone.

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Click for today’s photos - 2008-06-15 - Father’s Day  - Photos

Today is Father’s Day.  First, we went to Ladybirds Pre-School for the Father’s Day Fete.  There were loads of things for the kids to do there.  They had a small bouncy castle, face painting (you’ll see in the pics), draws and prizes and several Tombola’s including a couple for adults where you can win booze.  I got a bottle of wine.  The kids won several little toys and a drink.

After the Fete, we headed to Cambridge to the Town and Country show on Parker’s Piece.  We didn’t even know this was on, one of our friends mentioned it to us. There aren’t a load of pics of the various things going on there.. we should have taken more pics of the event.

There are a bunch of pics of the kids playing on some of the rides.

Click for today’s photos - 2008-06-15 - Father’s Day  - Photos

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Why? Why not. I was wondering how else I could make use of Twitter for other things I thought “How could I use twitter with my Asterisk PABX?” Doing some Google searching showed I wasn’t the first to think of this (as if that would have happened). There are a few people doing various things with asterisk and twitter.

I didn’t really like much of what I found, or found it wasn’t really what I wanted to do with it .. so I decided to use some of that info and came up with something of my own.

The short story is this. When someone calls my Canadian number, my US Toll-Free number any number that ultimately rings the group of phones in the house, I will now get a direct message in Twitter from a special account I setup for this purpose, which also sends a SMS to my phone (device notifications in twitter).

Read more by clicking below… Be warned! Thar be scripts and technical stuff in them thar parts

(more…)

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While looking for some resources on the net to re-learn how to tie knots (and there are no shortage of these BTW), I came across this one.  It’s “animated” with a series of still pics, and it’s very well done.  There are some sites that show guys tying the knots but in some cases their hands can get in the block the process from being seen.

Grog’s Climbing Knots Index

Check it out..

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When I went for my walk tonight I took the camera along. The walk was a short one due to the weather turning bad. You can see the route I walked by CLICKING HERE.

The pics I took have been uploaded to Flickr - CLICK HERE, go and have a look. I’ve geocoded just about all of the ones I uploaded. If you don’t know what means, simply put each photo has been associated to a point on a map.

I’ve also put a some new videos of the kids being kids ..

video 1 - video 2 - video 3

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I’ve decided to start to use Flickr for my photos and videos.  I will keep the current gallery in place with the pics and videos we have now, but from now on I’ll be putting all new items into Flickr.

You can easily get to our Flickr page by going to:

http://flickr.uk-experience.com 

Here’s a new video of Emma, and more can be found in The Kids Collection on Flickr.

I also shoved all the pics from Mull up on Flickr as well, they are here

Isle of Mull - 2008 album.

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