The McKenzie’s Blog…

I’ve been working on this project for a few weeks (lack of time).  Basically, I bought a huge 120A/hr battery to go camping with and to use for other things, such as portable amateur radio work.

Well, that’s all well and good, but how do I connect things to it?  I wanted some easy way to connect multiple things to the battery without having to have a number of wires getting attached to the battery.

So, not wanting to spend ARM+LEG and either our first or second born to buy something already made, and it wouldn’t include the cig plugs either.

So, I made this:

Read on if you’d like to see the other pics .. or, you can just go and look at them in my Flickr Gallery

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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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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

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I’m just testing a blogging app on my phone. so far its alright. if this posts I will update in the morning with details of the application.

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Haha ok, well, the posting worked.  I noticed that because the server is on UTC and my phone is on BST the posting actually was “scheduled” for posting 1 hour after I actually hit the submit button.  There might be an option in moBlog for that, I’ll have to have a look.   Otherwise this is slick, I can post blog entries from my phone, including being able to attach images to postings.

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No, it’s not yet another new phone, just that I haven’t really said much about this one since I got it.

This is the HTC Kaiser. I won’t rehash everything that’s already been posted by the folks at http://wiki.xda-developers.com. Check that site out, it’s an incredible resources for SmartPhones/PDA’s and the like.

Basically in a nutshell this is the phone:

Specs and Tech Info

• Qualcomm MSM 7200, 400MHz
• Windows Mobile 6 Professional
• ROM: 256MB (accessible 145.24MB), RAM: 128MB
• Dimension: 112mm (L) X 59mm (W) X 19mm (T)
• Weight: 190g with battery
• Display: 2.8″, 240 X 320 QVGA TFT-LCD display with adjustable angle and backlight
• Network: Tri-band HSDPA/UMTS (850, 1900, 2100 MHz), Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Device Control: Finger scrolling and panning, 5-way navigation control, 3-way Jog Wheel
• Keyboard: Slide-out lit QWERTY keyboard
• Keyboard Layout Pictures
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi 802.11b/g, HTC ExtUSB
• GPS: Built-in GPS and connector for external antennas, A-GPS supported
• Camera: 3MP CMOS colour camera with auto focus on the back, front VGA CMOS colour camera (for video calls. No front Camera on AT&T Tilt.)
• Audio: Built-in mono microphone and speaker
• Audio Output: Proprietary jack
• Battery: 1350mAh rechargeable Li-polymer battery, shape: KAIS160 (35H00088-00M)
• Expansion Slot: MicroSD(SD2.0 compatible, MicroSDHC compatible up to 8gb tested)
• AC Adapter: 100-250V AC, 5V and 1A DC

MyMobileR is one of the most essential apps for WM6 devices. This app installs both on the phone and the PC. Once the phone is connected to the PC I can get a window up that allows me to completely control the phone from my PC. I can use the PC keyboard and mouse to navigate and enter messages and what not. I’d have to say it has it’s place in the top 10 to top 20 apps for people with this sort of phone/PDA. Oh, and it’s completely FREE!! Incredible.

My opinion of the device is high, but as with all of these all-in-one devices the battery is what really lets it down. This is not a reflection of the choice of battery installed in the device, it’s very high spec and power, but the unit just consumes so much power it’s unreal. I have a battery monitor installed that will report the current draw on the battery. With the camera on, gps on, wifi on (and connected) and bluetooth on (and connected) I’ve seen it drawing 2100mA, this was briefly reported but still, that’s an insane amount of power for a “phone” to pull. Windows Mobile 6 (WM6) is very nice indeed. Things have really changed since my last WM based PDA which was running 2003SE or something.

The OS generally runs pretty fast, depending on what I have open and running in the background, but I can’t complain. I did have the Blackberry Connect software installed to try it out with my work Blackberry server.. this worked well but it really put a beating on the CPU and battery of the device. I ended up removing that and now getting emails via the Microsoft Push-Email service through the webaccess portal of Exchange. This, while not getting emails to be instantly is a lot better on the memory and battery life of the phone.

The availability of software for this device is off the charts. There’s so much of it out there, much of which is free or at least cheap and justifiable for the cost. This was one of the big reasons I had t get rid of the Blackberry I had. It was good, but getting software wasn’t as easy and what was available was a lot more expensive.  I expect because of the licensing and certification that I think software on the BB has to go through.

All in all, a very good phone and would recommend it anyone that likes to tinker. I can’t say I’d suggest a technophobe get it, there’s just way too much t break and get setup. Now, just have to look at replacing WM6 with Linux on it

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Pure genius ..

About this Talk

Clifford Stoll captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides — and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he’s a scientist: “Once I do something, I want to do something else.”

About Clifford Stoll

Astronomer Clifford Stoll helped to capture a notorious KGB hacker back in the infancy of the Internet. His agile mind continues to lead him down new paths — from education and techno-skepticism… Read full bio »

Check this site out..

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OK, I’m hooked on .  I was a bit dubious of it’s real usefulness to start with.  OK, there sure are a lot of mindless postings to twitter, but I suppose it depends if they are made by someone you know or not.. you’ll clearly be missing some context.  I am definitely going to be keep on using this great service.

A lot of the people I follow and those following me are ham radio folks.  It’s a slick and instant way to send updates to your followers and friends.   For example, if you were sitting on the radio and calling CQ you might send a tweet¹ to say what frequency you’re on.  Another use might be if you are out working specific squares or counties or whatever you could let folks know which one you are in and what freq you are on.

A lot of audio and video podcasters use twitter as well, they send out tweets to let listeners know if they are on live and a URL where to find them, or just to let their fans know when new podcasts are up on their sites.

It’s also just another form of CB really, you can message with friends around the world while out and about or just at home.

Access to twitter is pretty wide open.. you can use SMS text messages, the main website - http://twitter.com, the mobile website http://m.twitter.com or a host of applications for mobile phones, PC, PDA’s, etc, etc.  It’s just crazy how popular this service is.

Check it out and add me to your friends

¹ - a tweet is what a twitter posting is called

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