Wednesday, 18 March 2015

Splitboard Newbie

Newbie Splitboarder

Why?

Last year I rented a splitboard for a day. It was utterly brilliant to be able to get out of the ski resort into the wilder areas, and to be able to go up stuff and then snowboard down it. But, renting a splitboard on holiday isn't the way to go because:
  1. In 2014 it cost €100/day to rent the board, bindings and skins.
  2. In March 2014 there was exactly one splitboard available to rent in Val D'Isere. Obviously other resorts vary, but there seems to be little supply.

How?

Firstly, I bought a cheap board from eBay. I usually use a 160cm board, but the advice received was to go large, so my board is a K2 "Access wide", 165cm long, a bit like one of these:
Secondly I bought some bindings from eBay, in my case F2 quick access ones - these have a drop-down back plate for fast access.

Thirdly, I bought the excellent Voile DIY split kit. This is a set of bits that provide you with the clips to hold the board together and the special touring bindings you need:


http://www.saltypeaks.com/pi/p13664-voile-diy-kit.jpg

Making the splitboard was pretty easy. I followed the Voile instructions on youtube:

With the exception that I cut the board using a hand saw not a power saw. I reasoned that things would go wrong only slowly with a handsaw. I went to my local DIY store and bought a handsaw with the highest number of teeth per inch available. It took about ten minutes to saw the board, but its ended up with a nice straight cut.

Fitting the Voile kit was straightforward - simply follow the instructions in the supplied booklet and the video on youtube.

The Other Bits and Pieces

Splitboard Crampons

I am really glad I got the Voile splitboard crampons, through careful eBaying. I checked the spe of these, and they support a board a couple of mm wider than mine.

Skins

I was lucky enough to win employee of the month at work in the crucial week, so bought the Voile splitboard skins with the proceeds. They are not cheap, but they have the advanatage that they are "sized to go" with the K2 Access Wide, fitting perfectly.

Coming soon

Will give some lessons learned from the field. 

Sunday, 3 February 2013

Sunday, 9 December 2012

We have a transmitter


Always nice when something works out. Using the handy guide here: http://ukhas.org.uk/guides:linkingarduinotontx2 I am transmitting beeps on 434.650Mhz to my handheld scanner.


Sunday, 25 November 2012

Arduino GPS "Hello World" Program

Arduino GPS "Hello World" Program

It was a slight mission to get the Sparkfun GPS shield and EM 406 chip to work with the Arduino Mega 2560 because none of the samples worked. Here's what I did differently:
a) Wired the GPS shield pin 2 (connected to the GPS chip TX pin) to the Arduino Mega 2560 pin 19 (RX1).
b) Recoded the sample program to use Serial1 instead of SoftSerial.

Here's the code I'm using:

/*
  6-12-12
  Aaron Weiss
  SparkFun Electronics, Beerware
  
  Example GPS Parser based off of arduiniana.org TinyGPS examples.
  
  Parses NMEA sentences from an EM406 running at 4800bps into readable 
  values for latitude, longitude, elevation, date, time, course, and 
  speed. Use 115200 baud for your serial port baud rate 
  
  For the SparkFun GPS Shield. Make sure the switch is set to DLINE.
  
  Once you get your longitude and latitude you can paste your 
  coordinates from the terminal window into Google Maps. Here is the 
  link for SparkFun's location.  
  http://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.06477,+-105.20997
  
  Uses the NewSoftSerial library for serial communication with your GPS, 
  so connect your GPS TX and RX pin to any digital pin on the Arduino, 
  just be sure to define which pins you are using on the Arduino to 
  communicate with the GPS module. 
  
  REVISIONS:
  1-17-11 
    changed values to RXPIN = 2 and TXPIN = to correspond with
    hardware v14+. Hardware v13 used RXPIN = 3 and TXPIN = 2.
  25-11-12
    James Cox - changed to work with Arduino Mega and GPS Shield.
    Jumper GPS shield pin 2 to Ardunio Mega pin 19. This connects the
    gps chip TX pin to the Mega RX1 serial input.
  
*/ 

// In order for this sketch to work, you will need to download 
// the TinyGPS library from arduiniana.org and put them 
// into the libraries folder in your ardiuno directory.

#include


// This is the serial rate for your terminal program. It must be this 
// fast because we need to print everything before a new sentence 
// comes in. If you slow it down, the messages might not be valid and 
// you will likely get checksum errors.
// Set this value equal to the baud rate of your terminal program
#define TERMBAUD  115200

// Set this value equal to the baud rate of your GPS
#define GPSBAUD  4800

// Create an instance of the TinyGPS object
TinyGPS gps;

// This is where you declare prototypes for the functions that will be 
// using the TinyGPS library.
void getgps(TinyGPS &gps);

// In the setup function, you need to initialize two serial ports; the 
// standard hardware serial port (Serial()) to communicate with your 
// terminal program an another serial port (NewSoftSerial()) for your 
// GPS.
void setup()
{
  // Sets baud rate of your terminal program
  Serial.begin(TERMBAUD);
  // Sets baud rate of your GPS
  Serial1.begin(GPSBAUD);
  
  Serial.println("");
  Serial.println("GPS Shield QuickStart Example Sketch v12 for Arduino Mega 2560");
  Serial.println("Ensure GPS shield pin 2 connects to Ardunio MEGA pin 19");
  Serial.println("       ...waiting for lock...           ");
  Serial.println("");
}

// This is the main loop of the code. All it does is check for data on 
// the RX pin of the ardiuno, makes sure the data is valid NMEA sentences, 
// then jumps to the getgps() function.
void loop()
{
  while(Serial1.available())     // While there is data on the RX pin...
  {
      int c = Serial1.read();    // load the data into a variable...
      if(gps.encode(c))      // if there is a new valid sentence...
      {
        getgps(gps);         // then grab the data.
      }
  }
}

// The getgps function will get and print the values we want.
void getgps(TinyGPS &gps)
{
  // To get all of the data into varialbes that you can use in your code, 
  // all you need to do is define variables and query the object for the 
  // data. To see the complete list of functions see keywords.txt file in 
  // the TinyGPS and NewSoftSerial libs.
  
  // Define the variables that will be used
  float latitude, longitude;
  // Then call this function
  gps.f_get_position(&latitude, &longitude);
  // You can now print variables latitude and longitude
  Serial.print("Lat/Long: "); 
  Serial.print(latitude,5); 
  Serial.print(", "); 
  Serial.println(longitude,5);
  
  // Same goes for date and time
  int year;
  byte month, day, hour, minute, second, hundredths;
  gps.crack_datetime(&year,&month,&day,&hour,&minute,&second,&hundredths);
  // Print data and time
  Serial.print("Date: "); Serial.print(month, DEC); Serial.print("/"); 
  Serial.print(day, DEC); Serial.print("/"); Serial.print(year);
  Serial.print("  Time: "); Serial.print(hour, DEC); Serial.print(":"); 
  Serial.print(minute, DEC); Serial.print(":"); Serial.print(second, DEC); 
  Serial.print("."); Serial.println(hundredths, DEC);
  //Since month, day, hour, minute, second, and hundr
  
  // Here you can print the altitude and course values directly since 
  // there is only one value for the function
  Serial.print("Altitude (meters): "); Serial.println(gps.f_altitude());  
  // Same goes for course
  Serial.print("Course (degrees): "); Serial.println(gps.f_course()); 
  // And same goes for speed
  Serial.print("Speed(kmph): "); Serial.println(gps.f_speed_kmph());
  //Serial.println();
  
  // Here you can print statistics on the sentences.
  unsigned long chars;
  unsigned short sentences, failed_checksum;
  gps.stats(&chars, &sentences, &failed_checksum);
  //Serial.print("Failed Checksums: ");Serial.print(failed_checksum);
  //Serial.println(); Serial.println();
  
  // Here you can print the number of satellites in view
  Serial.print("Satellites: ");
  Serial.println(gps.satellites());
}

Wednesday, 31 October 2012

Lac D'Estaing

 

Lovely walk with Russell, Henry, Siena.
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Col D'Aspin

 Riding the Col D'Aspin from Bagneres de Bigorre seemed like a good idea at the time.

It started of nice, easy, gentle, manageable.

The the last 5km were just brutal.

Worht it for the autumnal views though.
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You Never Tire of the View


I'll never get tired of the views from my brother's house near Pontiacq Viellepinte
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