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Hugh Blemings's Blog, A Diary and Miscellaneous ramblings
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Sun, 30 Jan 2005
PocketTracker setup taking shape
Spent some time working on the PocketTracker setup this afternoon. Made good progress and was even more enjoyable for Rachael helping out with some of it. She can now fairly claim to have stripped some Cat5 cable, soldered LEDs and have a rudimentary understanding of how it all fits together (little antenna gets position from satellites, bigger antenna transmits a signal saying where I am etc.)
About a week back I'd mounted a commercially made ground independent antenna on the back of the trike. The one I'm using is of Australian design and manufacture an RFIndustries CD28-37. Have added a bit of bright orange surveyors tape to top so it can do double duty as a second flag :)
Today was basically finishing up the elecronics package to connect to the antenna. Took a sequence of photos starting here which gives a pretty good guide to what I've ended up with.
Assuming it runs well this week, final steps will be to mount the batteries in the lid of the waterproof enclosure, rig up the status LEDs so they're visible while riding and wire up the multipin connector to allow the batteries to be charged and unit to be programmed without removing it from the bike. Once again, more to follow!