Windows 7 USB blues

I have a Windows 7 x64 OS installed on my Acer x1700 quad core machine and I keep losing the external USB drives for no apparent reason. They just stop working without any error or warning.
I have seen that this has also been a problem for other people so it may be something real as opposed to just my bad luck.
I have just turned off the legacy USB support in the bios and will do some more tests to see if this made a difference. I may post here or tweet (@bobpowell1) the results...

iPhone auto brightness

This is a great feature and althouh many people say it seems to do nothing I think that it works so well that it is unobtrusively cool.

The feature takes a reading of ambient light when the phone wakes from sleep but it also periodically adjusts brightness when you go say from a dark room to a well lit one.

You can see the effect like this.

Sleep the phone and do to a dimly lit place. Wake the phone and see the screen brightness. If you then turn on a bright light or move to a mote brightly lit room then you will see the brightness increase to suit the current conditions.

The phone doesn't seem to be so keen to reduce brightness when awake but it always adjusts on waking.

Sus reprobo totus erudio

I have had a few requests concerning the latin motto I display so proudly on my blog.

To be honest I don't know if its the best possible translation but essentially it means...

"Pigs reject all education" or more properly in good old Isle of Wight-ese...

"You can't educate PORK"

Carduino, more from the brainstorm...

I have another idea which will be easier to implement in the short term and enable me to put together some of the systems I need to accomplish the larger task.

I want to make a CO2 economiser which will turn the car engine off and back on again when sitting in traffic.

Because the Land Rover clutch is so heavy and Paris is so full of BLOODY TRAFFIC LIGHTS!!!! I habitually shift into neutral when waiting in traffic. I also often switch the motor off entirely, especially if there is a little down grade towards the lights because I can often roll most of the way instead of sitting with the engine running.

So, I need to detect the car's speed to see if the thing is moving, I need to detect the revs to see if its at idle, I need to cut the fuel to stop the car and I need to see if I have put my foot back on the clutch so it can restart again.

For this I need a sensor for the engine revs which can come from the tacho. I need a relay on the electric solenoid diesel fuel cutoff to stop the motor and a relay for the starter motor.

I bought a couple of reed relays this week and I will start looking into the logistics.

Meanwhile, I have an app key from the nice folks over at Pachube so I can start putting a web-service on my Arduino and creating an interface.

I really want to see if the Pachube system can serve up WSDL so that I can easily write a nice application using Visual Studio 2010 directly for the web-service reference and resulting API import.

While Microsoft applications are lovely on a client or web think how much more loveley it would be to create such a tightly integrated system with a web service running a car engine!

Its so cool I'm positively shivering!

Arduino Sketch for Visual Studio 2010

Here is a link to the Arduino sketch template project for Visual Studio 2010.

Thanks to this original post on the Arduino Playground for the idea.

Project Carduino

Many years ago I was a professional electronics designer creating embedded systems for music, add ons for home computers and other good stuff. I recently bought an Arduino board to play with and intend to add computerised goodies to my car. A Land Rover Discovery 300 TDI.

A recent modification to the car was to remove the cooling fan which is belt driven and add a second hand electric fan which relieves about 8% of the engine load making the car more efficient. An important aspect of engine efficiency is good temperature control especially when towing a load, which I often do, I want to make a temperature monitor with an arduino I also regularly drive the 200+ miles from Paris to my real home in Brittany so I would love a cruise control for it which, I believe can be done with the Arduino as the brains.

I need a throttle position sensor to detect actual power settings and so the cruise control can detect if I want control back. I also want a brake sensor, tied to the brake light switch to immediately turn off the control if I brake. I need an engine speed detector connected to the tachometer or crank sensor in case I put the clutch in while the cruise control is on.

Next I need a stepper motor drive to work the throttle with a fail-safe mechanism that will release throttle control if the computer dies and which will not effect normal throttle operation. Then finally I want the whole kit and caboodle to provide a web service so I can connect it to a touch screen computer running Windows 7 and generating WPF graphics for user feedback and control

Effectively, in my spirit of "it's just a computer, integrate it!" I expect this to be a really interesting project.