Tag Archives: DIY

Corvair Aircraft Conversion – Push Rod Tubes

January 6, 2021 Jayadeva Leave a comment

The original push-rod tubes are going to be reused. I was fortunate that all of my tubes were in great condition. Give them a makeover and they will be ready to use.

The Process

First step is to get them spotlessly clean and set them up to dry. I used Purple Power and hot water to soak them for a few hours.

After soaking I used cheap toothbrushes to clean the inside of the tubes and HFT cleaning brushes to clean the outside. I then stood them up to dry for about 30 minutes.

Next I cleaned the tubes inside and out using starting fluid. I then sanded the tubes with 150 grit sandpaper until they were all nice and shiny.

I used high temp zinc primer to prime the tubes then high temp ceramic white to do the final painting.

tubes with bailing wire hangers and paper end plugs ready to prime

These turned out great. Not sure if I need to remove the paint around the seals or if I should leave it. I am sure Bill at Azalea will know. Almost time to order my fuselage kit from Aircraft Spruce. Stay Tuned!

Aircraft, DIY

Corvair Aircraft Conversion – Deburring the case

January 6, 2021 Jayadeva Leave a comment

The disassembly and cleaning went very smoothly. To finish the prep on my core for maximum value all the casting burrs need to be removed from the case. The tools that worked the best for me were a straight deburr tip and a wire wheel tip.

The purpose of this procedure is twofold. First and foremost, these small extra pieces of aluminum can break off the case and get in the oil and possibly work its way into the motor. YIKES! Second there are sharp edges that will shred your gloves and hands during the detail cleaning process. A deburred case is SO much easier to work on.

Azalea Aviation is doing my Fith Bearing build on the short-block so I will be ordering that today. This means I need to get my oil pump housing prepped for the conversion to a rear alternator/starter setup. This will allow Bill at Azalea to include the alt/start with my block build. Working on my push-rod tubes now. Stay Tuned!

DIY, Hacks

Charge Bauer 20v Lithium Packs Using a Balance Charger

January 4, 2021 Jayadeva 4 Comments

This all started the other morning when I realized I had left my Bauer battery pack and charger outside in the rain. Long story short you can use the plug from a broken charger to make an adapter to charge your battery packs with a RC Vehicle Balance Charger.

Bauer 20v + TBS Charger — Bauer 20v Pack Connected to Balance Charger

The Story

After sitting, plugged in, in the rain, overnight, there was a large amount of blue material on the battery and charger connections.

Pushing the button on the battery showed full charge, so I cleaned off the connections and tried it in my drill. No dice. I dissembled the battery pack by removing the four torx screws on the bottom. There was corrosion on the inside of the connector but everything else looked OK. I cleaned off the connectors from the inside and reassembled the battery. JOY! The battery is working again.

Things were not so good for the charger. Under the charging board there was a huge black spot where a bank of resistors had fried.

I was thinking about repairing it when I noticed that the plug part inside the charger was a self contained unit. Not only that, the connection plug for the sense port was the same as the plugs on the batteries for LiPo RC batteries (eg Drone Batteries).

The pin-out on the above mentioned plug is not the same as a standard RC LiPo battery, but all the necessary components (and then some) are. If you are looking at the balance plug (on a Drone Battery for example) with the bumps facing down, the leftmost wire is ground and the next wire to the right is the voltage of one cell. The third wire is the voltage of two cells, the fourth wire is the voltage of three cells and so on depending on how many cells you have.

The Hack

In a nutshell we need to make the Bauer battery pin-out match a stander RC Lipo Battery. The finished adapter will look something like this:

You will need security torx bits (with holes in the middle) to remove the bottom plate from the charger. Then just unscrew all the Philips screws until you have just the battery plug unit. Unplug the 6 wire plug from the board and cut the red and black wires as close to the board as possible.

Using a small screwdriver to press down the tabs, remove the pins from the 6 pin plug (they need to be rearranged). The small yellow and red wires (that you just pulled from the plug) are for the battery’s internal temperature sensor, we don’t need to monitor this sensor so we can use these wires to finish our plug. De-solder the small yellow wire and solder it with the main negative (big black wire). De-solder the small red wire and solder to the main positive (big red wire).

Move small red wire to big red wire post. Move yellow wire to big black wire post.

Solder a battery connector (salvaged from old battery pack) to the main positive and negative (big wires). Finally reinsert the pins into the plug as pictured:

Bumps Up: Red, Grey, Black, White, Blue, Yellow

The adapter is finished and just needs to be tested. Plug the adapter into your Bauer battery pack. Using a volt meter your battery plug should show about 20v. With the bumps facing down your 6 pin plug should test as follows (voltages are approximate and will vary depending on the level of charge):

Yellow: (-V)
Blue: (+3.7)
White: (+7.4)
Black: (+11)
Grey: (+14.7)
Red: (+18.4)

Using the adapter you can now connect and charge your Bauer tool packs. In the program mode set your battery type to 3.7V (Lithium Poly or LiPo). Set the amperage to match the AH listed on the side of the battery pack. The charger will auto-detect the number of cells (5) and after doing a quick balance on the cells will charge the pack until full.

Individual Cell Voltages and Balance Charging

In summary, this hack is very simple and could be considered an upgrade to the charger from HFT. Having the info display showing the voltage of each cell and balance charge mode are both great. There is also a fast charge that I haven’t tried, but this already charges my batteries quicker and more completely than the Bauer charger.

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Drones, Hacks

Amazon Kindle Fire 5.3.1 Hacked – Rooted and new Rom

January 17, 2017 Jayadeva Leave a comment

I just purchased a Amazon 5th gen kindle fire to use as a ground station for my drones. The device supports OTG and has the power needed to run the 3dr usb telemetry device.

Out of the box the fire is kind of useless for anything but an e-reader amazon buying tool. Rooting and a ROM upgrade solves this! It is fairly simple, however the process is time consuming with lots of waiting (have something else to do like a book or a movie while you’re waiting on certain processes).

Step 1: Make sure you have 5.3.1.0 fire OS installed on device
Go to Settings -> Device Options -> Software Updates to check the version. My device shipped with 5.3.1.0 so I did not need to load a different firmware. Your mileage may vary.

If version is less than 5.3.1.0 follow This Guide instead.

If version is greater than 5.3.1.0 follow these instructions to install the 5.3.1 firmware. download from here

DO NOT attempt to downgrade a > 5.3.1.0 device below 5.3.1.0!!! This it will BRICK your fire.

Once version is 5.3.1.0 go to step 2

Step 2: Reset to factory settings
Go to Settings -> Factory Reset and perform a factory reset. This will reboot the device.

When device boots skip all set up and do not connect to WiFi yet (this will slow down any unwanted update process).

Step 3: Enable Developer Mode
Go to Settings -> Device Options and tap the build number seven times to enable dev mode.
Go to Settings -> Device Options -> Developer and turn on USB debugging and ADB.

Step 4: Download needed files
Download the latest SuperTool from RootJunky and extract somewhere you will remember.

Download the latest Nexus ROM for Fire Tablet but DO NOT extract it.

Step 5: Run SuperTool
From a command line navigate to the SuperTool folder and run the appropriate file. In Linux the command is
$ ./3-Amazon-Fire-5th-gen-linux-mac.sh
You will see a screen like this:

Press 2 and Enter to root device. First it will install KingRoot to your device which you will then have to run from your device when directed to do so. KingRoot will ask you to connect to WiFi.

You will likely have to run KingRoot repeatedly before it will work. Time to grab a book or a movie as this part takes time. Each time you run KingRoot it will reboot your device a few times and show progress on the screen. Each attempt takes about 10-15 minutes or more. After the first attempt I unplugged my device from the computer and had to run KingRoot a total of 4 times before it worked. Just keep trying.

Once root is gained plug your Fire back into the computer (you may need to cycle the ADB setting on your device for it to be recognized) and continue the SuperTool process following all instructions there. This will install SuperSu which will need interaction from you on the device. Follow the setup procedure according to the instructions in SuperTool.

Once this process is done run “Block OTA updates” to prevent accidentally losing root access.

Step 6: Install Rom via FlashFire
While still in SuperTool install FlashFire (option 6).

From your computer copy the zipped ROM file downloaded in Step 4 over to the INTERNAL storage of your Fire device.

On your device run FlashFire and follow these steps exactly, otherwise you risk the installation having problems:

Select the red plus (+) button to expand a selection of options, choosing Wipe.
Select System data, 3rd party apps, and Dalvik cache if they are not already checked.
Click the red plus (+) button again and choose Flash ZIP/OTA.
Search for the Nexus ROM that you’ve copied over and choose it.
Automount and Mount /system read/write need to be unchecked.
Drag Wipe to the top of the queue.

Hit the flash button to start the process.

This will take a few minutes and the screen might go blank for a while. It will eventually boot into the new ROM.

Step 7: Enjoy!
With new ROM installed be sure to update Google first. After it updates clear google app and framework cache and reboot.

Install apps. You will need EVERYTHING as this is a very vanilla ROM.

OTG works great with APM/Tower or DroidPlanner software.

Much faster, full play store support and NO ADS! Yay!

DIY, Drones

Configure Tarot 2D Gimbal on Linux / Wine

January 5, 2017 Jayadeva Leave a comment

Having trouble getting serial devices in Linux to show up as COM ports ( eg, COM1 ) in Wine? So was I. Getting the correct software to configure your Tarot Gimbal and getting the com ports to work can be a nightmare.

Problem solved! Read on!

So you have a Tarot Gimbal and the included USB programming dongle.

On your *nix machine ( I am using Ubuntu, your mileage may vary ):

Make sure user has dialout privileges:

$ sudo usermod -a G dialout username

Log out and back in.

Install Wine:

$ sudo apt install wine

Configure wine to run XP

$ winecfg

Add required items to Wine registry (~/.wine/system.reg):

[Hardware\\Devicemap\\Serialcomm] 1231984861 "Serial0"="COM1"

More info here: https://onetransistor.blogspot.com/2015/12/wine-serial-port-linux.html

Plug in your USB to serial adapter to computer. Link device (ttyUSB0 in my case) to Wine com1

$ ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 ~/.wine/dosdevices/com1

Download programming software: ZYX-BMGC-EN_V1.5.zip

Uncompress the file, right click on main application and select run with Wine.

Plug in connector on USB to Gimbal.

Select COM1 in software and click connect.

Power on drone/gimbal.

Hack Away!

DIY, Recipes

Kombucha Recipe

September 9, 2015 Jayadeva Leave a comment

We can all thank the Angelfish for giving me a reason to post this 🙂

The following recipe is for 1 gallon of ‘buch. It can be halved/doubled etc. to match your needs. All cooking times stay the same.

You will need:

2 quart pot
1 gallon of good water
1 cup sugar, organic unrefined preferred
1 SCOBY (AKA the Mother… a Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast)
1 cup starter tea
8 oolong, green or black tea bags
1 g glass jar. NO METAL!
1 piece of cotton cloth or paper towel. Holes in cheesecloth are too large, if using cheesecloth use at least 3 layers.
1 rubber band

Procedure:
Clean hands and all utensils with distilled vinegar after washing with NON-Antibacterial Soap.
Bring 4 cups of water and sugar to a boil.
Once boiling add the teabags, count to ten, then remove the pot from heat source.
Put the lid on the pot (leaving tea bags in) and wait for 5 mintues.
After 5 minutes remove the lid and add some water to fill up the pot.
Wait 5 more minutes.

Remove tea bags and squeeze them out. Let this “sweet-tea” sit and cool off for at least 20 minutes. Ideally temp should be below 110 degrees Fahrenheit before continuing.
Put SCOBY and starter tea in brewing jar. Pour sweet-tea into jar. Fill remaining space with water up to 1.5-2 inches from top of jar. Stir with WOODEN or PLASTIC spoon.
Cover jar with cloth and secure cloth with rubber band. Put jar in cool dark place (pantry or cupboard). Do not disturb jar while fermenting.

In a few days a new SCOBY will start to form on the top of the tea. After about a week start tasting your brew using a wooden or plastic spoon. When you like the flavor, you are done! Bottle it up and enjoy. Google for more recipes and flavoring ideas.

Baby SCOBYs — I got SCOBYs, who wants one???

NOTES:
Never expose SCOBY or ‘butch to direct sunlight.
Never expose brew to any type of metal.
When you first start brewing, there will be more yeast than usual.

It’s brown and gross looking. This is normal. Unless your SCOBY is super fuzzy everything is probably normal. As your SCOBY adjusts to it’s new environment it will get whiter and produce less yeast strands.
After brewing is finished, the new SCOBY can be separated from the old to start a new batch, make additional batches, give to a friend, make bio-pleather, etc.

After the first harvest, bottle all but a cup or two of the brew and just pour some new sweet tea in the jar and brew it.

Pirates in Teepees