I’ve been too busy to sort out my workshop for a while, but thanks to the delivery of a small Dell machine (thanks to Eric’s basement!) I’ve got a dedicated box assigned to run XP and Mach3 on my mill.

I did a quick test cut and it looks like I’ll have no problem producing new bezels for the RGB keypad soon. I’ll have to check and see if SparkFun want’s to carry them again, but if not they’ll be available directly from my store. Now I just have to rebuild my design/cad/cam machine and we’ll be golden.

If you’re desperate for a bezel, comment and I’ll see what I can do for ya.

Juniper MX960 Routers:

This is the latest addition to the network. I have a pair in production with 10Gb uplinks receiving full BPG routes from I1, I2 and native IPV6. I managed to talk our provider into a dedicated 1Gb link for my lab (which is converted to 10Gb for the MX by a Nortel 5530) Thanks to this (and a pile of fiber), I was able to prototype our full redundant config before going live with it. I even managed to secure a /24 that I advertise via BGP for live connectivity. These supply per IP bandwidth policing (across two class Bs), generate default routes into OSPF for everything else and they are fully redundant – both routers mirror every function. I can boot one at anytime with no consequence aside from a BGP flap to my provider.

Tipping Point SMS, Core Controller, 2400E IPS and 1200 IPS:

Before I implimented the MX routers, I had to update our campus IPS. On our edge, we use Tipping Point hardware. The IPSs use FPGAs on several Gb links to do initial, line speed analysis. In depth analysis is done by intel CPUs as needed. (The next generation is even better…) By using a Core Controller, we split the 10Gb link into multiple 1Gb links that are processed by several 2400E IPS units. The signature updates from TP are excellent, and the benefits of using the system on our network are impressive.

Juniper M20 Routers:

Our old border routers. I use these to simulate the multiple router setup in production since it’s hard to justify a pair of MX960s just for lab/hardware spare use.

Nortel ERS8600 Layer 3 switches

Our core aggregation switch. These handle multiple link redundancy, 10Gb core up and cross links and do just about everything you can think of.

Nortel 5500 and 5600 GigE swtiches (The edge switches used across campus)

I have a small pile of these switches for testing code, simulating production

Netscreen 5400 Firewall:

Our core uses four of these in redundant(ish) pairs. There are a few single connected services but they mostly back each other up. These protect our data center and user networks. Again, core connections are 10Gb.

I put up a cheap whiteboard in my home office earlier this year. I couldn’t find a decent solution at the time. Today I ran across this. It’s whiteboard paint by rustoleum. Apparently, it can be found at home depot… Guess what my garage will will be getting sometime soon.

This whiteboard has magnet grabbing paint underneath it. Nice!

Final take: It works, it’s faster than driving by the bank, and it wasn’t frustrating to use. (and their app is even faster to use than Bank of America’s iPhone app.)

Sometime in the near future, I’ll have a Juniper SRX to play with. Now that’ll be interesting.

Before my last ski trip I wanted a helmet-cam. I bought an Oregon Scientific ATC3K digital video camera, but the mount was just too bulky for a helmet rig. It’s great for mounting on a kayak or mountain bike, but totally unsuitable for a real helmet mount. (It’s just too big.) Obviously, it was time for a bit of modding.

Parts & Tools:

• Soldering iron
• De-soldering iron
• Dremel (rotary cutting tool)
• Small screw drivers
• Oregon Scientific ATC3K Video Camera
• Ski goggles
• AA battery box
• IDE hard drive cable
• Small plastic case

Take the camera apart

Start by disassemble the camera. Unscrew the back cover and
pry off the rubber from the lens end. Remove all of the exposed screws
and pop open the battery cover. Unscrew the rear cap and remove the
batteries.

You’ll have to cut slots into the two security screws in
order to use a normal screwdriver on them.

If you’re lucky, the battery tray and camera will slide out of the
body of the camera now. If it’s too stubborn,  you may have to cut the
body of the camera in half to help things along.

De-solder the camera board

The camera is mounted to the main board by ten pins on either side of the main board. Grab your soldering iron and add more solder so that on each side a large bead of solder covers all ten pins. Use your soldering iron to heat the entire bead. Once it’s melted, you can partially pry the camera board from the main board. Repeat the process on each side until you can remove the camera board entirely. Be patient and give the camera board time to cool down in between heating sessions. Once the board is free, de-solder the entire connector and remove any excess solder from both boards.
Add the ribbon cable to the camera board

Grab an IDE hard drive cable and cut the longest piece out of it that you can. Now peel off a piece of cable that has 20 wires in it – preferably with the red mark to make wiring it up easier later on. Strip about 2mm of wire at the ends and cut them flat.

Now solder the leads to the camera board, where the old connector was.

Repeat the process to complete the remote cabled camera board.

Now we’ve got a nice, easily mountable camera. This should work for various different build ideas: helmet mounts, custom enclosures, embedded motorcycle cams…

Mount the camera and microphone

Locate the camera on the lens and drill a hole through the lens of your goggles. Blow out the dust with a can of compressed air if you end up with debris inside the double lens. Position the camera and use hot glue to permanently mount it to the inside of the goggles.

Now route the camera ribbon cable along the edge of the goggles and out through the strap mount.

On my goggles, it was easy to pull the ribbon cable through the hole for the strap.

Mount the Microphone

Re-use the microphone from the ATC3K and add some new wires. The soft wire from some old headphones will help isolate the microphone from vibration noise. Pull the end of the audio cable out the side of the goggles where the
strap attaches.  If needed, mount the microphone on the bottom of the goggles with a small amount of glue.

Wire the main board

Trim the ribbon cable to length and solder it to the main pc board
where the camera originally mounted. Use the red marked cable to make
sure you connect the correct pins. Attach the microphone wires and a pair of wires
that are long enough to reach the far side of the goggle strap.
Running power

Pull the power leads through the goggles so that they will be out of
the way. Run them out the far side of the goggles and connect them to
a replacement AA battery box.

Originally I wanted to use AAAs, but I found that AA batteries balanced the goggles better.
Enclose the main board

We want to protect the main board with something that’s removable and
waterproof. I made a custom enclosure on my computer controlled mill,
but a simple plastic bag with tape will suffice in a pinch. In the final build, I mounted the control buttons (seen behind the red acrylic) on top of the acrylic with some hot glue.

The body was milled from two pieces of polyethylene cutting board.

The cover was milled from some acrylic I had left over from some laser cutter projects.

I thought about some complicated mounting tricks to attache the boxes to the straps, but found that electrical tape worked great. Keep in mind that the cold will drop the voltage on your average alkaline batteries – get some of the lithium AAs or the camera will keep shutting down.

Hit the mountain!

Have fun carving the slopes.

Just thought I’d throw in a view of the server that’s running things at home now. It’s  a poweredge 2650 – you can get them dirt cheap despite having dual 2.8ghz cpus, 2GB of ram and onboard remote access. This one once served the military – they removed all the drives, but left an IP address assigned to a military base in Arizona on the management card. (Really, they used real IP space for internal management. Sigh.)

I tossed in some ultra320 drives and installed ubuntu. I had to update the firmware on the raid controller, but now it purrs like a 2u rack mount server. Now I’ve got redundant power supplies, a raid 5 system drive, a mirrored data drive and I’ll add some e-sata or usb drives for larger storage needs.

Soon I’ll be racking it under one of the worktables in my lab/workshop for easy access.

Now I can take a photo, and within 10 seconds or so, it’s been added to my personal Gallery2 server – ready for storing, sorting and editing.

You can grab my modded version of the EyeFiServer here.

The card itself is an interesting piece of hardware. There’s a tear down here. The RF chip might be an interesting piece to build for an Arduino module…