Move mastodon server. 

https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server/ 

1. Create New account: grantpetersen@mastodon.nz
2. login to both old and new accounts. (used different icons to make this obvious)
3. on NEW account: switch off email notifications for new followers
4. on OLD account:Preferences/Import And Export/Data Export. click on each CSV or JSON icon one at a time. Download them all to a local folder.
5. on NEW account: Preferences/Account/Moving From A Different Account. click on Create An Account Alias and follow instructions. (When it asks you to write your old account’s handle, it needs to include the @ at the start as well as the @ in the middle.)
6. wait at least 5 minutes.
7. on OLD account: Preferences/Public Profile/change the Display Name to say (YOUR OLD ACCOUNT NAME HERE) has moved. and replace the Bio text with a simple message telling people you have moved and giving your new account’s account address,
8. on OLD account: Preferences/Account/Move To A Different Account at the bottom of the screen, then click on Configure It Here
9. on OLD account: Leave it there as a pointer to your new account.
10. Mastodon tags: (manually xfer)

All seems to work.

And try to verify my account....

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Mastodon

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 Record warp remover.

Been needing this for a long time and finally found some glass that's just right.

 Still in the garden.

The watering system made me think more about a garden that needs less attention from me so it can thrive if I am away for work. 

I thought of the orchards inside: They are not doing as well as the outside ones so lets put them all out there. Clear some space under the bananas, make a frame to hold the pots I reasoned and I did that. It looks good and a few weeks later they all seem fine. The space inside is filled up with cactus and succulents who can live for weeks without attention so this should work well.

I snagged a pallet from work on the Friday. It had long narrow planks and was heat treated so safe for plants. On Saturday I got out the saw and drill and just started without a plan. That's fun sometimes.

I made two and cleared out a space in the bananas and just kind of jammed them in there and added some props until it was level and stable.

It only took an hour and I don't expect it to last, thinking if it is a success then I will put some real effort in and make it more durable.

 

 

frames to hold the orchards in place... 

 

and then populated.

 Garden watering system.

I will be away for a few days and the seedlings can't be let to get dry at this time of the year. Not much time and I as always work on a budget:  Reviewed the timer tap controllers and sprinklers. Picked a controller from Jaycar and tried a rotating lawn sprinkler.

I thought if the timer software is not good but the hardware is Okay I might gut it and replace it's brains with a Arduino type controller then get all sorts of remote control. The hardware seems fine so far though and the software too. Lets leave it at that for now.

The lawn sprinkler just did not work and stuck after half an oscillation. I returned it an got a simple cone spray that is meant to stick in the lawn. I mounted it upside-down over the main garden and used the timer to set it running for 15 minutes at 6 am and 6 pm. It seems just fine for late spring and did a great job while I was away for 5 days.

Control unit and sprinkler.
 

I might tap into the hose that runs along side of the house with some screw in spray nozzles to water some potted plants to the along there. I put these pots in the empty spots of the garden under the timed sprinkler while I was away and that worked out well but I need that space to let things grow so the pots need to go back.

Then

Now

 I now own an 8 Track player

So I just found an 8 Track Player.....

 A Prinzsound CRD8, Serial # 001429 (thanks man)

I spent a bit of time on it to get it going nicely and it does now. Information on it is very sparse to the point were the above post was the only reference I could find on it.

I want to do a fairly complete post on the fix so that web can preserve the info in case others need it:

I opened the case and the hardware was all quite good. Heads nice and not even very dirty. Only one drive belt in the whole unit and that still has good tension. The power plug was loose so I tidied that up and plugged it in. 

No smoke or bad smells. Plugged in a David Cassidy 8-Track (the tape I cared least for was picked for testing) and it thumped into life ( really does thump. Big fat solenoids ) and plugged my 70 Technics EAH-220 headphones in.

Right channel fine, left channel nothing.

Got to be the rec/play switch. Stripped and cleaned with iso. No difference. Made a quick and dirty audio probe with a guitar amp I had to hand and found the signal disappeared in the left pre-amp just before the volume. 

No service manual to be found anywhere on the web. 

Drew a circuit and overlay then put it back together and started checking voltages on the left channel against the right. Second transistor in the left channel sus; replaced the 2SC871 with a BC549 . Sound in both channels but the left starts quietly then fades to full volume after 10 or so seconds. Replaced various electro' caps to no affect until I looked at the what I had considered the least likely electro which was the cap to the playback head. 

Replacing that fixed it and it now runs just fine. It was quite obviously swollen on removal and had interfered with the bias of the first transistor until the cap in the emitter path had charged up. Finally I put RCA plugs on in place of the DIN plug.

I'll post the overlay and circuit diagram I worked out in as follow ups to this post.

The only real lasting damage is that I now quite like David Cassidy. 

 

PC board overlay: Solder side.

 

 

Circuit diagram of the left channel :

 

2016-07 Concrete Record Player.

The Dual turntable needs somewhere to live. I decided to make this a test of the process for my ideal record plinth.
The Concrete Record Player (plinth.)

The process: Make a mold and fill it with concrete

The mount points for the turntable are precise and too thin for concrete so I made a frame of plywood to be embedded in the plinth the the turntable will rest on and mount to. I made two and laminated them together for strength and the depth needed for the turntable spring support cups.

The frame mounted on the top of the mold with the turntable cutout under it. The frame protrudes and that will keep it embedded in the concrete. Here I am packing out the interior with packing foam and masking tape to keep the void in the middle empty.

The mold with the sides on and some dowels for the mains and audio cables. I didn't want to risk cracking the plinth by drilling these out after it had set. The first  concrete is in and you can see the wire squares I added into the concrete hoping it will strengthen the final block.

2016-06 Dual 1214 turntable restoration.

I want a better 78 player and found this turntable in a 3-N-1 stereo for $10. At that price it didn't matter if it was a no go. Looks like there had been some water damage and some missing bits but not too bad.
The motor did not spin freely which was a very bad sign so I worked on that first. The bottom of that armature was locked into the brass ball that acts as a bearing and guide. It was riveted into a support bracket that I destroyed before I realized I could possibly have disassembled it on account of one of the parts being so frozen I thought the two parts one.

(a bad first attempt that involved dental floss).

Hacked up a replacement bracket from a tip-top ice-cream lid and that worked really well .
Reassembled and the motor ran reliably and quietly but the speed selection, disk size and return were all faulty.

A good clean section by section, some small adjustments and I got all these working.
 
 Gave it a run (after using a magnifying glass and tweezers to straighten the stylus) and it sounded great. I had no suspicion that 78s could sound so good.
And I found the auto-change spindle lying inside the electronics in the case in the old 3 in 1 guts and that seems to work too.

2016-05 Speaker Stands

I've been keeping an eye out for something to use for speaker stands or a good design to build from scratch. I found these slightly odd stools.

They looked like this

Here they are stripped down

I reclaimed the wood from the seats, trimmed it to fit the width of the frames and added some stick n cable clips for the speaker wires.

These speakers have no internal cross overs and I have these that I use with them. Why not mount them on the back of the stands to keep them tidy too?

Like this

 ! For The finished !

(I really don't like blogger's lay-out tools / editor.)

2016-04 Empty the LP Queue

I have about 4 to 5 hundred LPs waiting to be listened to or just to be shelved.
It's getting to me. This month I want to review and shelve them all.
I started a bit late and set 8/day as a goal. Had a cold and took a break then came back reinvigorated and decided on 10/day and 20/day in the weekend.
Then the Rotary Book fair happened and I added 25ish to the Queue. Now I've set myself 15/day and 30/day in the weekend. I might make it.
Here's my progress chart that I keep to enthuse myself:

It went well enough. I've kept on top of things too now that I have better organised shelves with some free space. Next to do are the 45s.

2016-03 Bread

Almost too easy this time: I had wanted to try a bread-maker for a while and found one at a garage sale for $5. It came with books too.
Bought some yeast and had a go at a basic white loaf. It all worked very well. I tried adding some rye meal flower on the next loaf. 1 cup of rye and 2 cups of white flower. A bit dry. This loaf: half a cup of rye and 2.5 cups of white. Very good.

Here's the  machine. It had some small scrapes in the loaf container where the Teflon had been damaged by using a knife to loosen the loaf but it didn't look too bad and tha price and books made it worth a go.

 Nice simple display and controls. The time is a count down and you can set a start delay and the total time for the loaf to be ready is then shown.

 Here's the dough ball being kneaded after the first rising.

Let it cool for 1 minute before tapping it out on a board.	... and it seems to come out quite cleanly.	I eat the end that had the stirring blade in it first.

With some olive oil, sharp cheese, tomato and basil .

2016-01 Book shelf system

It's been on my todo list for a while and books are getting out of control. I have the time over the hols for a big project so here it is.
I really like lundia but I can find it as thin and tall as I want.
I like another particular  type of shelf that has adjustable shelves using an easily available fitting.
I decided to combine the top-bottom shelf lock the uprights idea of lundia with the adjustable shelves.
I also decided to abandon the need for them to be unattached to the wall. They will be too high and thin to stay upright by themselves.

 I added a fixed shelf in the middle as I thought the uprights might bow outward if books were forced in then the shelves would drop off their brackets.

Lots of holes to drill. Measuring and drilling them so that they are right on and clean took the longest time by far. Over 10 hours at a guess.	This a unit frame. I was thinking I might need a X brace and had planned to use wire and turnbuckles. This was just needed to keep the frames intact while handling them into place and  screwing them to the wall. They were more then stable enough to handle so I did dropped that.

Screwing the frame to the wall. That's a complete one to the right of the window.

With the shelves clipped in.	And a double wide set for the bigger stuff.

2015-12 Repair Solarvox speakers

This was to be an easy one. HA! Anyway... I have a number of HiFi speakers from the '60s - '80s and they take up space. Sorted them out and found this pair have a sound I like but a blown tweeter.

The label on the back is interesting...

I found an appropriately rated tweeter from JayCar and fitted it. It sounded very very bright. A series resister would be all that's needed to reduce the level of the modern more efficient driver but doing that by listening and changing the resistor seemed fraught.
I decided to try measure it :

• Make sweep and noise files and play them  on the left then right channels
• Use the Tascam recorder to grab a recording 
• Have a look at the spectrum of the recordings and adjust until they match.

Generate tone:  sox -n sweep1.wav synth 10 sine 10-20000
Generate noise:  sox -n wn1.wav synth 10 whitenoise

Then play it back and record it on the tascam.

Script:

while true ; do for F in *.wav ; do echo "Playing [ $F ]" ; play $F ; sleep 1 ; done ; done




Note the rug on the chair to create a special sound proof recording area.



After some trial and error the spectrogram of white noise seems the best way to see what's going on. Got these from
sox infile.wav -n spectrogram outfile.png
after trimming the tascam recordings down to just the white noise burst.

This is the new tweeter 

This is the original.













An 8 Ohm resister seemed to be about right:

I did both speakers as the high end is clearly better.

2015-09 Line out for the Yamaha CN-70

I got this for $30 or less. I have the room right now and it seemed in good nick and is. I removed an odd mixer that had been added but came without its power supply so was useless. I had been hoping to use it for a line out. (The organ is very well built for service).
That got me thinking about adding a line out. Found a circuit diagram. Found some room on the side panel. Had the parts.

Test Point 82 clearly indicated on the main board is just before the Expression peddle and the main Vol so that's about right. Drilled a hole and made a plate to hold a 6.5mm jack socket.

Mounted it, soldered it up and tried it out.

Noisy but good. I think the way to fix the noise would be to go back toward the tone banks, make a low noise amp and pick it up from there. There'd be no rhythm or auto play stuff that way though but I was toying with giving them their own outputs anyway. Maybe later.
Sounds AWESOME through last months PTOM (a spring line reverb tank reverb. must write it up). Very Marty Rev