Flightless Angels

We’ve all seen this before – the ‘broken spoke’ which seems to me to be the most common failure of the contemporary umbrella, from the $4 street corner specials to the $20 upmarket models with the ‘lifetime guarantee’, which I assume means the lifetime of the average housefly.

This is particularly aggravating to me because although the metal can be recycled the lifetime of an umbrella is incredibly short considering how often it is actually used. In my case my umbrella had not even been in the wind; it’s just so poorly made that part of it broke.

Here’s an internal examination of the problem, which in this case is a complete break of the outer spokes away from the core. It’s really very sad.

And also very aggravating because the root cause of these problems is the bottom-dollar riveting used

This metal is so soft in the cheaper models that I can dent it with a thumbnail. Even the expensive models such as this one (no names but it rhymes with “boats”) they obviously aren’t’ up to the job.

There is hope however, if you have a pair of pliers and an Ebay account- these are ‘barbells’ used in piercing and body modification. I bought a few because they’re so cheap (about $1.50 per) and I imagine that more rivets will fail. They’re made of stainless steel and have a threaded ball at one end.

So, using your pair of pliers, pull out the old rivets and replace them with the barbells. I recommend a dab of Loctite to keep the ball from coming unthreaded.

It’s a little bit fiddly but once it’s done the umbrella is returned to full working order and you can walk with a little spring in your step that you’ve kept your umbrella out of the landfill for a little while longer.

I discovered that one corner of the base is 1.5″ too high do the walls aren’t square. There’s enough flexibility for me to pull it into place, luckily.

Man they weren’t kidding about the 28 day shipping time. Anyway I hope to get one of these done over the weekend.

It’s everybody’s favorite Space Shuttle, the Enterprise! Here seen en route to JFK airport and it’s final destination at the Intrepid Air and Space Museum.

Well Koala me didgeridoo it’s famed Australian actor, Chris “Thor” Hemsworth, surrounded by admiring Sheilas!

The software is complete and works the way I want. You can now stop and start the timelapse anytime. Once the units I ordered arrive I’ll do a video which shows how it all works.

Today’s episode, “Floor”.

Here

I’ve modified the code so that the timing is now driven off of the internal counter/timer instead of using a delay loop. This means that the variable image processing time is at least partially resolved, at least while the image processing time
is smaller than the image capture interval. For instance if I have a 15 second capture interval then while the image processing takes less than about 12 seconds, it’s fine. After that the image capture interval grows.

I’ve also modified the code to have the chip wait for a button press on the power switch before it starts working. This means that you can charge the unit and not have it capture images until you are ready. It also tests the power button in between image captures so you can turn it off anytime. I’m not going to bother putting the chip to sleep between intervals since it only draws about 0.5ma when busy.

I think that’s about it for the features I wanted to put in. The next step is to put the Atmel into the case and put the camera unit back together. I have some units coming from Hong Kong so hopefully they’ll arrive soon.