Landrover Defender 110 - Camper Upgrade

So a year ago I bought a Landrover Defender 110, it has been a great vehicle for going to the beach, taking my bike to the local mountain bike track and generally a fun vehicle to take on a bit of a trip.

So what way could I make it better, well we decided to  to make a camper in the back of it. This is not for long camping trips, as we are already well set up for multi-day camping, but for short long weekend trips. 

As there is only two of us, so we removed the back seats to allow for a fully flat bed to be constructed. These seats will remain out of the vehicle even when the Landy isn't being used as a camper. The length of the area when clear is about 2m long by about 1.3 m wide, this is definitely a comfortable width for both my wife and I to sleep well.

I made the floor bed at the height of the wheel arch space. This allowed for a minimum amount of materials to be used for the bed construction. I made the bed space of two rectangles essentially. They were both made of 19mm plywood from the local timber supplier. I used two sheets which was about $140 NZD. The thicker ply allowed me to build just one support down the middle of central box. See picture below.

I weigh quite a bit  but the ply handled it well and will definitely last. The uprights are glued and screwed to the to panel. With the overall height of the box being flush with the wheel arches. 

My wife sewed some curtains which have been attached using curtain wire and eye and hook fixings to the interior lining. The curtains have a whole bunch of NZ destinations as the primary styling of the material which makes our Landy look like it belongs on the roads. 

We had a spare 4x4 camper mat that we bought a few years back for camping which was too bulky for taking in our car but it fits well into the Landy and we will use it now for our Landy camper.

So this is the final product, we will be testing it out over a long weekend in Feb we are driving Molesworth Station in the South Island.

Velocio Brach 11 PLC

So I have been waiting in anticipation for the arrival of my new Velocio PLC it arrived a week or so back and wanted to just make a quick post about my initial thoughts.

Below is a picture of the PLC with the first reaction being wow, how insanely small!

This wee gadget is only as big as a typical Nokia charger, which, incidentally I have used as the power supply for the PLC. 

This PLC is a Branch 11 which has 6 digital in and 6 digital outputs. This cost me something like $135 NZD to get landed here in NZ, I feel like it is a little expensive given that I am able to get industrial PLCs of TradeMe for a similar price. 

Go to the Velocio.net website to check out what they are trying to achieve... 

So far I have not been terribly excited about the product. It's small size and user interface has not been a highlight for me so far. In fairness I have used AB CompactLogix and Festo PLCs before and I prefer the full size and robust appearnces of said PLCs but I am going to give this one a fair whack before I judge it too harshly. 

I'm going to start by working my way through their videos on their Youtube channel and see where that gets me. 

Here is hoping I make progress. 

C# Starting from Scratch

So many years ago, it seems I learnt how to program in C# a compiler developed by Microsoft. Well, recently I was asked if I could write some code to sort some data in a CSV format.

This is easy enough to do with Excel but with many data sets to be sorted in the future and with a bit of time till it will be used. I thought to myself what an opportunity to build a program using C#. Little did I know I have forgotten so much of what I have learnt I decided that I would pull out the old text book and start from the start. Or from where I think the start should be in this case.

Anyway here is the work that I have done today in the last half hour.

And here is the code that I used to implement it. Pretty straight forward code, give it a go, you forget how much fun mucking around with code it. 

Shout out too Douglas Bell & Mike Parr from C# for Students. Great book and will never throw this one out!

Hopefully I will keep you posted on how my little C# program for organising my CSV file goes.

namespace FirstDrawingProgram
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Graphics paper;
            paper = pictureBox1.CreateGraphics();
            Bitmap pic = new Bitmap(@"C:\Users\Nathan\Pictures\Coding\Solved.bmp");
            Pen pen = new Pen(Color.Black);//Create a black pen

            paper.DrawRectangle(pen, 10, 10, 100, 50);
            paper.DrawRectangle(pen, 10, 75, 100, 100);
            paper.DrawEllipse(pen, 10, 75, 100, 100);
            paper.DrawImage(pic, 130, 10, 300, 300);
            paper.DrawEllipse(pen, 10, 10, 50, 50);
        }

        private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Graphics paper;
            paper = pictureBox1.CreateGraphics();
            SolidBrush myBrush = new SolidBrush(Color.Black);
            paper.FillRectangle(myBrush, 10, 10, 90, 90);
        }

    }
}

CAT Demolition Demonstration

This is another demonstration from Macaulay Metals from the Spotlight on Seaview open day held in Lower Hutt.  This massive claw makes mince meat of a huge I beam!

Another Spotlight on Seaview Post - Video

Here is a video taken at Macaulay Metals by Aydin edited by Me... ( No comment on the poor editing :) ).  We used Picasa3 to do the editing.. Finding Picasa3 to be an extremely powerful tool! Hit the link below if you want to download it!

Picas3

Festo pneumatics, all in a couple of hours work!

So here is a video from the other day showcasing some high level Festo pneumatics... OK maybe not so high level but it was a cool little exercise we did in our Automation Paper at Weltec in the mechatronics lab!

Enjoy....

Spotlight on Seaview!

So a couple of weeks ago I was talking with my wife about a mysterious tunnel to Wainuiomata which was started many moons ago but was never finished.  We thought it would be cool to search for it and maybe see if we could explore it!

Well a couple of days ago a newspaper article, from The Hutt News, titled Spotlight on Seaview stated  the tunnel to Wainuiomata was going to be open to the public for the first time!

Coincidence??

Well taking it as a sign from above I rustled up some friends and we went to the Spotlight on Seaview, Industrial Fair. Sadly the line into the tunnel was way too long, we estimated the wait time to be over an hour long... The day wasn't ruined however, there was still things to see!

Metal spinning at at Basil Jones Metal Spinners

Metal recycling at Macaulay Metals, won a sweet beanie for guessing that iron can can oxidise, rust or corrode..

Pretty cool wind tunnel setup by Opus Laboratories!