Jeff's Blog

Free Software to Reduce Your Cellphone Bill

2009-11-04T10:18:00.004-05:00

I am a long time (decades long) user of Verizon Wireless which I have used since they were locally called Bell Atlantic. They are expensive but there coverage is second to none and they work in my house where few other carriers get a signal.

I currently have four phones on my family plan, used by myself and three of my children in three different states. With a data plan on my Smartphone, the bills get up there pretty quickly. That's why I was happy to hear about Verizon Wireless's new Friends and Family plan, which allows you to pick five or ten frequently called out of network numbers and add them to a list for free calling.

While this feature has been out since February, I only just heard of it. Enthused at being able to save some money and moving to a cheaper plan with fewer minutes, I call Verizon Wireless and asked about the plan, and verified I was able to use it. I then asked them to put the top ten phone numbers which were eating up most of my minutes onto my plan. The service person on the other line said that he couldn't do that, but I could figure it out myself on their website. Well, I logged into "My Verizon" online and it wasn't obvious which callers were the ones to pick because only call details are provided. They did have an option to download call details as a spreadsheet, but not being a spreadsheet expert I didn't have a quick solution.

Instead, I wrote a program which associated itself to the spreadsheet files, and totaled them up by number, from biggest user to smallest. It also shows all call details and has reverse number lookup capability in case you can't remember who is who by number alone. A charting tab also shows your top 10 callers in a pie chart.

This software worked well for me, so now I am making available to others who may need this functionality at no charge. Here is the download page: http://berezintechnologies.com/FriendsAndFamily . Please try it out and let me know how it works for you.

A grid-tie inverter for the rest of us

2009-10-28T14:38:00.003-04:00

Grid-tie inverters have become egalitarian today. You no longer need thousands of dollars or a licensed electrician to take advantage of the newest generation of micro grid-tie inverters. These devices let you hook your small wind turbine or solar panel to the grid for around $250-$350 US. In our latest Youtube Video, my colleague Paul Gelling puts one of these inverters through the wringer.

Click here to view the video: Youtube Video

Old Information can be Good Information

2009-10-14T22:36:00.009-04:00

If you are interested in making wind turbine towers from schedule 40 or schedule 80 pipe and fittings, some very good information can be found using a very old source: a 1958 copy of Popular Science which I was reading from Google Books:

Brown, S. (1958), "Machined Pipe and Fittings", Popular Mechanics, May 1, pp.197-200.

Its amazing that you can find so many old magazines on Google Books which still have relevancy today. Even using a CNC machine rather than a lathe, many of the ideas in this article are still transferable. I am interested in making a telescoping wind turbine mount inexpensively and found the discussion on telescopic uses of pipe very interesting.

Equally amazing is how much material was in a monthly magazine back in the day. Go buy a Popular Mechanics today and compare it in quality and quantity to the 1958 vintage equivalent. I bought one in an airport and had finished everything of value before the plane reached altitude. Same goes for most other magazines like Popular Science that are but a shadow of their former selves. They mostly help you buy things now rather than make things.

55 Gallon Drum Turbine Instructable

2009-09-23T10:12:00.005-04:00

I wrote an Instructable. I have been a fan of Faroun, a prolific VAWT inventor who has been writing Instructables for years, and now I have finally written my own instructable:

55 Gallon Drum Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT)

Please let me know what you think. It is a lot easier to read if you actually to to the Instructables site to view it.

RSS Available

2009-09-17T12:01:00.002-04:00

You can now get news feeds which will update automatically when I change my blog at the following link.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/berezin/RrRx

Savonius Kit For Sale

2009-08-26T21:57:00.003-04:00

We are now offering our Savonius VAWT kit for sale on our corporate site at Berezin Technologies. This provides the gears shown in my youtube videos and a complete set of instructions for building the turbine in English or Spanish.

Mangetic Levition VAWT

2009-07-06T11:12:00.002-04:00

Check out my Magnetic Levitation Bearing equipped VAWT

This uses permanent magnets to lift the VAWT, reducing friction and required maintenance.

Microsoft giveth, and Microsoft taketh away

2009-06-16T12:55:00.006-04:00

In a wierd coincidence, the day after I published my last blog entry on the availability of Caligari Truespace, a now free and formerly expensive 3d design and animation package, Microsoft has decided to kill the package. This probably explains why the initial availability of this software wasn't advertised in the media more by Microsoft.

Since this is one of the best packages available for 3d design and even includes physically based modeling capabilities, I find this decision by Microsoft to be very unfortunate. I am now looking into a package that costs nearly $10,000 (Autodesk Inventor) to replace this capability.

If anyone reading this has influence at Microsoft, please ask them to reconsider the killing of this product.

For those of you who still want to download the software and video training, it is still available at http://www.caligari.com (hurry, it won't be there for long). Here is the full text of the letter sent to all Truespace users by the founder of Caligari, Roman Ormandy: Full Text

There is a free lunch - Caligari Truespace

2009-05-18T10:59:00.007-04:00

Truespace by Caligari

Two years ago my son and I were looking for a 3d modeling and animation software package. After much comparison shopping we decided on Truespace from Caligari. I paid over one thousand dollars for the software and some training videos. We were highly productive with this software.

Well, in a bid to compete against Google's Google Sketch-up (also a free tool from Google), Microsoft purchased Caligari and has made Truespace a free product. On top of that, all of the training videos are now free. For some reason, this has not received a lot of press. I highly recommend Truespace.

I recently attempted to design a vertical axis wind turbine blade using Google Sketch-up. I found that Google Sketchup has some excellent intuitive drawing techniques, but fell short as a CAD tool. I had no problem modeling the wind turbine blades, but found that trying to machine holes in the blades to allow machine screws to connect the layers together was an inaccurate and inconsistent process. I abandoned Google Sketchup after wasting days trying to get around these bugs. I also found that outputing to STL (stereo lithography file format) from Sketch-up was a dicey process. I need STL files to produce 3D objects on my CNC machine using the DeskCNC software (only option is DXF for 2D and STL for 3D).

I abandoned Google Sketchup and instead purchased and downloaded Viacad 2D/3D for $99 from Punch Software and was able to recreate my turbine wings in one day.

Several days after that, I came across the news that Caligari Truespace was now free so I downloaded that onto my Vista-64 Quad Processor workstation and began playing with that. My son is an expert with Truespace so I am now learning the software from him, and from the video tutorials. I hope to produce a simulation of my next generation wind turbines in Truespace, which also has some physically based modeling capabilities. The first thing I am trying is to export models created in Viacad into Truespace for assembly into a rotating VAWT.

I will post the videos of this at a later time.

New Airfoil-Based Wind Turbine

2009-04-21T22:01:00.009-04:00

This is a preview of our new turbine. This turbine is still under development but is performing very well in initial tests.

This turbine is much lighter and faster than previous turbines I've built. For one, it is a lift based turbine utilizing symmetrical airfoils rather than a drag based turbine such as the Savonius. This has both advantages and disadvantages. This turbine really goes, but the Savonius starts up easier in super light winds.

I would like to thank the following companies who produced custom products or provided services which were integrated into this turbine prototype.

Liberty Machine and Tool - http://www.libertymachine.net/

SENSYR - http://sensyr.com

FC Sails - http://www.fcsails.com/

Thermal Foams, Inc. = http://www.thermalfoams.com/

Otherpower.com - http://otherpower.com

Here is a YouTube video of this prototype turbine.

Eye-Fi update

2009-02-06T09:52:00.005-05:00

I had problems with my Eye-Fi card (click here for my previous blog entry on this). It would just stop working after a while in my security camera application. Then one day I logged into the Eye-Fi Manager and received a message that my Eye-Fi card was recalled. Eye-Fi then shipped me a new card within two days and a mailer to return the old card.

Now, I am having much better luck with the new card and have run it over a day now with my CHDK motion detecting script. I have the Canon A590IS camera pointed out into my front yard and have caught some birds at my feeder. I am not a bird watcher so if anyone can tell me what kind of birds these are, I would appreciate it.

I will post my test results with running the Eye-Fi card based security solution in the near future and hopefully I can report that it has run for many days or even weeks.

Gear-Wheel Designer Vastly Improved

2009-01-30T14:10:00.040-05:00

When I wanted to couple my prototype Savonius wind turbine to an off-the-shelf alternator, I decided to use gears. I cut the gears on my IMService CNC machine using an inexpensive piece of software from Delph Electronics called the Gear-Wheel Designer

Graham Baxter's Gear-Wheel Designer with G-code generator lets you type in a few parameters, press a button, and get a DXF file of a gear, along with G-code to run a CNC machine. This program allowed me to make gears to electrify my wind turbine without being an expert on gear cutting. Click here to see a video of the wind turbine in action.

The user interface of the Gear-Wheel Designer is quite simple and contains a parameter area and a graphical preview of the gear to be rendered:

Here is a picture of a gear produced from the software.

The latest release has the ability to create five gear types as opposed to just cycloidal and involute gears in the previous release. The new release added the capability to design ratchet wheels, dead-beat ratchet wheels and anchor ratchet wheels. See this page for more detail on the new gear/wheel types. Also added was the ability to create wheels with spokes as shown above. There are also a number of other new features as this release was a complete rewrite of the software. They let you download the user manual prior to purchase so I advise doing this to find out more details about the software prior to purchase. This software does not attempt to teach you terminology or gear design concepts so if you are like me and don't know much about gears, you should do some research prior to machining your gears.

This software is definitely a bargain at less than $80 to purchase. I just upgraded to the latest version and will be trying it out on my next generation vertical wind turbine. I am also going to try my hand at machining a pendulum clock. Watch this blog for future updates if interested in gears.

Canon A590 IS + Eye-Fi Card + CHDK open source software = FUN

2009-01-13T16:06:00.023-05:00

A friend of mine owns a liquor store and was robbed recently of some high priced bourbon. He had a professionally installed security camera system which recorded the thief's car leaving the parking lot. Unfortunately, the detail of the NTSC video output was insufficient to recognize the license plate number, hampering the investigation by the police.

I wondered why the resolution in pixels in security cameras hasn't improved much since the 1950's. I researched some newer, higher definition, security cameras, and found a very nice one:

The Sony EVI-HD1

"The Sony EVI-HD1 is a color motorized PTZ camera that can be switched from displaying standard NTSC/PAL resolution video to outputting high definition images with a maximum resolution of 1080i. By starting off with such outstanding video quality, images will retain their sharpness and color depth even under extreme digital magnification."

This is a very nice piece of equipment. Unfortunately, it costs over four thousand dollars. Because of the price, this was not a cost effective purchase for a small liquor store.

I began to look around and found out about the EYE-FI card, a secure digital card with 2GB of storage combined with a limited Wi-fi capability. I already new about CHDK, an open source software project which allows one to "take over" the firmware of certain models of Canon digital cameras. I researched work done by the many programmer volunteers who contribute to CHDK, and came up with a solution which combines a Canon A590 IS inexpensive point and shoot camera, an Eye-Fi Card, and CHDK open source software to produce a "poor man's" high definition security camera. Total hardware outlay for the development prototype was less than $300. Now, because of sales on the camera and chip, this number can drop to under $200. While it does not have remote pan and zoom capability, it does have very high 8 Megapixel resolution, which may preclude the need to pan and tilt by instead using an optional wide angle lens to cover a large area of a parking lot. Also, being more inexpensive than the alternative would allow the deployment of multiple DIY cams for the price of a single high end camera.

I wrote a script to run under the CHDK firmware which detects motion, snaps a picture, uses the eye-fi card to send the picture to a PC or photo sharing site over my home wi-fi network, and then automatically delete old images on the eye-fi card so the card does not run out of space (this should be built into the eye-fi card but is not). I used a language called LUA, used to write advanced scripts under CHDK, and eventually got the camera to successfully upload eight gigabyte images in real time. Here are some images I was able to capture in my front yard while pointing the camera at a bird feeder (you can click on the images to see them at 1600 x 1200, the actual images out of the camera are at 3264 x 2448 pixels which is too big for my blogging software to upload):

This week I will be stress testing this solution. Others working with the eye-fi card in similar endeavors on the CHDK wiki report that they are having reliability problems with the eye-fi card after 18 hours of constant use. They are attacking the problem by using an embedded computer to reboot the camera by simulating depression of the power switch. I am going to see how long I can run this system without a lockup before attempting to make any hardware modifications of my own. Obviously, to be used a security camera, the system must be reliable. I am not putting this into the liquor store until it has run at least a month in my house without failure. I will keep you abreast of the project as it progresses. My final script will be published on the CHDK forum. I am going to get back on wind turbines and RF remotes later this week.

Alternative Energy in Spain

2008-08-02T09:06:00.013-04:00

While traveling in Spain for six weeks to study alternative energy and green technologies, I have observed some interesting trends.

I have been staying in a small pueblo named Casas de Benitez. Casas de Benitez has a population of slightly more than 1,000 people, and is flanked with wind generators (called molinetas by the locals) and solar cell farms. Everywhere I have gone in Spain over the past month (mostly in the Castilla-La Mancha region) has been dotted with wind turbines and solar cell farms. I recently drove from Casas de Benitez to Alicante for some sailing, and constantly passed wind farms.

We also passed a wide load on the highway which turned out to be a huge semi hauling three 100 meter blades for a new turbine installation.

This is the area of Spain where Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, and Molinos were used to grind wheat into flower for centuries. As I walked through the narrow streets of Casas de Benitez, vacant lots were covered which grains of wheat drying in the hot summer sun and in preparation for grinding by molinas (not wind powered in this case).

Spain's wind output has doubled over the last three years and will double again before 2010. While we are seeing wind power growth in the US, it is not as dramatic as in Spain. Helping things more, Spain's wind turbines, for the most part large HAWTs (horizontal axis wind turbines), are much lighter than most due to new technology developed in Spain.I hope that wind power in the US will now grow at faster rates. Certainly the gasoline price increases and resultant economic effects will help make the country take a long term look at alternative energy. Hopefully we won't repeat the shortsighted mistakes that were made in the 1970's after the first gas crisis abated and prices dropped.

More information on Spain's wind power growth can be read in this interesting article from MITs Technology Review. I found it very interesting the all wind farms in Spain are linked together and controlled by a central computing facility. Take time to play the interview video (available in several languages) at the MIT website because it is extremely interesting.

VAWT Video Part 2 - Power Generation.

2008-05-19T22:44:00.013-04:00

VAWT Part 2 -- Gears and Generator

Please check out the following link to a YouTube Video of part two of our wind turbine build. Video - Part 2 This shows our geared generator design and a desktop CNC machine cutting gears.

Two other designs are being worked on for future:

1. Geared design shown in this video.

2. A version with a built in rotating cylinder of permanent magnets exciting a stationary coil (permanent magnet alternator) with no mechanical gearing and hence no mechanical loss as is inherent with gears.

3. Another type with a geared automotive generator (no magnets at all) whose mechanical resistance is controlled with PWM(Pulse Width Modulation) by a microcontroller controlling power into the rotating coil. With no power, the coil should free-wheel with minimal resistance. In strong winds, we could "make hay while the sun shines" by putting a lot of juice into the coil. In light winds, the power in the coils is reduced to an amount which still will at least hopefully trickle charge the battery. A small permanent magnet motor-generator would be used to jump start the process and handle the case of a totally dead battery, and could "trickle charge" a dead battery. This design is very interesting from a software point of view, but has the highest amount of technical risk.

The wind speed, RPM, and outputs will be monitored, and more importantly compared, with a flexible sensing and visual programming environment called NeatTools, which will be discussed and "filmed" in future posts. We will also be using a TNG-3B from http://www.sensyr.com in conjunction with NeatTools to simultaneously monitor multiple inputs from hall effect sensors (from a small magnet on each turbine axle), voltage sensors, and a wind speed sensor.

CNC part 1-Unboxing and Connecting

2008-04-12T17:16:00.005-04:00

I received a CNC machine last month and opened it up. Here is video of the initial checkout of the machine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duunwn_yfW8

Since this was posted I have used the machine for many other projects including making gears for my wind turbine and machining plastic front panels for local companies.

I did a lot of research before buying this machine from IMService ( http://www.imsrv.com/ ) and I think I made a good decision as it is making us more productive. The owner of the company, Fred Smith, provides excellent support. Here is a link to the actual 12 x 24 inch machine I bought:

http://www.cadcamcadcam.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=208

Soon I am going to try to make printed circuits on the machine using special micro end mills.

Here is the YouTube Video of the unboxing: YouTube Video

Ship in Santo Domingo Harbor, Dominican Republic

2008-03-27T15:57:00.000-04:00

I saw this ship docked in the harbor at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in February 2008. I used my new Kodak Z812IS camera with built in panoramic stitching to take this shot. Well the shot was way too large to display on the internet, so I used a free tool from the clever Brits at Clevr.com for displaying panoramic photos on websites after first downsizing the number of pixels in the image. The final product is a flash object which can be embedded in any web page or blog. Let me know what you think.

Dominican Republic

2008-03-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

Just returned from the Dominican Republic. We stayed in Santo Domingo for about a week and had a great time. We stayed with a relative who is working on the new subway project and got to see the country in a non-tourist fashion. I will post a movie shortly on some of our DR experiences.

I looked for wind turbines when I was there but found none. A pilot project was abandoned, purportedly due to "lack of wind". The wind was blowing 10-20 knots north of Santo Domingo most of the time I was there so I want to go back to the DR with some VAWTS and see if they are viable.

VAWT video

2008-03-07T11:12:00.001-05:00

Here is a video demonstration of our sub-$100 VAWT.

If you want to make one yourself, here is an instructional video (about 8 minutes long).

Here is a video of it running in some gusty winds.

Wind Power, CNC, and More

2008-03-07T09:59:00.001-05:00

Welcome to my blog. Here I will keep you abreast of new developments at the Berezin house. Currently, we are developing an inexpensive "build it yourself" VAWT (vertical axis wind turbine). After checking locally for a wind turbine and finding entry level prices in the $3,000 to $5,000 range, I decided to build a plastic barrel VAWT. Last week we bought a CNC machine to fabricate parts for our VAWT. I will be publishing videos of our progress on these projects.