Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Because the first pair of Wasabi NP-BX1 batteries for the Sony HDR-AS30V camera faded to the point where they weren’t useful for a typical bike ride, I bought a pair of SterlingTEK (a.k.a. STK) NP-BX1 batteries that, like the Wasabi batteries, claimed to have a 1600 mA·h capacity. These are “second tier” batteries, not the cheap eBay crap I’ve already dismissed, and run a bit under $10 apiece.
Here’s the picture from their product description:
SterlingTEK – STK NP-BX1 battery – as advertised
Here’s what arrived:
STK NP-BX1 batteries
Huh.
That’s a red flag, right there. It’s remarkably tempting to ship a good product for a while, then swap in much cheaper junk that can ride on the good reviews. Not saying that’s what happened, but it’s a possibility.
Here’s how they performed:
Sony NP-BX1 – Sony Wasabi STK – as received
The red and blue curves show that the STK batteries produced less than 1000 mA·h in their first two charges, with the blue battery (I labeled it B) showing considerable variation that suggests it’ll suffer early failure. The green curve shows one of those Wasabi batteries and the purple curve is the OEM Sony battery, both in as-received condition.
SterlingTEK will send two more batteries, in the belief that I received two sub-standard samples. We shall see…
All the tests are at 500 mA, approximately half the camera’s load. Oddly, the numeric values along the mA·h axis work out pretty close to the actual runtime in hours:
Sony – 1:30
Wasabi D – 1:15
Wasabi B – 0:40
Given that a typical bike ride takes an hour, the two year old Wasabi B battery’s 40 minute runtime isn’t useful. The Wasabi D battery is a bit over a year old and looks very much like the B battery did last year.
The Wasabi batteries march through the camera and charger in order, so each one gets used about once a week. The Sony battery gets used once every half-dozen complete cycles, just so I have a standard “good” battery.
The Sony and Wasabi B cells over the course of two years:
Sony NP-BX1 – OEM Wasabi – 2015-10 2014-10 2014-01
Much to my surprise, the Wasabi batteries started out slightly better than the Sony OEM battery, at least as measured by the available voltage and energy. The camera runs from an internal switching power supply, so the area under the curve (basically equal to energy in W·h) above the cutoff voltage is all that matters.
In round numbers, I can expect 100 cycles out of each battery before the run time drops below the ride time; at $10/battery, that’s a dime a ride. Any claims that the batteries can be recharged “1000 times!” may be true, but they’ll have a useless fraction of their original capacity by then.
In 1991 we lived in Tolland CT, where I took one picture of a maple twig every week:
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That was with a film camera, of course, with negatives. I assembled the printed images into a poster and eventually (perhaps in 2001) scanned / digitally photographed them four-at-a-time, saved the result as a 330 MB Photoshop file with one 2×2 group in each of 13 layers (there are 50 images, probably because vacations), and burned that to a CD.
All I can say: it must have made sense at the time.
Anyhow, here in the future, I found that CD in a pile destined for the shredder, which shouldn’t ought to happen without some attention.
Here’s how I extracted the separate images from that file into standalone JPEGs, cropped them to a uniform size, and smushed them to suitably low quality:
convert A\ Year\ in\ the\ Life\ of\ Tolland\ CT\ -\ 1991.psd -quality 95 Tolland-1991-%02d.jpg
for f in {01..13} ; do convert Tolland-1991-$f.jpg -crop "1212x1775+0+0" img-$f-0.jpg ; done
for f in {01..13} ; do convert Tolland-1991-$f.jpg -crop "1212x1775+1212+0" img-$f-1.jpg ; done
for f in {01..13} ; do convert Tolland-1991-$f.jpg -crop "1212x1775+0+1775" img-$f-2.jpg ; done
for f in {01..13} ; do convert Tolland-1991-$f.jpg -crop "1212x1775+1212+1775" img-$f-3.jpg ; done
for f in {01..13} ; do for g in {0..3} ; do convert img-$f-$g.jpg -crop "1100x1650+50+50" out-$f-$g.jpg ; done ; done
sn=1 ; for f in {01..13} ; do for g in {0..3} ; do printf -v dn 'Tolland-1991-Maple-%02d.jpg' "$(( sn++ ))" ; convert img-$f-$g.jpg -crop "1100x1650+50+50" +repage -rotate 90 -define jpeg:extent=200KB $dn ; done ; done
Then WordPress assembles the 50 images into a slide show.
Of course, it didn’t go quite as smoothly as all that, but it took maybe half an hour of fiddling to get it right by iterating on the commands until I liked the results. One might tweak the exposures and suchlike, but that’s in the nature of fine tuning.
The Sony HDR-AS30V has extremely high audio gain, which is precisely what you need for the mic on an action camera. It sends that audio, along with the video, through its HDMI output, so when you drive a display from the camera in enclosed space, the audio is REALLY LOUD and causes severe feedback. For obscure reasons, given the staggering cost of the venue’s AV system, there’s no way to mute the audio channel of the video input when you’re also using a mic attached to someone giving a presentation.
The obvious solution, a shorted jumper (formerly an earbud plug) in the external mic jack, looked like this:
Sony HDR-AS30V – Dummy external mic
Contrary to what I expected, the camera doesn’t disable the internal mic with the jumper in place. The amp probably uses an analog multiplexer, rather than a mechanical switch, and even an off-channel isolation of, say, 76 dB (from the MAX4544 spec, for example) isn’t enough to completely mute the mic. You could, given sufficient motivation, measure the actual isolation, but the surviving audio isn’t subtle at all.
The not-obvious solution turned out to be putting the camera into either single or interval photo mode, rather than the movie mode I use for bike rides. It seems that when the video format doesn’t require audio, the camera either disables the audio inputs or (more likely) just doesn’t include audio data in the HDMI output.
Which produces exactly what I want: a video output with no accompanying audio.
For reasons not relevant here, I need a tripod mount for the Sony AS-30V that’s not quite so constraining as Sony’s Official skeleton mount + right-angle tripod bracket:
Sony HDR-AS30V – skeleton tripod mount
I must run a cable from the micro-HDMI port behind the hatch on the bottom of the camera to a display, but the Sony mount puts the hatch directly over the tripod platform and handle. Reversing the camera points it toward the handle, which then appears in the camera’s not-quite-fisheye view. Flipping the camera upside down sends the cable out the top, where it will put what I consider undue stress on the smallest high-density connector on any of my gadgets.
This Thingiverse model by maxspongebob is called a “Windshield Mount“, but has approximately the right features:
Sony HDR-AS30V holder – on tripod
The weird T-shaped dingus adapts micro- and mini-HDMI sockets to an ordinary HDMI cable (HDMI connector Types D, C, and A, respectively), serving as a placeholder for the yet-to-arrive 15 foot (probably 4.5 meter) cable.
The mount isn’t designed for easy 3D printing, as it includes thin walls with chamfered edges, close tolerances, and aggressive bridging in dimension-critical areas. The first attempt failed when the minimal footprint (you’re looking at it in the picture above) pulled off the platform when the nozzle hit the lower bridge in the battery compartment:
Sony HDR-AS30V holder – failed print
Surrounding the first layer with a 5 mm brim provided enough traction to finish the whole thing:
Sony HDR-AS30V holder – on platform
You can see some droopy threads across the openings; PETG bridges reasonably well, but the chamfers don’t provide good anchors. The opening for the camera hatch (on the far right rear) turned out slightly too short or, perhaps, the camera doesn’t seat quite far enough forward, which required some abrasive adjustment to accommodate the hatch.
For unknown reasons, the top end of the battery compartment has a trapezoidal bridge:
Sony HDR-AS30V holder – trapezoidal bridge – Slic3r preview
Which simply cannot be printed:
Sony HDR-AS30V holder – internal bridge failure
Cutting those threads out with an Xacto knife solved that problem.
The mount attaches to the tripod with a 1/4-20 nut trapped behind the hole next to the battery compartment. I grabbed an ordinary steel nut in a long normally closed tweezers, heated it over a butane lighter flame, threaded it onto a bolt stuck through the hole, and pulled it securely into the trap with exactly zero drama.
It has a very, very snug fit around the camera and battery that’s much better than a loose & floppy fit: there’s no positive retention latch.
This will serve as a prototype to see if the whole project works. If so, I’ll lash something together in OpenSCAD that should print a bit better, even if it looks like my usual brackets…
It took a while, but the owners of Janet Drive did a commendable job of resurfacing the giant potholes that were consuming the parking lot entrance:
Janet Dr at 708 Dutchess Turnpike entrance – 2015-10-05
That patch covers all the holes, has a smooth surface, and neatly joins the adjacent pavement without huge bumps. It’s entirely possible to do good repairs, if you just hire the right contractor.
Which doesn’t happen if you’re NYSDOT, unfortunately, as they regards a few random hand-tamped blobs on a section of Rt 44 (and Bike Rt 44, for whatever that’s worth) as entirely adequate:
Rt 44 – 695 at Quest Diagnostics – 2015-10-05 – no progress
The sinkhole on Rt 376 that we must dodge maybe four times every week continues to grow:
Somebody who should know better suggested the NYSDOT crew just ran out of asphalt after patching all around the sinkhole that I’d reported back in July, but …
The NYSDOT Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator (yeah, she exists) assured me the engineers were studying the signal timing and would contact me directly:
Burnett at Rt 55 2015-08-31 – Yellow 8 s after green with cars
That hasn’t happened after four months, so I’d say NYSDOT uses the word “study” to mean “stonewall”.
This orb weaving spider set up anchors on the patio, the railing, and the gutter, as have many before her, but managed to get a slight twist in her web:
Orb weaving spider – warped web
It seemed to work well, although she packed up and moved on after just one night.
We haven’t seen many orb spiders this year, for unknown reasons.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 