Training Log Archive: biggins

A year or so ago I decided to see if I could figure out how to speak SIAir, since it seemed fun and hard and topically relevant. This has been a very occasional project, since James takes up all our time and then some (which also lead to 2018 and 19 being my two lowest training years ever, by a lot). But the occasional bit of tinkering here and there was enough to figure it out, and then figure out how to build controls, and learn all sorts of fun bonus things in the process. So it's been cool.

The latest and greatest is this. It's mostly wires, but the useful stuff in there is probably $7 worth of amazon'd bits and pieces. It has about a half meter range as a control unit, and can also "punch" from other controls to time sync itself (or sync some other settings).

There have been lots and lots of different versions along the way, the most notable of which include:

- the GPS model: Instead of an external clock module to remember time, this one used a gps chip to sync the time, so it was always accurate and never needed to be sync'd.
Downsides: you have to turn on your controls outside.
Upsides: a serial gps chip only costs $4 on ebay. That's crazy.

- the GPS model v2: Since the gps chip also gives location, each control knew exactly where it was. So when you punched, instead of writing a time to the stick it wrote the location. Then when it downloaded you got the location where each punch happened.
Downsides: even taking over every single bit that gets written to the stick, there are still only so many to play with, so you can't get very good accuracy. Knowing the bounding box of the map, you can compress it to something sortof useful, but still not really. Also, this isn't really useful information anyway unless your controls are moving too.
Upsides: it was kinda cool.

- the Two-Batteries-and-a-Wire-Taped-to-a-Chip model: lol cause it works.
Downsides: there's no "clock", so even with some fancy tuning the best I could get still drifted 3 or 4 seconds every minute. But that's not really an issue because the batteries only last 10 minutes anyway.
Upsides: it costs a dollar. If I were a nefarious individual that wanted to stand in the start chute of WOC and throw Finish controls at the fast kids as a joke, this is what I'd use. But I'm not. So it wasn't me.

Anyway next steps are probably to take that current one and figure out how to make some PCBs for it and SMD everything, which will make it smaller and cheaper and sexier. And I need to work on it's sleep mode, which is more ghetto than average right now. And then make a permanent gazillion control score-o around the house for James and/or the roomba.

C • GPS 7

Quick ski up at ASC. Can't tell if they did lots of trail work over the summer, or they've already been moving lots of snow around, but the little rolling parts on the trails are smoother than normal.

C • ASC 2

Long ski. Wasn't really planning on this long, but after a loop around the top it was starting to cool down and get good down low, so I did a loop around the valley. Could have used some munchies.