Environmental Degradation caused by bicycle bridge construction

UPDATE! Photos made in late October PROVING this bridge project is still WAAAYYYYY out of compliance with the Corps of Engineers Permit. It's both a boating hazard and an Environmental Hazard which is accelerating the silting in of the Harbor by impeding the flow causing silt and sediment to be dropped in front of the boat ramp     ... Unfortunately the Corps got scammed by the contractor who OBVIOUSLY Cherry Picked where they were putting the measuring stick. For cripes sakes don't any of these so-called Engineers owned a freaking Depth Finder?  Any fool with a $100 Depth Finder can see it's not correct in just a couple of passes ...

THIRD muffed removal of causeway

October 24 2012

Once again for comparison pre-construction Summer 2011:

October 24 2012 3D maps

Pre-construction 3D Summer 2011

The Army Corp of Engineers Nationwide Permit #14 permits the construction of bridge and associated causeway across the slough. It reads in part as follows:

Linear Transportation Projects. Activities required for the construction, expansion, modification, or improvement of linear transportation projects (e.g., roads, highways, railways, trails, airport runways, and taxiways) in waters of the United States. For linear transportation projects in non-tidal waters, the discharge cannot cause the loss of greater than 1/2-acre of waters of the United States. For linear transportation projects in tidal waters, the discharge cannot cause the loss of greater than 1/3-acre of waters of the United States. Any stream channel modification, including bank stabilization, is limited to the minimum necessary to construct or protect the linear transportation project; such modifications must be in the immediate vicinity of the project.

This NWP also authorizes temporary structures, fills, and work necessary to construct the linear transportation project. Appropriate measures must be taken to maintain normal downstream flows and minimize flooding to the maximum extent practicable, when temporary structures, work, and discharges, including cofferdams, are necessary for construction activities, access fills, or dewatering of construction sites. Temporary fills must consist of materials, and be placed in a manner, that will not be eroded by expected high flows. Temporary fills must be removed in their entirety and the affected areas returned to pre-construction elevations. The areas affected by temporary fills must be revegetated, as appropriate.

Obviously the City of Davenport and General Constructors, Inc. are still WAAYYYYY out of compliance with the Law .......



Just some maps for now ....

July 2012  (1st attempted removal of causeway)

Summer 2011 (Pre-construction)

 USACE docs

August 2012 (2nd attempted removal of causeway and current state)

Conversion Details and Final Specs

The base unit is an Acer one AO531h netbook with WWAN modem and the 6 cell extended battery. This is the same unit sold with a data contract at AT&T although this particular unit was a refurb that most likely only had a bad webcam which is why they were returned to AT&T and Acer. So the basic specs are the same except for a few subtractions and additions.

Items Removed:

1. Webcam assembly
2. Keyboard (Which can be replaced if needed)
3.  Touchpad and controller (Like the keyboard it's not accessible in normal use)
4. VGA connector (Replaced with an SMA jack)
5. Ethernet connector  (Replaced with SMA jack

Items added:

1. Touchscreen Kit
2. Bluetooth transceiver (USB Bluetooth dongle stripped and mounted in the provided mount and hardwired to the Bluetooth Port on the motherboard)
3. Wireless Mouse receiver (Another stripped out USB dongle mounted where the touchpad controller used to be)
4. Antenna Jack (SMA) for GPS antennas
5. Antenna Jack (SMA) for Cellular WWAN modem
6. Memory upgraded to 2 GB
7. Windows 7 OS (Without a keyboard with the hardwired Fn key there was no way to control the backlight in XP even with the Tablet PC extensions so Win7 was my best option and properly set up seems just as fast as XP )
8. Power supply circuit modified to run off 12-13.8 VDC **without** battery installed, no noisy auto adapter needed lowering average power consumption to 10 watts or less
9. Four switches added to the front bezel, Power, Bluetooth, WWAN, WLAN wired in parallel with the existing switches which are all still functional


Outboard items mainly wired into my boat:

1. USB Hub in console
2. Rubber industrial grade USB keyboard in console
3. Serial to USB converter in console for serial NMEA depth output of the Garmin 300C fishfinder
4. GPS antenna(s)
5. Cellular 1900MHz Edge band antenna(s)
6 USB port mount in front of console
7. Tough Tray II and Ram Mount mounting hardware
8. PC Shade hood for better daylight visability of the LCD screen
9. Bluetooth headset for Voice Control

GPS related software:

1. Ozi Explorer v 3.95.5k
2. Map Merge for OziExplorer
3. Depths2Ozi
4. Fugawi Marine ENC v 4.5
5. Dr Depth v4.5


Next up some pictures of the unit in the boat and the boat electrical setup

Netbook To Chartplotter V 1.0

First a few pictures then I'll go into the final details

They don't make a touchscreen kit for this particular Acer One model (AO531h) and it is so slim there was really no place to put the touchscreen controller. Since the keyboard was essentially worthless now with the screen flipped like a Tablet PC I removed it and put the touchscreen controller in there. I got a 3-in-1 screen protector, microfiber cloth and mousepad to cushion the LCD screen and chassis when it's in the boat Ram Mount.

The Tough Tray II Ram Mount, wireless mouse and Bluetooth headset for voice control

I was able to just flip the screen and wiring to get it to convert to a Tablet PC for use in my boat without the battery but the battery would bind a bit on the LCD screen when fully closed stressing it so I had to remove a little unnecessary plastic and then covered with quality electrical tape (3M Temflex 1700)

For field GIS type of work like mapping a yet to be flooded lake they are building north of Davenport I can pop in the battery pack, flip the screen 180 degrees and add my custom Cellular data modem and GPS antennas (which I'll detail in a later post along with the antennas I've made for my boat) and I can walk the area and map out all the manmade and natural structure that will eventually be underwater. If I need to I can access Google Earth, Bing and other online map services or any other information I might need after I get into the field

Here's a couple of pics with the unit in the Ram Mount like how I use it in my boat. It's running OziExplorer and Depths2Ozi showing some depth readings I took on a photomap I made at the outlet end of the Lake Odessa wildlife preserve in late July when I couldn't get on the river due to a late season flood

That should be enough to chew on for one post, I'll detail the system in my next post and then have some pictures of the setup in the boat along with the boat's electrical/electronics package

MAJOR UPDATES COMING SOON

Both projects have been completed since late June, I've just been too busy with other projects and trying to enjoy the summer (despite the record levels of rainfall and heat) to gather everything together and do an update. But since all this rain has kept me off the river lately I've had a chance to catch up and get my home improvement projects done.

Here's a couple of quick pictures of the netbook to chartplotter project,  the first is when I was roughing in the electrical system in my boat, the second picture is from late June on one of it's first trips out

I should have a bunch of pictures and details by the end of the weekend.  I'll stick mainly to the Netbook to Chartplotter but will throw in a few pics of the boat project since the two actually are part of one big project

Update To Livewell Timer Circuit

A slight update to the livewell timer circuit. I changed the value and way I switched the On Time resistors. The other way it was 32 and 64 seconds, this way it will be 30 and 60 seconds. I couldn't split 150K because they don't make a 75K resistor and it didn't dawn on me until this morning to just put another 150K in parallel to get my 75K ohms. I also moved the motor on indicator LED so it lights when on Manual Fill as well as when the timer turns on. It's nice to have so you don't accidently leave it running when it's too noisy to hear it running. I add the same 680 ohm resistor and red LED to every switch on the panel as an indicator. I get both in bulk and from grab bags and it costs me about a nickel per switch to add them.

Livewell Timer Circuit - Simple Recycle Timer

I updated my livewell timer design originally made in 2004 for my previous boat. I have yet to find another livewell timer circuit on the internet so I figured I'd put mine up on the blog. All the parts should be available at any Radio Shack. The circuit features a manual fill override, 30 or 60 second switched On Time and 1-8 Minutes infinitely variable Off Time. The 555 timer must be a CMOS low power version to get these long of delays and the relay should be rated at 5 amp or better. The motor is only rated ar 2 amp but it's an *inductive load* while relays are rated for a resistive load necessitating a higher amperage relay to keep from burning the contacts from inductive kickback. The main difference between the new circuit and the old one is the addition of a selectable on time so this circuit has been field tested and proved 100% reliable over the last 6 years.

On my last boat I also added a Pulse Width Modulator motor speed control to control the water flow/pressure. The smallest livewell pump available is 500 gallons per minute which is way overkill for smaller livewells. The spray head restricts it somewhat and the common solution is to insert a valve in the line and choke it down which wastes a lot of electricity. So a 50% duty cycle from the PWM will cut your amp hour usage nearly in half ( There are circuit loses keeping us from a full 50% savings) Again the circuit is simple and the parts available at any Radio Shack. (I don't get my parts there all that often but I like to design with Radio Shack available parts so I can repair a circuit ASAP, there is always a Radio Shack fairly close by) If I do decide I need it I'll go dig out the schematic and post it on the blog.

It'll probably be a week yet before I get back to the Netbook to Chartplotter, getting my new boat on the water is a priority (This project isn't much good without a boat to test it in). I did get a Ram Mount and their Tough Tray II universal netbook/tablet PC mount which will give me the ability to rotate the computer to the front where I can see it while operating the trolling motor. Right now I'm putting the finishing touches on the design of the electronics package and I'll start pulling the wires and doing the 'rough in' so I can get the floors in and start the painting process.

Touchscreen Controller Problems But Back In Business Now

Sorry about no posts lately. The controller board for my touchscreen kit was bad and I had to spend several days trying to get a warranty replacement. Actually I damaged the controller board by hooking it up to 5V instead of the 3.3V that's at the camera port. For most of the kits for computers other than Acer Ones they grab 5V from a USB port but the internal ports (Camera, Bluetooth) on the Acers only supply 3.3V. So in order to save a few pennies on the controller they left out a 5V to 3.3V regulator for the USB hub chip. Problem is they didn't document this and one piece of documentation listed only 5V controllers. You can see on the controller PCB where the regulator and outboard components are supposed to be and also you will find a jumper across the input and output pads of the regulator.

Even the techs at Hoda Technology are unaware of this and I wasn't going to mention it to them in fear they'd deny me a warranty replacement. It's their fault not mine that their documentation is extremely weak and 'dumbed down' and their technicians aren't properly trained/supplemented with basic details (Like supply voltages). Unfortunately this is the Status Quo throughout the computer industry with most of the so-called Technical Support being $8/hr non skilled labor reading from a troubleshooting check list. The thing is a seasoned troubleshooter like myself knows the basic steps of troubleshooting by heart and have already performed these simple tests. If I'm calling for technical assistance you can be damn sure it's a problem not listed in their cheat sheets.

But I did finally get a replacement controller board in the mail Friday and tonight I got the touchscreen working, it needs some tweaking for edge compensation and my Cubed Desktop program didn't want to play nice with it (A problem with the buggy program and not the touchscreen) but given the quick calibration it worked pretty good. Now all I have to do is wire the switch array and power LED I added to the bezel and test them, then I can button up that part of the project. Then I can move on to removing the connectors for VGA output and wired network, a few of the surrounding components, and trimming the PCB to make room for the SMA jacks for the WWAN and GPS antenna inputs. Then I can add my other options, PCB from a Bluetooth USB dongle, PCB from a wireless mouse USB dongle, and my latest feature addition an FM transmitter since the boat I just got has an AM/FM CD system already (I was using a modified for line level input  car 'power booster' amp) That eliminates another wire to plug into the Netbook2Chartplotter leaving only Power and the two antenna inputs and all at the bottom.

On the bright side the delay allowed me to get started on my other project and I've completely stripped the boat down, finished the front decks, hatches and trolling motor mount (Built from a huge 1/4" thick 'L' shaped piece of aluminum that once doubled as the heatsink and sides to a old mainframe computer power supply I stripped years ago.) Rebuilt/beefed up the transom and am about half way through redoing the trailer bunks, loading guides and wiring/lights. Still a lot to do before I'm even ready for paint, much less flooring, carpeting and the final touches. I'm doing it right so I only have to do it once and it will be a fitting home for the Netbook2Chartplotter. I'm shooting for a 'launch date' for both projects of May 1. So although it may seem like nothing is going on, behind the scenes I'm working on these projects every free minute I have. I was hoping to have the hardware part of this project done by now (And would have easily) but the 2+ week delay caused by the controller board threw the schedule all out of whack. Although I don't foresee any other delays like this, now I'll have to juggle time between the boat project and this one so I don't expect to get anything more than the button array wired and bezel closed up until I get ready to paint the boat (7-10 days). I'll have plenty of time to work on it between coats of primer and paint