Skip to main content

Rockmite RJ45 Moves Inside

 After losing the negative power lead while transporting the radio that's supposed to be ultra-easy to transport, (I'm trying to develop a type of ham radio akin to free-running, but anyway), it became apparent the RJ45 connector needed to move inside the radio case sooner rather than later.

Here's the broken power lead:



Yes, produce is an important part of amateur radio around here.


The initial idea was to use a dremel to cut notch the box for the RJ45 connector, but there wasn't a shaft for the cutting blade. The next idea was to use a hacksaw, but well, there wasn't a blade for the hacksaw. But! The maker space I work in, Noisebridge, did have a pair of tin shears! Oh My Goodness! It was so easy! It was like cutting paper. 


There were a few issues entirely of my own creation. I forgot I had the box of spiffy matching nylon spacers in my backpack, so the first prototype wound up with mismatched metal spacers:


(Notice how the wall of the box is simply folded down after making the necessary snips.

Upon arriving back home I realized I'd had the spacers all along, and used them:


The screw on the left is intentionally loose. The holes were not precision drilled so it takes a little bit of play to get everyting to work out. The slop in the screw allows that to happen.

I'll need to drill two more holes. The RJ45 connector is a little too stiff for this to easily be a two screw operation.


Here's a video walkthrough:



To answer the question posed at the end of the video, Utah could in fact hear the radio with the new RJ45 connector.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1.  While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero.  This is typically explained in the following way.  While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare.  That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2].  Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector.  Its operation is in concept very sim