Flying Red Horse

+Darian Drake posted this funny commercial to G+ earlier today.  The name of the energy drink "Flying Horse" brought back memories of something that happened when I was working at Verifone in the late 90's.

Verifone does Point Of Sale (POS) terminals. One of their target markets is "Petro" meaning gas stations, pay at the pump, etc.  My project assignment was to prototype an RFID-enabled POS terminal for Mobil Oil, with one of the design elements being that the Mobil logo (a red Pegasus) would light up if the transaction was approved.  The branded name for this system was "SpeedPass".

The project's execution was problematic.  We struggled to design a loop antenna that wouldn't have to be made by hand.  The product used ultra-bright LEDs - fairly new at the time - and custom Lucite "light pipes" to illuminate the logos.  The technician assigned to construct the prototypes procrastinated and ended up completing the work after the last FedEx pickup of the week.  Strapped for time I was preparing to take the shipment box to a FedEx depot when the UPS guy showed up to make a delivery.  I quickly filled out a shipping form for overnight delivery and handed the box over.  Turns out the story was just beginning.

Monday morning I came in to find several urgent messages on my desk.  (1997 - I hadn't yet bought a cell phone.)  The shipment had not arrived, and the sales meeting had started.  People (including Verifone execs) had traveled to Mobil Oil offices for the meeting - this was supposed to be the deal closure.  I quickly called UPS and got no answers.  Unlike FedEx, UPS didn't track packages every time they're touched.  The box had been put into a shipping container, and after that nobody could tell me anything.

The box didn't show up later that day as the UPS helpdesk suggested it might.  It didn't show up the following day, nor in the following week.  I called the UPS helpdesk every day, seeking news.  UPS wanted to compensate me for the loss, but how do you assign a value to hand-built prototypes?  How do you file a claim against the possible loss of a multi-million dollar deal?  I wasn't eager to repeat the painful prototype construction process.  Sales wanted the prototypes YESTERDAY - literally.

Ten days after my first call to UPS I was on the phone with the helpdesk.  I'd been speaking with the same person each day and while he was nice enough we'd made no progress.  Somehow I wound up telling him about the custom Lucite light pipes, and the Pegasus logo.  "What's a Pegasus?" he asked.  "You know, Pegasus.  The mythical flying horse?"  [typing sounds in background]  "I found it!  The box is in an overage center, listed under 'flying red horse' - we can have it delivered tomorrow."

That the shipment was listed under "flying red horse" is astounding.  The prototypes did indeed have a red Pegasus logo, but they also had the Verifone logo on the model/serial number plate.  They were inside individual boxes with the Verifone logo, and those boxes were inside a larger box again with the Verifone logo.  Someone had to have opened all the boxes, ignored multiple Verifone logos, and decided to list it by the 1 inch diameter Mobil Oil logo.

I sent an email to the team letting them know that (a) the prototypes would arrive the following day, and (b) the project name henceforth would be "Flying Red Horse".

Persistence

A few years ago I started experimenting with microphone audio processing as a way to way to improve my HF signal.  I live in a fairly dense suburb and haven't been able to put up a tower, so running >100 watts isn't really an option.  Speech processing such as that described in this article seemed like a good idea.

I started out playing around with a PC app called Voice Shaper by Alex VE3NEA.  (YouTube demo of Voice Shaper.)  This worked fairly well, had all the features I needed such as RF envelope clipping/limiting, compression, and equalization.  The only downside to Alex's app is that there's a digital processing delay, and I like to monitor my transmitted audio with headphones so I can detect if there's any distortion or RFI on the signal.  Voice Shaper's delay was enough to send me looking for other solutions.

Reading around I found that a few hams are using equipment like Mackie tabletop mixers, parametric equalizers, etc.  The one that caught my attention was the dbx 286a, a rack-mount microphone processor for studio work.  I found one used for a decent price and figured I'd be on the air no problems.  As it turns out, I was starting a journey of discovery which would teach me a lot about RFI, filtering, ferrites, and ultimately signal impedance.

I made up an adapter cable from the mic processor to my Heil Pro-Set Plus and another to the mic input on my Kenwood TS-2000 and started testing on the air.  I quickly discovered that while some bands were OK, others were causing some RFI on the transmitted audio.  Depending on which antenna I used, the RFI ranged from barely noticeable to so bad that it blocked my audio completely.  A couple of cases were so bad that even keying the radio caused RFI feedback which continued until I unkeyed.

So I started experimenting with adjusting audio levels, adding ferrites, grounding and tuned grounding, etc.  I found that I could clear up some bands, but others got worse.  After a lot of work I was able to get most bands working, but it bothered me that I couldn't get all of them to work.  The question haunted me, and the dbx processor sat near my station unused, silently accusing me of being an idiot.  Why won't it work?  Other people had clearly made theirs work.  Was I just doomed to wander the earth for the rest of my life in search of a solution?

Every few months I would get an idea and try again.  Modern HF radios use BALANCED inputs, and so I went through and made sure that nothing was pulling the differential pair to ground.  I didn't find anything, but at least I had eliminated that as a possible cause.  Maybe I had faulty bought equipment?  I tested using some other audio gear and found that the problem shifted around; some bands got better, others got worse.  I gave up for about nine months after that.

My most recent attempt proved to be the solution.  I had been listening to Ham Nation while driving and Bob Heil was talking about ground loops.  Something he said made me realize my mistake.  He was talking about balanced microphone inputs (already knew that) but he also mentioned that most radio microphone jacks are expecting a LOW LEVEL audio signal, whereas the auxiliary in port usually wants to see line level signals .  Clearly the mic processor was emitting a line level signal.  What if I connected the mic processor to the AUX IN port on the radio?  This proved to be the solution!  Not a bit of RFI on any band, or on any antenna.

It's a little embarrassing to admit that it took me so long to figure this one out, but I'm really pleased to have finally resolved this one.  I'm looking forward to finally getting some use out of the mic processor I bought!

Fixed: Toyota Highlander Brake Light

Note: This post has nothing to do with wireless. 

Toyota Highlanders are well made cars - I bought a 2004 for my wife who later upgraded to a Sienna minivan, so I took the Highlander for myself.  It's at 100,000 miles and still going strong.  However, apparently they have a known problem where the brake lights on one side will intermittently stop working.  I've had people pull up next to me at stop lights and tell me I have a light out, then I get home to find the light is fine.

Then recently the light went out and stayed out.  I replaced the bulbs but they remained out.  Fuses were fine, my trusty Fluke 77 said voltage was getting to the assembly.  Posters in Toyota forums said that dealers are asking $40 - $140 for diagnostic, plus possibly $300 to replace a "circuit board"...?  Sounds like a scam to me.

I did some searching online and found reference to how the contacts on the bulb holder will get compressed and not make proper contact. (Kudos to Berto for the original post and Kujath for the photos.)  Kujath suggested using a flat-blade screwdriver to bend the contacts a bit, but I think a needle-nose pliers works better since you can control the amount of bending.  I did both bulb holders and the lights are working just fine.