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I’ve been pretty busy getting things done around the house. I’ve done some work on the vehicles, getting brakes replaced, fixing blinkers and doors – so Holly can take her driver’s test in a vehicle that will pass inspection.

The Christmas lights will be coming down in the next day or so. I’ve finally taken some video of the remaining working lights. The winter was hard on some of them – sections not lighting, some always on, etc. It wasn’t as grand as I hoped they would be, but it was a good start. Hopefully next year will be bigger and better. I’ve learned a lot about where I need to concentrate on for next year. I’ll try to get the video edited and posted in the next week or two. Here’s a picture of the wiring and controllers, but only 2 strings of lights – the rest are still up.

The kids started helping make the remote controller things for the video cameras. They were in the shop a couple days ago punching metal, drilling holes, grinding edges and taking LEDs out of the remotes. I need to show them how to finish preparing the metal plates and then powder coat them, along with soldering the wires onto the remotes and extending the LEDs. I’m not sure how excited they are about doing the work, but expect that the idea of them making some money is appealing. A couple weeks ago, I sent one to The Netherlands.

Since we live on a small lake, I have been slowly accumulating a small dock. I found some dock sections on Craigslist, some pipe on K-Bid (a local on-line auction) and some hardware from the company that makes the dock I bought. It’s a Crepeau dock, which I guess most of the people on Lake Minnetonka own. Docks are not cheap, if you buy new. I have stripped the stain off the old dock and am waiting for it do dry a couple days before I stain it. I’m hoping it will be in the water by the weekend.

The kids are in a play and I’ve been working on some LED lights and hooking them up to the computer using DMX – for theater lighting. I’m waiting to receive a bare PCB for the LED lights – it will control the 21 channels I need for the 7 lights (red, green, blue for each light) and run DMX firmware. I have 3 other boards that will control 12 PAR lights, running DMX – they are finished, except for putting them in an enclosure and making it look nice. The goal is to use the Freestyler software for all the lights and program the scenes for the play in the software. All of this is not really designed to be compatible, except that they all are DMX capable, which in theory, will work. Confused? So am I.