Bill’s Blog

I recently read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan.  He had spoken at the Web 2.0 conference I attended last November and it was a compelling talk.  After reading the book and hearing about Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farms I decided to sample some Grass Fed Beef.

Having taken this objective, my first task was to find out where I could buy grass fed beef.  I looked online and found a few local farms that would sell me a whole or half cow.  That was more than I needed.  A friend told me that New Season’s Market carried it.  I packed the family in the car and took a trip out to the store.  They carried one cut, a New York Steak.  I bought it.

To prepare the meat, I marinaded it in a Yoshida’s marinade overnight.  I then cooked the steaks on the BBQ, carefully using tongs rather than a fork (no holes).  You can see the finished product below.

Now it was time to sample the meat.  Typically I am not a fan of steak.  I’ll eat it in a pinch and think it tastes ok.  This steak was fantastic!  It was tender and moist and full of flavor.  I’d say it was the best steak I’ve ever had (including the Kobe Beef I ate in Japan).  I’ll definitely be back for more.

In case you’re looking for local sources of Grass Fed Beef and other meats, here are a few places I’ve found (mostly through my friend Holly).  Let me know of other places in Oregon.  I’d love to try them out.

Kookoolan Farms – Heirloom Breed Chickens

Abundant Life Farm

Mossback Farm

North Valley Farm – Lamb

Once I got the solar powered webcam working, I started thinking about how to make it more power efficient.  Looking at the specs of the inverter, I found it consumers 3W all the time.  That’s a lot of power wasted.  To make things more power efficient, I replaced the inverter with a circuit I built.  It is a highly efficient 12v to 5v switcher.  The picture below shows the near finished product.  It all fit in a box slightly smaller than the inverter.  Now that it is installed, the battery lasts about twice as long.

About six months ago I got this crazy idea.  What if I put a webcam up on our hill?  There was no power up there, so I thought of the options.  I settled on the idea of building a solar powered webcam.  Having never done this before, I set out to learn about solar panels, batteries, and webcams.  I’ve tried to capture the important parts here so you can learn from what I’ve done and build your own solar powered webcam.

First, select the camera.  There are hundreds of webcams to choose from.  I was looking for an inexpensive camera that could be mounted outdoors and that was wireless.  I was not running any wires up to the hill.  I decided to skip the PTZ cameras (the ones with pan, tilt, and zoom) since I knew I’d be running on battery power.  I choose an indoor camera with a matching outdoor housing rather than the outdoor cameras.  The main factor was cost.  My Trendnet IP-TV110W was $74.46 on Amazon.  Outdoor cameras are much more expensive.  Trendnet also makes an outdoor housing with a mount designed for the camera.  The other thing to worry about with a solar powered setup is how much power the camera draws.  This one says it draws 6 watts max.

The next thing to consider was how much solar power I would need to power the camera.  I assumed six watts max meant 2.5-3 watts nominal, or 60-72 watts each day.  At 12 volts, that’s six amp hours each day.  Since solar panel installations run off of batteries, they end up being just as important as the panel.  You need a battery that will hold enough power to run the camera all day.  The panel needs to provide enough power to charge the batteries each day with the limited amount of sunlight available.  According to Solar Oregon, Portland gets about 4 hours of peak sun on average each day.  To test my assumptions about the power bring drawn from the camera, I bought a Kill a Watt meter and plugged the camera into it for a week.  The power consumption was so small that it never registered on the meter.  Armed with this info I decided on the 15 Watt Sunforce 50032 Solar Panel.  The panel shoudl generate about 60 watts of power each day to the battery.  I ended up buying a 33 Amp Hour battery from Batteries Plus locally.  While I could have used a smaller battery, I wanted the extra power available for those winter days when there isn’t much sun.

To connect the panel to the battery, you use a device called a charge controller.  One side connects to the panel.  The other side connects to the battery.  Basically, it keeps the panel from overcharging the battery.  I chose the Sunforce 7 Amp model.

Once I had chosen the camera, panel, and battery, the next step was putting it all together.  I started by mounting the panel on a pole at the top of the hill in my backyard.  I fretted quite a bit over how to mount it to the pole.  In the end I used three 12 inch 2×4s, a metal L bracket, and a 4×4 post.  The top and bottom 2×4s are bolted onto the panel through the mounting holes provided.  The middle 2×4 is attached to the metal L bracket and resting on the panel mounts.

Solar panels work best when mounted facing South at roughly 45 degrees.  To accomplish this, I bolted the L-bracket to the side of a 4×4.  The 4×4 was concreted into the ground for stability.

Once the panel was in place, I connected the charge controlled and batter.  To keep the charge controller dry, I mounted a small (6×6x4) plastic sealed box to the 4×4.  Wires go in and out of the box through a small hole drilled in the bottom.  I chose the size of the box so it was large enough to fit the chrage controller, an inverter, and the power adapter for the camera.  I could have also just built or bought something to convert the batteries 12 volts to the fix volts used by the camera.  In this case, the Charge Controller is connected to the battery.  This is how the battery is charged.  The inverter is also connected to the battery.  The inverter has a cigarette lighter style input on it, so I bought a cigarette lighter style jack at a local auto parts store.  I used heavy duty velcro to hold the charge controller and cigarette lighter adapter to the back of the case.

At this point, there is power to the inverter.  I first plugged in an LED nightlight to test it.  Instead of a webcam, I could power lights. a radio, or other small electronic devices.  A solar setup like this can be used in many situations.

Once I had power it was time to mount the camera.  When I say the camera, I actually mean the camera, the camera housing, the arrestor, and the external antenna.  That’s a lot of stuff!  The first thing I bought was the camera.  I tested it out to get it working as I wanted, then ordered the housing.  Once it got here, I realized I needed an external wifi antenna.  I choose the smallest outdoor antenna from this manufacturer.  It is still almost 2 feet tall!  The reason for an antenna is twofold.  First, the camera is in a metal box.  Its wifi reception is going to be hampered by this fact.  Second, the camera is a ways away from the wifi router, which is inside and at the other end of the house.  I tested the signal first by walking around on the hill with my ipod touch.  It worked fine and so does the camera.  The arrestor has two functions.  The first is to convert the cable from an SMA to N-type connector.  This connects the antenna to the camera.  The second and most important function is to protect the camera from a lightening strike.  Finally, I had to plug the camera into the inverter in the box mounted to the 4×4.  I had to cut the power adapter at both ends.  The DC plug doesn’t physically fit through the holes in the camera enclosure, so the manufacturer recommends cutting the wire.  I had to do the same at the other end.  This was both to lengthen the wire and to fit the wire through the hole in the bottom of the plastic box mounted to the pole.

The next result is a solar powered webcam that broadcasts live video 24×7.  The total cost for the project was $564.60.  This is less than many of the outdoor cameras I looked at.  It is also less than what it would cost to hire an electrician to run 110V to my hill.  I thoroughly enjoyed building this and am now thinking of all kinds of things I could power with my solar panel.

Annette and Jim insisted that we try Krumpe’s Do-nuts.  The shop itself is in a small house in a dark alley.  They’re only open 7 PM – 2 AM.  And they are delicious.  We had them one night and had to go back the next night for more!

That was certainly entertaining, but not the strangest thing we saw on our trip.  The town of Williamsport takes the cake. It was a lovely little town that we visited to see the civil war era bridge they have there.  While driving through the town, we noticed that many of the houses had downspouts that drained into the street (like the one below).

And speaking of bridges

We saw many civil war era bridges on our trip.  They’re interesting to look at.  It’s also interesting to see them still standing and still being used.

9200 Square feet!  That’s the size of our first President’s house.  Very cool.  It was fascinating to see what he’d done with the place.  The site is beautiful.  The house is beautiful.  The river is beautiful.  I enjoyed our little trip into history very much.  See all the pics here.

This was taken in the parking lot of the Antietam National Park.  The lights are solar powered.  This is similar to the setup I’m planning for my solar powered webcam.

The 12-hour battle began at dawn, Sapetmber 17.  The battle ended about 6 pm.  Of nearly 100,000 soldiers engaged in battle, about 23,000 were killed, wounded, or missing.  It was the bloodiest one-day battle of the American Civil War.

Visiting Antietam was different than I expected.  The fields was empty, quiet.  While the battle came alive at Gettysburg, Antietam felt subdued.  Someone else described their visit to Antietam as emotional.  It was amazing to see the place where so many people fought and died.

The pictures don’t do the place justice, but they are here anyway.

This trip was our first visit to Gettysburg.  It was less than two hours away from where we were staying so we loaded everyone up and headed out.  One of the best recommendations we got was to hire a tour guide.  He literally drove the car around for us as he talked.  In the two hours he was with us, he gave us a brief history (more of a play by play) of the battle at Gettysburg.  What made it so interesting was that he drove us around in a way where he could stop and say here – this is where such and such happened.

After the tour we also took a little trek to Cemetery Hill where Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address.  It was sobering.  There was a monument, and also many headstones from the Civil War and other later wars.

After learning all of the history I was excited to find a bookstore in the museum.  They must have every book ever written about the Civil War.  The whole experience gave me a renewed respect for the people that fought for what they believed in.

See all of the pics here.

Of all the places we went on vacation, I was most excited to see the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.  It did not disappoint.  The image above was what we were greeted with as soon as we walked in the front door.

Besides that we got to look at an F-14, a Joint Strike Fighter, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, several MIGs, an A-6E, a concord, and a hanger full of other very cool planes.  If you’re in the DC area, you won’t want to miss this.  See all of the pics I published here.  There are more, of course.  If you’re really interested just ask.

I had a great opportunity that fell in my lap a few weeks ago.  I was invited to speak at Stanford about the value of foreign education and experience.  The event was yesterday.  For my part, I was on a panel with three other folks.  Two of us spoke about our experiences hiring and working with engineers from outside the US.  The other two folks represented big Indian outsourcing companies and spoke mostly about their hiring process built for volume (~25k people a year).

It was cool to be invited and I was thrilled to go.  The attendees were a mix of academics and industry folks.  May were professors studying similar topics.  A few folks from the GAO were there.  Several attendees came from far flung places like India and New Jersey.  There were ~30 people all in all.

The meeting was in an ornately decorated room on campus.  I don’t think I’ve seen so much wood paneling ever.  There was a massive fireplace at one end.  But they had a great sound system, a dedicated AV guy, and comfortable chairs.  The whole time I kept wondering if anyone there twittered?  I still don’t know

For lunch they had arranged for lunch at Google.  It was my first time there, so I jumped at the opportunity.

The day was a nice change of pace for me and I enjoyed every part of it except for getting up at 4:30 to catch the flight down there.