David Trebacz Blog

Comcast Xfinity Internet and Arris TM722G Voice Modem DOCSIS 3.0 Self Install Unboxing

2012-01-22T18:17:00.000-06:00

Below is my unboxing experience with the new Comcast Arris TM722G EMTA Internet Voice Modem. The Modem is DOCSIS 3.0 and supports Comcast's Triple Play service (TV, Internet and Voice). I'm not a big fan of paying a $7 per month rental fee in my area, so I purchased a modem from the Best Buy in Crystal Lake, Illinois for $149. I paid for the modem at Best Buy. It took the representative a couple minutes to set things up so I could check out at Best Buy.

You can get a list of all the locations at http://www.arrisi.com/consumer/_docs/ARRIS_Modems_Comcast_Xfinity_Best_Buy.pdf

Users Manual in pdf format
http://www.trebacz.com/Instruction%20Manuals/Arris_TM722_Instruction_Manual.pdf

Once at home the unboxing began.

Pretty box on the outside with all kinds of Comcast Xfinity branding.

List of the minimum requirements to install. You do need to have a working triple play service setup or an appointment to have the voice installed, if you don't already. It took the technician quite awhile to set up my voice lines (trips to the various phone and cable boxes) and verify it was working correctly.

Back of the Arris Touchstone TM722 Comcast modem box.

Open box with the modem underneath.

All the contents of the box, TM722G/CT DOCSIS 3.0 Internet and Voice Modem, Instruction packet (very thick), Li-Ion Battery, assorted cables, and power cord. Yeah -no extra power brick.

Modem itself was just packaged in an anti static back. It is surprisingly light without the battery. The unit has rubber feet so it can be set flat or vertical. The dimensions of the box are 2" by 9" by 7-1/2" deep (allow more depth for cables and power out the back).

Here's a view of the connections out the back of the Arris TM722G modem. Note there are connections for two analog phone lines, a reset button (there is a sticker over the phone lines and reset button), cable connection, power cord, and push button to get to the battery on the bottom of the eMTA DOCSIS 3.0 modem.

Backup battery in the package. This is the battery that keeps your phone up during a short power outage. Since it's Li-Ion I would expect it to have a good lifetime. The Comcast technician said he's not had to replace one yet.

The shape of the battery is a very proprietary design. It is made to just fit in the compartment of the Arris modem. It's approximately 1-1/2" wide by 3/4" thick, by 7" long. It also doesn't weigh a lot. Not compared to the lead acid batteries in my UPS's.

The battery model number is listed as BPB044S and Product ID 718005. 8.4 VDC with a life of 4400 mAh. Charging current is listed as 0.115 Amps. Seems like a pretty decent backup. The installer said the backup was in the neighborhood of 8 hours. My networking equipment is on battery backup anyway, so in combination I should get long life.

Here you can see the proprietary battery connectors.

Here you can see the loop of yellow tape that allows you pull out the battery if you needed to replace it.

Little warning message not to remove the battery. Use the reset button (located by the cables in the back) if you want to power cycle it.

Above are the coaxial cable bundles that are included wit the package. They were quite generous with the 20 foot cable. For my installation I didn't need any of this, since I was replacing an installed Comcast TM402P Arris DOCSIS 2.0 modem.

General wiring instruction for the Digital Voice modem.

Wall Mounting template instructions. The Arris Touchstone TM722 has slots to wall mount the modem. This sheet has a template to put in screws so you can wall mount it. The screws were not included.

The installation of the modem was pretty simple. I called the Comcast number for activation of the new modem.

I gave them the MAC address of this modem.
The had me switch the cable and power from the old TM402P leased modem to the new modem (AC cords are the same).
Then switch the coaxial cable. At that point the person on the phone could "see" my modem. He started pushing a configuration to it.
After that started I switched the ethernet and voice over to the new modem. I chose to unplug my network ad have one laptop on the ethernet line for simplicity.
He activated the internet portion and my laptop connected just fine.
Last step was to verify that I got dial tone on the phone. Then Comcast placed a call to my voice line.

Pretty simple and painless. The total call took about 20 minutes to switch from the leased modem to my modem. Hope this gives you an idea what the Self install process for moving from a leased triple play modem to an owned one can be like. I'd expect this modem to last at least 6 years like my old Motorola SB5100. PS - you can buy it on eBay now if you like.

2007 Dodge Durango Fuel Spilling Problem Solved

2012-01-21T14:01:00.000-06:00

It been almost 1 year since I first posted my You Tube video of my 2007 Durango spilling fuel all over the ground. Since then it and several forum posts have gotten a lot of attention from legal folks and the NTSB.

After years of filling issues with the NTSB and following threads on the problem, it seems that Dodge has finally decided there is an issue. Just today on one of the many forum threads Dodge noted there is a TSB on the subject covering many more vehicles than the original one that just covered the 2005 models.

I followed this forum post for a long time http://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen-durango/190747-gas-fill-overflow-on-my-06-durango.html.

We'll be at the Dodge dealer on Monday seeing if we can get it in to be fixed at no charge to us. It will be nice to not have to fill the tank slowly or short filling it by 2-3 gallons. It also seems like a simpler fix than replacing the entire fuel tank on the Durango which was almost >$1,000.

Here are the details on the TSB that were posted on numerous forum post on the subject:

Posted by: DodgeCares
On: 01-20-2012 08:16 AM
All,
There is a new TSB on this issue which involves an unlimited time and mileage warranty extension on the fuel filler tube due to a bad check valve. I am posting the TSB now. Anyone who owns one of the affected vehicles and is on file with Chrysler as the current owner will be getting something in the mail indicating the extended warranty on this part. It will also have instructions on where to send for reimbursement if you have already paid to have this part fixed. If there are any questions regarding this issue I would recommend a call to the Chrysler Assistance Center at the numbers listed below.
800-992-1997 U.S.
800-465-2001 Canada

*NUMBER: 14-001-12
GROUP: Fuel System
DATE: January 20, 2012*
SUBJECT:
Fuel Spit Back During Refueling Due To Faulty Inlet Check Valve X39 (Unlimited Time And
Mileage Warranty Extension)

OVERVIEW:
This bulletin involves replacing the fuel filler tube if the condition occurs.
MODELS:
2006 - 2008 (HB) Durango
2007 - 2008 (HG) Aspen
NOTE: This Extended Warranty Bulletin applies to vehicles equipped with a naturally
aspirated gasoline engines.
SYMPTOM/CONDITION:
Some customers may experience a fuel spit back condition during a refueling event.
DIAGNOSIS:
If the customer experiences the symptom/condition, proceed to the repair procedure.
PARTS REQUIRED:
Qty. Part No. Description
AR (1) CNNZX390AA Tube, Fuel Filler
(4) 6500911 Rivet, Splash Shield Attaching
NUMBER: 14-001-12
GROUP: Fuel System
DATE: January 20, 2012
POLICY:
Reimbursable within the provisions of the warranty.
NOTE: Vehicles included in this Service Bulletin have a lifetime coverage - Unlimited
Time and Mileage warranty for this repair. See Warranty Bulletins; U.S.
D-12-07, Canada SAB 2012-03, International ID-12-02 or Mexico BG-01-12 for
details associated with the extended warranty.
************

Installing Pan 0.135 Newsreader in on Kubuntu 11.10

2012-01-21T13:41:00.001-06:00

I really enjoy using a simple Newsreader on my KDE version of Ubuntu. It's a simple newsreader that feels a lot like Forte's Agent newsreader on windows.

After a recent upgrade to 11.10, I started getting double images of inline images. This is the opposite of a problem before where mulipart images wouldn't appear at all. The version of PAN in Ubuntu repositories is quite old, so I needed to install it myself. I adapted the post by Scot Kuma http://www.scottkuma.net/pans-at-it-again-updating-pan-newsreader-on-ubuntu-11-10 for my needs. I got an error about missing hotkeys.h when I tried to compile it using his instructions verbatim. As suggested in this pan mailing list post for KDE I could just install the program from their source. Hopefully this will help you get your version of pan updated.

I f you don't have pan installed. Install it. This will created all the icons in the appropriate menus in kubuntu.

sudo apt-get install pan

Download the source tarball from the pan website. I just used my browser and saved it to my Documents directory.
(http://pan.rebelbase.com/download/releases/0.135/source/)
Move the file to where you want to decompress and compile it. This location was suggested in an Ubuntu article about installing your own software.

sudo mv ~/Documents/pan-0.135.tar.gz /usr/local/src/

Change to the directory where you want to decompress it your download:

cd /usr/local/src/

Decompress it:

sudo tar -xzvf /usr/local/src/pan-0.135.tar.gz

Move to the new directory created:

cd /usr/local/src/pan-0.135/

Run the configure script:

sudo ./configure

Compile the application (pan in this case):

sudo make

Find where your current version of pan is located:

which pan

Mine was located in /usr/bin/pan

Move you old version to a new name just in case you mess something up and want to revert back to the installed version (now called pan_OLD).

sudo mv /usr/bin/pan /usr/bin/pan_OLD

Copy the newly compiled binary to your /usr/bin directory:

sudo cp /usr/local/src/pan-0.135/pan/gui/pan /usr/bin/pan

Now fire pan up and happy newsgroup reading with the current version with no duplicate images.

Tracing Arpwatch "sent bad addr len" MAC address on My Local Network

2012-01-14T13:12:00.000-06:00

For a few months I arpwatch has been reporting that "some device" on my home network is sending out packets that aren't properly formed. Unfortunately, the email that I get sent (via logcheck) only sends me the mac address that's sending the bad packets. I did some checking around the internet and wasn't sure what I should do with that information - do I have a NIC going bad, bad cable, etc? My network is becoming a complicated systems of >40 devices running a variety of operating systems.

I like using the linux utility arpwatch on my network, since combined with linux logcheck, it let's me know via email when any new DHCP device is added to my network. Seems like a great way to monitor if that crazy neighbor is snooping around at my wireless network. Even though they are pretty protected -separate network segment (courtesy of Smoothwall).

Anyway the email that I was getting two or three times a day looked like this:

This email is sent by logcheck. If you no longer wish to receive
such mails, you can either deinstall the logcheck package or modify
its configuration file (/etc/logcheck/logcheck.conf).

System Events
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Jan  9 19:18:42 AMD-ubuntu arpwatch: 00:10:0d:17:80:z9 sent bad addr len (hard 0, prot 4)

Armed with only the MAC address of the offending device how do I identify the device name?
Here's are 2 quick steps to help you figure out where (or what) device on your network is causing issues:

1) First I looked at the device that hands out DHCP addresses on my network.
I use Smoothwall 3.0 as my firewall. It also hands out DHCP addresses on my network (your network is likely different). On smoothwall and many other linux DHCP servers the DHCP lease information is stored in a dhcpd.leases file. Although there are a few homebrew mods for smoothwall that show the DHCP lease table contents in the Smoothwall GUI. I have not needed or installed one and there were several to choose from. Seemed like too much trouble for just for this issue. I SSH'd into my smoothwall firewall and read the contents of the DHCPD leases file.

cat /usr/etc/dhcpd.leases

This file contained the MAC address and IP addresses of all the DHCP devices on my network (34 of them -wow). I found the offending MAC address in the list:

lease 192.168.60.561 {
starts 6 2012/01/14 14:26:23;
ends 6 2012/01/28 14:26:23;
binding state active;
next binding state free;
hardware ethernet 00:10:0d:17:80:z9;
uid "\001\000\031\235\027\220\311";
}

Unfortunately, the device with the MAC address above didn't have a hostname in that file (some devices did) and I didn't recognize anything about the IP address. So what is it?

2) Next linux utility I used was nmap.
Nmap is another great Linux utility to report all kinds of wonderful things about an IP address. Note if you don't execute nmap as root you don't get the same information returned. In my case it was missing the most important piece of information - device name.

sudo nmap 192.168.60.561

Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-01-14 09:30 CST
Nmap scan report for 192.168.60.561
Host is up (0.013s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
111/tcp open rpcbind
MAC Address: 00:10:0d:17:80:z9 (Vizio)

The key to my puzzle was the last bit of information after the MAC address- Vizio.

Turns out the device on my network the the "bad addr len" issue is a Vizio TV set. We have a Vizio TV (Vizio model M221NV Part 10212090022) with internet capabilities that obviously has some issues -or the wireless router it's connecting to has some issues. Now I'll just need to figure out if it's something I want to fix or ignore. At least I know it's not something critical on my home network.

The great news is that open source once again gives me the small tools to troubleshoot what's going on on my home network.

Picasa upgrade from 3.8 to 3.9 thumbnails disappeared for all +30K photos - grey dots now

2011-12-17T08:39:00.000-06:00

My upgrade on one of my machines for Picasa did not go well. As you can see below Picasa seems to have dropped all of the thumbnails on the upgrade. I posted to the Picasa help area - Upgrade from 3.8 to 3.9 thumbnails disappeared for all +30K photos (of course you can't upload a picture to Picasa help area), so I figured I blog about the issue and included some screenshots. You can see (Image 1) the grey dots that represent where the images should be in Picasa.

Image 1 - Picasa lost ll thumbnail preview on images after upgrade -all you can see id icons

Randomly the images are being rebuilt (Image 2), but for the number of images and faces I have in Picasa it will take several days to rebuild them all.

Image 2 - Randomly the image thumbnails are being rebuilt

I really like using Picasa as an image management tool. It really does seem like the best photo management tool out there. I have over the years compared it with other pay, free, and open source solutions. None of the others had Picasa's simplicity and sophistication. I love the fact that it never touches my original images, except to store tagging and geolocation data on the pictures. Just wish it was a little more stable at times like this...

Install Squid Proxy on Ubuntu Server Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS

2011-11-12T12:08:00.001-06:00

I decided that I need the ability to host a proxy server on my own network to see what the internet looked like from my house when I was at work.

I tired to setup an Apache forward proxy using mod_proxy, but had issues with SSL requests not working correctly. I have used a squid proxy on my home network for local caching via my firewall machine for years. Squid has always been reliable.

The process to install squid is quite simple in Ubuntu lucid:

Open a terminal or SSH into your lucid Ubuntu Server.
Install squid proxy using apt-get at the command line.

sudo apt-get install squid

Edit the configuration file. The configuration file for squid is huge. It's a very configurable proxy. I decided to make a backup, just in case I messed something up in the configuration.

sudo cp /etc/squid/squid.conf etc/squid/squid.conf.original

Use nano (my favorite command line editor) to edit the configuration file. Understanding what I needed for a simple http proxy, I needed to make only make one edit and two additions to the default configuration file that Ubuntu provided.

sudo nano /etc/squid/squid.conf

Edited the default port from 3128 to 8001 (my preference).

http_port 8001

Added two lines to configure the ACL rules to allow connections from two specific networks.

acl localnet src 192.168.0.0/16 # RFC1918 possible internal network

acl outside src 22.33.189.0/16 # RFC1918 outside network

Added two lines to allow http access by those two networks.

http_access allow localnet

http_access allow outside

Start up squid service.

sudo service squid start

The trickiest part is defining the allowed networks in one line and then configuring squid to allow http access to those networks.

Went and changed one of my browsers to use the proxy on port 8001 and everything worked great. SSL worked perfectly transparent as I expected. Not sure why Apache didn't work, but I like the separation of the two applications.

Squid seems infinitely configurable and very full featured. Perhaps when I get more time I'll play with it more. The log files are stored in /var/log/squid/.

Adding a Windows 7 Home Premium PC to BackupPC using SMB

2011-09-14T20:30:00.002-05:00

I wanted to backup a couple new Windows 7 Home Premium PC's on my local home network using my current installation of BackupPC on Ubuntu. I have a mix of linux and Windows PC's on my network. I have enjoyed using BackupPC as my central backup system for all of our PC's (8 at last count) in our house. I have used RSYNCD, but find the configuration of SMB, just a lot easier. For my home network, I'm not really concerned about SSH secure communication on my firewalled home network for my backups.

In order to set it up I needed to create a users account on the machine. I have used a special backuppc user on each machine that is backed up.

I set up each backuppc user as an administrator. In the past I set the accounts up without user logins and only backup administrator rights. It would appear that Microsoft has crippled the ability to manage user accounts and groups in Windows 7 Home Premium edition.

I was able to get my BackupPC to be able to access the administrator share on Windows 7 Home Premium version. No restart was required after the registry change. By following the instructions here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947232

Essentially:

Click Start

, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.

Note If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Type LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy to name the new entry, and then press ENTER.
Right-click LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
Exit Registry Editor.

The LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy entry in the registry can have a value of 0 or 1. These values set the behavior of the entry as follows:

0 = build a filtered token
This is the default value. The administrator credentials are removed. These credentials are required for remote administration of the print drivers.
1 = build an elevated token
This value enables the remote administration of the print drivers on a server within a workgroup.

I needed wanted to hide the user account on windows welcome screen. I did that by following the post from here:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ar/w7itproui/thread/16378967-8a39-4aef-85e4-d859a71648d3

Essentially:

at Run type regedit
Once in regedit go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
In the left panel, right click on Winlogon and click New and click Key.
Type SpecialAccounts and press Enter
In the left panel, right click on SpecialAccounts and click New and click Key.
Type UserList and press Enter.
In right panel of UserList, right click on a empty area and click New then click DWORD (32bit) Value.
Type in the name of the user account that you want to hide and press Enter.eg: backuppc.
In the right panel, right click on the user account name and click Modify.
To hide the user account – Type 0 (number zero not the letter) and click OK.
Whenever you want to use the account just unhide the it by typing 1 instead of zero.

Hope this helps you setup Windows 7 Home Premium and BackupPC to work over SMB. Not real happy with the tweaks Microsoft made to Home Premium. Probably another reason alternative operating systems will be more and more popular in my house as time goes on.

DIY - Make your own Permetherin Mosquito Yard Spray

2011-07-02T11:46:00.000-05:00

Making your own Permethrin based mosquito spray good up to 30 days – using an Orthro Dial’nSpray and 10% Permethrin solution. I had previously used a Permethrin based spray from Cutter Backyard Free to keep down the mosquitoes in our yard. We are in a heavily wooded area and the commercial Permethrin based hose spray worked well for us. It usually kept the mosquito population to almost 3-4 weeks depending on the amount of rain we had. For the most part this made our yard usable during the summer. These sprays have become difficult to buy, so I figured why not make my own.

As best I can tell Permethrin properly applied is a safe mosquito reduction chemical. So I decided to make my own using commonly available Ortho Dial a spray and 10% Permethrin used for cutting down pest in animal barns. I found the 10% Permethrin for $14.99 from Amazon.

I just needed to figure out the proper dilution and delivery rate for the dial a spray. The Permethrin I bought recommended ½ oz of 10% spray for 3 gallons of water to cover 1000 sq ft. I did the math to upsize this to cover 5000 sq. ft. of lawn and fill my Ortho dial a spray (32 oz capacity).

Tools:

Garden hose and water supply
1 – 32 oz Ortho Dial a Spray
1- 32 oz 10% Permethrin solution (any brand)

Mix:

Add 2.5 oz Permethrin in the dial a sprayer container
Fill the remainder of the dial a spray with water (creates 32 oz water and Permethrin solution –properly diluted to instructions)

				Ortho Dial a Spray Setting
Permethrin fl 0z	Dilution ounces	Gallons of Water Mixture	sq ft yard coverage	oz per gallon	tablespoons per gallon
2.5	30	15	5000	2.00	4.00

Application:
Set the dial a spray to apply at a rate of 2 oz per gallon. The previous Cutter solution recommended applying the solution when it was wet out. So I usually wet the area before I spray with the hose (no solution). Once it’s wet I spray the solution over the wetted grass, weeds, under our deck, and the shady corners of our porch with the dial a spray set to 2 oz per gallon..

I did my first spray on June 4th and I can tell it’s time to spray again. They were really cut down for the last month. The mosquito population has just started picking up again. Based on the rate of usage I should get 12 applications a year for $15. I think that’s a pretty economical way to enjoy your backyard again.

As with any chemical, be sure to read the directions thoroughly. Be careful in what pesticide you apply and use it sparingly, so as to minimize any impact on the environment.

Hope this blog post makes your backyard more livable for the summer.

2007 Dodge Caliber - Fixing a Leaking Taillight Bezel Assembly

2011-05-29T16:31:00.000-05:00

Our 2007 Dodge Caliber had a taillight that would get foggy looking. We could see water on the inside of the taillight, that couldn't be good for the electrical connectors. I took the light out once (two black plastics "screws" inside the trunk area -then remove the three bulbs from their sockets), emptied it, dried it and looked for cracks. I couldn't find any, so I put it back int the car.

Same problem of condensation inside the lens, after the next rain. I figured I had little to loose if I caulked the taillight.

First, I made the assembly was fully dry. I used a hair dryer through the bulb holes to get all the condensation out of the taillight. I used 100% silicone bathroom caulk. A good quality sealant, that could be used to seal much tougher things.

Here is the taillight removed (shown from the back side). See the two tabs where the screws held it in.
Start a silicone bead in the upper part of the Caliber taillight assembly. I filled the channel completely, between the read lens and the black plastic back assembly.
Continue sealing around the whole outside of the tail light lens assembly.
Work around the outside putting a thin bead silicone between the red and black plastic tail light lens parts.
Just use your finger to smooth it out. I let it dry overnight and then put the taillights back on the Dodge Caliber. This saved the expensive prospect of replacing an otherwise good taillight, due to some hairline crack that wasn't even visible to the human eye.

If you see water in your Caliber's taillight, hopefully you can just drain it, dry it, and seal it like I did.
I used 100% DAP clear silicone caulk to seal my tail light assembly. It's been 6 months since I did this and the Dodge Caliber's tail light assembly hasn't been foggy or had any water in it since.

2007 Dodge Durango - Heater / AC Control Instrument Lights Burned Out

2011-05-29T15:34:00.000-05:00

	Our Dodge Durango heater control dashboard lights went out. One half of the push button lights didn't illuminate at night making it real hard to see what heater control switch you needed to press when it was dark out. Turns out there are regular light bulbs in the dash. The process to replace them takes maybe 15 minutes if your careful and follow directions. I bought led replacement bubs for mine from www.autolumination.com. I ended up ordering part number Neowedge SMT Led , Color: Green , Lens: Type C Led. Got them shipped to me for less than $10 for two. They are bit hard to find on their web page. I did find that I needed to shave the plastic on the locking tab slightly to get them to lock into the circuit board. Good news is it's unlikely I'll ever have to replace them again. To start the process remove two black screws (9/32 socket) underneath above the storage area.
	From the bottom carefully pull the whole panel away from the dash. There are three clips on each side and a tab at the top that holds the panel in.
	Once it's free from the dash carefully remove the three electrical connectors that plug into the heater control module. After that it's much easier to get behind the heater control panel to see your way around. Each connector has a locking tab, so take your time.
	View showing the three electrical blocks removed from the digital heater / AC control.
	Another view with the three top connectors removed. If you want to you can remove the other electrical connectors and remove the heater / AC panel from the car. You don't have to remove it, but it may make it easier to work on.
	There are 4 screws that hold a cover over the heater control circuit board. I removed them for easier access to the light bulbs. Technically there are access holes in the back, but I found it hard to get the bulbs in and out, if you didn't just remove the cover.
	In this shot you can see the access bulb holes, but they are buried pretty deep in.
	Here are the screws partially removed.
	Be careful, once the back panel is off. That back panel holds all the buttons and circuit board in place. With it removed a lot of little parts can move around. Here you can see the two grey bulb bases on the circuit board.
	Another shot - perhaps a little clearer.
	I used a standard screwdriver to twist the bulbs about 1/8 of a turn counterclockwise. They kinda click in and out of place. I then got my fingernail underneath them and pried them up.
	Here's a view of the old incandescent green bulb that was burned out. You can see the locking tab and contacts in the picture here. It's looks blue, but trust me it was green when it lit up. I believe the Dodge part number for the bulbs is part # 5019519-AA.
	Here are the replacement green led bulbs. They look white, but they do light up a very bright green. I bought led replacement bubs for mine from www.autolumination.com. I ended up ordering part number Neowedge SMT Led , Color: Green , Lens: Type C Led. Got them quickly shipped to me for less than $10 ($3.49 each) for two. They are bit hard to find on their web page. I did find that I needed to shave the plastic on the locking tab slightly to get them to lock into the circuit board. I used a small file to make the gap between the base and the tab a little larger. Make sure when they are twisted in, that the contacts touch the circuit board. I did find that you could turn them too far. Good news is it's unlikely I'll ever have to replace them again. They also sell a standard bulb that looks like it would work also. Neowedge 79609-S5A-003 Incandescent , Color: Green , Lens: Type C (T5). They were just $1.49 each.
	If you remove all wires -here is what the heater panel looks like out of the car.
	View of the Dodge Durango heater control from the back. This is removed completely from the Durango.
	To reinstall just reverse the steps: Install the bulb into the heater control circuit board by turning it 1/8 turn clockwise with a medium screwdriver Install the 4 phillips screws on the back of the heater control module. Install all of the electrical connectors. You can check to make sure the lights work and look as expected here. Slide the top of the panel into the dash. Work your way down the two side gently pushing in the clips. Install the two black screws to secure the panel for good.
	Here's what it looks like with the led lights installed. My Dodge Durango heater lights will be visible through the life of my Durango now.

How to configure Backuppc to automatically backup Smoothwall firewall

2011-03-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

I decided it was time to get all my machines on the same backup solution. I've been using Backuppc for quite awhile for my Windows boxes, but have been slower to move my Linux machines over. I really was challenged when I tried to backup my smoothwall firewall for my home network How difficult could it be. It's on a linux based operating system.

At first I had issues with tar exited with error 65280 () status. All my troubleshooting seemed to point to a permissions error. Ultimately, the process below would have saved me a lot of troubleshooting and on the job learning.

1. Setup SSH public credentials between both machines (see http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/ssh.html OpenSSH section), so the user that BackupPC runs under can get the proper credentials to connect to the Smoothwall server, without physically typing in a password.

2. Modify the client transfer configuration for the non-standard tar location and SSH port on Smoothwall.

Tar Paths/Commands - TarClientPath /usr/bin/tar
Tar Paths/Commands - TarClientCmd $sshPath -p 222 -q -x -n -l root $host env LC_ALL=C $tarPath -c -v -f - -C $shareName+ --totals
Tar Paths/Commands - TarClientRestoreCmd $sshPath -p222 -q -x -l root $host env LC_ALL=C $tarPath -x -p --numeric-owner --same-owner -v -f - -C $shareName+

3. Login as backppc user on the Backuppc server (or su to that account) and connect to the Smoothwall client. Accept the certificate. While your here you may want to look at the command that Backuppc server is trying to run against the Smoothwall (check XferLOG in Backuppc for the Smoothwall client). I found removing the -q option in the string very helpful for troubleshooting. Removing it allows error messages to be sent to the console.

4. Backup all the smoothwall directories -except the /proc

The good news is now I have automatic and periodic backups of my firewall configuration. Several incremental and full backups. Now Smoothwall upgrades are less stressful. I have backups (beyond a floppy disk), just in case a modification I've made to the Smoothwall firewall gets clobbered by an update.

Hope this helps someone else with the issue. If you have any tips on something I missed -let me know.

References:
http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/two-way-mirrors-of-external-mailing-lists-3/backuppc-21/tar-backup-smoothwall-box-108742/ - Got me past my error and allowed me to figure our what was worng.
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/ssh.html - OpenSSH setup for linux clients and server.

50" Samsung DLP HL-P5063W with 3 Flashing Lights on Front

2011-01-15T10:00:00.000-06:00

My broken 50" Samsung DLP HL-P5063W has 3 flashing lights (Timer, Lamp, and Stand By/Temp) on the front of it. There is no picture. It tries to start up 3 times and then just has the three flashing lights. Here is my YouTube video of what my exactly what DLP was doing:

Many people talked about a loud squealing noise when the color wheel goes bad -although as you can hear in the video -there is some noise there, but it's not really loud. It sounds like the color wheel never gets up to speed -and you could feel pretty significant vibration in the DLP chassis when it was trying to start up.

1. I replaced the lamp (from Amazon) Samsung Replacement Lamp with Housing for Samsung DLP TV

2. Then the Samsung BP47-00037A Lamp Ballast / Driver | BP47-00033A BP47-00029A ballast from Discount Merchant (http://www.discount-merchant.com/product-p/ballastbp47-00037a_bp47-00033a.htm).

Both the lamp and the ballast are easy replacements if you don't mind unscrewing the back of your DLP and removing a couple cables. Unfortunately neither were my issue this time.

3. Ultimately it ended up being the color wheel that was the issue on my DLP. I purchased the replacement from Discount Merchant. http://www.discount-merchant.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=Samsung-BP96-00674A-CW-ENC

The process getting to and replacing the color wheel takes about 20 minutes. It can be a DIY project. I used the guided instructions provided by the fix your DLP website (FixYourDLP.com Samsung Color Wheel Instructions). As long as you comfortable with screws and computer connectors -it's not a big deal.

Here is the picture of my color wheel after I extracted it from my DLP. The bottom of the housing was filled with the missing glass. It was very obvious once I got to it that it had failed. Almost 1/2 of the color wheel is missing in these photos. Now I know where the vibration was coming from. If this off balance wheel was trying to spin up to 9000 RPM -that would make for some nasty vibration.

I did make one mistake and placed the ribbon cable in backwards (didn't work when first powered up). This picture below from the guide clearly shows the ribbon cable silver side out:

General feeling from the family is that the Samsung DLP looks as good if not better than brand new (set is about 6 years old). The picture seems much brighter and vibrant. I now have a spare lamp and ballast for the next time it has issues. Hope this helps someone out!

Comcast Xfinity DVR App for Android Phones

2010-12-12T14:31:00.000-06:00

Just got my email notice for Comcast Xfinity application for Android phones. Surprisingly it didn't take Comcast long to get their Android version of their application out after the debut of the iPhone application.Why Comcast didn't include the QR code to download the application in the market I'm not sure.

Searching for Xfinity in the Android market as suggested quickly found the application.Comcast explains it all here:

http://www.xfinity.com/help/internet/mobile-android/?xcr=1

After downloading it I gave it my Comcast account information and zip code. The TV listings were brought down to my phone quite quickly after selecting the cable system I'm on. The application then asked me if I'd like to synchronize it with my DVR. I had previously set this up to program my DVR from my computer. It also worked flawlessly.

Now I can schedule my TV recordings from anywhere on the planet. Thanks Comcast -perhaps I won't move away from your services quite so quickly.

Fixing a Dropped Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II Camera Lens

2010-08-21T14:14:00.000-05:00

My daughter tipped over our Canon 40D camera (on our very sturdy Manfrotto tripod) while getting freaked out by a thunderstorm. The lens took a header and "fell apart". This lens in our favorite lens. Unfortunately, it is inexpensive (<$100), so there was probably no point in having it repaired by a service center. My only choice was to buy a new one -or fix it myself.

Buying new?
I started to look for new lenses. I considered the Canon EF f1.4 from Amazon, but it was just a bit to pricey at $349 from Amazon. A new Canon EF 50mm f1.8 from Amazon had gone up since I bought it, but was still a reasonable $100. Well I figured those were my best two new alternatives, unless I fixed it.

Fixing the 50mm f 1.8 lens:
I did try just "putting the lens back together" -that wouldn't work. Nothing just snapped into the right place.

I found some great advice from this Flicker post about a broken 50 mm 1.8. I decided I had nothing to loose, so I followed the 50mm f1.8 dissassembly instructions mentioned in this post. The guy who put them together did a great job (Yosuke Bando). So much so I moved a copy of the pdf to my server so I'd always have it.

Following the instructions word by word I was able to properly disassemble it -then reassemble it. It only takes about 15 minutes -once you know what your doing. The first time it took awhile to figure out how Yosuke named all the parts of the lens. I had to do it about 3 times -remember the follow the instructions part. I'd recommend printing out and reading the instructions.

I did need to do some straightening on the steel ring that holds it together the lens together. It got bent when the lens hit the ground. To straighten it -I traced a circle of the lens on a piece of paper and then used linesman pliers to gently squeeze the ring back into a perfect circle to match the circle on the paper.

It worked!
If your favorite cheap canon 50mm prime lens gets dropped and falls apart -hopefully you'll be able to use my experience to put it back together again. Happy picture shooting. PS -these are great lenses for the price.

Pan Newsreader and Multi-part Images in Kubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx

2010-05-08T22:07:00.003-05:00

I got frustrated at not being able to view multi-part images directly in Pan newsreader. I could save them to my local system and view them, but that's too many steps. For whatever reason this bug has been around for at least 6 months.

I started with the article from http://www.scottkuma.net/pan-newsreader-and-multi-part-images-in-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala, but had to make some changes to support the latest version of Kubuntu (10.4 Lucid Lynx). First, I needed to install a number of application to support the building of Pan on my Kubuntu 10.4 version.

$ sudo apt-get install pan gitk gnome-common libgtk2.0-dev libpcre3-dev libgmime-2.4-dev build-essential kde-devel subversion libncurses5-dev libtag1-dev libqca2-dev libstrigiqtdbusclient-dev libstreamanalyzer-dev

I removed git and git-core -and added several kubuntu specific libraries to the install list. I think I needed all of them, but I'm not completely sure. Kubuntu then required a restart. After that I followed the instructions from Scott Kumma's posting.

$ cd ~
$ mkdir src
$ cd src
$ git clone git://github.com/lostcoder/pan2.git
$ cd pan2
$ sh ./autogen.sh --prefix=$HOME

You shouldn’t have any error messages during the autogen. If you do, they’re likely due to missing programs or libraries needed to build the application. Please post your error messages from this procedure here! If you didn’t receive any errors, type:

$ make

This will take a while…so go treat yourself to a coffee, soda or your preferred method of caffeine distribution. (I might recommend a nice chai!) If the compile completes without incident, continue with:

$ make install
$ cd /usr/bin
$ ls pan

For safety’s sake, let’s back up pan so that we can restore the package maintainer’s version later…:

$ sudo mv pan pan.OLD

Now let’s keep on going:

$ sudo mv $HOME/bin/pan .
$ sudo chown root: pan

And you’re done! You should now be able to use the Pan icon located in the “Internet” section of your main Kubuntu menus to run your newly-compiled application.

When I was done -I could finally view muti-part images directly in Pan once again. It really is a great newsreader for Kubuntu. Hope this help you out.

Motorola Droid won't update to Android 2.1

2010-04-10T15:32:00.000-05:00

So I got an email from Verizon thanking me for upgrading to Android 2.1 (Verizon email link). It mentioned all the great features that I should be enjoying (and have been been patiently looking forward to). Last time I tried a manual update install and probably got my self into trouble. The problem is I didn't actually accept the over the air update and 2.1 wasn't running on my droid.

I went to Home> Settings> About Phone (still on 2.0.1)> System Update (presented with a Android Update 2.1 screen) press the download button. Nothing downloads and I'm presented with the same screen again and again and again.

Searching the internet presented me with some unplug my battery options tried it -no joy. Decided to let the droid sit overnight. Hopefully it would fell better in the morning.-no joy.

Next posts that I saw (http://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/26494) started talking about doing a hard reset, pull the battery while hopping on one foot, etc. I went ahead an backed up my currently installed applications using the nifty utility in Astro file manager (http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-metago-astro-qzq.aspx or http://www.metago.net/astro/).

I decided to go the hard reset route:

You can try to start it up in recovery mode. The phone needs to be powered down first. If it is stuck in a perpetual boot then pull the battery to get it powered down. Now follow these instructions:

Press the "x" key on the physical keyboard while pressing the power key at the same time.
When the triangle with the exclamation point in it shows on the screen then you need to press the volume up key and the camera button at the same time.
When the system recovery comes up use the d pad to move the highlighted words to wipe data/factory reset. and then press the gold key on the d pad.

After doing that sequence I get a nice message about E:Can't open /cache/recovery/command so I decide to wipe cache partition. Then selected to reboot the phone -no joy.

Found a post to force the update at:

http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid/58150-how-force-official-android-2-1-update-motrola-droid-ese81.html tried it. I complained about improper signatures on the file -one other person complained about the same thing, but no one ever responded with a fix.

Did the factory reset.

The Motorola droid still won't download the update. I took the phone into the Verizon store. After about an hour with the store person on the phone with Verizon and Motorola technical support they decided that they would try and re-push the update to my phone. It would take from 2-3 days for the new push signal to be sent to my phone.

In the meantime, I have a factory reset phone with most of my applications reinstalled, but I don't want to fully set it up they way I want it, with the idea Motorola may need to replace this phone (GPS has been freaking out, phone has been runnig very hot, etc). We'll see what happens in a few days.

Comcast DTA (Digital Transport Adapter) Cable Box Unboxing - Welcome to the Comcast Digital Conversion

2010-03-21T14:28:00.000-05:00

My cable area is one of the areas transitioning to more digital cable and cutting out many of the current analog channels. You can read about the digital conversion from Comcast at Digital Conversion

I thought I would chronicle my experience receiving 2 of the small set top (or side top -or bottom mount) from our local cable office. I read about the conversion in a letter I got from Comcast. Essentially it sounded as if my old TV's without some sort of cable box, would no longer get most of the channels that I was paying for. If I ordered these DTA's I would get my existing channels and pick up a few extra.

Understanding that to be the case I ordered two of the smallest boxes (Digital Transport Adapters and Comcast calls them) online and picked them up at the local office. It was a quick pickup at the local office for us, since they're around the corner from our house).

Here are the pictures from the unboxing:

The box was a very generic black cardboard box.

On the side was a model number, Serial Number, Unit Address, and a MAC address.

Inside the box, I was surprised how complete the kit was.

Everything I expected and more (Velcro mounting strips) were included.

The front of the Comcast DTA.

The rear of the Comcast Digital Transport Adapter (DTA) showing the connections.

The bottom of the adapter showing the label and place to attach the Velcro strips.

The remote IR transmitter and Velcro were a nice touch that I didn't need for my installation. The cord is about 3 foot long for the IR remote.

The remote is reasonable small and well made. Programming for my TV was simple and easy. It does turn the TV on and off, but any really special TV remote features will still need the OEM remote control.

A major annoyance for me was the addition of a pretty good sized AC adapter for the unit. There is a challenged in hiding these things (my main installation was in a kitchen). Oh well, at least it wasn't HUGE.

This was my final installation with the Velcro strips hanging off the bottom of our 9" Sony TV in the kitchen.

The adapter was small. In fact I wanted something small and unobtrusive. I already had a couple full size cable boxes in my house (an Motorola HD DVR and Motorola HD settop box). For my additional TV's tiny would be a plus.

I tried to activate the boxes using their automatic system. I called the number and was told the boxes would be activated in the next hour. It never happened. I even let them sit for a few days and nothing magical happened.

I then called the 1-888-634-4434 and requested assistance with activations. Much to my surprise I got a "technician" that walked through the activation on the phone and activated each of the two boxes one at a time. I just needed to give him the serial number off each box and they came right up.

In summary, I needed additional power hungry cable boxes around my house like a hole in the head:

What I liked:

No charge (for 2), relatively easy to order, and pickup Comcast DTA units
Small boxes that can easily be hidden or attached to the side of a TV
IR remote would allow you to hide boxes completely
Technical support (when needed) actually answered the phone in under 10 seconds
These boxes are really only required for any old analog turner TV's. It would appear that any TV's that have digital tuners (that receive clear QAM channels) don't require the adapters

What I didn't like:

Another "universal" remote and Comcast cable box that needs to be always on
Activation process should have not required a phone call or the call should have worked
Relatively large AC adapter that needs to be hidden

BackupPC Backups Failing with "no ping response" for DHCP Windows XP Computers

2010-03-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

I just noticed that the majority of the machines on my home network started failing with "No Ping Response" back in November. My storage is pretty redundant for most of my network so it took me some time to get around to figuring out the issue. In my case the machine have been faithfully backed up by a linux machine running BackupPC (http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/) going on several years. On November 23rd (between 10 pm and midnight) that all changed. All of my DHCP Windows machines failed with the "no ping response". I knew the machines were up, but why was BackupPC not seeing them -or at least reporting a ping failure.

Turns out this was all caused by a change I had made to my Smoothwall 3.0 firewall. I had removed the Services > Static DNS entries from Smoothwall doing some routine maintenance -I think. I mean why would you have static DNS entries for machines that have their IP addresses dynamically assigned.

Ultimately, I found a solution to keep my Smoothwall DNS and Windows XP machines frequently updated in Smoothwall's DNS hosts file here: without manually putting entries in the smoothwall hosts file (/etc/hosts/ linked to /var/smoothwall/hosts/hosts).

The script runs about every 5 minutes (via a Cron job) and keeps my smoothwall DNS resolving my local Windows machine names when asked. This made BackupPC happy again and makes it easier to navigate from machine to machine on my network using friendly machine NetBIOS names.

Thanks to Nicholas 'Aquarion' Avenell for making my troubles a bit better.

Inexpensive Radio Controlled Camera Shutter Release for Canon 40D Review - JYC JY-110

2010-02-20T12:47:00.004-06:00

I was looking for an inexpensive remote for my Canon 40D SLR. I had looked at the Canon infrared remotes (like the Canon RC-1), but didn't like the idea of having to be line of sight with the infrared window of the camera. They were inexpensive, but you'd still have to use the in camera timer if you wanted to be in the shot (or have a nice picture of yourself holding the remote).

I decided to take a chance and buy a inexpensive wireless Canon remote on ebay. The seller was located in Hong Kong, but the $18 price was great so I took a risk. The remote had the features I was looking for:

JYC JY-110 Wireless Remote Control includes:

1 x V2s Wire/Wireless Remote Control C3 for Canon 10D 20D 30D 40D 50D 5D 5D Mark II 1D 1Ds and etc.
1 x CR2 Battery
1 x 23A Battery
1 x English Instructions
FREE 32 inches Lanyards with K hooks

What's new with this Wire/Wireless Remote Control?
Work as both wired and wireless remote control.
The receiver works as a wired remote as well, even without the battery and transmitter.
The receiver can be mounted on the hot shoe.

Wirelessly Trigger Your Camera's Shutter

With the receiver connected to your camera's remote control socket, you can press the button on the transmitter to trigger your camera's shutter wirelessly!

Also Work as a Wired Remote Control
The receiver alone can be used as a standard wired remote control, even without the battery and transmitter.

Two-Level Shutter Button, Autofocus, Continuous Drive & Bulb Mode Supported Too!
The shutter buttons on the transmitter or receiver can be pressed halfway or all the way (half-press or full-press).
You can activate autofocus, release shutter, activate continuous drive mode or keep the shutter open for bulb photography as well.

16 Channels with Working Distance of 100 Meters!

Strong resistance to interference.
There are 16 channels available so that you can switch to other channels to avoid jamming frequency.
Maximum working distance is about 100 Meters in open area without blockage.

Able to Mount the Receiver on Hot Shoe
The receiver can be mounted on the hot shoe, like a flash gun.
If you need to use the hot shoe for your flash or spirit level, you can use the Free fastener tape to mount the receiver on your tripod.

Energy Saving Design, Long Working Hour
With its low voltage and energy saving design, you don't have to change the battery often.
With a new battery, the receiver standby time is about 100 hours.
With a new battery, the remote control can trigger about 1,000 times.

Avoid Camera Vibration=Sharper Pictures!
Since you can trigger the shutter without touching the camera body, it can avoid camera vibration, thus resulting in sharper pictures.

How to Use?

With the shutter buttons on the transmitter and receiver, you can do the followings:

Autofocus:

Half Press to activates autofocus.

Single Shot:

Switch the camera to single shot mode.
Full Press to release shutter and take pictures.

Continuous Drive:
Switch the camera to continuous drive mode.
Full Press and hold it to release shutter continuously.

Bulb Mode:
Switch the camera to Bulb mode.
Full Press for 3 seconds.
The receiver is in bulb mode now.
Press the button again to close the shutter.

Seemed a little to good to be true for $18.00 with free shipping from Hong Kong. Well it delivered on everything promised (took about a week in shipping). The product quality very reasonable prosumer camera user. It worked as designed. The wireless work at distances up to 50 ft. (I didn't try any farther) with the antenna still in the remote. The LED's on the hand held remote and the camera mounted receiver unit were very informative about what was going on.

Here is a link to my completed auction on eBay (I just bought this -don't know the guys running the auction):

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260479510820&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_3175wt_962

FFMpeg and Panasonic BL-C11 IP web cam to automatically create time lapse video

2010-01-11T22:02:00.002-06:00

I decided that I should keep snapshots off my Panasonic IP webcam every 2 seconds over the holidays. I set the IP webcam's internal software to drop of an image on my FTP server using the configuration software built into the camera. I primarily did this as a security measure for our house. I also created a script on my linux box to delete any images older than 2 weeks. I set this up to run once a day as a cron job.

If there ever was an security question or issue we had 640x480 images of (about 20,000 images at 44KB apiece) our house covering the past 2 weeks safely stored on my server.

Then I got the idea by playing with Picasa, that it would be cool to build these into a time lapse video sequence that I would make avaiable on my website. Needless to say after playing around with various tutorials and scripts I have something that works really well. The once daily updated finished product is available here:

http://gpigs.trebacz.com/Office_Cam.htm (embedded flash version of the movie using flowplayer free player running on my web server)
http://gpigs.trebacz.com/PigCam/OfficeCam2.mpg (mpeg video for download and playing on just about anything that doesn't support flash

The biggest challenge was that the images out of the web cam's filename are a timestamp of when the image was captured. FFMPEG is a great open source linux program to automatically turn still shots into a video, but the files need to be sequentially numbered.

#Creates soft links to all the Web Cam jpgs to a temp folder, renames the softlinks sequentially so FFMPEG can create the video streams (mpeg and flash video), and then deletes the temp folder

#Create a temprary directory underneath for symbolic links
mkdir /home/david/.ffmpeg_temp

#change to the temporary directory
cd /home/david/.ffmpeg_temp

#Create sequentially numbered softlinks of all the images in the temporary directory from SMB mounted Windows 2000 server
\ls /home/david/Trebacz/web_sites/Gpigs_Trebacz_Com/PigCam/OfficeCam*.jpg | perl -nwe 'chomp; next unless -f $_; $r=sprintf "OfficeCam%06d",$i++;print `ln -s "$_" $r.jpg`'

#Convert the sequentially numbered files into a mpg and flv movie in the temp folder
ffmpeg -f image2 -b 2000k -mbd rd -trellis 2 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -g 100 -pass 1/2 -y -i ./OfficeCam%06d.jpg ./OfficeCam2.mpg
ffmpeg -f image2 -b 2000k -y -i ./OfficeCam%06d.jpg ./OfficeCam.flv

# Copy video file from temporary directory to Windows 2000 server overwriting existing file
cp -f ./OfficeCam2.mpg /home/david/Trebacz/web_sites/Gpigs_Trebacz_Com/PigCam/
cp -f ./OfficeCam.flv /home/david/Trebacz/web_sites/Gpigs_Trebacz_Com/PigCam/

#change to the main directory
cd

#delete the temporary directory
rm -rf /home/david/.ffmpeg_temp

External web resources to get me there:

1. General overview of FFMpeg http://ffmpeg.org/faq.html#SEC14
2. How to create time lapse video using FFmepeg http://pr0gr4mm3r.com/linux/how-to-create-a-time-lapse-video-using-ffmpeg/
3. Flash player installed on your weberver to display embedded flash video's in web pages http://flowplayer.org/download/index.html

Quick Replacement of BP96-00826A(P) Bulb on Samsung 50" DLP TV

2009-12-23T20:01:00.001-06:00

Just replaced the bulb on my Samsung 50" DLP TV this week. We were watching a movie, when we heard a large "pop" come from the DLP TV and the screen went black. Every few minutes we'd hear a "clicking" sound out of the TV, so I unplugged it and got online. My wife freaked out a bit.

We bought it in 2004, so it's almost exactly 5 years old at this point. I guess that's the life I would have expected out of the bulb. I was pleased to see that the replacement bulbs had come down in price significantly from when we bought the TV.

I bought the bulb from discount-merchant.com for $120 and normal shipping charges (also found a coupon code "fiveoff" for $5 off my order):

http://www.discount-merchant.com/Samsung-BP96-00826A-Lamp-Enclosure-p/samsung-bp96-00826a-lamp-enc.htm

The company sounded a bit like a shady internet business, but the more research I did -the more comfortable I got with them. I decided to buy the whole assembly for the extra $10 and recommendations on the site. They are behind the site fixyourdlp.com where I found a cool illustrated article on how to change the bulb:

http://www.fixyourdlp.com/2007/12/28/identifying-replacing-changing-your-samsung-dlp-lamp-how-to-guide/

There were only 5 screws to remove and put back in. They also had the information to reset the hour counter on my TV (we had almost 10,000 hours on the old bulb according to the counter):

http://www.fixyourdlp.com/2007/02/15/resetting-your-samsung-dlp-lamp-hour-meter-counter/comment-page-4/#comments

After I pulled the lamp assembly out of the TV -I could see where the bulb had burst inside the glass. The replacement lamp arrived 3 days after I placed the order on a Sunday night. Pretty impressive speed of delivery -and just what I expected. Cleaned the dust of the back of the TV set, followed the instructions, and fired the TV right up. Literally took only 10 minutes to change the bulb.

It was simple to do and discount-merchant.com was easy to deal with, though next time I may just consider buying a new TV...

Microsoft Exchange Account Disappears from Android Phone - Motorola Droid

2009-12-19T14:55:00.001-06:00

At least I'm not alone in the fact that my Motorola Droid keeps loosing my Microsoft Exchange email account periodically. I have personally lost the exchange account 4 times (and the other IMAP accounts under the email application). Putting in the credentials again "fixes it". The frequency has gone up since the upgrade to Android 2.0.1. During the entire time the gmail mail accounts are fine. Here are a few of the posts that I'm tracking relating to the issue. No official word from Google, Motorola, or Verizon on the problem -or a pending fix.

Reports on Google's Android forum:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4866
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4980

Reports on Verizon's droid forum:
http://forums.verizon.com/t5/Android-Devices/Email-accounts-being-deleted-from-Droid/td-p/117067;jsessionid=32c7704020432f772a7cfec1677f7fd52

Reports on Motorola's message forum:
http://supportforums.motorola.com/message/89501

I'm looking for a better way to diagnose and find the root cause of this problem. Any suggestions are very welcome.

Motorola Droid USB tethering made easy with PDANet

2009-12-06T12:32:00.000-06:00

Decided today was the day to set up USB tethering on my Motorla Droid running Android 2.0. I'm getting ready for a business trip and I'm always amazed at the places that you can't get a wireless connection. USB tethering allows me to always have a fallback cellular connection (usually 3G on Verizon's network) for those type of emergencies.

I love the products produced by June Fabrics. I used their product to intermittently tether my Windows Treo 700W -and it got me out of some odd jams. Essentially it was it's like using your cell phone as a 3G modem (without having to carry separate devices). June Fabrics couldn't make the process any simplier:

Download the install application from http://www.junefabrics.com/android/
Begin installing the application -the installer walks you through all the steps nicely. I did need to enable a setting to allow the application to be automatically pushed form the Windows XP PC to the Motorola Droid.
Plug in you phone. I'm using the USB tether mode, but it also supports Bluetooth tethering. The appropriate USB driver was installed.
Launch the PDA net application from the phone.
Launch the PDANet application from the PC -little icon in the system tray
Roam and surf.

June Fabrics couldn't have made the process any simpler or more painless to use my Motorola Droid and cellular network as a backup when wireless (or reasonably priced wireless) isn't available. I enjoyed the simplicity and stability of their Windows mobile version greatly. In fact it's one of the few Windows mobile version that I paid for a full license for. It also seems to be a simple and light application on both the phone and PC side that just does it's job flawlessly.

Currently, I'm running the free version. It's nice that nothing is crippled in the free version of PDANet for Android. The price for the full version is $29, which is a bargain. I think I paid $39 for the previous version. Sure beats paying $10 a night for hotel wireless, just to make a quick VPN connection to check in on a server.

A few nice features are:

when tethered over USB it's also charging the phone
widget on the phone shows connection and bytes transfered
author also provides a twitter account to follow up on the latest developments
look forward to utilizing the Bluetooth capability in the future
developer has been very responsive with enhancements and responding to questions over the years

June Fabrics -thanks for another great product!

LightKeeper Pro Christmas Light Tester - Easily fix miniature Christmas lights in one click

2009-11-25T08:58:00.000-06:00

I bought this at my local Walmart for twenty dollars -figuring I'd take it back since it probably wouldn't work... Got it home and watched the videos on the manufacturers website (long and short video from the manufacturer) . It really works and just as easily as in the video. I had 10 strands of 300 count miniature icicle lights that I could no longer buy (white wire with green bulbs). Here was the procedure.

1. Remove 1 bulb (with the lights plugged in).
2. Plug the tester in where you removed the bulb.
3. Pull the trigger a few times (In most cases the section lit on the first pull).
4. Replace the bulb.

This will be especially helpful on prelit trees or lights that go out once there on the tree. This product really is true genius. This was the best money I've spent in a long time. It literally saved me about 3 hours of playing with bulbs.

There are other functions on the tester -tool to easily pull bulbs, non-touch tester to find a loose bulb, built in light to see what your doing, and replaceable batteries (3 button cells). I used the additional features to find strands that were missing a bulb or other weird stuff.

If you really want to know how it works (the physics geek in me), the full explanation on How the Lightkeeper Pro works from them.

Here's a link to the LightKeeper Pro on Amazon:

Target, Wallmart, and Menards also have it, but I couldn't find it on their websites...

1st Week With the Droid as a Windows Smartphone Replacement

2009-11-18T20:22:00.000-06:00

Overall I'm pretty happy with the Motorola Droid hardware. It powerful, well built device. The only rip would be that the slide out physical keyboard takes some getting used to. I never had any issues hitting the keys on my Treo 700 W, but often times I find myself having to hit the "DEL" key on the droid.

I'm very satisfied with the Android 2.0 operating system. In general it works well and seems pretty mature. Many of the default applications that came with the phone are well designed and work well. The navigation in Android 2.0 is really well done.

3rd party applications I really like:

Amazon (scan it and buy it from Amazon)
Astro (file manager for basic copying and moving files around on your device)
Barcode Scanner (scan pc screens for apps to download)
KeypassDroid (Password manager application for Android, Windows, and Linux -great!)
Locale (automatically change GPS, WIFI, Bluetooth settings based on where your at to conserve battery)
PhotoBurst (Nice photo browsing application that makes use of the whole droid screen better than Gallery)
Shazam (listen for music, recognizes it, and presents you with the title, artist and potential to buy it)
SugarSync (Basic file syncronization between Windows and my Android phone -best I could find)
Where (Use GPS to give you location specific information -restaurants and entertainment)

On the software side -I'm still uncertain of the applications environment for Android.I'd suggest improvement in the area of Outlook/Exchange/Gmail integration. They all feel like different pieces of software and there has to be a better way to integrate my information. It's really simple I have contacts, appointments, tasks, and notes (okay work and personal). I'd also throw images in the mix. Why can't I get to those anytime and anywhere? Why don't all my connection points utilize the same information. Now there is a cloud service that could really simplify my life....