RosKnows

2009 Summer Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:37:00 +0000

Without the motivation of Nate, Nick, and Paul, blogging did not happen this summer. Thanks to mattrosno.blogspot.com being featured in the Raikes Summer Newsletter, I'm back. Although these highlights could be spread across multiple blog posts, here is my summer in a nutshell.

Italy of Fun - We dominated Italy for a week.

IBM Extreme Blue Internship - This summer I studied Facebook and Twitter and learned about social networking in the workplace. Mike Cassidy from Mercury News (Silicon Valley's newspaper) wrote an article on my team: Looking at the Valley through fresh eyes.

Sometimes it takes a new set of eyes to see a place for what it really is. I found mine — actually four sets — in a windowless room nestled in the hills above South San Jose, at IBM's Almaden Research Center. There a team of four interns was finishing up a summer project that could change the way (thank goodness) we sift through the tweets and updates and pokes and shout-outs and blog posts and notes from bosses that social-networking tools have trained on us like a relentless blast from a fire hose.

In particular, the interns were interested in finding ways to make sense of social-networking overload in business settings — settings where a worker might be involved in several simultaneous projects, spread out among many development teams.

Travel to CA - I drove with my dad to California at the beginning of the summer and it was less like a long drive, more like vacation. We drove through Vegas and took Highway 1 up the coast. We stayed at the New York New York casino and I was five for five in sitting down at blackjack tables and not loosing money. On the coast we visited Monterey and Santa Cruz, and lots of elephant seals along the way.

JavaOne Conference - I already blogged about it here.

Half Dome at Yosemite - I hiked it (and didn't want to move the following days). 17 miles and a 5000 foot climb. All eight interns that attempted the hike made it to the top and survived the decent back to the parking lot. We downed many pitchers that night in celebration of a successful hike.

Sequoia National Park - I saw the biggest tree in the world. Luke and I did a 12 mile hike to Pear Lake in the park and it was absolutely beautiful. Although we only saw one bear, it was a fun 4th of July weekend.

Wine Tasting in the Santa Cruz Mountains - We visited two wineries, Savannah Chanelle and Byington, and finished the day on the beach at Capitola.

IBM Headquarters - At the end of the summer IBM flew all Extreme Blue interns from the US and Canada to NYC for an end-of-summer expo. We left for NYC a couple days early for vacation and although it was nice seeing the city again, my favorite part was dropping good money for a Yankees - Red Soxs game at Yankee Stadium.

Nate & AJ Live - Since returning to Nebraska I have had the privilege of hearing Nate & AJ Live three times. I was happy to hear new songs in the set list...even a new original about me!

Facebook Integration Day

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:10:00 +0000

Picasa App for Facebook
A while ago I chose Picasa for my online photos over Flickr and Facebook because I really like Picasa 3 (the desktop client). Also I want to share photos with my non-Facebook friends. (Non Facebook friends...is that possible??) Anyways this lets you upload to new or existing FB photo albums so it is exactly what I want.

Importing Blogger
Now that my blogging has calmed down, mattrosno.blogspot.com is receiving less traffic and it is time to bump that. You can import any blog to Facebook notes so I'm trying that for a while to see how it goes.

Twitter App for Facebook
I added this application to kill two birds with one stone. Well one bird at least (pun intended). This lets me tweet and status at the same time. This app could be better in lots of ways...

Tightening Rusty Facebook Bolts
I went through every security setting possible today in Facebook and it took a good hour to clean everything up. Interesting findings:

Posting to someone's wall may appear in your mutual friends' news feeds. There is an option to show others' wall posts in your home page, but there is no way to prevent Facebook from publishing what you post on others' walls...ridiculous.
You can now add siblings to your profile and that made me happy!
matt.rosno is my new user name but its not that fulfilling because I only had to beat the one other Matt Rosno to it.

JavaOne 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:07:00 +0000

There are perks of still being a student: attending JavaOne for free! This included the full conference pass valued at $1,800 and from the looks of it, this was available to all college-level students.

With work I was only able to attend on Friday, the last day of the conference. I met up with Trevor, Erik, and Nick and we dominated San Francisco Thursday night. Nick used all of his 11' vertical and caught a free t-shirt at one of the general sessions that contained a coupon for a free Kindle 2. Which general session? IBM's with Craig Hayman!

I attended three sessions that all related to my work this summer. My favorite was Creating Compelling User Experiences with Ben Galbraith from Mozilla.

Creating compelling user experiences requires craftsmanship, a term that I have never associated with programming...a great point.
Everything's amazing, nobody's happy by Louis C.K. (hilarious)
Don't ask customers specific user interface questions, understand the users' GOALS.
OpenHallway sounds like a sweet tool for usability testing.
Users can notice delays down to 50 ms...crazy.
There is a big difference between interaction design and visual design.
In Defense of Eye Candy by Stephen P. Anderson
I found new weblogs to follow: www.webdesignerwall.com and www.smashingmagazine.com
The Human Interface by Jef Raskin
More choices make users less happy.

Overall, JavaOne was a great experience and I will definitely attend again if it is free for students.

Specialized Rockhopper

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:09:00 +0000

I have been really good at buying things lately (not a TV) and to continue this trend, I purchased a new mountain bike yesterday, a Specialized Rockhopper Comp Disk.

With an overload of nearby biking trails and a desire to stay in shape, I could not resist buying a bike this summer. I visited three bike shops yesterday and overall, I am really happy with my purchase.

When buying a bike, you have three basic options: road, mountain, or a hybrid. Although a mountain bike isn't needed in the great state of Nebraska, it is required to ride the nearby trails. The biggest decision is hard-tail or soft-tail (having shocks on the back tire). A soft-tail bike will bump you to the $1,000+ range so I was able to eliminate that.

Most newer bikes come with disc brakes as opposed to the padded brakes that "squeeze" the tire rims to slow down. For a little more $$ you can get hydraulic braking but I decided to stick with mechanical braking to give my hands a better work out, of course.

I live close to Santa Teresa Country Park that has about 15 miles of trails/park roads with the maximum elevation change of 600 feet! The park offers a variety of trail difficulties so I will be able to work my way up.

I'm thinking about using MapMyRide.com to track ride information like distance, elevation and route. At the same time the site is cluttered with painful ads that limit the mapping functionality, so maybe not.

First Day at IBM

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:20:00 +0000

I am officially an IBMer. I can now call e-mail Notes. I can now work towards a Smarter Planet. I can now be extreme.

Today was the first day of my IBM Extreme Blue summer internship. Although I can't share details of my project (yet), I can say that today was a fun day full of paperwork and team bonding events. Although we didn't get our Extreme Blue track jackets today, I did get some good IBM merchandise to add to my collection.

I'm excited for my project this summer. Extreme Blue is structured so every team consists of 4 interns: one MBA intern and three technical interns that can be at the undergraduate or graduate level. Our starting group of 16 is very diverse and I have much to learn from them. I am almost equally excited about living in San Jose for the summer. I have had nothing but good experiences so far and I'm glad that we don't have the cold wind from San Fransisco.

My journey to San Jose (with a small detour through Italy) was great. Two weeks of travel has built up lots to blog about and I'll dive into that soon.

My First Camera: Nikon Coolpix s630

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:38:00 +0000

I finally purchased my first camera, a Nikon Coolpix s630. Although I haven't had the chance to take any outside photos, everything indoors has turned out great. Unlike most point-and-shoot cameras, I feel very comfortable taking one-handed steady pictures.

I really like "rotary multi-selector" that is very similar to iPod's click wheel. It has the standard up, down, left and right buttons for quick access to change settings...and it can spin. This is very convenient in playback mode to scroll though images. In fact, it one-ups iPod's click wheel because it has ridges for more thumbing traction. I also like how efficient it is because of being so small.

My question is this: Picasa of Flickr? I definitely want to upload my photos somewhere that is free for backup and sharing. I'm not a big fan of PhotoBucket and I am trying to stay away from Facebook. I'll probably stay on the Google train and stick with Picasa because I am already using it to host images for mattrosno.blogspot.com.

Hopefully my camera and I will make it home safely from Italy next week and I will have some photos to share.

Senior Design Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:14:00 +0000

I have been trying to get Raikes School Design Studio as a senior count for the computer engineering senior design requirement without any luck. The course objectives are "to gain hands-on experience in a significant design project involving technological competence, open-ended problem solving, teamwork, and both written and oral communication skills." This sounds exactly like Design Studio but something is missing: the design problem must contain both software and hardware design.

Each team is given a $500 budget and anything on top of that will come out of our pockets. I want to do something fun that will be applicable outside of the academic environment. I'm thinking that the PortaParty has lots of potential for a senior design project.

Now that I have built one already, the next version could be smaller, lighter and louder with more mobility. Possible expansion ideas for senior design are:

Dynamic volume control - Attach a sensor to the remote and have the volume vary with distance from the cooler. The purpose of the PortaParty is loud music. Why trouble with changing the volume when it could do it automatically?
Dynamic equalizer - The sound system needs different equalizer settings for different genres. When played at loud levels, rap music needs different settings than rock music to sound good and protect the speakers. Include a controller that would change the settings based on the song, not on the song meta data.

I would really like to use National Instrument's Data Acquisition (DAQ) hardware and LabVIEW software. I know that I'm biased because I interned there last summer, but NI products are a perfect fit for senior design. Also, my project was on the Sound and Vibration Measurement Suite...which could be very handy with the PortaParty...

If anybody has any ideas let me know!

Microsoft Word Prototypes

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:12:00 +0000

Its painful for me to say this, but I just created a web page mock-up...in Microsoft Word.

The final assignment in my marketing class is to come up with an e-commerce company that has to be supported by an on-line community. Although my group has to prepare a market analysis, business model, and marketing strategies and a financial plan, my main focus is creating the web-customer interface. Because this is for a marketing class and because the mock-ups are worth very little compared to the rest of the assignment, I decided to do it entirely in Word.

Our (fake) website is dazzlebean.com, an internet radio site. It is advertisement and subscription-based that streams free music. It is essentially a combination of Pandora, Seeqpod, and Last.fm with a stronger community. My favorite part of DazzleBean is that it follows Twitter's subscriber-follower model. Instead of tweets, you share individual songs, albums and artists that can in turn be used as playlists.

This semester I have taken classes on transistors, marketing, strategic management and Design Studio, but one thing stands out the most: the importance of social networking. I'm glad that it is slowly making its way into the classroom. Charles Hull from Archrival spoke to my marketing class about blogging, Facebook and Twitter. Ed Brill recently talked at the Raikes School about successful social networking for business collaboration. I'm sure that every marketing class discusses Apple and the success of the iPod because of iTunes, the community supporting it. Every product needs a strong customer support base and it is nice to have an assignment that requires an on-line community.

If there are more formatting options in the next release of Lotus Symphony, I will have to use it for my next web page mock-up.

PortaParty Part 7: The Final Product

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:10:00 +0000

Finally, my last post about the PortaParty. Here are the final components and prices for anybody who wants to make something similar.

Car battery and charger: 127
Decals: 11
Cooler: 22
Stereo (with iPod cable): 124
Speakers (mounted in cans): 100
18 gauge speaker wire: 14
Switch: 4
Bolts, battery terminals, wire connectors, wood: 25

Total: $427

Although that may seem much for an audio system in a cooler, this has been a great investment. It gave Trevor and me the opportunity to design and create something unique without being restricted by the requirements and specifications of all homework assignments. I'm not saying that I don't pay attention in class, but my favorite part of the day was catching Trevor after class and discussing new ideas, new prototypes and new uses of the Party.

A lot of people have asked me "how long did it take to build this?" Although it only took one night to build, I respond with "a few months." I have learned a great deal about car audio systems because of this side-project and it has been awesome turning far-fetched ideas into a reality.

Let's not forget the true value of the PartaParty: projected music anywhere you need it. After two hours on the sand volleyball courts tonight and a solid playlist...great success!

Nikon Coolpix S630: Smarter Than Me

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:15:00 +0000

I am currently camera shopping because of the next month of travel: Italy, Las Vegas and California. I'm looking for something that can easily fit in my pocket but still have decent zoom. It is amazing how cameras have evolved since the 2 megapixel days.

My mom recently bought a Nikon Coolpix P90. This camera is great for taking pictures on the golf course with its great zoom, but I don't exactly need that. Because I am impressed with the quality of images it takes, my first place to look is other digital compact cameras in the Coolpix series.

The Nikon Coolpix S630 caught my eye as a new camera that is sleek and stylish with a 7x zoom. It didn't take long for me to realize how powerful modern cameras are. Although some cameras have red-eye fixing and face-finding, this camera can do everything. It has smile mode that waits to release the shutter until the person smiles, and blink proof that takes two pictures when the person smiles and saves the shot in which his/her eyes are open.

One feature that I really like is the scene auto selector. With this, it automatically recognizes the scene in your picture and adjusts the camera settings. This works with one person, multiple people, scenery, close-ups and night pictures. Another essential feature is the image stabilization. This "positive feedback" system produces a sharper image. Motion detection detects moving objects and adjusts the shutter speed and ISO settings accordingly. Also, the best shot selector can automatically take up to 10 shots while the shutter is pressed and save the sharpest image.

Turns out, cameras are not only about megapixels and zoom anymore...they are powerful devices. This camera's review was good except for its performance. 4 seconds to boot up, 3.1 shot-to-shot time and .5 to .8 shutter lag. This might seem like an eternity to some people but I empathize with the camera, it appears to be working hard.

If anybody has any camera suggestions let me know. You probably know more than me.

Favorite BlackBerry Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:57:00 +0000

I have been a proud owner of a BlackBerry for over a year and here are the apps that I use on a daily basis.

Gmail App
This is by far my most widely used app. This includes everything that is nice about Gmail: truncating e-mail chains, search, contacts, archiving, stars, and labels. When I read an e-mail from my phone, it doesn't take long for it to update my inbox on a browser.

Google Sync
How do you automatically sync your personal Google calendar with your BlackBerry native calendar without being on a BlackBerry Enterprise Server? Google Sync is the answer. This provides manual or automatic two-way syncing of my calendar and contacts, although I haven't tried the contacts yet. Because of Google Sync I made the bold move to not use a planner this year and only my phone. Because I live and breath by my Google calendar, when I find out a due date or something important, I just add it as a day-long event on my phone.

Google Maps
Over the last year Google Maps has gotten a lot better on BlackBerrys, but it still isn't as good as the iPhone app. Lattitude is really fun to see where my friends are and the search has the functionality for a voice search. There is the satellite view and street view but without a 3G network it takes a long time to load. When finding my location, it only uses satellite triangulation and never locks in with a GPS connection. I don't know if this is because of the actual chip in the phone or Alltel's network.

Google News
When I'm bored in class or eating breakfast without the newspaper, Google News is a good, quick source of the day's news. Although it only displays top stories, it is better than nothing.

Pandora
This summer Pandora came out with an iPhone app and although I really wished it was for BlackBerrys, I figured that it wouldn't stream properly without a 3G network. I tried out Slacker Radio but never got it working correctly. This spring Pandora came out with a BlackBerry app and I am more than pleased. Although it drains the battery and has ads, it is worth it.

TwitterBerry
I have had a twitter account since last April and have never bought into the concept. With the help of Nate and TwitterBerry, it is much easier to keep up with the tweets.

Dear Facebook: You Win

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:09:00 +0000

I pride myself in never clicking on or noticing ads. I can't get over this ad. Facebook, you win.
Facebook has adapted the red comments balloon for notifications. I have my Facebook account locked down pretty well and only receive notifications for newly tagged photos and wall posts. When one of these two things happen, I see the red comments balloon on my home page and I get excited.

This ad gets to me because it is at the top of the right sideshelf, at eye level, and is a "notification". It also has the keyword "hiring". As a college student when I hear or read hiring, jobs, jerbs or The Kistle Whistle, my eyes light up. Finally, it says "engineers". I believe that us engineers have to stick together in life: engineers only.

Although this Facebook ad wins me over...don't get me started on the new trend of becoming fans of random things. Hey, anybody a fan of sleeping? Great thanks for sharing.

PortaParty Part 6: The Battery

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:20:00 +0000

When designing the PortaParty, Trevor and I knew very little about car batteries. We found this to be a good resource for deep cycle batteries. It covers everything from the history of batteries to lifespan to charging.

I found the typical voltages vs state of charge to be very interesting. Although car batteries are rated at 12 volts, it actually varies based on the charge. Unlike a typical car battery, deep-cycle batteries are made to be drained down to the 20% level and recharged.

As I mentioned in Part 4: The Circuitry, we are not sure what happens when the battery gets to the red region. We are guessing that the head unit turns off, opening the circuit and preventing the battery to be drained any further. Whenever deep-cycle batteries get drained below 20% the overall lifetime diminishes.

Another option besides the standard deep-cycle battery is a dry-cell, like an Optima Battery. Although this option was an additional $60, it is (slightly) lighter, can be mounted in any position and supposedly has more power.

We bought a 1.5 amp automatic trickle battery charger. The slower the charge, like a trickle charger, the better for the battery. Because this simple charger has float-mode monitoring there is no fear of overcharging. It includes a connector on the battery terminals so it is "plug-and-charge".

One final comment: we used 18 gauge speaker wire to power the head unit from the battery. This is no thicker than the wires for the head unit so it works out well.

Twitter's Evan Williams at UNL

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:08:00 +0000

Over the last four years the Raikes School has brought in great speakers and today we are all excited about hearing from Evan Williams, the founder and chief executive of Twitter. Mr. Williams is from the great state of Nebraska and has been named one of The 25 Most Influential People on the Web. Here are some notes that I have taken over the years.

Warren Buffet

His policy on ethical leadership is the newspaper test. If managers wouldn't be comfortable having their action printed in the local newspaper for all to read, then they shouldn't be doing it.
"We can afford to lose money, but we can't afford to lose reputation."
Supports a flat tax rate. The tax system needs to become more progressive.
Warren looks in the mirror for business advice.
Concentrate on your "inner score card" and what is important to you.
Do what you love, form good habits early in life, and surround ourselves with loving people.

Bill Gates

Bill spends two weeks a year alone thinking up new ideas and then shares them with advisors to make them a reality.
Today's computer technology is a million times more powerful than it was 20 years ago; it sill improve just as much in the next 20 years.

Tom Osborne, UNL Athletic Director, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives
Leaders possess three qualities:

Energy
Intelligence
Character

Character is the underlying determinant of leadership and is very closely related to passion. Character is built by:

Honesty -> builds trust
Contribution -> servant leadership, don't focus solely on yourself
Adversity -> how can I learn from this?
Balance -> spiritually along with intellect and energy

Robbie Bach, President Entertainment and Devices Division of Microsoft
Kevin Turner, COO of Microsoft
Ed Zander, Chairman and CEO of Motorola
Brian Halla, Chairman and CEO of National Semiconductor

Evan's speech will be available soon at raikes.unl.edu.

Mass E-mail: Good or Bad

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:18:00 +0000

This year's Dance Marathon was a great success raising over $35,000 but I think that we suffered from something called "let's rely on technology too much."

I created a mass e-mail page that lets the Dance Marathon executive team send mail from their Google Apps e-mail addresses. It uses the System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient class to send out e-mails in batches of 100 because Gmail limits the number of recipients. Using TinyMCE as the text editor, we are able to send html e-mails.

The value-adding functionality comes in the filters. The possibilities are endless. After selecting a filter, all recipients are displayed in a collapsible panel for ease of use. We can send e-mails to:

All registered dancers (current year)
All past dancers
Need to pay registration fee
Have paid registration fee
Submitted less than 5 addresses

Because all e-mails are sent through our Google Apps account (Gmail), we have a complete history of every mass e-mail sent. For example, the finance director needs to send an e-mail through dm.unl.edu but doesn't know how to phrase something. Log into the respective Gmail account and everything is there from previous years.

Although this feature is nice, it replaced too much one-on-one interaction. It is the responsibility of the small group leaders to contact their dancers and remind them to pay their registration fee, submit donation addresses, get others involved, etc. This year I think that we sent too many mass e-mails and lacked that personal touch. How much more could we have raised with more phone calls and even individual Facebook messages? Its hard to tell.

Where is the fine line between convenience with new features like this and the huge overhead of making phone calls?

A Year of Dancing

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:46:00 +0000

During my freshman year at UNL I joined Dance Marathon (DM), a 12 hour fundraiser for the Children's Hospital in Omaha. Even though this event was full of entertainment including bands, break dancers and families helped by the Children's Hospital, I wasn't sold by the concept. I chose to not participate the next year and after that Dance Marathon, I was contacted about becoming the technology co-chair.

I started the position with lots of energy. The current website was a Joomla template where we were paying a hefty yearly amount for Aplus.net to host it. It was outdated, very hard to customize, and the database was a mess. We struggled with the website throughout the year and after another successful Dance Marathon, I knew that I was coming back under one condition: a new website.

Over the last year I have been able to harness my passion for technology and service to the community through a new website: dm.unl.edu. It has been an amazing experience for me to manage a server, build a website from scratch, provide innovative Web 2.0 solutions to better the philanthropy, and see it through to completion. It is very rewarding to know that my efforts have helped build something that will continue to raise money and save lives after my involvement with DM is over.
A highlight has been tracking the site's usage since it was launched. Site traffic peaked on February 20th, the night of the event, with 416 visits that day. Since August 1st, dm.unl.edu has had:

5,681 visits
2,776 absolute unique visitors
26,784 pageviews
Visits from 47 states

To Nate of nongenre.blogspot.com, I would like to see you beat these analytics!

PortaParty Part 5: Let's Build This

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:35:00 +0000

Construction of the PortaParty was really simple compared to picking out the components. We just needed a coping saw, drill and wire strippers.

The hardest part was cutting out the hole for the CD deck. With a tight enough fit, we didn't need any additional support to mount it. Since the battery is so heavy, it just sits on the cooler floor.

We cut out a little notch (bottom of the picture) for any cables that need to run out of the cooler. With this, we are able to adjust the size of the iPod cable on the fly.

On the inside of the lid we have a piece of wood to support the can speakers. At the hardware store we were able to buy longer bolts to accommodate a washer, board, and cooler lid. Also mounted in the lid is an on-off toggle switch that can handle up to 40 amps at 12 volts DC. This switch acts as the ignition of a car... ignition of the party in our case.

Nothing is complete without product placement. For $11 we were able to get an 11" Kicker decal for the back and two 6" decals for the cans.

The PortaParty is missing one final touch: a giant shiny decal that says

mattrosno.blogspot.com

PortaParty Part 4: The Circuitry

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:13:00 +0000

Here is the schematic for our original design that includes a subwoofer and an amplifier.
The AC to DC power source is a computer supply unit with the DC source a deep-cycle car battery. The first switch is a three-way main power switch to control which power source to use.

To save battery life, the subwoofer and amplifier shouldn't have to be on all the time. That is where the second switch comes into play. This would be nice with a modular sub. By this I mean have a sub in a sub box with the necessary speaker wires that plug into the cooler. When using the AC source, have the amplifier on with the subwoofer attached. On the go, just use the can speakers without the amplifier.

It would also be nice to have a volti-meter running off the DC positive line to help gauge the battery. In general, deep-cycle batteries should not be drained below 20%. This is when the battery dips below 11.75 volts. To protect the battery and electronic components, maybe something is needed to turn off the system at that low voltage. I'm not sure, but the Pioneer head unit might be smart enough to turn off with a dangerously low voltage, thus protecting the rest of the components.

Here is the final schematic used in the PortaParty.The head unit has a battery terminal as well as positive and ground. This is used to run the clock and keep all equalizer settings even when the main power is off.

PortaParty Part 3: Taming AC Power

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:15:00 +0000

My favorite part of this project was determining how to power it. We definitely need a car battery but what else could we use? A power outlet? Solar panels? A car? We decided to stick to a stand-alone car battery for now.

Having a high-quality speaker system in a cooler is nice and all...until the battery runs out. The most practical way to power the PortaParty is through a normal power outlet. At first, this seemed like a reasonable approach until everything audio-related is taken into consideration.

Starting the basics, car batteries supply 12 volts DC (direct current) and household electricity supplies 120 volts AC (alternating current). These power supplies are compatible as long as there exists a power converter. Every laptop cord, phone charger, etc. has an AC to DC converter so you would think that it wouldn't be that hard to find something to power a car audio system.

For example, take Best Buy or any car audio retailer. They have large displays of CD decks, amplifiers, and subwoofers to try out. This is made possible by large grids of deep-cycle car batteries and expensive AC to DC converters that partially power the audio equipment and partially recharge the batteries. When subwoofers hit low, loud bass the amplifier draws an enormous amount of current from the power source. A car battery is essentially a pool of energy that can provide those current peaks; household wiring is not the same. In extreme cases without the batteries, household wiring could be damaged.

I found some forums that discuss this exact issue using a computer power supply unit, PSU.

The majority of this advise was not good but it did bring up some interesting points. Although PSUs are rated in watts, this is not comparable to the rating of amplifiers, also in watts. PSUs have multiple rails that supply different voltages (+3.3V, +5V, +12V, and -12V). The only wattage that is important is over the 12V rail. Another important factor is how much current that rail can supply. Our Kicker amplifier that we were looking at was rated to draw 20 amps max and the Pioneer head unit 10 amps max. This Corsair power supply has a max current of 30 amps on the 12 volt rail, a perfect fit for us.
Another thing to consider is the expected use of a PSU. In the forums there was some discussion on how a PSU could not handle the constant draw of power. In my opinion, newer power supply units are reliable enough to handle this load. In the worst case, the internal fuse in the PSU blows and your audio system remains safe.

Because we were looking at a lower-powered mono amplifier with a fitting PSU, this appeared to be a good option.

PortaParty Part 2: Initial Prototype

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 06:09:00 +0000

Our initial design was to use Kicker marine speakers because they are water, UV, everything resistant and when the cooler is closed, all of our components would be protected from the elements. We quickly decided on mounting our speakers in cans for louder sound and to free up room inside the cooler. Because we were looking at coolers like this, we wanted to mount a sub in the front for better sound.

Having a free air sub allows us to mount it directly in the side of the cooler because no acoustic casing is necessary. Also, vibrations from the sub would not effect the rest of the sound system because audio head units, amps, and car batteries are all meant to be used in cars, thus a rough environment.

After talking with audio experts at StereoWest, we determined that we would get little bang-for-our-buck with this set-up. When a subwoofer is indoors or in a trunk, its orientation has little effect; subwoofers are typically omnidirectional. The important part is that there are walls, the inside of a trunk, and other barriers that help build up the sound and deliver strong bass. Our cooler would have bass, but it could be a lot better.

The solution in this outdoor environment is to down-fire the sub. By mounting it on the bottom of the cooler (so it is around three inches from the ground), now there is the ground that helps deflect the sound waves, build up pressure in the cone, and deliver a stronger bass. This got us thinking: is a cooler right for us or should we build a custom enclosure to fit our needs better?

In the mean time, Trevor and I purchased a pair of Kicker KS600 6-1/2" 65 Watt RMS speakers from LiquidAudio on eBay. Although the cans are plastic and resemble PVC pipe, they provide a sealed enclosure, mounts, and the external connectors for speaker wire. The cans definitely seem "homemade", but the speakers are high quality with good looking grills. Including shipping, we spent $100 on the speakers and cans which is much cheaper than buying them individually.

1204px Template Comments

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:59:00 +0000

I am new to Blogger and it took me a while to find a template that I like. I stumbled upon the 1204px Blogger template made by Carl Galloway and designed by Andreas Viklund. Although there have been many updates to this template for Wordpress, this is the only version made for Blogger.

Since the template's creation in 2006, there have been many additions to Blogger, including inline (embedded) comments. I found this useful when upgrading my blog to support embedded comments.

Go to Layout -> Edit HTML and check "Expand widget templates".
Find this line: <b:include data='post' name='comments' />
After this line, add this: <b:include data='post' name='comments-form' />
Save your template and you're good to go.

Happy commenting!

PortaParty Part 1: Initial Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:57:00 +0000

Here is the initial website that gave us guidance. We liked the idea of mounting everything in a cooler with hopes of keeping a portion of the cooler functionality. Turns out, we wouldn't want to be chilling beverages in the same container as a car battery among other electronics. This approach is to mount 6x9" speakers on the side walls of the cooler, pointing in opposite directions. Here are the goods and bads of this design.

Good:

Cooler with wheels - These audio systems can weigh up to 70lbs so having wheels is a must.
Deep cycle marine battery - Car/lawn mower/go cart batteries are not meant to be completely drained so it is important to go with a deep cycle battery. I'll discuss choosing the right battery in a later post.
Automatic battery charger - Not all battery chargers stop charging when the battery is full.

Bad:

900W amp - If you want to use the full potential of your speakers, then using an amplifier is a must. 900W is overkill that will drain your battery. Most car CD decks have a pre-amp and can provide speakers plenty of power for this use.
Direction of the speakers - We determined that in most cases, we want directional sound. Having sound outdoors needs a different setup to combat the elements. For outdoor use, it is better to point the sound in one direction, as opposed to filling a room, or area, with sound.
Lack if audio sources - This setup can only use an RCA cable for audio input. What about CDs and the radio?
Inaccessibility of the equalizer settings - To turn on the system and the adjustment of any settings requires opening the cooler...bad design.

Up next: our first prototype.

Introducing the PortaParty

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Rosno) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:29:00 +0000

In September, Trevor Thompson and I had a problem. We wanted (loud) high-quality music wherever we go: indoors, outdoors, at the beach, at the pool, sand volleyball, tennis, grilling out, tailgating, etc. Realizing that most of these places don't have access to "household electricity", we had to be creative.

With Trevor's wakeboarding and car audio background and my electrical engineering background, we decided to take on a project: The PortaParty.

We searched the internet for examples and found similar projects, but we quickly realized that not everybody's advice was practical or remotely safe. Here is our final audio system that has been tried and tested in various settings and we are more than pleased. Highlights include:

Wakeboarding can speakers to project the sound
Car CD deck that gives us the radio, auxiliary in, CD playback, a remote, and an iPod cable (that also charges iPods)
The wheeled cooler for easier transportation
Deep-cycle battery that provides plenty of battery life (we're guessing over 8 hours)

This series will include how we came up with our final design and details on every component, prices included. After starting this project, products like the Boom Cooler have emerged but I will show you how our audio system is better and more practical by all means.