Did some more probing and reading about IR. I found I had the wrong schematic for TV B Gone. Took it out and did some continuity measurements. All the output drivers are tied together to a single transistor which is then driven by an Atmega pin. This is a better design than the 1.2 schematic I was using. Found the new schematic online as ver 1.3 I eventually found that I was keeping the IR LEDs on because the final output was a "zero" which enabled the LEDs. . After the device emit the code sequence, I put a statement in to turn the LEDs off. This was a one on the output pin. This made a difference. The A/C can now be turned on or off with the test button without doing a power cycle. Dinner was Cajun rubbed Tilapia with corn Mach Choux and Shiraz. Desert was Moo Lineum ice cream.

I got all the electronics mounted in an old ember development case. I can now read temperature and transmit IR with the Arduino. After a little tweaking I was able to turn the A/C unit on and off. the only issue now is that it only does it once. Have to power down and back up again for it to work again. Not sure what is going on.Will continue working on it. Dinner was corn Mach Choux with Cajun rubbed Tilapia. I accompanied it with a cucumber salad. We had a bottle of shiraz and Moo-Lineum BlueBell Ice cream which is a vanilla with pecans, walnut,almonds, chocolate and caramel. Excellent.

Nancy came over to help Libbie. She got back from her camping trip in the California mountains last night. I used the IR library to study my remote some more before beginning to build a shield for the Arduino and a case to install everything in. Had not finished it today. this evening we had the eggplant parmigiana again along with a glass of Barefoot Shiraz. After dinner we used one of the free coupons and watched a Pay Per View Movie, "Being Flynn". It wasn't award winning material but it was passable.

This was another day of working on receiving IR codes on the Arduino. This is very educational. While doing this a mouse ran across the bedroom floor. Caught him later in the day in the Family Room in a trap baited with an Almond. I hope this is the only one in the house. It's significantly cooler outside today but we still need the aux a/c in the plant room. For dinner libbie made eggplant parmesan using one of our eggplants from the grow boxes. They seem to be really putting out the eggplant fruits with many set for harvesting.

Groceries this morning in the rain. We got almost 1.5 inches in the past few days which is great news for the garden, especially since I put down some 8-8-8 granules over the weekend. I started capturing the GE A/C remote codes with an Arduino. Hooked up an IR receiver and the scope. Using the Lady Ada tutorials on IR I was able to capture and measure the codes with the Arduino Uno which is a Chinese knock off from eBay. Had to load the serial drivers which I found out are located in the Arduino driver directory. Very convenient.
Dinner tonight was Carolina chopped BBQ from BrookwoodFarms. This was a tub from Kroger. Nice rain today as I moved a full garbage can to the street.

Still working on COSM software today. Had a dentist appt first thing this morning then continued COSM. It was hot in the plant room so I brought the 10,000 BTU AC unit up from the shed and mounted it in the front window. It cools very well. I will be mounting this on a more permanent basis in the knee wall. Started doing a cleanup of the workshop, hoping to fill the garbage can before it goes out to the street.
Dinner tonight was leftover corn Mach choux and BBQ chicken tenders. Excellent as usual.

I continued to work on the temperature sensors. I finally got them extremely reliable. When I tried it with COSM, COSM is reported an error. I started studying online versions of COSM feeds. Outdoors it was another hot one. I mowed the lawn in the morning out front and fertilized the flowers. I noticed the Hydro timer got reset after the thunderstorm, This is not too good. I'll have to switch over to using my Arduino based code. Libbie made a wonderful pizza from scratch once again. She used our garden peppers as one of the toppings and her home grown basil. Yummy

Last night I switched to the latest UniServer and copied my data over. Surprisingly, all the MySQL apps are now working such as the magazine server and the art server. This wasn't working before. I'm happy. I'm not happy by the fact that Windows installed updates and restarted my server overnight.
Went outside this morning to fix storm damage. A tree fell on the shed, no damage. Cut it up and brought the logs to the pile. Did a quick front yard and driveway pickup and came in to shower off. It's hot and extremely humid outside. Did a grocery run for Mach Choux ingredients then blew the driveway off. I have a sore under my left arm, I think it may be an allergic reaction to deodorant. Hope it's not serious.
Dinner was corn mach choux, wild caught sockeye salmon and shiraz. Dessert was pralines and cream ice cream by blue bell.
I finally got a good handle on the temperature sensors. There are two types in the house, an 18b20 and an 18s20, and the software also has a 2.1 library that does a better job in handling the two types.

Tied the tomatoes this morning. They are really looking good, the eggplant is great as well. Spent the day trying to get real data to work with Meistersinger. No deal. did some extensive debugging and have found that the one wire routines are not working. the new code I wrote to parse serial data works like a champ. I'm going to rry a different One Wire Library. There supposedly is a new one maintained by Bill Stoffregen. The new version of Arduino may have a lot to do with this. Dinner tonight was shrimp on the Barbie with Shiraz and fresh Farmers Market corn which we picked up today. the Farmers Daughters are out with their short shorts and pickup trucks selling corn. I like summer. We had a tremendous thunder storm this evening at 4:30. We got a much needed 1 1/2 inch rain but also tremendous wind and many close lightning strikes including one in the backyard.

Spent the whole day reqriting the serial data parsing routine on Mesitersinger. I'm very happy with the results. I now have a rock solid serial parse routine. Dinner this evening was Briyani. I ended up running the Flower Garden watering for 10 minutes. The garden is wilting pretty bad in the 100 degree heat.

WooHoo!!! This is the first time in a long time that I can access the blog. Yesterday I successfully installed Windows 7 Pro on the new Traviata hardware. Proceeded to remove passwords that were stopping access to the UniServer. A lot of the old server is working. The biggest obstacle was the passwords. I'm not sure I want to run this open ended on my Traviata server which is public. I may end up with the passwords again, but for now I'm happy.
Libbie picked up hotdogs for lunch. they were great with onions and mustard. Yum. I worked some more on Traviata and got the Music Server running. next step will be the art servers. If not, then using Jalbu is a possibility. This also means the VideoDb is hosed although I haven't used that very much.
Ran over to Krogers and picked up some wine for dinner. Libbie cooked scallops over Brown Rice which we had with Ravenwood Zin. Nice.

Started by loading the new Win 7 Pro onto the server but it got an error. Next I tried the ISO and then did all the updates. This seemed to work. I used the serial number from the new Win 7 purchase and it activated OK. Tried the remote desktop and had some success. Could not get UniServer to run. Need some serious debug. In the meantime I transferred all the files from the old IDE C drive of Traviata using an external hard drive case. I also mounted the old 750 meg drive into the Rosewill aluminum cabinet and labeled it "Tools". Now all three Rosewill external enclosures have SATA drives.

This morning I did the groceries and then the Credit Union to get the $100 for the copy of Windows 7. Stopped in to Walgreens to get a refill of my prescription and also get the Aetna PPO card on file. The card has prescription drug coverage. While waiting for the prescription to be filled I stopped into Office Max and got 2 wheels for my office chair. this has been broken a while, the sales guy in the store was no help. He didn't even know there was such a thing. I found the wheels with the office furniture hanging on a pegboard. Libbie's plane came in at 8:15 pm instead of 7:45, she didn't know why it was late. There was a thunderstorm threatening the airport when I went over there but fortunately she was able to get in without problems. I made a PB and J sandwich and a banana for her because of her late arrival with no dinner. I also had a PBnJ sandwich for dinner along with a slice of watermelon.

Bought a copy of Windows 7 pro off Craigslist. Met the guy in the Cary Amtrak parking lot. Paid $75 cash which was worth it. Still having install troubles. Ubuntu server won't install, Win server 2003 won't install. The only thing that works is the Win 7 ISO. Spent alot of the day configuring the new server. It's getting closer to reality. Dinner was French Bread pizza again.

Went to Tigerdirect and got an AMD Motherboard by MSI, an A6 triple core chip and 4 gigs of memory.
Got it all installed into the Traviata case. Windowss Server 2003 crashed twice trying to get this installed..
I'm running a memory test from Ubuntu to rule out hardware problems. Libbie is coming back Tuesday! Crap,
where did the time go? Dinner was French Bread pizza by Stouffers.

There was a tremendous wind storm last night. the power went out and the generator took over. Unfotunately
Traviata the server will not boot. Changed the generator oil then spent the day researching motherboard and
whole computer replacements for Traviata. Went to Walmart to get the generator oil and perused the computers
they have in the store. Also looked at BJ's as well as the office stores. Nothing jumped out at me. I guess
it's either order from Newegg and wait or deal with TigerDirect which I hate to do. Dinner was French bread pizza, supreme model wth
banana chocolate ice cream.

Temps were ridiculously high today. The house was cool, however. I finished
installing the LED spotlight shining onto the driveway. This will be a replacement for
the two lights on the Gum tree in front of the house that quite a few months ago. This morning
I was able to sucessfully get the watering going for the backyard and greenhouse. The problem was a timer variable was only an 8 bit var which meant a max value of 255 seconds. By making it 16 bits
it can hold a larger number of seconds. Dinner was fried chicken and key lime pie.

Did some light work in the garden then took a 3 mile walk around the lake. My butt hurt from the long walk. I really like the new sidewalks installed in front of Buckingham. dinner was a beanburger.

Worked some more on Calibre and eBooks in general. Repaired the spotlight over the grill. It was hanging by it's wires because the metal mount had split open. This repair went well and now the new light works. Dinner was fried chicken pieces and pie.

Took Libbie to the airport at 4:40 am for her 6 am flight. We took 40 and got to the airport at 5. Went home, changed cars and picked the Doggets up at 6:45 in the Prius. Used this car because they were bringing the bedding to their vacation trip in Calif. They had an 8:30 flight. Came back and did a lot of reading. I set up Calibre as a Server on Traviata. It will serve magazines so I tried Consumer Reports. It worked. Dinner was fried chicken from Kroger.

Lots of reading today about interfacing to my Sprinkler. The Adafruit stuff came. The USB microscope seems to be flimsy but the electronics are OK. I assembled a TV B Gone kit as well as another RTC and an LCD shield. I have a few things I want to try with both of these. Helped Libbie scramble around getting ready for her trip tomorrow. Dinner was a pulled pork BBQ from Trader Joes with Blue Bell Mint Chip Ice Cream.

Chose to skip RLT and the Bolshoi today so we could get a little more done around here. Went to Home Depot for more stakes for Libbie's tying work. On the way back I checked our mailbox and found we had not retrieved the mail yesterday (Saturday). Our photo book from shutterfly was in the mail. It came out quite nixe with just a few exceptions. I'm happy. Successfully removed the pump and seals from the hottub. Ordered replacements on eBay. This will probably take a week to arrive.
I spent some time looking at using a web proxy which allows a browser to open a socket in web proxy software which handles sending and receiving data out the serial port. I found this was pretty complicated and that a better way to do this was to use PHP on a server. I think if Traviata had the PHP code and the serial port hooked to an Arduino, comm would result. Another way would be to use the PHP code on Traviata and go out the web interface to a sprinkler timer arduino. This has lots of possibilities. The Arduino would not be doing the web serving function, just straight TCP processing. ANy kind of session would work, Telnet, SMS, private TCP/IP message, etc.
Libbie made another great pizza, this time using a pepper from the garden. Yummy.

Worked outside today on the garden. Picked up some bamboo stakes for the zinnias which are falling down. The flowers are growing nicely. Planted the cone flower and the Licorice plant that I missed yesterday. This should do it for a while. Started draining the hottub so that we could remove the pump and water heater. The element seems to be bad and the pump is leaking. Both are available on eBay for around $20 each. Will wait till I get the motor out before ordering the seals in case I can't remove the rotor from the shaft. Dinner was shrimp on the Barbi with Mach choux and Barefoot cellars cabernet. Desert was Bluebell ice cream. Totally delightful evening. I will miss Libbie when she's at her parents this week although I can now cook for myself quite well.

Worked outside this morning first planting our Farmers Market purchases then I mixed up some Roundup and did the fence as well as a trip up to the fence line in back. In the PM I read the Amish romance which I'm enjoying and listened to Satygraha which is on my Nook. Dinner was grilled chicken with Corn Mach Shoue an Shiraz. Had Bluebell Three desert on the back porch after dinner while we watched it rain.

Nancy came over this morning to work with Libbie in the greenhouse. I went onto the roof and blew the pine needles off the greenhouse then put the shade cloth over the original shade. This is the first day of summer and the light is brighter so we needed more shade. After this I worked in the garden tying the tomatoes, harvesting the cucumbers from the cucumber vines which had died for unknown reasons. Next was deadheading the flower garden All this work really tired me out. We went to the Farmers Market before lunch and bought 7 more plants from Longhill Nursery, the guy in the straw hat. It really started pouring when we were there. We both got wet picking out plants. Once home I finished reading Creep by Karen Hillier on my nook then briefly napped. Libbie made corn machu which was fantastic using fresh corn. I cooked cajun rubbed tilapia under the broiler. We had it with Barefoot Cellars Merlot which was great. I went out to Kroger after dinner and got BlueBell Ice Cream, three Dessert flavor. Yummy.

We scrambled this morning getting the porch and house cleaned for Violet Club. We turned the A/C on for the first time this season. I put out a buffet of broccoli salad which I made, potato salad, chicken salad and tuna salad on buns with chips. I also made iced tea by dipping 5 tea bags in 8 cups of water. It went over well. The meeting was excellent, Libbie did a grow to show demo. We had one new member, Catherine, and Felicia also showed up. She is going to contact hotels in Durham for MAAVS. Dinner was some of the leftover salads with slices of the rotisserie chicken.