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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<title>Sergio Morales - Blog</title>
<description>Sergio's stream of consciousness- my ramblings, thoughts, and ideas.
</description>
<link>http://blog.sergiomorales.me/</link>
<atom:link href="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/>
<pubDate>Fri, 19 Aug 2016 22:38:26 -0400</pubDate>
<lastBuildDate>Fri, 19 Aug 2016 22:38:26 -0400</lastBuildDate>
<generator>Jekyll v3.1.3</generator>
<item>
<title>Hardwiring a Dashcam in a Vehicle - Follow Up</title>
<description><p>A couple months ago I tried hardwiring my dashcam. I mentioned I was using a voltage regulator to step down from 12 V to 5 V. Worked like the charm for a couple days, until I realized the dashcam was intermittently shutting on and off? I took out the circuit and tested it out, and found out it was overheating to the point where the regulator shuts itself off. Silly me…I didn’t even bother calculating the amount of heat generated from stepping down by 7 V on a device that’s easily drawing up to 1 A of current!</p>
<p>Ohms law tells me that the power being dissipated would be:</p>
<p>Power = I x [ Vin - Vout ]</p>
<p>Power = 1 A x [ 12 - 5 ] V</p>
<p>Power = 7 Watts that needs to be dissipated into heat for the regulator to stay at 5 V!</p>
<p>Even with a heatsink attached, I still found the circuit to be overheating…</p>
<p>For some reason, I forgot that I could have salvaged the circuit inside the charging cable that came with the original camera packaging…I basically tore apart the casing (cigarette lighter connector) and soldered the input voltage, output voltage, and the ground wires. That did the trick!</p>
<p>Lesson learned- linear voltage regulators are not good at dissipating lots of power if you don’t have a nicely-sized heatsink…pictures to be added soon!</p>
</description>
<pubDate>Fri, 19 Aug 2016 21:07:00 -0400</pubDate>
<link>http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/08/19/hardwiring-a-dashcam-followup.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/08/19/hardwiring-a-dashcam-followup.html</guid>
<category>projects</category>
<category>electronics</category>
</item>
<item>
<title>Hardwiring a Dashcam in a Vehicle</title>
<description><p>A few weeks ago, I purchased a dashcam, because why not? Driving more frequently, I thought I’d
get something to be able to record my commute in the event where I’m involved in an accident. And with
the amount of bad drivers in Michigan I’m surprised I haven’t done this earlier…anyways, I got tired
of having to use my cigarette lighter to power it on, as my vehicle’s socket is always on, requiring me
to have to disconnect and reconnect the cable every darn time. Instead, I decided to tinker with the available
fuses in my car’s instrumentation panel, to tap into a circuit that is only enabled upon ignition, or when
the engine is on.</p>
<h2 id="step-1---whats-needed">Step 1 - What’s Needed</h2>
<center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/dashcam-materials.jpg" />
</center>
<ul>
<li>I will be using a moderately priced dashcam, the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rexing-Dashboard-Recorder-G-Sensor-Recording/dp/B00X528FNE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466388408&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=rexing">Rexing V1</a>.</li>
<li>An Add-A-Circuit, to piggy back our circuit from an existing socket in the fuse box. This is a clean way of
hardwiring, rather than just adding a wire into a fuse- a much messier and less safe approach.</li>
<li>A fuse, with appropriate amperage rating. 2-3 amps should do the trick.</li>
<li>Some method of stepping down the ~12 volts from the power to the appropriate rating on your dashcam. For mine,
I needed 5V. I had some voltage regulators laying around so I used that, along with the mini USB cable
that was included with my dashcam, which will require a modification.</li>
</ul>
<p>This should cost you less than $10, save the cost of the dashcam itself.</p>
<h2 id="step-2---wiring-the-circuit">Step 2 - Wiring the Circuit</h2>
<p>My power cable was not detachable from the cigarette lighter connector, so I snipped it off, as I wouldn’t need it
from now on. To be safe, I made sure 5 volts is what I truly needed, so I measured the output of the connector
when plugged in– and to confirm which wire was power and ground:</p>
<center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/dashcam-measure.jpg" />
</center>
<p>5.5 volts, good enough. For my voltage step-down circuit I will be using the L7805CV, a very common 5V voltage regulator:</p>
<center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/L7805.jpg" />
</center>
<p>Basically, I set up the wires so that the cable running from the Add-A-Circuit goes to the input to the L7805CV. Ground pin will
go to both the negative pin of the USB cable (black), and to the bare metal chassis of my car. The last pin is the regulated 5 volt
output, which goes to the power pin of the USB cable. I also threw in a 10 uF capacitor to stabilize the input to the regulator by connecting
it to the input and ground pin. This required a bit of soldering and taping.</p>
<h2 id="step-3---connecting-the-circuit">Step 3 - Connecting the Circuit</h2>
<p>Next step would be finding a good fuse to piggy back your circuit off of. What you do is you first bust out your multimeter, and look for points
that are only on when your engine is running or is keyed-on. You can confirm this by measuring for voltage when the car is off, and when the car is on.
Also important to note is that you need to find what side of the fuse is being supplied power to– which again is found easily by measure both sides and
confirming there is voltage.</p>
<p>Once this is done, remove the original fuse and attach it to the bottom slot of the Add-A-Circuit. The top slot is where the new fuse goes. Then attach it, and
voila! Ready to test.</p>
<center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/dashcam-test.jpg" />
</center>
<p>Don’t worry, I cleaned it up a bit after that image…this allows me to better hide the cables and avoid manually plugging and unplugging it! More details about how I wired
everything will be added soon.</p>
</description>
<pubDate>Sun, 19 Jun 2016 15:11:00 -0400</pubDate>
<link>http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/06/19/hardwiring-a-dashcam.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/06/19/hardwiring-a-dashcam.html</guid>
<category>projects</category>
<category>electronics</category>
</item>
<item>
<title>On Reinventing The Wheel: My Naivete</title>
<description><p>I used to be the type that would like to build things from the ground up. I’ve since moved away from doing that…heres why. Although I’ve always been an advocate for learning the lower level intricacies of things, there comes a point where it slows you down from developing work- and that’s where you should stop and reevaluate what your end goal really is, and if it’s even reachable. This happened a billion times with me. Just setting this site up is the best example. I lost track of what I wanted to accomplish here, which is a simple blog and showcase for my work. I ended up spending dozens and dozens of hours learning primitive steps to getting a web server up and properly making sure the client gets what I post…had I just set up a WordPress blog, this would have saved time. Sure I did learn something, but I have better things to learn…especially if I know I won’t apply this to other things. I won’t see myself as a sys admin, not now, not ever. I’d rather spend this learning time on getting decent progress on my other projects…so, lesson learned. Just to give you an idea of the struggle I’ve went through with building this site: I’ve messed around with Namecheap for DNS resgitrations, Github for static site hosting, <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/">Amazon’s AWS</a> with a full on LAMP stack (Linux, Apache for the webserver, MySQL for future database usage, and PHP for server side scripting), and many, <em>many</em> other things. I ended up realizing I don’t need to put up with all of this crap, I just want an easy to manage blog and professional portfolio of my work…so I found the perfect combination of Namecheap, <a href="https://jekyllrb.com/">Jekyll</a>, and Github.</p>
<p>To add on, I will say that learning the lower level schema of <em>anything</em> can be beneficial if you know that having such a deeper understanding will allow you to become a better worker in that field. Looking at you, C language. A perfect example of this for me is my <a href="http://sergiomorales.me/ias.html">Integrated Appliance System</a>. I’ve probably spent over 50 hours working on this on the side, but I’ve learned things I wouldn’t have had I not learned to build a PCB from the ground up, or integrated the dozens of ICs with my microcontrollers instead of just using an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. But that’s just me.</p>
</description>
<pubDate>Sat, 30 Apr 2016 12:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
<link>http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/04/30/reinventing-the-wheel.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/04/30/reinventing-the-wheel.html</guid>
<category>engineering</category>
<category>software</category>
</item>
<item>
<title>Visual Studio 2015 Installer is Terrible</title>
<description><p>So, I finally decided to try out <strong>Unity 3D</strong>. I finally went out and bought a book for myself, because I honestly don’t like to sit through crappy YouTube videos or stare at a screen to read for hours. I ended up getting <strong>Joe Hocking</strong>’s book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Unity-Action-Multiplatform-Game-Development/dp/161729232X?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;redirect=true&amp;ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00">Unity in Action: Multiplatform Game Development in C# with Unity 5</a>, and wow, I’m amazed out how quick it is to develop something from scratch. Before I start talking about my progress in the world of crossplatform game development, I’d just like to rant about the week long struggle I went through just install the damn thing for C# scripting.</p>
<center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/vs-error.PNG" />
</center>
<p><br /></p>
<p>For anyone wondering what this even means, I’ll save you the trouble of having to run around only to have Microsoft act like you’re an idiot and think you just downloaded a corrupted installer and having to compare checksums. This <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34889317/error-installing-visual-studio-2015-enterprise-update-1-with-team-explorer">Stack Overflow</a> post will save you the trouble.</p>
<p>First off, if you get the steam explorer error, this is from the depencies it needs, which leads to NuGet package installer failing due to your system having an outdated copy of some system library. Save the crap, just install an older version…at the time of this post, the VS RTS version should do the trick. There should be a link to it in the stack overflow post above. Just for reference, you can inspect all of the files in case your problem is unrelated:</p>
<center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/vs-error-logs.PNG" />
</center>
<p><br /></p>
<p>This is the perpetrator. I found the error by trying to workaround the issue and installing a standalone version of the NuGet Package manager, but to no avail:</p>
<center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/vs-error-nuget.PNG" />
</center>
<p><br /></p>
<p>Anywho, just do what the post says. Sometimes its better to start everything from scratch than to spend hours like me trying to figure it out. But that’s just me. I just hate error logs that don’t give you a proper indication of what exactly is freaking failing. Good job VS team.</p>
</description>
<pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2016 12:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
<link>http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/04/23/visual-studio-is-terrible.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/04/23/visual-studio-is-terrible.html</guid>
<category>programs</category>
<category>tools</category>
</item>
<item>
<title>Double Checking Your Work is Not Enough, Seriously</title>
<description><p>After going through 3 different phases of my <a href="http://sergiomorales.me/ias.html">IAS PCB</a>, I learned its never a bad thing to double check things…in my case a simple check of temperature limits in the datasheets for the components I used could have saved me another full revision of my previous layout…I basically couldn’t put up with surface mount components so I limited the amount I needed and revised it:</p>
<center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/ias05.jpg" /> <br />
Never again, tiny SMD components. Never again...
</center>
<p><br /></p>
<p>Anyways, I found the problem with my last revision was not the design of my board, but simply my soldering strategy…turns out one been burning out my voltage regulators…can’t blame my botchy soldering skills on cheap Chinese parts. What I thought was accidentally shorting of smd components and wires was actually just me being silly and burning out the regulator from too high temperatures. Keeping my iron at 300 C is not a good idea apparently…at least for the components I’m using. I never thought soldering for such a small amount of time would burn out components. Busting out my multimeter proved it burned. Anyways, the new revision of my board is better ish. Don’t know if the extra 40 bucks I had to shell out to <a href="https://oshpark.com/">OSHPark</a> could make another 3 batches is worth it though.</p>
<center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/ias06.jpg" /> <br />
Much better.
</center>
<p><br /></p>
<p>So back to the point. This all applies to the real world too. I’ve been working in the industry for less than a year, so this may be obvious to <em>most</em>, but its still good to explictly say it. I catch small mistakes <em>all</em> the time. So make sure to not only triple or quadruple check your work, but to get a fresh pair of eyes to see your work, you never know if they may catch mistakes that you overlooked. Now to finally solder this baby completely and move on to re-coding the mess of the state machines I had done for the breadboard prototype version…fun…</p>
</description>
<pubDate>Sat, 16 Apr 2016 12:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
<link>http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/04/16/double-checking-your-work.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2016/04/16/double-checking-your-work.html</guid>
<category>electronics</category>
<category>engineering</category>
<category>software</category>
</item>
<item>
<title>Well, This is It! Hello, Real World</title>
<description><center>
<img src="http://blog.sergiomorales.me/images/bourns.jpg" />
</center>
<p>So, I’ve finally graduated from college. This Monday, I had the honor to walk amongst the many friends, family, and truly inspiring individuals that I have had the pleasure of meeting. Some of these people I’ve met over the past four years, and some that I have known since I can remember. I came in as a young, naive seventeen-year-old <em>kid</em> who had no idea what was to come of me within the span of my time at UC Riverside. I now come out knowing a lot more about myself. I’ve matured here, no lie. So, as my first blog post, I’d like to take my time and reflect on my time spent as an undergaduate student.</p>
<p>First off, I can’t stress enough just how much more you get out of college by becoming involved. I can honestly say that when comparing my first year to my second and beyond, the reason I improved in every possible way was because I broke out of my shell and started to become involved in things outside of academia. Joining the <a href="http://shpe.engr.ucr.edu/">Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers</a> at UCR was one of the best investments of my time I could have made. Despite the fact that I faced very troubling issues in my personal life during this time, I somehow managed to preservere and worked well under the stress of a million things going on at once. I think the most important thing I learned is that, everyone has their own system when it comes to success. Sure, you can fetch tons of advice from mentors, motivational speakers, etc. But when it all boils down to what you do, you come to face the fact that not everything works as well as it does with others. So I went out, experimented with time management techniques, and found my own way of managing my life. Dozens of sticky notes on my desk didn’t work out for me, but it might for you.</p>
<p>I could go on and on, but I won’t. What I will say is, its never good to go through the path of college alone. I had the amazing luck of finding my girlfriend, who has and still is, extremely supportive of me, as I am with her. Not to mention my parents, who are the sole reason for why I was even able to get to college. So yeah. Here’s to everyone who has been suppportive of me throughout my time as an undergrad. I really can’t believe how fast fours years have gone by. Now I’m heading out, with a B.S in Computer Engineering, ready to head out to Michigan to work for General Motors! I promise to everyone who has supported me, that I won’t disappoint them. Cheers.</p>
</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2015 12:33:31 -0400</pubDate>
<link>http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2015/06/17/well-this-is-it-hello-real-world.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://blog.sergiomorales.me/2015/06/17/well-this-is-it-hello-real-world.html</guid>
<category>life</category>
<category>education</category>
<category>industry</category>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>