Nuts and Volts - August 2015

Published Monthly By T & L Publications, Inc.

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Jack Lemieux

PUBLISHER Larry Lemieux publisher@nutsvolts.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/ ADVERTISING SALES Robin Lemieux robin@nutsvolts.com EDITOR Bryan Bergeron techedit-nutsvolts@yahoo.com VP OF OPERATIONS Vern Graner vern@nutsvolts.com CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Fred Eady Tim Brown Jon McPhalen Jeff Eckert Paul Verhage Chuck Hellebuyck Thomas Henry Tom Kibalo Bob Fischer Bob Fink Geoff Clark Larry Coyle Craig Lindley

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EVERYTHING FOR ELECTRONICS

advantage of moving to LED lighting is that the light is nearly pure white as opposed to yellow. You can find LED bulbs at Amazon, 100bulbs.com, and, of course, homedepot.com.

Replacing frayed power cords can be a challenge — especially when the appliance is designed for a non-polarized two-pronged connection to the mains. Arbitrarily connecting a three-pronged plug can be a hazard — especially on an appliance with a metal chassis. Unless you’re familiar with electrical code — as well as how your house is wired — I’d stick with the original wiring diagram. Do replace the brittle plastic cord with modern flexible cord. I’ve had good luck with non-polarized cords from both Amazon and Walmart.

Switches — especially power switches — are the most problematic components in a vintage repair. It’s usually easy enough to replace a toggle switch with a garden variety version, but it’s at the cost of destroying the “vintage” feel of the appliance. Take the Singer sewing machine switch. The toggle is a distinctive white Bakelite, and the mechanical aspect of the switch is almost two inches long. I was lucky enough to find a new old stock (NOS) replacement on eBay. Otherwise, I would have been forced to substitute a miniature toggle switch for the classic Bakelite toggle. I’ve found a great source of old fashioned switches is guitar supply houses and local music stores — especially stores that cater to the tube amp crowd.

So, next time you walk past a yard sale, check out the vintage electrical items. There’s always something to learn from a teardown, even if you have no need for the actual item. NV

Weather Website

In one of Bryan Bergeron’s past editorials, he mentioned purchasing a weather station. I've often thought of building or buying my own weather station, but I never seem to find the time to do it.

Living in southern CA, I wanted to add seismic sensors, in addition to the standard array of sensors (wind speed, direction, temp, humidity, barometric pressure, rainfall, etc.). It'd be cool to be able to set up a weather website, so my neighbors could see the conditions. I wonder what make/model system Bergeron finally settled on.

I emailed both Davis and AcuRite, and they have told me — in no uncertain terms — that neither of their systems can be made to work with "homebrew" sensors. So, maybe the easiest way to go would be to start with a standard model weather station — from either Davis or AcuRite — and have it upload the weather data to a website.

Then, I could design my seismic sensors and upload the data to that website as a separate process, using a microcontroller (sort of in parallel to the weather station).

Any thoughts on this would certainly be appreciated. It might be doable, but I'm no expert on this.

Jeff Kerner

I ended up modifying an ancient but workable Heathkit weather station that a friend was about to toss out. It was a fun project, going from analog to digital. You have an ambitious project; really data fusion.