When Your Truck is Missing Parts?

Last week, someone was stopped aside the freeway with emergency flashers.  The last thing I wanted to do was to get to work, so I stopped to help.  I quickly found out that the individual could not get their jack underneath the car (hint: don't lower your cars, folks).  I finagled the jack underneath, and lifted the car.

Then we found out they didn't have a lug wrench.

So I headed back to my new-to-me truck to see if I could find mine.  I'd only had the truck for a half month, so this was something I needed to learn.  And that's when the new realization hit me ....

I didn't have a lug wrench or a jack for the truck!

I didn't even have the bracket that holds the jack and wrench down.  It typically sits underneath the front passengers' seat, but where it was was a threaded hole that would allow water to permeate the interior.  Not good.

So, a quick call to a dealership, and they can't even find a part number to order.  A check to eBay, and someone out there is charging $120 for the assembly.  I fired off an offer that was rejected.  Rather than face up to a low-ball and buy it, I grabbed parts from Home Depot, picked up my spare Kydex sheets, and bought a bottle jack from Harbor Freight.  Then it was a matter of assembling a frame.  I heated the Kydex and formed it around the jack (I didn't want a potential hydraulic fluid leak), and then riveted the thing together.

I did have to trim a panel to get it to fit, but unless you know what you are looking for, you'll never see it.

The other thing was that I didn't have a 6mmx1.0 hold-down bolt, so I turned some 1/4" threaded rod to the outside diameter and used a metric die to cut it, coated it with Loctite, and created my own hold down bolt.

Not bad!

Status of the Home Brew Security System

I decided to upgrade from an Arduino and a large media server to an Udoo quad core (http://shop.udoo.org/usa/product/udoo-quad.html), because I didn't want to have to have the event server on the same network as everyone else.  I'm sort of paranoid.  What I found is :

• The Udoo uses GPIO inputs that ARE available through the Linux image.
• The Udoo failed to work with my relays.  This was because the relays were 5v relays (perfect for the Arduino Mega2560 I was using), but the Udoo uses a 3v logic level.  Simply put, the relays would never work.
• I could put my entire event server package onto the Udoo, and have a self-contained alert system.  This was my goal.

Here's what happened.

I found a great tutorial from Adafruit at http://www.udoo.org/ProjectsAndTutorials/linux-gpio-manipulation/.  I slapped together some listener programs to watch the GPIO states, and I was suddenly in business again.  I no longer needed to upload any code to the Atmel chip on board - I could do it all in native C code, standard-Linux stuff.  Those tools were checked into the event server repository (subversion), and have been thoroughly tested.

Next, I needed to be able to work the garage door.  I toyed with building a separate, stand-alone device, but I'd already done that, and I was starting to get lazy.  I found a device on ebay, http://www.ebay.com/itm/111248757109?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649, that was $50, and had two relays and Ethernet.  The downside is this came hard coded to an IP address of 192.168.1.199.  I had to use a crossover cable to connect it up, and reconfigure it to use DHCP.  It has a simple web-based interface.  So, being the nerd I am, I watched network traffic to see what requests were being sent.  When I'd click one of the relay buttons on the web page, it would send a request :

http://192.168.1.199/relays.cgi?relay=1

When I turned it back off, it sent an identical request.  There was no "off" or "on" designation in the requests.  Apparently, the device simply took "toggle" commands".

I did find if I left off the ?relay=1, it simply gave me the following page:

<div>
<font size="5"> one                             <span style="color:red">0 </span> </font>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<font size="5"> two                             <span style="color:red">0 </span> </font>
</div>

<div>
<p hidden>
Status: 0 0 
Relay1: one                          
Relay2: two                          

Now I was getting somewhere.  I toggled it, ran the previous, and found that the "Status: 0 0" line went to "Status: 1 0".  It's a two relay board, so now I know how to get the current state.  Next, I needed to identify what had to be done to ensure it was always turning the switch off when it was done acting like a momentary push-button :

1. Ensure the switch was in the off position.
2. Toggle the switch to the "on" position.
3. Wait for 1 second.
4. Toggle the switch back to the "off" position.

So, I used the request without the "?relay=1" to get the "Status: " line for the relay I needed.  If it had a 1 for that one, I had to turn it off first.  In my case, it should ALWAYS be in the off position already.  Next, I had to toggle it to "on" position, and a simple request to the following would work perfectly :

http://192.168.1.199/relays.cgi?relay=1

Then, I slept for a second, and then made that toggle request a second time to turn it off.  I hooked it up, and ran it.  Woohooo!  I'm back online again!  Here's the code I used :

#!/usr/bin/perl

use LWP;

use HTTP::Request;

my $relay_host = '192.168.1.199';

my $relay_index = 0;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new('alarmsystem');

$ua->credentials($relay_host.':80',"Protected", 'admin', 'admin');

# FIRST - Ensure this thing is OFF

my $res = $ua->get('http://'.$relay_host.'/relays.cgi');

print $res->content;

exit;

if ($res->content =~ /status: ([\d\s]+)/i) {

  my (@rows) = split(/[\s\t]+/,$1);

  if ($rows[$relay_index] == 1) {

    my $res = $ua->get('http://'.$relay_host.'/relays.cgi?relay='.($relay_index+1));

  }

};

# SECOND - Turn it ON

my $res = $ua->get('http://'.$relay_host.'/relays.cgi?relay='.($relay_index+1));

# sleep for a second

sleep(1);

# LAST - Turn it back to OFF

my $res = $ua->get('http://'.$relay_host.'/relays.cgi?relay='.($relay_index+1));