Your latest purchase

draythomp:
He then had a backhoe dig out the center of the foundation about 30 feet deep, and a crane lift 5 of the containers and put them in the hole. Then he covered them all with plastic sheets, and buried them. After running some equipment over the loose dirt to compact it, he poured the floor inside the foundation, and had the inspectors come out to inspect.

The reason why you put plastic under a concrete slab is to prevent moisture from moving upward through the slab. If he draped plastic over the top that's going to have the effect of keeping the moisture in -- not out.

For a nuclear war the best place to be is in one of the old L-carrier vaults (description, example). Doesn't look like much, right? The above-ground buildings are all expected to be lost and the actual vault is underground, encased in "a lot" of concrete with mesh to act as a Faraday cage. One near me is about the size of a basketball court, underground.

I don't think he was at all concerned about water. With the water table at over 400 feet and the rainfall as low as it is, I'll bet he covered them with plastic to keep dirt from messing up the contents, or building up inside them. I didn't get to see when they filled it, but was told that he actually wrapped it over the top and sides of each container.

You're right about preppers, he wouldn't want to be this close to anyone else. So, grow house (there is a big generator on site), storage for something valuable that he wants to protect especially well, extra bedroom? I drove by it today and he has mounted cameras on the walls, looking at the gate and has no trespassing signs all over the place.

Oh well, he keeps to himself.

Hi, probably got a REALLY GOOD WINE CELLAR.........

Or have you seen a TV crew form A&E or Discovery around, new series of Moonshiners, copper pipe and cylinders turned up yet?

Tom......... :slight_smile:

Hi guys, just bought:
-Arduino Duemilanove
-Arduino UNO R3

Hope to make something cool!

Can you still buy a Duemilanove? Well I suppose you can as you just did :slight_smile:


Rob

Graynomad:
Can you still buy a Duemilanove? Well I suppose you can as you just did :slight_smile:

Plenty of clones still bring made, it would seem. Not sure why exactly...

pico:

Graynomad:
Can you still buy a Duemilanove? Well I suppose you can as you just did :slight_smile:

Plenty of clones still bring made, it would seem. Not sure why exactly...

Because it's still a proven design. The replacement Uno only improved the bootloader somewhat (smaller footprint, faster upload, proper WDT handling) but otherwise nothing lost using the Duem... design.

I think some of the branded development kits you can buy actually have an even older board inside, the one where you have to select the power source. I suspect that they bought a load but they didn't sell as quickly as they would have hoped?

And on another, unrelated topic, Derbyshire nuclear fallout bunker goes under the hammer - BBC News

I believe you can buy old missile silos in the US as well.


Rob

Graynomad:
I believe you can buy old missile silos in the US as well.


Rob

Minus the missile of course. :wink:

I served at a SAC missile base in the 60s. I didn't work on them, rather I worked teletype/crypto on base, but I did get to tag along with a maintenance crew once to help service some equipment in a LCC (launch control facility) which was 70 feet underground behind a bank like vault door where two officers had control of 10 missiles. Pretty impressive setup to say the least at least to a 19 year old.

They seem to still be operational at that same base today, having read of personal problems lately with the launch control officers cheating of review tests. SAC was a very serious place to be in and work at in those days, I'm sure the thawing of the cold war and the many reorganizations that eliminated the SAC command helped to take the shine off such duty these days. Still impressive that a weapons system designed in the late 50s is still operational to this day.

system designed in the late 50s is still operational to this day.

Yeah, I can't see my Arduino-based sprinkler controller still being used in the 2070s :slight_smile:


Rob

Graynomad:
I believe you can buy old missile silos in the US as well.

In some cases ownership of the silo is passed to the current landowner. A friend of mine was quite pleased about the deal: included with the silo was an enormous copper grounding strap worth about $40,000. Took him a few days to get it out of the ground but, at least for a while, he was paid about the same as the President.

retrolefty:
The replacement Uno only improved the bootloader somewhat (smaller footprint, faster upload, proper WDT handling)

I guess different people value "somewhat" somewhat differently. If the price is the same, design A vs design B is a no-brainer if A has disadvantages compared to B, but no compensating advantages.

pico:

retrolefty:
The replacement Uno only improved the bootloader somewhat (smaller footprint, faster upload, proper WDT handling)

I guess different people value "somewhat" somewhat differently. If the price is the same, design A vs design B is a no-brainer if A has disadvantages compared to B, but no compensating advantages.

Assuming they are the same price would certainly be a factor. But if the older board is cheaper, burning the Uno bootloader to any older board is a trivial matter that I have done to most all my 328p based boards.

retrolefty:

pico:

retrolefty:
The replacement Uno only improved the bootloader somewhat (smaller footprint, faster upload, proper WDT handling)

I guess different people value "somewhat" somewhat differently. If the price is the same, design A vs design B is a no-brainer if A has disadvantages compared to B, but no compensating advantages.

Assuming they are the same price would certainly be a factor. But if the older board is cheaper, burning the Uno bootloader to any older board is a trivial matter that I have done to most all my 328p based boards.

Yes, assuming you have a ISP programmer, of course you can easily burn a new bootloader. I certainly would.

But the Duemilanove being cheaper?

If anything, the older board is more likely to more expensive than the Uno, not cheaper, given that one of the drivers of the design changes for the the Uno was make something that was cheaper to manufacture.

Further, we are really talking clones vs clones here, since you can't buy a Duemilanove from Arduino anymore. And a cheaper Duemilanove clone is then going to be beating a sub $10 price for an Uno clone (shipped). So I'd suggest if they are still making Duemilanoves, it's not because they can make and sell them cheaper than the Uno!

FInally, the Duemilanoves have the older pin header layout. (I don't know if that yet creates a practical problem with any of the newer shields out there, but still, it's a consideration.)

In short, I wouldn't bother buying a Duemilanove, and find it hard to figure out why anyone else would buy (or manufacture) one either!

But clearly they are...

How many did they make and how many sold?

Not sure why [people are selling duemilanove clones.]

Uno presents a problem for clone vendors because the 16u2 (or 8u2) chip used for USB/Serial needs to include a vendor code and serial number provided by the manufacturer. Forging those might be more "actionable" than merely forging the arduino (USB association being a bigger entity than the Arduino company), and getting them wrong results in non-working boards. In theory, Uno clone boards from companies OTHER than arduino should need separate driver files.

The change in USB chip theoretically allows emulation of USB devices other than serial ports. That's a need better served by the Leonardo, and I never understood why it was a good idea for Uno in the first place (I've never seen a lot of interest in non-serial USB devices.) Some of the duemilanove clones are pretty much using "any USB chip that has drivers"; I've seen CP2102 and PL2303 chips that were NEVER used in any official Arduino boards (but they're pretty significantly cheaper and more widely available (to cloners) than the 16u2 or the FTDI chips, I think.)

Personally, I'd like the clone vendors to go all the way back to ther diecimilla era. I don't like the auto-power-switching on the later boards; I'd rather have a switch. (Lower overall power consumption and fewer things to go wrong, too. (There have been a couple of posts recently about people apparently blowing out the opamp...))

westfw:
In theory, Uno clone boards from companies OTHER than arduino should need separate driver files.

I didn't realize that. That's quite interesting, from a number of different angles.

westfw:
The change in USB chip theoretically allows emulation of USB devices other than serial ports. That's a need better served by the Leonardo, and I never understood why it was a good idea for Uno in the first place (I've never seen a lot of interest in non-serial USB devices.)

I always got the impression the emulation of USB devices was a bit of an afterthought with the selection of the 8u2/16u2 chips, the prime driver of the change being manufacturing cost. But this business about the firmware in the chips not being legal to clone is also intriguing...

westfw:
Some of the duemilanove clones are pretty much using "any USB chip that has drivers"; I've seen CP2102 and PL2303 chips that were NEVER used in any official Arduino boards (but they're pretty significantly cheaper and more widely available (to cloners) than the 16u2 or the FTDI chips, I think.)

A matter of terminology, perhaps, but as soon as you deviate from the "official" pcb layout (except for silkscreening) and parts list, I'd say you are now in the realm of "derivatives" rather than "clones." So a 328 board with CP2102? IS it an Uno or a Duemilanove? Or neither? Neither, I'd be inclined to say.

westfw:
Personally, I'd like the clone vendors to go all the way back to ther diecimilla era. I don't like the auto-power-switching on the later boards; I'd rather have a switch. (Lower overall power consumption and fewer things to go wrong, too. (There have been a couple of posts recently about people apparently blowing out the opamp...))

I agree -- the simpler designs hark back to more of the "you really can make your own Arduino" era. There is a kind of honesty in that simplicity. Actually, one of my favorite "derivatives" in that vein is the Diavolino -- I like the flames, too! :wink:

You can always breadboard a Duino and use an FTDI cable or like to communicate with it.
I don't suppose that anyone has a serial cable that can do the job?

I have a Dontronics Little rAVR dev board for 90Sxxxx chips. It programmed through parallel.

pico:
I always got the impression the emulation of USB devices was a bit of an afterthought with the selection of the 8u2/16u2 chips, the prime driver of the change being manufacturing cost. But this business about the firmware in the chips not being legal to clone is also intriguing...

It was. It's not "illegal" to clone the u2 firmware, but since it's not a dedicated USB-to-serial IC (it's just a micro with support for USB client mode), the developer is responsible for coming up with a valid USB vendor ID. The USB Forum assigns these, so you can't just make it up, and it's against USB's terms and conditions to use another vendor's ID. (This is how they ensure the device IDs are globally unique -- by assigning the vendor ID and delegating the responsibility for the device ID uniqueness to the vendor. That breaks immediately if multiple vendors get to share vendor IDs.)

Vendors have to pay (I think it's $2000?) for a unique vendor ID, and it's not permitted to sub-let them. So the clone manufacturer is obligated to buy a vendor ID of their own and program the ATmegaXXu2 with their own IDs. Doing so makes the device unrecognizable to the official Arduino driver (since its keyed to the vendor + product ID pair by USB's design). You could always hack the driver to include your own IDs and distribute that, but if you have no ethics, it's easier to just steal Arduino's valid IDs and hope for the best regarding potential ID collisions.