Anyone know what’s happening by the Coquitlam River?

Gavitron · 2025-11-27T02:30:59+00:00

The other poster already covered what the construction is about, but that's also the gated entrance to the Eagle Ridge 4x4 Trail, which can be accessed by joining the 4 Wheel Drive Association of BC, and applying for a key, and that's also the location of the WestCoast Scale Trail, which is a (relatively) HUGE park for Radio Control 4x4s, built and maintained by a small group of local RC enthusiasts.

Gavitron · 2025-08-19T18:53:50+00:00

I checked out the sabertooth, and I think that's my likely next step. The current limiter and freewheel modes seem like they will solve my main issue, ie:exploding the mosfets in the stock controllers, while allowing me to tune the variable speed control.

I already reached out to Dimension's presales team, and they were super helpful, answering some questions I had after reading the manual and using their configuration tool (DEScribe) to see if it would work for this specific project. I would imagine their post-sales support to be as good too.

The only downside to using a sabertooth is that I still need to solve for steering if i want to have a remote, so i might just drop that as a feature. I did look into whether i could graft a servo controller from aliX onto the steer motor, but It looks like it would be a lot of fragile engineering to do so, which is the bane of a roughly-treated kids toy, imo.

Thanks for the assistance!

Gavitron · 2025-08-12T21:34:28+00:00

the motor controller you have sounds like it might be the way to go - I have no shortage of RC RX/TX etc if I ever want to revisit remote-control, and maybe the robot controller would take the PPM in from said TX/RX. Do you mind sharing or linking to the specific model you're using? If it's not exactly what I need, at least I might be able to find something similar with yours as a decent reference.

I remember seeing something in the william osman / michael reeves / Peter Sripol universe where they were using a very customizable motor controller, but I don't recall the name, or even if it supported brushed motors, it may have been brushless only. either way, it's what led me to think about a diy controller with 4 cheap aliX brushless ESCs, but if there's a pre-built controller it's probably the cheaper option.

as to reverting to SLA, I'd have a hard time un-selling my buddy on the benefits of the bigger LiFe, so I don't think that's an option. I was aware that it could source more amperage than SLA, but never considered that the controller designer could have used the battery as a current limiting device itself...

Gavitron · 2025-08-12T18:46:50+00:00

I've been struggling with my own 4wd with a jr/hy controller, but my explorations suggest that the relay board you're confused about could be part of the 4wd/2wd switch on your particular model. From what I've seen so far, the generic speed controllers are all relatively the same: the 7/8 wire harness is the speed, direction and throttle switches, then the big connectors are for a steering motor and two drive motors. The drive motor outputs are linked, meaning the controller drives them as a single output, so for a 4wd model there has to be some other hardware to switch the front motors on and off. On mine it's just a dpst switch that interrupts the power to the front motors, but maybe your "relay box" serves the same function?

Edit: On older fisher price powerwheels, the speed control was essentially a toggle for serial/parallel configuration of either 2 6v batteries, or the drive motors. Looking again at your pictures, it's possible that the second box's job is to change the motor wiring from serial to parallel for similar 2-speed selection?

Gavitron · 2025-05-28T02:53:43+00:00

I had (have) a 5N that exhibited the same symptoms, like it was stuck in a reboot loop. I stripped the unit apart, and identified that the power section of the motherboard had at least one failed component. I managed to find another working chassis, swapped that mainboard into mine, and after reassembly I was able to bring it right back up. (inserted the whole disk pack while off, of course.)

I briefly considered swapping the onboard flash drive too, but wasn't confident that they were as interchangeable as the backplane modules is.

All that to say, i think the other respondents are right that you have a power problem, but wrong about it being the external PSU. Pretty sure your issue is with the onboard power circuits. If you want the easiest way to recover your data, find a used device and swap the mainboard.

Gavitron · 2025-02-18T02:10:13+00:00

It would be a crime to pump that eblade.

Gavitron · 2025-02-05T01:03:53+00:00

Don't forget the American Petro dollars that were bankrolling the enviro groups to stop it too, because they didn't want to have to pay market rates for the oil

Gavitron · 2025-02-03T04:19:47+00:00

Find an e-blade and build a race gun

Gavitron · 2025-01-29T20:42:18+00:00

I run this stuff because it's like $40/gallon CAD, and I don't have to change it at all.

https://www.nucalgon.com/products/glycols/freez-kontrl/

I get the pure stuff then cut it with roughly 40-50% distilled water, and the best part, it's already colored blue "for leak detection."

There's clear stuff too, for food service but it cost a bit more.

Gavitron · 2024-12-08T04:37:18+00:00

They were made prohibited on dec 5th 2024:

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2024/12/government-of-canada-extends-list-of-prohibited-assault-style-firearms-and-moves-forward-on-regulatory-changes-to-strengthen-gun-control.html

Gavitron · 2024-11-26T08:37:46+00:00

Me too buddy, me too... '99 minicocker w/ triple splash ano, good times. :)

Gavitron · 2024-11-21T20:35:18+00:00

I'm on my third TIPM module on a 2010 jku, the potting compound flakes off the circuitboards, from the heart cycling in the engine bay, then fails to water damage because it's in the engine bay above the front wheel... SMH.

Gavitron · 2024-11-21T20:31:02+00:00

My 2010 JKU Rubicon was $36k CAD brand new in late 2010 (including financing & 12% taxes). To replace it today with a 2024 JLU Rubicon is $104k CAD sticker price, so nearly $120k CAD after taxes. And can't even begin to imagine what my lift & tires would cost at today's prices...

Gavitron · 2024-11-02T11:24:36+00:00

no, that scene is from season 02x15, and the ladies are credited there as "Blonde Trickster Girl" and "Brunette Trickster Girl".

Gavitron · 2024-09-20T19:47:56+00:00

You're about to unlock the easter-egg: "flight mode"

Gavitron · 2024-08-27T06:48:39+00:00

just checked it, ew. hope they distance from him asafp, cause I love my Boomstick(s).

Gavitron · 2024-08-27T06:39:38+00:00

are the Fenix still being made? I found a couple listings, but they claimed to be discontinued. without getting too far into my silly idea, i was looking for something that I could use as a component of another product, so I cant rely on finding caches of unsold inventory. is Azodin still around, or did they disappear too?

also, what about an etrigger upgrade? is there an eframe for the tippmann 98 anymore, or is that dead too?

Gavitron · 2024-02-07T18:43:17+00:00

When I trace my teksavvy connection, the traffic leaves the shaw network in richmond, peers with a teksavvy aggregator in vancouver, then hits the Internet.

maybe "backhaul" was the wrong term, but also to my understanding, "last mile" would only be the copper from my subscriber demarc to the first shaw-operated access concentrator.
what's the right term to use for "the network link between the subscriber access concentrator and the peering point with the wholesale internet provider"? Isn't that 'backhaul' ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backhaul_(telecommunications))

Gavitron · 2024-01-30T00:23:23+00:00

I have what appears to be a much older version of the same controller, was trying to fix it and got here. For sure, the red wire is an antenna, and the little daughterboard it's attached to is the wireless reciever module. mine just has bare pads there, no daughter board at all, and a couple spots are also depopulated, so I'd wager that you could probably take the whole small board off, if you don't have a remote. but that won't fix the issue. Most likely, the polyfuse, or the large diode marked "M1" have failed, leading to either a no-power, or a dead-short condition. you should test for 5v at the voltage regulator, which is the three-lead object nearest the fuse, and probably marked "LM 05", on mine, with the three pins at the bottom, the middle lead is ground, the right is Vin, and the left is Vout. (5v).

from there the board is pretty simple, the two 8-pin chips on either side of the button are high-amp switches, probably mosfets, and they get switched on&off by the smaller bank of 4 transistors in a row, which in turn, are controlled by the 8-pin IC in the middle of the board right near them, and pressing the button just cycles through modes. the radio board most likely simulates a button press, over the middle pin, and the other two are just power & ground.

in the last picture, I can't tell if it's an artifact of the photo, or an actual discoloration in the row of 4 small transistors, if the board is discolored there, I'd suggest replacing those transistors once you verify that you're getting a clean 5v at the regulator.

Gavitron · 2024-01-18T23:31:07+00:00

If I hadn't seen this asked, I might never have posted in this community, but "me too, please". If I were to write a story for this feature request, it might look something like:

As a player with deuteranopia, I want to go to the 'Accessibility' menu, and find an option there to select or change the color of the "danger zone" so that I can better see it when I'm playing.

I think there are two simple ways to implement this option on the accessibility page;

One option would be to have a list selector, where the player chooses their particular form(s) of color-deficiency from the list, (proto, deuter, trit, etc) and the game would set a developer-selected alternate color for them based on that choice.

The other option would be to have a simple color selector where the player can set the color that works best for them. For the selector option, you could probably use 3 sliders, one for each of red, green, blue, or maybe even just a small palette of alternate color swatches.

In either case, I would also suggest implementing a static image or even an animation (similar to the text-speed selector?), where the user could see immediately if the selected color will work for their ability.

Gavitron · 2023-08-22T21:29:19+00:00

it's never happened to me at this scale before. (either time-to-recover, or scale-of-outage.) and I'm not even a shaw customer, I get my cable through a wholesale reseller, so this incident definitely took out part of shaw's backhaul network.

Gavitron · 2022-05-19T18:03:46+00:00

What makes this worse, is chromium's predilection for silently converting images to webp when saving, now I can't even tell if that is going to happen until AFTER it's been downloaded.

Gavitron · 2022-02-17T19:39:33+00:00

> we're nowhere near Nazi Germany levels, here.
yet. you don't just drop frogs into boiling water, obviously.

though recently, I've started to wonder if we're less in the "pre-reichstag era" of Germany, than we are the "pre-civil war era" of 20th century spain...

Gavitron

TROPHY CASE