Thursday 6-13-24 Jukebox, Irrigation, Games & Puzzle

 

We had a wonderful day of doing this and that. 

Larry spent a good part of the day working on his jukebox project. The new jukebox has a small LCD screen that can't be used with his conversion, he and Frank talked about what they could do with that space. Larry designed a sticker using a couple of music images and a 57 Chevrolet to put on top of the LCD. He made a couple of them and sent a picture to Frank for his opinion, Frank was thrilled, he said as a younger man he actually owned a 57 of the same color. 

Sticker to Cover LCD

 

Larry thought he was done with the design but he came up with a new idea. Currently the power button you see above will shut down the jukebox but to turn it back on you have to reach around to the side of the machine and flip a power button on and off. On Larry's other machines he has more buttons on the front and is able to use one of them to turn the machine on, however, that is a bit confusing, use one button to turn it off, another to turn it on. This has always been a limitation between the computer that runs the jukebox and the software. Larry had an idea how he might be able to get around this. 

He was thrilled when he got the one button to do both on his old jukebox but he could not get it to work on the new jukebox. At one point he even thought he had ruined the computer but eventually he got it to turn back on. After lots of experimenting he finally figured out the keyboard encoder he used in the new jukebox was the problem, he uses a different one in the older jukebox. 

Now he has a decision to make. He used a different encoder in the new machine for a number of reasons, first he didn't need to control as many buttons, the newer encoder was smaller and easily obtainable via Amazon, the other encoders have to be ordered from overseas, there are also multiple manufactures of the ones on Amazon so if one disappears you could change to another, the new encoder is also a bit less expensive. 

So, does he leave the design as it is or does he change to a encoder that is only available via one vendor in China. For his personal machine he is happy to use the one he can only get from the one vendor but the new machine he designed with the idea of them turning it into a commercial product. A bit risky to use a part that might disappear and not be easily replaced.

Two days ago one of Jason's sprinklers was broken off and water was spraying everywhere. Larry chased down some parts and repaired it, since it is not our system he didn't have a way to turn it on to make sure it was working correctly. When the system did come on he discovered there was a leak. After digging it back up he found a crack in one of the pieces he didn't replace. He has now repaired that and will need for the system to run again to see if it works correctly or needs some adjustment. He didn't cover it back up this time.

While Larry worked on his projects I played games and worked on my jigsaw puzzle. I played the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong before going to bed last night. Today I did the event, which was Event: Free Cell Adventure of 20 games. It took me 2 hours, 35 minutes and 40 seconds, which put me in 11th place in my group. Then I played some Angry Birds.

In the afternoon we played pinball. Larry played Attack From Mars and got as far as trying to destroying Mars. I played Attack From Mars, Big Buck Hunter Pro and White Water. When I played Attack From Mars I didn't get as far into the game as Larry but I only had one more country to left to destroy Mars. When I played White Water I got a new high score of 87,505,920, which moved me up to 39th place out of 52 participants. We both had a great day of playing pinball.

 

Attack From Mars

Big Buck Hunter Pro

 

White Water

 

I worked out with the Synth Riders for an hour.

In the evening we watched an Amazon Original movie called Air. It was about how Nike was saved by introducing Air Jordon. It starred Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. It was a good movie. Afterwards I watched the last Star Wars movie in the series called Star Wars Return of the Jedi. I ended up doing 17,500 steps, which put me in 2nd place in my group.