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The Van of the Future

In 2019 my wife and I went to a Discovery Dinner at the local nature center. It was a presentation about electric vehicles. The presenter, Jukka Kukkonen, was an automotive engineer by trade. He switched his focus to hybrid and electric vehicles as he knew clean energy would be the way of the future. We left the dinner with one major point in our head:

If you’re going to buy a hybrid vehicle, make sure it is a plug-in hybrid.
Jukka

At that time we had a Toyota Highlander Hybrid (not a plug-in). It was fantastically reliable with over 250,000 miles on the clock. Never had to replace the batteries. No major engine or drivetrain issues. Consistently 20-27MPG – not a stunner, but much better than most other SUVs of that era. Every time we drove that car over 200,000 miles it felt like a gift.

For our next vehicle, had set our sights on the Chrysler Pacifica Plug-in Hybrid. I always wanted to go straight to minivan ownership when we became parents. I understood a van’s utility and could look past the soccer mom image, she couldn’t.

After Jessi got a new job in 2020, it was time. We shopped for used Pacificas as the new ones are upwards of $40k. We wound up getting a deal on a 2017 model that had 120k miles on it – am I concerned? Nope, and I’ll explain why…

PHEV Awesomeness

Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs) are the best of the two worlds we currently live in. You plug it in and get up to 30 miles of driving all-electric. You really don’t need a level 2 (240 volt) charger, as the 30 mile range will recharge in 12 hours overnight with the included 120 volt charger.

When you run out of battery, the gas motor kicks in and the two work in concert to get better mileage than a gas motor alone can’t. There’s no range anxiety, but you can still plug in at the mall or the grocery store (usually for free) to extend your electric range.

In the first 6 months we had the Pacifica, we put on 5,000 miles: 3,000 electric and 2,000 gas. If the previous owner had the same experience, that means out of 120k miles, the gas motor was only responsible for 48k of them. 120k miles doesn’t sound too scary then, eh? Worst case scenario the gas motor worked 2/3 of the time so it effectively has 80k miles.

The bottom line is the Pacifica is an excellent hybrid. Even when the battery reads 0%, it’s not fully depleted. There’s always some reserve to operate in a traditional gas-electric hybrid mode. And when it’s in that mode it uses electric drive way more than our Highlander did.

These are just some of my thoughts on what you can expect as a first time PHEV owner, and some of the quirks of the Pacifica. One thing I want to note is that when the car is in electric mode you hear everything. Tire tread, road grooves, the steering rack – if it makes noise, you’ll hear it b/c there’s no engine noise to cover it up. 😀

Climate Controls

In our 2007 Toyota Highlander Hybrid, the sure way to get the gas engine running is to turn on the heater. When I’d do oil changes on the HiHy in the summer, rather than following the ridiculously complex “force the internal combustion engine to run” procedure, I’d just turn on the heat.

Pacifica Hybrid in Freezing Weather

The Pacifica is similar, but not as bad. One thing is for sure, the internal combustion (IC) engine is going to run from a cold start on cold days. When it’s freezing (below 32°F) the IC engine will run until the coolant temp is 130°F – even if the climate controls are off. This is because the battery coolant, which also acts as a battery warmer in cold weather, is connected to the engine coolant. My suggestion is to run the heater during this time because the IC engine is going to run regardless.

After 130°F if the climate controls are off it will switch to all-electric. Maximum battery power delivery will be limited – lithium batteries can’t sustain high amp draw without severe voltage drop when they’re cold. So if you stomp on the accelerator, the IC engine will kick back on.

If you keep the heater on, the IC engine will continue to run and heat the coolant up to 165°F. It will switch to all electric drive once it’s above 165°F, and then run the IC again when coolant goes below 150°F. On a cold day (0°F) at highway speeds with the heater on, this will mean about 1-2 miles with the IC engine on and then 2-4 miles with the IC engine off. Mostly because the wind chill is very effective at lowering the coolant temp.

I may try putting some cardboard in the grille like Minnesotan’s used to back in the day. 📦

Touchscreen & Software

The center console touchscreen is capacitive, so if you want to operate it in winter, you’ll need to be wearing touchscreen compatible gloves.

I had an issue with navigation system. I don’t actually use the built-in nav, I use my phone. But the problem revealed itself through the compass. I noticed it was wrong a lot of time, sometimes showing the opposite direction I was traveling.

When it was happening, I switched to the navigation map and it showed an icon of the van in the metro area, but it was not on the road I was on. It was sort of “floating” over the map, through fields and neighborhoods. It wasn’t just a compass issue, it was a GPS issue.

I updated the software and that took care of the issue. BTW, plan for 30-45 minutes for the software upgrade. If it’s cold out when you perform the update, bring a warm cup of coffee or hot chocolate. ☕

Battery Life & Electric Range

Even with the number of miles on the clock – estimating that the battery pack and motor have traveled 72k miles, it still has good range. In warm weather (without the electric heater running) it will get 25-30 miles. You should probably cut those numbers in half if you’re running the electric heater w/o assistance from the gas engine.🔋

Best Minivan Ever?

I never thought I’d own a Chrysler. But I think they did a great job and other owners I’ve talked to say the company put a little more care into this vehicle than their normal offerings. We’d be more likely to go with a Toyota, but the Sienna hybrid came out in 2020, and not as a plugin (see above). The 2021 Sienna Hybrid is a plug-in with EV range, but at $40k+ I’d have to wait for someone else to buy it and sell it to me later 😂 Perfectly happy with the decision we made.

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Microsoft 3600 BT mouse latency in Linux

In my other XPS 13 DE Settings post, I linked to an article about mouse lag that helped my Microsoft 3600 mouse behave better.

Last week I noticed it started acting up again 😔 so I revisited the problem. My previous settings had apparently been wiped out with my upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04. But in my search I found some other settings that might help.

I’m applying both the settings from this post and my previous one, as I feel like the settings in this post additionally help smooth out mouse wheel scrolling.

From this bug report you can also change the latency settings for your bluetooth (BT) mouse. I found it easiest to execute these commands as root so I could use tab completion to navigate the bluetooth mac addresses:

The BT device info file is at /var/lib/bluetooth/<BT adapter MAC>/<BT device MAC>/info.

So I type vi /var/lib/bluetooth/<TAB>EF<TAB>info to get to the right file.

vi /var/lib/bluetooth/90\:78\:41\:CA\:1E\:02/EF\:E5\:F1\:99\:EA\:24/info

My file started out with these default ConnectionParameters:

[ConnectionParameters]
MinInterval=6
MaxInterval=6
Latency=60
Timeout=300

I changed those values to:

[ConnectionParameters]
MinInterval=6
MaxInterval=7
Latency=0
Timeout=216

Then I restarted the BT system with systemctl restart bluetooth

Hopefully this quick tip helps you iron out the kinks with your MS 3600 BT Mouse!

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SCX24 Subaru Brat

One of the first things I did after purchasing my SCX24 Jeep was buy the Subaru Brat body made for the Carisma MSA-1E 1/24 scale platform. I remember the Subaru Brat from my childhood with a fond weirdness, because it was definitely different than anything else on the road. The BRAT officially stood for Bi-drive […]

The post SCX24 Subaru Brat appeared first on Meatball Racing.

One of the first things I did after purchasing my SCX24 Jeep was buy the Subaru Brat body made for the Carisma MSA-1E 1/24 scale platform.

I remember the Subaru Brat from my childhood with a fond weirdness, because it was definitely different than anything else on the road. The BRAT officially stood for Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter. The Japanese understood American’s desire for a vehicle to be fun. The Brat tapped into the American desire for a vehicle that is conventional in some ways, but very unconventional in others. As such, the vehicle was never sold in Japan, it was for the English speaking markets of the U.S., U.K., and Australia.

Continue reading “SCX24 Subaru Brat”

Rear Facing Seats

The thing I remember most about it was the rear-facing seats. The first thing I did for this body was 3D print a set of rear facing seats in 1/24 scale and hot-glued them to the bed facing backwards. For the print I used this 1/10 scale design. I scaled the seat so it was 20mm wide and then moved it down on the Z-axis 3mm to create a flat bottom.

Body Mounting

To mount the body I purchased a set of Axial Chassis Parts 201002. It includes the body post, which can also be used in the rear. Rather than using the body pin, I purchased some 3/8″ rare earth magnets from a local store called Ax-Man Surplus. I used CA glue to attach them onto the body post.

The magnets have enough height that I didn’t need to remove the body clip retainer post.

The magnets came on a thin steel disk, so I hot-glued that to the under-side of the bed.

Wheelbase

With the body mounting sorted, I needed to adjust the wheelbase. I ordered at set of SCX24 DIY Rod Ends off of Shapeways to make custom length suspension links. I lined up the front fender of the Brat with the SCX24 front wheels so I only needed to make custom links for the 4-link rear. There’s an excellent page on Scale Builders Guild that covers making custom links of various sizes.

I purchased some 2-56 threaded rod and some 1/8″ aluminum tubing from my local hobby shop. It pays to ask them where to find this stuff as the threaded rod was in the airplane section.

Using the DIY end links, I needed to cut the rod 8.5mm shorter than my desired link length, and the tubing 10mm shorter than the rod. The upper rods on the SCX24 are 7.5mm shorter than the lower rods. The Carisma has a wheelbase of 125mm, the Axial JLU is 133mm. To remove 8mm of wheelbase I constructed my 4-link rods with the following lengths:

Lower: 50mm center to center (41.5mm rod, 31.5mm tubing)
Upper: 42.5mm center to center (34mm rod, 24mm tubing)

Thinking about this, the tubing isn’t strictly required, but I noticed the 2-56 rod bends easily, so the tube will help add rigidity. The tubing also provides a smooth surface that will less likely get hung up on rocks. Lastly, the tubing helps create an exact rod length. I used a dremel to cut the tubing about 1mm long, then did additional grinding & sanding to get the length just right.

I also cut the length of the rear drive shaft down 8mm (just the outer sleeve section) as well using a pipe cutter – similar to what I did on the Slash 4×4 Crawler.

Suspension Mounts

I moved the suspension mounting points forward 8mm by drilling a couple extra holes in the frame rails with a 1/16″ drill bit.

I could have went with The Goblin frame, but that presented a different set of issues as it lacks mounting hardware and the flat sides don’t accommodate the stock body & suspension mounts as nicely as the stock steel C-channel frame rails.

To allow the suspension & body post mount to move forward, I also trimmed part of my battery tray.

The Chassis Parts Kit comes with an extra battery tray if you need to put your rig back to box stock. To restore the driveshaft you’ll need Axial Part # 31611.

Finishing Touches

I added some RC4WD Stamped Steel 1.0″ white wheels to compliment the early 80s look, along with some RC4WD Rock Crusher tires. The tires aren’t the best for crawling, but you can’t argue that they provide a streetable look to this rig.

The post SCX24 Subaru Brat appeared first on Meatball Racing.

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Carrying stuff by bike: bike tubes

Bicycle tire tubes are the most prolific piece of trash that is generated by the bicycling industry. Luckily it’s nowhere near the poundage of old car tire waste out there. Still because it’s the thing most often replaced on a bike, people have found several clever ways to use punctured tubes instead of putting them in the landfill.

I like to keep one in my bike trunk bag for carrying things. I use the tube as a shoulder belt to strap things to my back. I’ve used them to carry a shovel, a pole saw, and most recently: snowshoes.

Carrying stuff by bike: trunk bag

Full disclosure: I like Topeak’s bike rack products with their QuickTrack system. It started with the BabySeat, which both of my kids rode in, Then I bought the worlds most expensive milk crate for beer runs. But the most versatile attachment is the trunk bag.

IncrediblePBX 911 dialing with Skyetel

Configuring E911 support with Skyetel is simple on their side, as it should be. But because it’s an emergency service, I wanted to do a separate post to underscore the importance on making sure it works.

I mostly followed this support article from Skyetel: https://support.skyetel.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041179233-E911 except I went in reverse order…

Asterisk Settings

I made the Asterisk PBX changes from the bottom of their article first. I also followed this article regarding changes in Asterisk: https://wiki.incrediblepbx.com/Configuring-e911-with-Incredible-PBX

From your Incredible PBX Admin website control panel, navigate to Connectivity -> Outbound Routes.

Skyetel requires that your outbound caller ID is the 11-digit number of your phone. I updated my other Skyetel setup post to reflect this change – it was previously using a 10-digit number.

Edit your main Skyetel route and click Duplicate:

Then you’ll have a copy of your main route that you can edit:

Per the IncrediblePBX E911 Wiki page, set the name to E911 and set Override Extension to Yes. The other change I made was to mark it as an emergency route:

You can see by the help text that it forces the caller ID (CID) to be a specific number (if set). I don’t have any other numbers besides the one I ported from Google Voice, but you’ll be able to see later how it clearly indicates this extension is set up for emergency calling.

Then go to the Dial Patterns tab and remove all of the pre-existing dialplans by clicking the trashcan icons:

Click the Dial patterns wizards button to generate new dialing plans:

Unselect all options except “US Emergency” and then click Generate Routes. You’ll have all of the appropriate 911 and 933 (testing) dialplans added, plus some extras to make sure all bases are covered. There’s a sad story behind Kari’s Law and why these extra dialplans are ultimately unnecessary, but I’ll keep them just in case.

Once those are added click Submit at the bottom and you’ll be brought back to the Outbound Routes list where you can see the emergency icon lit up:

Move your E911 Route up to the top of the list by dragging it by the crosshair icon. Then click “Apply Config” to save all your changes and reload the dialplan.

Skyetel Settings

Over at the Skyetel dashboard, it’s as easy as following their support document. I’ve included screenshots here as additional examples. Head to Phone Numbers -> Local Numbers and click the gear icon on the number you want to edit.

Once editing your number, go to the E911 tab and set it to Enabled. Fill out your name and address so Skyetel can route you to the correct emergency service provider.

Once it’s enabled, the E911 indicator will be bright green:

Enabling E911 will add $1.50/mo to your bill. But for $2.50 per month ($1 for the local number, $1.50 for E911), it’s way cheaper than having a land line. I like that anyone in the house can dial 911, especially kids.

Testing

Testing 911 dialing seems like a nerve-wracking thing to do. Luckily Skyetel understands your anxiety and has set up a test number of 933 that you can dial to make sure everything is set up correctly.

When you dial 933, if everything is set up correctly an automated Skyetel message will tell you it’s working. It will also read back your configured caller ID and address to verify.

One minor hiccup I noticed is that my call didn’t go through until after a 15 second delay. If it were an actual emergency I would be panicking during this time.

The problem was at my RTP-300. You can dial a pound (#) to commit to the dialed number immediately – I like this for dialing my 702 extension. If I want to dial that extension, I dial 702# – because I might otherwise be trying to call a friend in the Las Vegas 702 area code.

I inspected the dialplan for the two lines of my RTP-300:

The default dialplan is:

(*xx|[3469]11|0|00|[2-9]xxxxxx|1xxx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|xxxxxxxxxxxx.)

You can see it includes 911 as part of the [3469]11 pattern – which will also recognize 311, 411, 611. I added a separate 933 entry.

(*xx|[3469]11|933|0|00|[2-9]xxxxxx|1xxx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|xxxxxxxxxxxx.)

I made these changes on both lines. Now my calls to 933 connect within 5 seconds. Glad to know it will also do the same for 911 🚓🚑🚒

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OpenWrt Bridging with IPv6 support

My network topology at home is pretty simple, it looks like this:

After my recent router hardware and OpenWrt 19.07 firmware upgrades, I noticed my access point connected to my cable modem looked like this on the Status Overview page:

Pro-tip: Notice I’m using the cloudflare DNS servers rather than the ISP-provided ones. The Comcast DNS servers have gone down on me before and their performance is generally lacking.

But over on my bridged router it looked like this:

Further more, when I went to the command line on my bridged router, I couldn’t ping any IPv6 addresses:

root@ap2:~# ping ipv6.google.com
PING ipv6.google.com (2607:f8b0:4009:807::200e): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: Permission denied

My concern was if the bridged router can’t contact IPv6 addresses, the same is probably true for the devices that are connecting through it.

I found the solution in this thread on the OpenWrt forums. While it’s easy to statically assign an IPv4 address, along with a default gateway and DNS server – for IPv6 it’s easiest to set up another lan interface specifically for IPv6 that gets it’s IPv6 address (and routes) automatically from the upstream router – rather than assigning it statically.

The TL;DR version of this post is to add this to your network config:

config interface 'lan6'
	option ifname '@lan'
	option proto 'dhcpv6'
	option reqprefix 'no'

Configuring IPv6 Bridging through the Web Interface

To do the same thing above via LuCI – the OpenWrt web interface, here’s how. Initially on the Network -> Interfaces page, ou can see my IPv4 lan with the wan ports disabled:

Click “Add new interface…”

Name it “lan6” and choose the DHCPv6 client protocol. For the interface, select the @lan alias. Then click Create Interface. You’ll be brought to a second screen.

All I had to do on this page was change the “Request IPv6-prefix” value to disabled. No need to change anything on the other tabs – the defaults are fine.

Now the Status -> Overview page on my bridged router looks like this:

Now I can ping IPv6 addresses from the command line on my bridged router:

root@ap2:~# ping -c 2 ipv6.google.com
PING ipv6.google.com (2607:f8b0:4009:807::200e): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2607:f8b0:4009:807::200e: seq=0 ttl=115 time=17.884 ms
64 bytes from 2607:f8b0:4009:807::200e: seq=1 ttl=115 time=17.351 ms

--- ipv6.google.com ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 17.351/17.617/17.884 ms

One of my 2021 goals is to better understand IPv6 concepts (at least as well as I can understand IPv4). If there’s any *nix configurations I find helpful along the way, I’ll post ’em here.

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Improved Connection Checking in Ubuntu

I wrote earlier about how I had to do some configuration of my DNS to get dnsmasq and resolved to work well together. With it working well I’m able to use dnsmasq, resolved, and network manager together to do local development while also detecting network changes nicely.

Recently I noticed I would occasionally get the dreaded question-mark network icon: “?” I did some digging around and it was related to Ubuntu’s Network Connectivity check. Several posts out there simply say to disable the check by going to Settings -> Privacy and turning Connectivity Checking to “Off.”

But by disabling connectivity checking, I don’t get the automatic prompt to connect through a captive portal (like at my local library). I wanted to actually fix the problem, so I needed to understand what the problem was.

Troubleshooting

Ubuntu uses the URL http://connectivity-check.ubuntu.com/ by default for connectivity checking. I went to the command line to see if there were any problems using curl while on my wired network:

$ curl -v http://connectivity-check.ubuntu.com/
*   Trying 35.222.85.5...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* connect to 35.222.85.5 port 80 failed: Connection timed out
*   Trying 35.224.99.156...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to connectivity-check.ubuntu.com (35.224.99.156) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: connectivity-check.ubuntu.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.58.0
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
< Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2020 16:02:34 GMT
< Server: Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu)
< X-NetworkManager-Status: online
< 
* Connection #0 to host connectivity-check.ubuntu.com left intact

Everything seemed to work out in the end, but you can see that the first request failed so it had to fall back to the secondary address. This whole request took 122 seconds.

The problem is, the default connectivity check interval is 120 seconds. So after the first one times out Network Manager flags the computer as offline. Apps like Spotify recognize the offline network status and stop working – despite being actually connected to the internet.

Alternate Endpoints

I could roll-my-own Network Manager connectivity endpoint – but I found an easier solution: use the default Debian endpoint.

The Debian default URL is http://network-test.debian.org/nm which has 3 IPs listed (for fall back) and it is much faster. All I had to do was add this file:

sudo vi /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/11-connectivity.conf

[connectivity]
uri=http://network-test.debian.org/nm
interval=300

I gave it a little longer interval – 5 minutes instead of 2. It’s probably not necessary as their service responds much faster, but I want to avoid the question-mark-of-no-connectivity as much as possible but still retain features like captive portal detection.

Restart after you’ve saved that file and you should be good to go!

← Summary Only

The Van of the Future

PHEV Awesomeness

Climate Controls

Pacifica Hybrid in Freezing Weather

Touchscreen & Software

Battery Life & Electric Range

Best Minivan Ever?

Microsoft 3600 BT mouse latency in Linux

SCX24 Subaru Brat

Rear Facing Seats

Body Mounting

Wheelbase

Suspension Mounts

Finishing Touches

Carrying stuff by bike: bike tubes

Rigging With Bike Tubes

Carrying stuff by bike: trunk bag

Case Study: RC Trunk

IncrediblePBX 911 dialing with Skyetel

Asterisk Settings

Skyetel Settings

Testing

OpenWrt Bridging with IPv6 support

Configuring IPv6 Bridging through the Web Interface

Improved Connection Checking in Ubuntu

Troubleshooting

Alternate Endpoints