Nissan QR25DE Camshaft position sensor recall

from http://www.b15u.com/troubleshooting-support/20302-0340-ways-fail.html

Fixing Whirlpool Refridgerator

Found that some "click" noise heard inside kitchen since last night. Then find the fridge is not cold any more. The lamp inside lit up normally. A clamp ammeter is used to check the current through the compressor (actually 2 wires lead to the compressor relay box, which in turn is plugged to the side of the compressor with 3 pins). The lable at the back of the fridge noted 1.5A @ 220V. However, the ammeter reads 5 A for 2 seconds and then down to 0A. A "click" noise is heard just before the cut out and this is assumed from the thermo protector in the relay box. What in my mind is that the compressor is seized as it does not run up at all. I make this guess as I found grease over the high pressure lines.
Then I read the net and found the relay box is the commonest fault. Then I go back and check
1) Voltage at the relay side : 3 pins -common, Run and start. The start/common pin reads erratic 180V-200V only , when the fridge is switched on.  This makes me suspicious.
2) Check resistance of the 3 pins on the compressor and looks for 2 coils Ohm reading. The sum of the smallest 2 reading should equal the highest value. Make sure the pins are not ground as well. My readings are 10 Ohm, 6 Ohm and 16 Ohm. So I suppose that the coil is not dead.

The relay is then suspected to be faulty. On opening up the relay box, I found chips of broken ceramic disc (later I found this is the so called PTC relay, or labelled as PTC thermistor from the fridge offical circuit label. This ceramic disc is shattered that the 2 pins (run and start ) lost their connection at the spring contact. The largest piece of the ceramic is realigned such that the 2 pin contact on both sides of the disc. Contacts are sanded and sprayed.

Then I pray and switch the fridge again. Wow.. the compressor works again !

The above is the compressor relay, which is usually found on the side of the compressor with 3 pin socket. The ceramic disc is found shattered. This PTC thermistor works by channeling current to the "starter" coil in first second. Temperature/resistance increases and current goes through the "run" coil circuit then.

Largest remnant is placed over the contact pins as a temporary measure, till I found a replacement part.

Replacing Nissan Presage / Altima TU31 QR25 Engine mount

 Above is old damaged engine mount. The right sided (from compartment view) (near pulley/ engine belt side) is most prone to be torn apart.

 There are 3 hex nuts on the engine side mount. Two above and 1 at the bottom. You need long socket to loosen it as seen here the center pin is long.

 A long hex socket extender > 12 inches will make life easier.

 This is the second most difficult nut to be removed. I need two socket extender ( total length of 15 inches) to reach the chasis mount at the back. The regridgerant lines will obstruct you access.

 You can see the hex nut at the back of the chasis engine mount.

 This is the most difficult hex nut to be removed because the difficult access. Taking away the Relay mount/ bracket, I still cannot reach it with wrench or hex socket from above. The belt and pulley is obstructing all movement here. Finally, it took me 30 mins just to loosen this nut. I have to jack up the car (not engine) and insert the long long hex socket from below.

 The Relay box/ bracket needs to be loosened in order to reach the front chasis engine mount nut.

All hex nuts are loosened but are not taken away yet. The engine is jacked with a foot long hard wood under the tranny. How much is needed to jack the engine? I jack it up till I can observe the engine mount rubber edge  rising up by about 1 inch and the whole mount can be shaken loose by hand.

 The engine mount can be removed now. You need to lift the water reservior out.

The damaged engine mount with the center strut completelt torn apart from the rubber mount. The central strut kicking around and create clunking that is very obvious in the passenger compartment, whenever over bumppy road.

Car Compartment noise and clunking over uneven road

My MPV is 5 years old and some noticeable metal clunking was noted over uneven road. Engine noise is also more pronounced at 2,000 rpm. The clunk is like metal knock against metal and happens 0.5 seconds after a bump/ uneven road. Worn engine mount was in my first suspicion but some forum mentioned worn sway bar bushing/ joint and even suspension may cause such clunking. My experience with my Mercedes is that the engine mount will last much longer and will only cause vibration rather than clunk. After thorough hammering, and kicking for loose parts ( jacking up both tyres and hitting , rocking the tyres, connection rods, exhaust pipe ... ) , no postive finding. But then after careful inspection, the motor mount near the engine side (TU31 / QR25 engine has 4 mounts : Font, rear ( not visible from engine bay), engine side, transmission side ), I find the engine mount collapsed by few centimeters and evident from the assymmetry of the rubber on the side. (Photo pending ...)

If you get a new engine mount and you can appreciate the difference.
The collapsed mount causing the metal strut rokcing up and down and hitting the chasis mount and results in clunking.

Replacement is simple and does not need to slip under the car (in which replacement of Mercedes E-class engine mount needs to do so ) .

All you need to replace the engine side engine mount ( Right driver side if you are sitting inside the car) :
1) Foot long 3 inches thick wood, to be placed between the floor jack and the tranny.
2) Floor jack
3) Hex Socket : size 12mm ( to remove the relay box that hinder the access to the engine mount) , 14mm (for the engine mount) . You may need a long 14mm hex socket as one of the screw of the mount is longer than usual.
4) A hex socket extender of at least 12 inches long, as the rear nut of the engine mount is not accessible .

It should be a 30-60 minutes job if all the tools are in hand. The part is cheap and cost only USD $ 60.

Repair my 15 years old Fuji Hi8 camcorder

My antique Hi-8 camcorder is dead for a while and now I need to revive it to digitalized all my Hi8 collections. Video image output nothing but white horizontal jerky lines with audio nosies. 1 out of  2 times the tape cannot go into the slot correctly and camcorder refuse to play the tape. Though of some mechanical problem, like slipping belt. Head cleaning does not correct the problem.

Open up the case. No loose belt. Looking carefully how the tape failed to engage. Seems the camcorder has a protection mechanism that when the tape jammed the rotating drum Imay be due to dirty drum surface/ old sticky tape), it will eject the tape  automatically.

Took my few hours to learn that there are tracking screws for lead in and lead out tape. The incorrect lead in (reason???) will cause the drum slow down and the camcorder refuse to read the tape and eject the tape. After trial and error, bu adjusting the 3 tracking nuts in sequence, finally I can digitalized all my 15 years old tapes (which takes anther 7 days !)

IR Full HD 1080 Watch

This Spy watch performs as expected with this price. Video captured has size of 1920x1080, frame rate of "30" and data bit rate of 8Mbps. Performance is less than satisfactory but this is expected for this price.
 Yet it is fun to open it up and have a look of the design. Interestingly, there is a large 8Mb ram as buffer. MicroSD is changeble and is class4 . ATTO test of stock microSD card is very fast, indeed. The unsatifactory performance is likely caused bt the slow encoding chip  STK2365 , capturing in 15fps motion JPEG. I cannot find any information from alldatasheet. As far as I know , there is only 3 chip factories that is capable of making FullHD 30fps low cost encoding chip . Default setting will capture continuous video clips of each 20mins size 1.3GB .  If configuration is allowed to capture at 720p with 30 frames, then this is a very good gadget.
Performance in no light situation is good with help of IR, which gives some spotted reflection underneath the glass.

Xbox 360 Fat flashed Liteon DVD key extract

My Xbox has iXtreme 1.6 flashed in the Liteon 74850c drive when bought. I was not given the DVD key (actually I have not have such knowledge by then) . Web search revealed dozens of way to extract the DVD key. Some say you need a probe/ USB key pro? / power board tht I do not have.

Further search found a better way. I use Win 7
1) PC e-SATA to connect the Liteon drive, so that no reboot is needed on connect and disconnect the drive (Windows will not show up the DVD drive anyway)
2)  Liteon powered by Xbox
3) Power on Xbox, push eject on Xbox , tray out
4) Push eject again, tray closing, quickly pulled away power cable between xbox and liteon drive.
5) Run jungleflash with administrative right, second tab - DVD Key, select the correct I/O port that recognize the DVD.
6) Extract ixtreme Key, save ***.bin

Pros:
1) No PC VIA card is needed
2) No extra hardware is needed
3) Xbox will be power down after 2.5 mins, so act fast

Car Digital Video recorder - Black box

There are tons of such product in the market and I can roughly categorize them according to the compression chips :

1) Low resolution 640x480 products (Some may cheat to increase pixels to 1280x960, with worst quality) ; price range from HKD 200-$400 ; The latest product even cheats by claiming having 720p/HD quality / with HDMI output , but you can tell from the jerky preview on the LCD (if you can test before buy) . THese fake product line can be made to look exactly the same as other high end product.

2) 720p : The chipset is from Z0ran with real 1280x720 quality. The colour saturation of this chip is good.

Another 720p chip is from NOVATEK. The cam manufacturer upscale it and claim  having 1440x1080/ 1920x 1080 video output, but at 15 fps, which is almost useless in reality. The colour saturation is good. Bitrate is around 6,000 bps. Product of this line market at range of HKD 600-980.

3) Genuine 1080p compression chips: Ambarella chip. capable to produce Full HD video of 30fps. The picture quality reveals lot more details than 720p, but looks soft in contrast and colour saturation. Most cam has bit rate of around 8,000 bps and this is the limiting factor of the performance of this camera. The optical resolution is also another limiting factor, as wide angle (120deg) will lost much details especially at the edge..The price of this product range over HKD $1100 - 1600 (DOD)

Below is the inside of a fake DOD F990 "Full HD" camera (Full HD only @15fps, though most seller claim it is 30fps and you must test it before buying). The button on the top makes lots of rattling noise when recording and you need to tap them.

 The compression chip Novatek is only 720p and is the same class as Zoran chips.

 CMOS housing

DIY Airsoft Chronometer/ Chronograph, PC based (Part 4 - Modification)

Just did 2 experiment:
1) Use 2 pairs of IR diode at exit site
easier to catch the exit signal , especially for faster BB > 500fps

2) Use shorter travel ~10cm
Accuracy / consistency of velocity can be kept within 2-3% deviation. Shorter tube results in easier to record the exit signal. The compromise is the time interval becomes shorter and needs more careful selection of the interval.
Audacity is set at 100k Hz sample rate with 16/24 bit (do not use floating as the signal will be lost during higher magnification of time)
Mic gain in Audacity needs to be set at ~90%

DIY Airsoft Chronometer/ Chronograph, PC based (Part 2- Construction)

Circuit diagram. Reverse polarity of the diode will not burnt the diode as the reverse voltage is not high enough to damage it. Make sure your mic input support stereo input. Most P4 or above motherboard has stereo mic.
IR diode is quite resistant to ambient light. U may cover the receiver diode if U found too much noise. Make sure all connection is solder well as small vibration may produce noise in the wave capture in Audacity. Get the orientation of which one is the entry reciever diode end, by testing each channel in the Audacity tracing.

IR sender diode connect in parallel with a battery source. The specified nominal voltage of my 5mm IR diode is 1.7V at 20-200mA. So I use 3V lithium battery with a voltage drop resistor. So 10-100 Ohm 0.5W resistor is ok. Note the polarity of the diode. The smaller metal piece inside the diode is to be connected to the battery positive.

For the IR recevier diode, one of the pin of the entry and exit diode is connected to the stereo plug middle and tip segment respectively (provide 2 channel information . The ground (base of the stereo plug) is connected to the other pin of each diode.

I check the IR sender by using my Sony DV camera. One should see the IR sender diode is lit on.

The IR receiver diode can be checked by using any TV/HiFi/DVD remote controller. One can see the IR spike on the Audacity software.

For small velocity gun, the tracing is easy to be capture. For higher velocity gun, a single exit diode may not be able to capture the signal in just 1 shot, as the BB may pass the exit diode on sideway. U can enhance this limitation by adding more parallel IR receiver diode in the exit end - a curtain of IR that will not miss the BB.

Audacity Software setting .... (to be cont)

DIY Airsoft Chronometer, PC based (Part 3-Result)

This Entry and exit signal with BB firing from my L96 stock. The mic gain setting on Audacity is around 0.9 . One can see the entry signal with some recoil due to the spring (relative movement of the travel tube as I put it in direct contact with my L39 on firing. Measured speed is 143-149 m/s or 490 fps. Muzzle energy just below 2Joule.

Velocity and Muzzle energy calculated from Excel. My M92 blowback - 0.6-0.7J only. Can only shot through 1 side of a coke can.
The 2 channel signal from Entry diode and Exit diode. Note this is captured from my CO2 pistol , in which the gush of CO2 signal is captured as 2 small spike before the BB pass the 1st diode.
Initial Audacity capture interface, showing testing with 3 shots of BB.

Audacity Interface and setting .........

DIY Airsoft Chronometer, PC based (Part 1)

This method is not invented by me, but I modified it with stereo channel of the mic input. The 2 separate channels make construction easier and more accurate.

Items need:
1) stereo plug x 1
2) 5mm IR photodiode receiver and sender, 2 pairs
3) connecting wires
4) 2cm diameter tube of length 25cm (Diode separation 20cm)
5) PC/notebook with soundcard/ motherboard with stereo mic in
6) Software - Audacity version 1.2.6

Facts:
1) Stereo mic, with 2 channels input enable entry and exit measurement be done separate and reduce noise/ interference.
2) IR photodiode is cheap. Do not use phototransistor (more expensive). Do not use those with metal cap (with internal pulse IC for IR TV remote control )5mm diode is used as the area cover will be bigger. If 3mm diode is chosen, you may have difficulty to catch the BB accurately. Make shoulde you know which diode is receiver as sometimes the purchased receiver diode is darker in colour, while sometimes is sold as clear diode (the one I got).
3) Length of travel tube governs the accuracy of the chronometer. The longer the separation (L) of the entry and exit diode placement, the less critical on the accuracy of time measurement. However, the longer the tube, the higher the chance the BB is shot in an angle , resulting in longer path (negligible) and chance the single exit diode not being crossed. (Then U need more than 1 exit diode , in parallel)
4) Time (t) measurement is done manually by cropping the signal spike between the entry and exit diode, from graph plotted on Audacity.
5) Time measured is translate to velocity (L/t) in fps or m/s, and hence the Muzzle energy can be calculated by 1/2 mv^2 Joule in Excel.
6) Error Tolerance is expected to be 1-5%. The higher the soundcard/ mic sampling frequency (44k to 100k from setting in the Audacity software), the higher the accuracy.

7" Android 2.1 MID/ Tablet Touch Screen Calibration Problem

Most peoploe like me find the sluggish and inprecise resistive touchscreen android a bit annoying. I , myself bought one with a faulty touch screen. This is difficult to detect on purchase as we are new to this OS. The virtual keyboard seems working on purchase, but yet the keys on the left hand side of the virtual keyboard seems unable to be pressed correctly persistently. In fact, if you download an apps like Paintpro, you will then find the touching point is 1cm away from the actual pen tip !
Since I am not to sure if that is my problem of incorrect steps of touch screen calibration, I can only make a decision to go back to the shop and ask for a change.
After testing, I confirmed that mine has a faulty touch screen. The shop exchange a "new one" and I test it with Paintpro app to make sure the touchscreen tracking is perfect. Nevertheless, I got a good one.

After playing with that for another 3 weeks, the same symptom appear again!
Googling, I found 3 posts regarding : 1) resolved by reloading the firmware , 2) faulty touchscreen
Initially it seems 1) is a better option as the screen works normal for the first 3 weeks. May be I load some apps not compatible, may be I root it,.....
I cannot just put this lovely pad into the rubbish bin. Finally , I decide to investigate. I dare to peel off the protective screen and confirm my finding.
The resistive touch screen compose of 3 layers (the cheap one has only 2) and the 4 pins are sealed together with some glue/bond. I find if I press on one of the pin, the touch screen becomes percise again. Likely the fault results from manufacturing problem results in one of the pin has poor contact between the 2 layers.

Then I think how to make a good contact for the pin in the upper and bottom layer as they is no point of soldering.

I repair it by using a soldering gun of low Watt and once it reach the desired temp., I switch off the soldering gun. Then hold it firmly and press on the plastic on the side of the pin. It works like magic and the touchscreen revive again.

Steps in repairing your touchscreen:
1) Confirm you can the same problem. The left part of the virtual keyboard does not work properly.The keys like a ,s,w,e cannot be pressed with one touch, it just wander (The reason is that the loss contact add additional resistance to the reading.
2) Try and press/hold on the touchscreen lower left corner,measuring 3.8 to 4.8cm from the left lowest viewable LCD corner. (refer to the photo below)
3) If this cure your touchscreen problem, you can follow as below
4) Peeled off the top screen. This is the most difficult and most destructive part. It may be irreversible!
5) Confirm which oin is loosen but pressing on the pin individually.
6) Apply warm solder to reglue the loose pin.


The LCD is removed.
The 4 pin of the resistive touchscreen.

Use solder gun of low temp and press the side of the pin.

****The soldering method is replaced with silver metal conductive paint, which works easier and safer.

支援Full HD 3D立體影像 LG W2363D-PF 16:9 LCD顯示器 - 電腦領域 HKEPC Hardware - 全港 No.1 PC網站

支援Full HD 3D立體影像 LG W2363D-PF 16:9 LCD顯示器 - 電腦領域 HKEPC Hardware - 全港 No.1 PC網站

Rooting Android HSG X5A Tablet

Steps
A) Install Eclair android USB driver in PC
1) Power on Android Table and wait till boot finish
2) Make sure X5A has USB debugging mode enabled
3) Connect Androdi tablet to PC via USB
4) Install X5A USB Eclair driver, when prompt for driver
5) In PC tray, you should see ANdroid composite ADB Interface
6) Reboot PC

B) In PC , enter ADB mode
1) Run > cmd> adb