Tony Blews

Just a bunch of unsorted and blurry photos from the Metallica gig in Paris.

Well, I’m back from Paris. We stayed at the excellent Eldorado Hotel, near Place de Clichy in the north west of the city. The place was recommended to me by Tim Bewlay, of The Quireboys and Dogkennel Hill fame (shameless attempt to look cool by having a rockstar mate).

Anyway, enough of that, here are some photos of the place…

All the staff were friendly and helpful, and put up with me complete inability to speak French beyond “deux bières s’il vous plaît”.

Our rooms were 69€ each per night, and came with a shower and a toilet. Some cheaper rooms don’t.

The rooms are all different, and slightly odd. My room had a weird slope to the floor which unbalanced me a couple of times. Yes, almost certainly the floor, not the drink.

The drink prices aren’t exactly cheap: 4€ for a coke, 22€ for a bottle of the wine I was pouring down my neck, and 3.5€ for 25 cl of what appeared to be Heineken (which equates to £2.81 for .44 of a pint, or about £6.39 a pint). All this goes towards explaining why Friday night’s bar bill topped 150€. I’ve bought cars for less in the past.

I’d certainly stay there again. I bloody love the place.

The important details:

Hotel Eldorado

18, rue des Dames | 17 Arr., 75017 Paris, France

Tel: +33(0)1 45 22 35 21 Fax: +33 (0)1 43 87 25 97

Web: www.eldoradohotel.fr Email: eldoradohotel@wanadoo.fr

The air-conditioner in our office reminds me, for some reason, of a snoozing robot.

Looking back on my grand ideas, I’ve decided on a bit of a change of plan.

The current scheme will not have ports for video, or extraneous USB holes for keyboards and things of that ilk.

The current list of ports to stick on the Dalek is:

• Ethernet – as i think I’ll need it in case the wifi fails
• USB (using the already fitted port) for power while testing

The Raspberry will need USB for these:

• Connection to the Arduino
• Connection to the webcam (unless i can get a camera that uses the on-board connection)
• Some form of microphone

So it still looks like I’ll need an unpowered hub.

It will also need a speaker connection for whatever sound output I decide to use.

Also, at some point i intend to get the ear lights working again.

The DIY Arduino Shield Kit arrived from Amazon, and has been soldered up.

And it looks really boring, without the other parts stuck on it.

The parts in question are four 5v DPDT relays (Maplin part no N05AW – which seem to be out of stock a lot of the time, but are better that the alternative BT Type 47s, as the coil isn’t fussy about the polarity of the voltage), four 1N4004S diodes (part no QL78H), and a mess of wires. Rather than try to describe the layout, I’ve drawn a really bad diagram.

Click for bigger

This is the view from the component side. The yellow boxes show the relay placements, the four vertical block are the connections to the arduino. The Cyan areas are connections on the other side of the board, either whopping great solder blobs or lines joining the pads drawn with a pcb pen. The other technicolour lines are various wires.

Although that diagram gives the impression that I’ve used a double sided board, I haven’t. In retrospect that would have made things a lot easier.

Another collosal lack of planning (ie putting the Arduino header blocks too close to the top of the board) means that the Massively Ugly Blob Of Solder at the top sits directly over the ICSP header on the Arduino Duemilanove that I’m using, requiring a bit of electrical tape to stop it shorting.

Here is what it looks like now, shitty soldering included for free:

Maybe you’ve spotted some things that aren’t on the diagram. Such as the 2 pin header, the two 3 pin headers and and 4 pin header. Well, the 2 pin is for the motor power input, and the 4 pin one is for the motor driver outputs. They were an afterthought, as were the two 3 pin headers which are for the distance sensors input, and are currently not connected. That bit comes next.