Mountaining Hazards

Types of mountaineering hazards.-

1. Objective Hazards - Hazards created by power of nature.
   
2. Subjective Hazards and Psychological Hazards - Hazards by mistake of climbers ( Human Hazards )
   

Objective Hazards-

1) Weather-

• Whiteout-
  If unknown place wait for clear. If distributed use torch for signaling (distance signaling).
• Lightning-
  -keep away from metals.
  -conical rock (at the top of the mountain) has no snow. During lightining come to the place covered with ice and away from rock.
  -Don't take shelter at conical rock and below single tree.
• Snow Blizzards-
  snow comes with wind.
  -wait till it get clear.
  -blizzards can enter your nose or ears or shirt.
  -stand opposite to it.
• Snow fall or rain fall-
  -pack all items in plastic bags.

2) Avalanche-
Mass of snow slide down from mountain to valley side.

3) Land Slide-
- start form beginning.
-pass one by one (other should watch and told passing person)
-select best way.
-don't pass without helmet or use rucksack to protect head.

4) River and streams-
streams are dangerous, they are small but flow can be from 8km/h to
km/h

5) Glacier-
moving river of ice.

6) Cornice (very dangerous )-
over hang lap of snow stuck on the mountain ridge.
- crup with X- stick to check hollowness
- choose central or middle area.

7) High altitude sickness-
irritation, noise beading , breathing problems.
-Acclimatise body then climb.

Subjective Hazards-

1) Sun burn -
Use caps, cover , suns scream, hats, umbrella.

2) Snow blindness-
-At mountain UV rays reflect from snow and enter to eye.
-Use black goggles.
-If suffering from snow blindness then use water or urine.
symptoms of snow blindness-
-feel irritation in eyes.
-eye turn to reddish.
-tears comes.

3)Frost Bite-
Blood tissue die because of cold
-don't use wet gloves, socks and always cover face (nose and ears).
Symptoms-
-chill burn
-skin color change to red then yellow then blue.

4) Benightment-
spending night without food, shelter and equipments. Without proper plan or co-ordination in team.

5) Fall and slip and over confidence-
-Use proper sole shoes.
-Concentrate on work.

6) Team Management-
Choose the root such that week person can also climb.

Installing Ubuntu 9.10 in Vista using VirtualBox

Often we need some software which are opensource and run in linux OS only. Dual booting your machine with Windows and Linux is one option. But just for one software switching between two OS is not desirable since we need to restart the machine every time. The best way out is to install Linux OS like Ubuntu in windows itself. To do this follow the steps-

1. Download and install VirtulBox. (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads).
2. Open virtual box. Select New. In OS select Linux from drop down list and then select Ubuntu.
   
3. Set the desired setting. It is desirable to give more RAM to virtual machine if you have RAM most of the time remains unused.
4. For hard disk you can either select static or dynamic drive. Dynamic drive is desirable.
5. Once all set select the machine and start for the first time mount the iso file of ubuntu desktop edition.
   
6. Machine will boot on it and follow the normal ubunut installation instructions.
7. After installation the machine will restart and you will see ubuntu inside the vista.
8. Ofter the screen size is fix and usually set to 800x600 which is not desirable.
9. Go to device -> Install device addons.
10. A cd rom will appear in your Desktop of VM (virtual machine). Run the following
    cd /cdrom
    sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
11. Once addon installation done press Ctrl+F and then Ctrl+G. Your are done. Enjoy
    

8051 Microncotroller

It is a good idea to start with the simple and most popular microcontroller 8051. The controller I am going to use is from Atmel AT89S52 microcontroller. I will start with small introduction then Assembly programing then we will use nice C compiler for programing. It cost around Rs60 and has some great features like-

Introduction

The AT89S52 is a low-power, high-performance CMOS 8-bit microcontroller with 8K bytes of in-system programmable Flash memory.

Specifications

• Compatible with MCS®-51 Products
• 8K Bytes of In-System Programmable (ISP) Flash Memory
• Fully Static Operation: 0 Hz to 33 MHz
• 256 x 8-bit Internal RAM
• 32 Programmable I/O Lines
• Three 16-bit Timer/Counters
• Full Duplex UART Serial Channel
• Fast Programming Time

Before starting it is a good idea to get familiar with internal architecture of the microcontroller.

8051 family of microcontrollers are based on "modified Harvard Architecture" which means we have different memory location for data and instruction.

1. It has internal RAM to store data and Flash memory to store Instructions. Pins are provided to attach external RAM and ROM to the microcontroller. Separate address space is used to access both memory (as well as internal and external )which is encoded in instruction itself.
2. Bit wise addressing is also possible.
3. The upper part of memory consist of SPR (Special Purpose Registers)

Hardware Required

1. AT89S52 microcontroller.
2. Crystall
   

Microcontroller and Embedded System Design

Introduction to my microcontroller and Embedded System Design Blog
For last two years I am working on microcontroller and embedded system design. I have worked with 8051, Atmega16/32, PIC 18F4550 (for USB) and will be working on ARM. I have little experiance on CPLD and will learn FPGA in this semester only. So I decided to start this new blog series related to microcontroller. For the starting I will use 8051. Architecture and assemble programming. After that I will switch to embedded C. Once we are done with 8051 we will move on to more complex microcontroller. Learning microcontroller is great fun. You can see the fruits of your labor. I hope that I will be able to give something which will benefit someone.

Home made C-V measurment system

My dual degree project is fixed and I am going to work on Nano devices. So surely I will be doing some HEMT fabrication and there characterization. Most common of electrical characterization is C-V measurement at different frequencies. So first challenge is measuring Capacitance (C) of the device. We had C-V measurement system in our lab but unfortunately it is shifted to electrical department and I am not in mood to go to EE department every time I want to do my measurements. Setting up a new CV setup is costly, A LCR meter from Agilent itself cost Rs 9 Lakh and we are not in mood of spending money on it. So I decided to make our own C-V measurement setup. Now I know some of methods which are used to measure capacitance.

1. Charge the capacitor with constant current source and then see how the voltage changes across the capacitor. Assuming ideal capacitor we can find capacitance equal to current / (time rate of change of voltage ). Well this method is simple but not accurate and many multimeter uses this method and there are very cheap so I am not going to this method.
   
2. Apply an AC signal across the RC circuit. Measure the voltage across the resistor or capacitor. The phase shift , amplitude difference between these signals will give as value of the capacitance. This is the method which is widely used in the more sophisticated instruments which cost lakhs. So I am going to use this method.

Now after deciding my method I am going to need some instruments. I made some circuits for both signal generator and aquaring data of voltage drop across the resistor. But since I need more sophisticated instrument I decided to use the Tektronix AFG3000 signal generator and Tetronix TDS1012B oscilloscope both of the instrument is available in my lab. I am going to use matlab for the data controlling the signal generator and acquiring the data from the oscilloscope. A Graphical user Interface will be made so that user can choose range of capacitance measurement and other tasks. This is what I have done so far , I will update the blog as I will go through the project

Home Made PCB using Toner Transfer Method

Making a circuit , soldering all components connecting them using wires etc are always been very painfull to me. So I came up with this solution of making PCB in home. In india it is really very difficult to find some shops from where you can get ready made PCB. Even if you find some shop (like i found one ) it will be very time taking ( you have to give order and then wait till it get ready and usually take one week or so ) and costly. So here we go.

Check list before you start.

1. Glossy paper (the one used for photoprinting and can be bought from any photostudio).
2. Blank copper PCB.
3. Ferric Chloride.
4. Acetone and Isopropenol (optional)
   
5. Liquid tin

Steps to follow-

1. First clean the PCB inorder to remove dust and oxides. You can clean it with VIM. (optionally you can clean it with iso proply alchohol).
2. Design you layout using the eagle software (you can download the free version just google it).
3. Take the printout of the circuit layout (mirror image) in the glossy paper.
4. Now heat up the iron, put the PCB on table and pre heat up it with iron and printed glossy paper on top of it heated PCB, be careful because the glossy paper will stick on the PCB so you have got only one chance to place the paper carefully.
5. Now put normal paper on top of the glossy paper and use iron to further heat. Put pressure so that the print get transfer to the PCB.
6. Once done with above step , let the PCB cool for some time to normal temperature and then put it in the water. Glossy paper will can now easy be removed from PCB just using thumb. After removing the glossy paper you can clearly see the Print on PCB.
7. Now take some Ferric chloride solution, heat it to 70 degree and then put the PCB in the solution and stair it for some time. (handle with care it is dangerous , avoid direct contact with skin - use mask and gloves).
8. You will see that the copper where the print is not there is been removed. Use window cleaner or nail polish cleaner to remove the remaining black print in PCB. (optionally you can use acetone or ask the printer guy the solution he uses when his clothes get dirty with the colors ).
9. Now you are left with the clean PCB with circuit treks in it. To avoid oxidation and good soldering use dip the PCB in liquid tin

Serial to Parallel Port Converter

Before you proceed with the blog I want to make sure that its exactly not the serial to parallel port converter so that you can connect your parallel port printer or device to serial port through it and it will work. It is more or less useful for certain simple Input/Output application with computer. During one of my robotics project I wanted to control stepper motor through the computer. The idea was that I will wright a program which will run and will send that data to the stepper motor driver through parallel port. Well its very simple you just need a driver IC which will take TLL input from the parallel port and will drive stepper motor. But wait I have laptop with no parallel port and the I was using MATLAB for programming. So I searched USB-to-Parallel port converter and I got it. I bought it for just Rs.200 and was very happy. I came to my room and attached it to my computer and here comes the role of vista which has no support to the old win98 driver shift with the device. I searched lot in internet and somehow managed to install the driver properly. I started matlab hoping that matlab will recognized it as parallel port but later I found out that matlab has no support to add-on parallel ports so the idea totally failed. Infact MATLAB no more support parallel port. I switched to serial port, again I bought USB-to-parallel port converter and it worked fine with MATLAB.

After Installing it I found out the in order to interface it I need a microcontroller which has USART like atmega16 and you need to program your micro-controller so that in can communicate it with computer. Well now I know how to program micro-controller and code has to be written in the computer side. But I gave a second thought and realize that there is another and simple way also for this you don't need any micro-controller at all. Most of the part is done at the coding side and I have written function that you can directly use. So here we go

Check List-
1) Serial Port or USB-to-serial Port converter.
2) Matlab installed
4)


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