In November 2005 I wrote a piece for PC Update about the installation of a computer and inverter in my car. This article explains how it worked; and some of the experiences on that journey.

If this was being written for a travel magazine I would have a ball boring everyone with my photographs and discussion of where I went and whom I met, and the whole tourist magazine bit. Actually the computing part ran smoothly and, apart from organising myself and the car, it worked as planned. Most of the planning was described in the previous article.

For those who have not read Part 1, I installed a desktop computer with CRT monitor in the passengers seat of my 1986 Honda City Pro. I powered it with a 330 watt inverter that ran off a second battery that was installed on the passenger side floor.

As mentioned in the previous article, I had some problems, as neither the computer nor the monitor were perfectly happy with the flat 50 cycles delivered by the inverter. I overcame that by not doing a software shut down when closing down. I just closed all the programs back to the desktop and then turned the power off.

Photography

I have been taking photographs for the last fifty years and like to think that I have a reasonable grasp on the basics. However it is only in the last year or so that I have been taking digital photographs. There is still a lot I do not know about digital photography but my experience so far leads me to believe that film photography produces a far better image than digital. Trust in the camera manufacturer to get your exposure right every time is very misplaced. Digital images have a range of artefacts that can wreck an otherwise good picture.

Maybe I am having problems adapting to the change but the end result is that the image is nothing like as good. Perhaps the two systems are so far apart that they are not directly comparable. Like push bikes and motor bikes. I feel more in control when I set the shutter speed, aperture and focus. Digital photography might be okay for snap shots but for serious photography, in my view you still need film. I suspect that it will come down to the right tool for the right job.

Let me Introduce my Car

I bought the car new in 1986 and since the have driven to all parts of Australia a number of times. While I was up in North Queensland, not far from Normanton, on this trip it clocked up 600,000 kilometres. The car is a little two seater, three door hatchback, with enough space in the back for my gear, but not enough to stretch out in. It is very comfortable to drive and most economical. On this trip I usually drove at 60 to 70 kph and maintained an economy of 5.5 I/100k from its snarling 1200cc engine. I have grown to have faith in its mechanical reliability. Honda should be proud of them selves.

The trip lasted 101 days and covered 26,000 kilometres. Each day I would take as many photographs as I liked. Each evening I would transfer them into the hard disk. Then I would toss out any that were not good enough or repetitive and rename the others.

This renaming is a tedious business. The camera just gives each frame a number that is a sequence and date combination. This is not very helpful when it comes to identifying the location or subject I am sure that with better software I could have saved some time. As it was, it took about a minute per picture to view and rename them. It is not hard to take a hundred shots on an interesting day. That means more than an hour and a half just sorting them out.

Whilst that may be ok at home, it works out to around half the battery endurance at a typical roadside stop, Frequently much more than half, depending on how full the battery was when I started.

I found that stopping in a shady spot in the middle of the day broke the task of reviewing and renaming into more manageable pieces. I would try to make the stops when there was at least another hour of driving to go. This way I could recharge the battery before the evening session.

I would string the photographs I liked into a slide show using Ulead Video 7, then add a sound track, chatting about the trip and the sights. Once I had the show running for about 20 minutes I would render it. This turns all the separate elements, sound, pictures etc into a single file that would run on the DVD player on the TV set. Then burn it to a CD. I would mail this back to Melbourne instead of writing letters. I usually managed two 20 or 30 minute slide show CDs a week.

I think my choice of software was poor. It is intended for putting movies together and is slow and clumsy with single frame images. But it did the job. I think that there must be better software out there. I am looking.

It takes over an hour to render a 20 or 25 minute slide show. Rendering is one of those computer tasks that requires no operator input. You just sit back and let the computer get on with it. I saw the light the first time the battery ran down before the computer had finished. That time I started the engine and ran it for the last 10 or 15 minutes. After that I would complete the assembly of the slide show to a point where I was ready to start rendering.

Next morning I would pack up the camp, start the engine, start the rendering and drive off. This way I could charge the battery, run the computer, cover some kilometres and feel smug. Once the rendering was done I would stop, pop in a CD blank and drive off copying the finished product. Another stop to swap to another disk and I would do my back ups as well. It is what we call multi-tasking.

Battery Power

Prior to leaving, I had struck the familiar problem of having the camera battery go flat on a couple of occasions. Here is how I overcame it.

As purchased, the camera came with a spare 120-ma hr battery. The battery that came with the camera was rated at 100-ma hr. Not much difference and inconveniently under-powered for anyone who wants to go bush, away from the car and other power sources.

My camera, an Olympus C-770, like most digital cameras, has an inlet for an external power supply. Like many cameras this is a 4.8-volt input. NiMh rechargeable batteries are rated at 1.2 volts so four of the in series will turn out 4.8 volts. A trip to Dick Smiths purchased a 4-battery holder, a plastic box to fit it in and a battery charger that ran on 12 volts or 240 volts. The plastic box was a bit longer than the batteries so I was able to drill a hole near one end (Figure 2) that allowed a bolt to pass through that mounted the whole thing under the camera using the built-in tripod mount. The only snag I struck was finding a plug that fitted the camera power input. I could not find one as a single item and ended up with a packet of about a dozen varied adaptor plugs that had one the right size included.
 

The NiMh batteries are rated at 2000 ma hrs. That's about 20 times the capacity of the Olympus battery. The whole thing cost less than a single 120-ma hr battery and that includes the charger.

I got into the habit of charging the NiMh batteries each evening or through the day when I was driving. It all worked very well and I never had any more problems with a flat camera battery.

However I did have a problem with the standard wire that comes with the battery holder. Whilst it did not seem to get much flexing, I had problems with the wire breaking inside the insulation and I had to replace it with a more substantial wire.

I always carried a spare battery for the camera but never used it except when the wire broke.

The camera batteries gradually lose their charge even when they are not being used so it pays to check their charge and top them up every few days. The mobile phone was only switched on when I thought I was close enough to a transmitter but that was another thing to be charged from time to time. I have two rechargeable lights and another that runs directly from the cigarette lighter on the car. The inverter also ran off a cigarette lighter fitting built into the battery case. I also had a small 12 volt cooler in the car that plugged into the cigarette lighter. I had a small water boiler that took 20 minutes to boil a cup of water for coffee on the run.

As you can appreciate I had a pile of electrical spaghetti in the dash (Figure 3) and keeping track of what was currently in need of charging required some vigilance. To assist in spreading the load I purchased a double adaptor for the cigarette lighter. Whilst this was convenient it also required to be modified as did a couple of the lighter fittings.

The problem being the method used by some manufacturers to construct the plug that goes into the cigarette lighter. Some of them have a built-in fuse. The end of the plug is a spring-loaded contact. In some cases the only contact between the end contact and the fuse is the spring that hold the end contact in place. The spring is very thin and gets to be very hot under even moderate load. It can get too hot to touch and there is a slight smell of burning plastic. Two of these got so hot that the spring lost its tension. Not good.

Once I realised that there was a problem I dismantled the plug and added a short length of copper wire with the insulation stripped off, along the inside of the spring, spreading it out over the ends to provide a better contact between the end and the fuse. That overcame the worst of the problem.

This trip was about taking photographs. That was my intention when I set out. You see I have lived at some time in most of the places that I visited on this trip. It seems that no one takes photos of their hometown. Sydneysiders never photograph the Opera House. No one from Melbourne photographs Flemington Racecourse or the MCG. It's the tourists that take photographs. So I had to go back as a tourist to get the photographs that I should have taken when I lived there.

Some things you cannot photograph. Obir, the Kimberley, Hamersley are all spiritual experiences that you need to be there to capture. They soak in by osmosis. Photographs just don't do it.

So I find myself with a load of photographs of what it looks like now. Many of the places have changed. When I was gold mining in Bamboo Creek I was one of about 12 people on the field. The company mining the place now employs 800 people. It is hardly recognisable. That's fair enough. It has moved on. So have I. The nostalgia jaunt and the photographs reduced me to being a spectator to my past life. The pictures are not enough.

Next trip I will do more to capture the feel and atmosphere. This last trip was just a shakedown cruise.
                                                                                             
Reprinted from the May 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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