Chris Bergeron's Blog

My projects, rants and general info

Worked on the wainscoting in the basement

September 15th, 2011

A few weeks ago Natalie and I found time to work on the basement wainscoting. Here’s a picture of the progress:

More work on the wainscoting in the basement

May 15th, 2011

Natalie and I spent some time this weekend installing wainscoting in one of the basement rooms. Here are some pictures of the project:


Electric car project is stalled indefinitely

April 30th, 2011

Sadly, I sold my electric car project Ford Aspire. At this time I don’t have the bandwidth to work on that project. Someday in the future I may renew my interest, but for now this project is indefinitely stalled. The car paid for itself and then some, so it wasn’t a loss financially but I’m still sad to see it go, particularly considering current fuel prices.

Created new utility bill graph

January 28th, 2011

I updated the code that renders my utility bill graphs. You can see it here.

Here’s a screenshot:

Installed the security system keypad

September 26th, 2010

This weekend I installed the security system keypad. I still have some programming to do, but the majority of the system is complete.

Keypad

Security Keypad

Security system integration

September 11th, 2010

Today I worked on the security system / home automation integration project. The security system now communicates with the home automation computer and it can now send events/triggers to remote servers. In the following picture you can see my homemade PIC reporting circuit (left), the security system (center left), the staging area for my homemade circuit breaker interruptor (center right), and the breaker panel (right).

Integrating these systems has proved to be more difficult than I initially thought. I’m on track for total home automation and internet connectivity via my event log and my remote iPhone control panel.

Here’s a picture of the installation:


Security system

Security System

Replacing the radiator in the Jetta

July 10th, 2010

Unfortunately, my Jetta has a cracked radiator. The estimate that I received to fix it was $1,500 and $1,000 of it was for labor. I figured I’d save some money by doing the work myself. Today, I removed the radiator. Here’s a picture:

radiator

Jetta repair

Updated the kitchen kiosk computer

June 28th, 2010

I was out of commission today, so I figured I could be productive by updating my blog. Here’s a picture of the kitchen kiosk computer:


Kitchen computer

Kitchen kiosk

The original thread can be seen here

Primed and carpeted the theater room

June 28th, 2010

Last week I primed the theater room and replaced the carpet (temporarily). Here’s the room as it exists right now:

theater room

After priming the theater room

Basement remodel: finishing sheetrock / drywall

June 12th, 2010

This weekend my friend Jeff and I worked on finishing the drywall in the basement. Natalie painted the stairway. Here are some pictures: