Our First Real RC Cars

Date:  Dec 25, 2015

It’s Christmas!  Merry Christmas!

Perhaps they are most happy to see these two presents from me.  I always wanted to buy RC cars.  But those that I bought from Toy R’ Us are not really RC Cars.  Those are … powerless.  Yeap, may be the best word to describe it is powerless.  

I bought these from Sim Lim Square 2nd floor, Hobby Square.  They only carry 1 brand, and that’s it.  And I must say, after I seen it run, it is a “Real” RC cars.  Where you can play it at the race track at East Coast Park or at the Bukit Panjang MRT off road track there.

Let’s give it a run.  I bought both green color, but different shape.

Let’s try it.  WOW!

WOW!  It is so powerful the motor.  And it is fast too.

Watch out for this reckless driver.

Kay Kay keeps driving the car hitting the curb.

Take a look at the slow motion action here.

And as a result after 20 min of playing… two dog bones broken, one dog bone cup missing, suspension leaking oil.  Hahahahahaha…

The RC car cannot move at all.  This is the dog bone holding the wheels and rotates it.  And you can imagine the impact of the crash is so hard that the RC car was completely dead after that.

Reading manual time!

This is intense.

That is the parts was broken.  

So, we brought it back to Sim Lim, and get it fixed.  I also upgraded to a better dog bone (one piece) and metal.  So that it will so easily break again.  

We have to changed the whole front and real dog bones, considered it an upgrade.

Also fixed the suspension, as it was leaking oil.  They have to find a “cup” to hole the dog bone too.

After this, the kids really know how to "handle it with care” means.

Especially mr. Kay.  HaHaHa… punish him to eat more.

Garden Notes Aquaponics

Date:  Dec 28, 2015

I always love the movie “Water World”.  I really believe one day, earth will be covered by water.  By then, humans have to learn how to survive in water, but they also need to know how to grow plants with water.  hahahaha

Welcome to the world of Aquaponics.

How it works?

Simply type the word “Aquaponics” in Google, and you will get tons of information.   

In summary, you grow fish in a tank and the water is cycled thru the plants and back to the fish tank.  That’s it.

It is an eco-system.

So, when you have fish in the tank, why not grow your food with it.

That’s the whole ideal about Aquaponics.

We have a garden to grown our food downstairs.

These are real organic food harvested from our plot of farm land.

Back in October we test drive the Aquaponics with our small fish tank.

With proper lighting, the veggies grew pretty fast on the small fish tank.

Once, the Aquaponics concepts is proven.

Of course, you will need to select your design.  My wife selected this design.  

This is the system you need.

Of course, where you get these?  From Taobao.  We usually write to Amy, cinagoods@hotmail.com and ask her to buy for us.  (I don’t sell these, so, please do not write to me ask me to buy, you can easily buy from Taobao yourself nowadays or you can ask any buying agent to buy for you.  For me, I have been using Amy’s services for years.)

You will need the pipes.  It is less than $50 for the systems. (not inclusive of shipping)

 

You need pump.

You need to cups to placed in the pipes.  So that water can run thru it.

You will need the foam cups.  To be placed within the cups in the pipes.

You will need seeds too.

 

This is how the setup looks like.  

We placed it at our balcony.  As you can see, there are lightings from the natural balcony.  But I think my wife will be installing some LED growing lights very soon.

A strong pump to pump the water up to the pipes, and water will flow down from the pipes and goes back into the fish tank.

So, you have some fish in the fish tank.  They will survive.

This is the plants grown in the foam.

This is how they grow.

They are ready to be transferred to the cup.

Squeeze the form into the cup.  These are ??? I think.

Place the cup with the plant into the pipes.

The cup sits nicely onto the pipes and water flow thru below.

There you go.  Water Crest veggies.  ???

Quite cool ya!  HaHa… we growing tomato too.

Altogether, we have 3 rows 3 levels and a total of 81 holes for you to grow the aquaponics plants.

Oh ya, we have incubators too.  This is where you grow from seeds to plants.

The growing LED lights.

The incubator foam.

Or you can use this if you wish.

These are the growing LED lights.  Very cool.  And the seeds really grow fast on this.

Wait a minute… Lego?

Yes, Kay Kay build a tower with a holding pad to house the lights firmly.

Let’s see what we have here.  Hi, tiny little plants.

You grew a bit bigger, we will transfer you to the aquaponics home ya.  

Then, we eat you.  hahahahaha

That is our Aquaponics set up.

Gadget Notes 4K Ultra HD Action Camera from China

Date:  Dec 27, 2015

I got a new gadget.

My friend Mike bought this for me from Shenzhen.  It cost about RMB$400.  This is about SGD$86.

It is a “GoPro” look alike camera.  HaHaHa… But 15%-20% of a GoPro price.

The box.  It’s 4K.  It is also Ultra HD.  It is Wi-Fi.  It is waterproof of 30M.  It has 2-inch Screen.  And it is an Action Camera.

It also have a Super Wide Angle Lens.  170 degree.

But the battery is only 1050mAh.  I think it is a bit small.  50 mins to 1.5 hour, that’s it.

Unboxing.

The waterproof casing has 4 buttons.  Seems pretty secure.

The screen is quite decent.  Not so intuitive UI.  But after you get the hang of it, it is not so bad.

Looks very sleek.  The ON-OFF button is at the front.  The shutter button is on top.  

The right side is the up and down button.  The down button is also act as the quick switch for Wifi. 

The left side has the HDMI port, the USB port as well as the micro SD card slow.

The bottom battery compartment is not so nice design.  It has no connecting hook.  So, don’t lose it.  And the latch is not so firm.  

This is the Made in China battery.

The manual is in English, and it is very impressive.

It is quite well written.

You will be more impressive with the mounting kit they gave you.

That’s is really impressive.

Yup, here are all the contents of the kit.

There is both iPhone App and Android App to download.

The Ez iCam is quite easy to use too.  And after you connect to it, basically, you can use it to control your 4K Action Cam.  (SPCA6330/6350 based).

The down button is to connect the Wifi.

Yup, you can control almost all the items in here.

you can view the files.  And of course, you can download them to your iMac, or your iPhone.

The download takes a long time.  

OK, now, let’s put this into test.  I went to East Coast Park and mount it on my bike.  And see how the video performance.  To me, it is pretty decent.

I never had a GoPro yet, so, I cannot say how it compare to GoPro.  But except for some time the stabilising function not there, most of the time it is good.  I need to set the exposure too as it was too bright the background some time.  Need to learn how to set that.

Otherwise, it is a pretty decent cheap 4K camera.

 It looks pretty decent!  Definitely 4K quality.  The following clips are uploaded to youtube.  You got to have good Internet as Youtube is adaptive technology to play video.  

Another video clip.  As you can see the sea is too bright, so, we lost details on the sea.  But I am sure there are some exposure setting we can use.

When the environment is darker, you can feel that the video quality has a lot of noise.

I still think it is pretty decent.  But under the bright day light it is very hard to see the LCD screen.  So it will be impossible for me to adjust the exposure.

I placed the camera pointing upwards.  Wow, look at the details of me drinking the soup.

Overall, if you don’t want to spent the big bucks to buy Go Pro, may be can buy this from China and use it first.  Wait until you really need that kind of power, then, you buy GoPro.

By the way, we went cycling again.

I think Kay Kay really love cycling.

We cycle to Marina Barrage, East Coast Park, Garden by the bay and MBS today.

It is a nice feeling to cycle at MBS.

And today, both Jay and Kay broke their record and cycle about 25.39KM using 2 hours and 38 minutes.  Well done boys.