Just wanted to add this final graph of Fidget’s running – this will be the last. Was pleased to see that she broke the 1km mark on the 25th July! Now I’ll have to think of something else to do with the Arduino….
We’ve put some pictures up from our house warming which we had last weekend. Strangely none of them feature the house… pictures here.
The graph above shows Fidget’s night-time running activity over the past week or so. Originally I was hoping to prove that hamsters run several miles a night but it seems that either they don’t, or we have a very lazy hamster. I’ll monitor her for a few more nights in the hope that she’ll break the 1km mark but it looks unlikely.
It was Jessica’s birthday yesterday so I decided to bake her something. Unfortunately we didn’t have the cake tins required to do a large cake so I decided to make lots of little fairy cakes. You can see them (along with my attempts at icing) in the picture.
In the absence of any proper piping equipment for the icing I had to improvise with a freezer bag which I cut the corner off. Some of the letters are a little wonky and I accidentally created “HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSIDA” so had to hastily modify the second D to make a C.
After work we went out to see “Hancock” at the cinema and then had a meal at Mae Ping in South Croydon. I think Jessica enjoyed her day even though she had to work.
I have now uploaded the few photos I took to Flickr.
Last weekend was time for my annual trip to Silverstone to watch the British GP. As you can see from the picture the weather could have been better but it made for a very exciting weekend of racing. The bottom half of the course (where I was spectator marshalling) saw a large amount of action with lots of overtaking and cars spinning in the wet. The weekend finished on a high when Lewis Hamilton dominated the race and was first over the line – there is a great atmosphere when the crowd gets behind one of the drivers. Saturday’s GP2 race also produced some exciting racing with places changing right up to the end of the race.
I have a few more pictures from the event (including one of the Batmobile) which I’ll put online soon. Marshals aren’t allowed to take pictures of the race so if you’d like to see some pics of that try here.
Unfortunately on the first night of measuring Fidget’s running the cage moved slightly and the wheel counter no longer triggered. I bit of blue-tac later and I now have a reading for last night. Unfortunately Fidget only ran 800m or half a mile – whilst this falls short of my expectations it is still pretty impressive for such a small animal. I’ll see if she can break that record tonight.
Pictured on the left is the final version of the Fidget wheel counter. It all looks a bit untidy but I have assured Jessica that it will not be there forever – just long enough to get an insight into Fidget’s night time habits. I read that hamsters can run several miles a night but don’t believe it.
I used the Arduino board that I got for Christmas and linked it to a cheap LCD screen I got off eBay. The potentiometer adjusts the contrast of the screen.
The circuit is reasonably simple with a reed switch and magnet arrangement mounted under Fidget’s wheel. The switch is connected to one of the Arduino’s input pins and pulls the value up to 5V when closed. The Arduino keeps count of the number of times the wheel has revolved and converts this value into the number of kilometres travelled. Unfortunately the display is still upside down and I cannot be bothered to engineer a solution to this.
I’ll take some readings over the next week or so and will finally be able to find out if Fidget runs a long way each night…. though I could probably just ask Dad who had the pleasure of sleeping on an air-bed in the room that Fidget occupies.
Today Jessica went for her second scan and we got to see Bump on TV again. Lately we’ve been aware of Bump’s presence thanks to the occasional tremor of Jessica’s tummy in response to Bump testing her limbs. We also know the sex of Bump now but there are some people that don’t want to know the sex yet so I’ll continue to use both he and her in my blog posts.
Bump was facing downwards during the scan so we haven’t got the classic scan photo of bump but you can still see some detail. Comparing the three month scan to today’s pictures is amazing – we can now see a defined spine and during the scan we could see all four chambers of the heart pumping away at around 160bpm. All the measurements came back normal so everything seems fine for Bump and the due date remains the same.
Now our house move is complete I’ll hopefully have some time to post a bit more on the blog. For those of who doubted the Fidget wheel counter would ever be complete… the picture on the left shows the latest progress. I’ve managed to hook up an LCD screen and now need to display some text on it – not sure what I’ll do to get it the right way up though!
I’ll keep the blog updated with progress 🙂
I found the beetle pictured on the pavement outside the house last night. I’ve seen dead stag beetles before but this is the first time I have found a live one. I think they are more common down South but I am not sure of this. To give you a rough idea of the size… it’s body was around 5cm long.
Strangely, last night’s edition of Springwatch had a short film about Stag beetles from which I learnt they can fly. You’d certainly know about it if one of these flew in your eye! The one we found is a female and lacks the “antlers” that give the species its name.