Enough of this bike business, after lunch it was down to the beach to make Dad (aka Mark) & Dad (aka Rob) push the S.S Inflatable around the shallows while the kids bounced up and down with the waves. Should have taken a video of this, so when the kids are older we can ask for pay back!

And what’s a trip to the beach without building (and more importantly, demolishing) a few sand castles!

I had originally intended on using an embedded LCD touchscreen, but it wasn’t quite powerful enough, and way too much effort and heartache to code from scratch. So I recently re-discovered and old HP iPaq I had lying around, and realised that after taking the electronics out of the pesky plastic case, its the perfect size to fit in a standard Clipsal wall plate.

So after a a little bit of fiddly work on the wall plate with a knife and the trusty Dremel, it was ready for mounting. As well as the pink cat5 for the Clipsal C-Bus, I had also run an additional blue cat5 to some light switches. So I’m using this one to run power to the iPaq’s USB port. No ethernet required – that’s what wireless is for! Fortunately the power supply I have is a touch over 5V, the cable run is short enough, and the iPaq tolerant enough for the power to work. I did have an issue with the first power supply, in that the iPaq turned on, but reset itself as soon as the wireless was enabled.

The screen is a little larger than the standard footprint of a light switch, and the PCB is a little wider, so I had to customise the cut-out from the standard template.

Everything tucked away and screwed in place.

The screen is a little off-center in the wall plate, as the edge is wider on one side (as seen in the first pic of this post. Unfortunately the mounting holes for the plate get in the way if I try to center the screen. I was also a little hasty is cutting the panel out of the bezel, and slipped a couple of times. So I’ll need to try again and be more careful to make the cover a bit more presentable. But other than that, I’m pretty happy with the result. Now I just need to convince Kirsty!

And a few screenshots of the interface, including the ‘Home’ screen displayed when music is playing and when radio is playing, album selection, radio station selection, and the weather forecast.

After a day of cutting and gluing, as usual the most tedious and time consuming bit was sanding and varnishing, but it came up pretty good, and Pia seems to like pushing it around. Until it bangs into a wall (or a dog!).

Pia still loves her broccoli, and eating in the great outdoors makes life easier for mum and dad coz we don’t have to worry about cleaning the floor after Pia decides that its fun to taste and toss.

Yes, yes, that’s a caravan in the background. We borrowed my parents’ van for the trip. Yes, we cheated. We weren’t really camping. But it was nice to have cupboards, hot water, and a freezer!

And when she’s not eating her veggies, she also loves to suck the goodness out of a juicy chop or steak. Or emptying out a bowl of pasta and bolognaise sauce just to see what happens. Usually ends up with a lap full of food and then a bit of a snack for the dogs.

Of course after tipping a bowl of bolognaise sauce over your head, its bath time! Although not entirely effective after splashing water all around the tub and picking up handfuls of mud to play with. But bath time’s not about getting clean, it’s about getting wet and having fun!

Just to prove that I can take pictures of subjects other than Pia, here’s Dion & Amanda’s son Jett after a covering his tummy with a a couple of slices worth of watermelon juice. Being a kid is all about getting dirty and not caring.

Pia’s not quite old enough to be a legal observer, so on the days when it was just the three of us we couldn’t do any real water skiing, but that doesn’t mean that Pia can’t start learning on dry land. Maybe she’ll start skiing before she starts walking.

Every day the temperature was in the mid to high 30′s, with a couple of days hitting 40, but probably the hottest day we had was the very last day we were up there. Just the right weather to be packing up in. Not! At least Pia and grandma were keeping eachother company in the little shade that was left after all the sunshades were taken down.

One of many presents from Pia’s first Christmas was her very first laptop, courtesy of grandpa. Other presents also included a Tupperware Shape-O, mobile phone, a dial phone, a set of wooden blocks, a fluffy puppy, a twisty abacus thingy, and you’ll have to ask her mum for the rest!

I figure now that since we have the technology, and now also the subject, I should start taking a few vids. Only short snippets, we all know how boring home videos can be!

So to start it off, here’s one of Pia playing with her laptop. Or is she just trying to tell us that she’s finished playing?

During the week I tried some Weetbix for the first time. Silly daddy. What was he thinking giving me Weetbix and not putting a bib on me. Especially when I’m wearing polar fleece! The Weetbix got really mushy after I sucked on it for a couple of minutes, which made it easy for Connie to eat. So I put it on the floor for her. I think she enjoyed it!

I get a bit grumpy around dinner time. Mum & Dad always seem to want to eat just when I want a bit of attention. But then they bath me, which I really like. And I’ve been really good and letting mummy and daddy sleep all night until Sam & Connie wake me up in the morning. Just in time for breakfast. Which tastes the same as dinner. And morning tea. And lunch. And afternoon tea.

I like poking my tongue out.

Mum took me to the baby market on the weekend and she bought me a new chair. So now I can sit at the table and watch Mum & Dad eat. Its very interesting. One day maybe I can also eat just like them!

That’s all for now. I better go before Daddy catches me on his computer. I also uploaded some more photos of me!

This effort is nowhere near as obstrusive as the Jeep’s home grown touch screen PC/media player/GPS, and I’ve tried to keep a factory look and feel as much as possible.

The bits that I’ve added are:

• Nokia CK-7W bluetooth car kit
• GME Electrophone TX-3400 UHF Radio
• RFI AP-454 glass mount antenna
• UDC Holden iPod interface

I actually installed the bluetooth kit a few months ago. A pretty straight forward install. I just bought the factory button from a local Holden dealer and attached a new plug into the wiring loom that’s sitting under a panel at the passenger’s right leg.

The 2.5mm socket above the phone button is for the phone charger. Good for those long weekends away! Its a bit unfortunate that the phone is upside down, but I wasn’t bothered trying to find if they also make one the other way up.

Last week I received my iPod interface from Vlad (http://udc.aus.googlepages.com/holden) and took to the factory head unit with a screwdriver and soldering iron to add seamless iPod support.

The only thing I did differently to Vlad’s recommended install was the way I routed the cable. Instead of cutting the cable and running it through to the arm rest compartment, I removed the centre console, drilled a 13mm hole, and threaded the mini din plug that comes with the kit through to the back of the head unit.

The insert to the compartment has only got three sides, which you can sort of see in the picture, It also has a false bottom, so its easy to drill out a hole big enough for the mini din plug through the console base, and then just check out a 5mm hole for the wire in the bottom of the insert. The compartment insert is screwed in from the bottom though, so I had to remove the centre console to get to it.

My Nano fits perfectly, but I’m not sure if the bigger iPods will fit nicely here.

And a close-up:

Last but not least was the CB install. This one was a little fiddly because of the tight space I tried to fit it in. Ideally it would have gone into the compartment above where it is now, but the radio was about 10mm too wide. I was going to take a few more photos of the iPod cable run, but that would mean removing the CB to get the console back out.

The GME Tx-3400 is a remote-head radio, so the main part of the CB is tucked up underneath the glove compartment. That caused the sound to be a bit muffled, so I used the external speaker that came with the Nokia car kit (The car kit audio routes through the radio speakers) and mounted it just behind the centre console. Much better sound!

Kirsty and I have been spending a bit of time in the special care nursery at the hospital (Kirsty much more than me), and Pia is slowly building up the stamina to last a full feed before falling asleep!

Due to excessive badgering by friends and family alike, I’ve uploaded a few more pics in my new Family gallery.