TinyTrak and Tripmate Interfacing

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I finally figured out what was keeping my TinyTrak from working with my Tripmate. I had to connect the RS-232 connection as a DCE device and I knew that the RX and TX pins were connected together inside the Tripmate, which is a required mod to get the tripmate to send out packets even without the mapping program on the PC. What I had forgotten was that I disconnected the wire coming from the PC board to the cable. Therefore, while I was thinking that the TX and RX were available and connected together, they were not. To complicate matters, the Tripmate that I modified requires that pin 4 be held at 5V to turn on. I made sure this was the case by using a voltmeter to check it, but I failed to realize that my null modem moved it to pin 6. Whenever I have trouble with RS-232, I slip in the null modem and everything begins to work. However, in this case, the null modem also turned off the Tripmate so nothing was coming out of it. Now that I have everything figured out, I just need to begin to make up plans for my various installations.

EAA Chapter 1117 Website

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Finally, the weekend has arrived. I managed to get the local chapter EAA newsletter out this week, but just barely made it. I try to get it out on time to notify the others in the group about the upcoming monthly meeting and thanks to the fact that most of them now have email, I can do it with less lead time than when I mailed each one out via postal mail. I feel like I’m writing it to myself sometimes since I’m not even sure it’s being read by others in our little EAA Chapter 1117 Website. I’ve thought of keeping some of the newsletters on-line, but can’t justify the space for old newsletters so I only keep the latest one. Writing a newsletter is a lonely business and judging by the number of folks who have abstained from volunteering to take over the job in the past 6 years I’ve had it, not a very sought-after role either. 🙂

I updated my guest book today so it’s not quite so generic, but am still waiting for my first entry.