OBD-II reader

I do not know how many of visitors to this blog really knows about OBD-II. It actually means On Board Diagnostic system. Okay!!! .. and then what ?. what is it and why ? and where ?.
This link http://www.obdii.com/background.html explains about OBD-II and its usage.
As my next weekend project, i am thinking about making my own OBD-II cable to connect my van's OBDII computer to my laptop so I could diagnose and reset the 'engine warning light' on my van's dashboard.

The first thing , i will need to gather as much information as possible before I actually able to make my own OBD-II reader.

I am going to use the power and information available freely on the internet to develop the OBD reader myself.

till next post ... bye bye ..

HTPC final result

this is the final result of my hardwork, initially the picture on the tv is not this good, there are some noise on the video itself.
I, once again, had to google to find answers.
Some people suggests to check the cabling for proper ground of the equipment including the power source.
I found out, my wall socket only has 2 pin, that could be the source of my problem.
Solution: I screwed a 3-pin adapter to the wall socket to make sure it is properly ground, and boot-up my pc again and the result is what you see there, perfectly noiseless video.
Now I could have my entire video library viewed on my HDTv, besides that, I could also view online movies, youtube..etc on myTv or big screen once I hook it up to my big screen projector

till my next weekend project .. mahalo , salam, adios , selamat !!!! next project coming up soon.

HTPC cabling

Continuation from prev subject of HTPC .. I also bought extra video card (kind of old version), it has s-video, and also DVI-I port. Just co-incidence my HDtv also has DVI port, unfortunately my sons already 'sapu' to connect it to their PS3, that left me with the only option, s-video.
After looking around (especially at my fav electronic shop RadioShit ) , i noticed s-video cables are too expensive for my budget, whatelse ?.. customade cable is the answer.
I choose to make use of extra cat5 cable (ethernet) i have in my storage box for this project.
The idea is to use 4 wires for the s-video and the other 4 wires for audio

This is my completed s-video and sound connector soldered to cat5 cable (ethernet) .

To be continued ...

Home Entertainment PC

Last week, i spotted an old pc at my neighbor's garbage bin, I thought I would better grab it before the mexican-recycler truck came by and grab it. It was an old pc, may be 5 to6 years old.
I took home and try to connect few cables..wallaa.. it boot up to windows xp pro after I fiddled with the bios setup.
I was surprised as to how some people are so ignorant about their secrets left on the harddisk and also some notes written all over the pc case. Whilst was there, I took my time to browse some pictures.
Since the processor is too old, it is too slow to use the pc for today's standard, I decided to remove the motherboard (with the processor) and probably I will only need the casing, and power supply and hard-drive for my next weekend project.
The question is, what am I going to do with it?. I have few options,:
1. use it as file-server, print-server
2. use it as my HTPC (home theatre PC), since I have some collections of movies ( downloaded using torent) on my har-drive, I could connect it to my projector and sound receiver for my home theatre.

whatever it is, I would need to find a new motherboard and CPU , cheap motherboard, and my budget is less than $200 for it. After surfing around, i found this motherboard (Intel dual core Atom processor). It should fit nicely to the casing.