New Cooking Gadget

This isn't a really a new cooking appliance as we already had an electric pressure cooker. But this particular model adds a few more features. It has a "saute" mode so it can be used kind of like an electric sauce pan. It will also work as a rice cooker and a slow cooker. If you watch a lot of YouTube videos of full time RVers, they all mention the Instant Pot. I suspect that the Zojirushi rice cooker will make better rice but it is a uni-tasker.

On our road trip, a slow cooker and a pressure cooker would have been nice to have along but I didn't want to take two additional appliances. The pressure cooker would use less power than simply cooking on the induction burner as would pressure cooking rice. It does draw up to 1000 watts but that is about the same as the rice cooker.

I hadn't planned on picking one of these up but Bridget had ordered it as a wedding present but the couple already had one. So now I have one as well.

As a quick test, I boiled up some eggs. It took about 15 minutes total. 5 minutes to heat up, 5 minutes to cook and 5 minutes to cool down. And the shells practically fell off when they were done. This model has a program for making yogurt. Maybe I'll try that one of these days.

As another quick "test", I made up some steel cut oats. In the past, I had to pre soak them overnight. The recipe just said to saute them in oil or butter, then add 3x water and pressure cook them for 13 minutes. They came out great. Add some raisins and maple syrup and I had breakfast. I think that this will be a great gadget and addition to the kitchen. Both at home and in the RV.

Winter Traction and Power Distribution

I took advantage of the fresh snow to try out the tire chains on the Ural. I put four (eight cross links) on the pusher to see if that was enough and if they cleared the drive shaft. I am still using the leather straps as I hadn't fitted the velcro straps yet. With just these, I drove around including more than a few stops on the steeper hills and deeper snow. They seemed to work pretty well. Very little wheelspin except when I tried climbing a steep slope in reverse. It was pretty challenging to get them installed on the wheel in the correct location so the strap wouldn't touch the drive shaft.

It was a much cooler ride this morning at +9°F but wonderfully bright and sunny. I finally got around to installing a few more studs in the pusher. I was reminded that I needed to put a few more in when 2WD was needed to get up our subdivision road. I used the studs that I removed from the tires last spring. Since this was last years sidecar tire, there is still plenty of tread left to screw in the studs.

A little over a year ago, when I installed the heated grips and the outlet for the heated gear, I installed a relay under the seat that was triggered by power to the electronic ignition module. This way the gear would shut off with the engine. There are more "elegant" methods. I picked up the Rowe Electronics PDM60 on sale on Amazon after reading about it on ADVrider. It simplifies the installation of accessories as it has one connection to the positive terminal of the battery, a low current ground connection and a sense connection to a switched connection. For the switched connection, I used the same connection to the no longer used electronic ignition module. The LED lights show the status of each circuit. In case of overload, the color changes to red. And just by cycling the ignition power, the circuit will reset. Simpler than changing fuses. Total current handling capacity is 60 amps.

It has six circuits and you program it using software (Windows only!) through a USB connection. You can set the current limit for each connection, whether it is switched by +12 or a ground connection or both, and startup and shutdown delays. I'm currently using three of the six circuits. One for the heated grips, another for heated gear and the third for the GPS. I still need to install the horn again and will use the one high current (20 amp) circuit for that. I set a 10 second delay on to limit draw on the battery while cranking the engine. I set a delay for the GPS of 600 seconds so that it will remain running during gas stops.

I was thinking that the software wouldn't run under Windows 8.1 as it wasn't seeing the device via USB. A search of the web site indicated that there are fewer problems if it is disconnected from power. There is no mention of that in the included documentation. A pretty cool device and smaller than an auxiliary fuse box.

It felt kind of nice to be able to remove all of the inline fuses that were installed under the seat for all of the accessories. Much cleaner installation. Who would've thought that a non-EFI Ural would need a laptop connected to it.

External Power for a GoPro

The GoPro batteries don't seem to last very long at low temperatures. At least that has been my experience while making the Polar Bear Challenge (PBC) videos. Depending on the temperature, they last as little as 10 minutes. The wireless remote isn't much better. There are several solutions available including an auxiliary battery pack that fits onto the back of the camera ($36). But I like the idea of just powering the camera off of the bike and not using batteries at all. One of the simplest solutions is to just cut an opening in the housing and plug in a mini-USB cable. I really didn't want to drill a hole in my waterproof housing but a quick Amazon search brought up other options. The one I went is is picking up an off-brand housing for the GoPro 3 (I have the 3+). The housing is larger but is ⅓ of the price. There were some comments about it not being completely waterproof but since I was planning on drilling a hole in it, not really a problem.

It took a short time to cut a small opening in the side of the case and remove some of the rubber from an extra USB cable. Now, not only can I power the camera from the cable, I can download videos without taking the camera out of the housing. I still have the original housing for those times I really do need it. I plan to inject some silicone sealant between the USB plug and the plastic housing for just a little more weatherproofing.

I still need to install the weatherproof, dual USB socket in the sidecar. That I picked it up in the middle of November. Part of the delay is trying to come up with a little dashboard or something in the sidecar to mount it.

PBC #47 was made on Tuesday afternoon during my trip back home. I circled around the north side of town and cut back through to go by the university before heading home. Not the most direct route as I passed by our street on the way.

PBC #48 was made on Wednesday afternoon. It was overcast and looking like it was ready to snow at any minute.

HooToo Router and Barrow Tour

A new gadget that I picked up is this tiny (2.8 oz) Wi-Fi router/AP. Like most routers, it'll take a wired Internet connection and share it out via Wi-Fi. This one will also take a Wi-Fi connection and share it out via Wi-Fi on another SSID. If you plug in a USB drive, it'll also share that out as well to it's wireless clients. Power is via micro USB. In the second photo I'm using the little phone charger that I got from Alaska Airlines during my San Francisco trip. It's only 2200mAh but I'm curious how long it'll last.

The first thing you may ask is "Why would anyone need such a device?". One example would be if you have a wireless network in your business and you would also like to offer wireless access to your customers. Using a device like this you could offer the service without having customers and business devices on the same network segment. Another example is that if you are in a hotel that offers Wi-Fi and you want to plug in an Chromecast, Roku, Raspberry Pi or AppleTV into the television, you don't have to reconfigure anything if you have all of your stuff connect to the tiny HooToo access point and have it connect to the hotel Wi-Fi or wired connection. Also, many corporate and hotel Wi-Fi access points suppress the IP multicast that some discovery protocols such as Bonjour need to function.

In addition to it's small size it was only $19 on Amazon. Pretty amazing device for that price.

I brought up the suction cup mount to record some video while driving around Barrow. Since so few get the opportunity to visit, I thought I'll post a tour. Please excuse the audio. I did it as a voice over since there was so much noise in the truck from the defroster fan and jarring road noise. It was -18°F when the video was made so the suspension was pretty stiff. Kinda long and not very exciting. No background music...

And here is the third of three videos that I recorded on Sunday. Starting from the turnout at the back entrance to the university x-country ski trails and ending at REI at the other end of town via a non-shortest-path route.

New Gadget

Not at all moto-related though you may be interested if you use the Chrome browser and use Blogger to host your blog. On October 21, 2014, Google added support for tokens as an additional factor for authentication. Hopefully you already have two-factor authentication enabled which means that you need something you know and something you have to log into your account. Typically this has been a password (something you know) and your cell phone (something you have).

The cell phone component is typically the Google Authenticator app which gives you a six digit code that you would type in on the web page to complete the login process. The "problem" is that the authenticator is time based and if the time on your phone is not synced properly, the code displayed would be wrong as they are only valid for about one minute. This has happened to me more than once such as whenever I am out of the country (including Canada). Google does provide a backup process involving text messages, phone calls or pre-printed lists of one-time use codes.

The device pictured is the FIDO compliant U2F security key made by Yubico that I picked up on Amazon shortly after I saw the announcement. Now when logging into Google, after entering my password, I just insert the key into a USB port and tap the circle then remove the key. Pretty straight forward. The downside is that, at least for now, you have to be using the Chrome browser. U2F stands for Universal 2nd Factor and now that it has been adopted by Google it may speed up adoption. Using this device doesn't mean that I can disable the Google Authenticator as it is still needed for mobile applications (no USB on the phone) or other browsers.

I also use Duo Security for second factor and they also support the security keys but I haven't had an opportunity to set it up.

Back in Fairbanks

At least I can generally find close-in parking though not nicely covered. My office is just through the door and maybe 20' to the right. Sunrise is getting later and later (10:28 today) but that trend will end in less than three weeks. I find that I prefer to head home before it's completely dark as there is more traffic but that's getting impossible. I usually leave the house at about 7:15am and traffic is pretty light. Yesterday, I had to dig out the snowblower to clear off some of the snow from the driveway. In comparison to last year, I think the trials tire I used last year worked better than the K60. It had a flatter profile so the studs had better contact. Maybe I'll try some studs near the middle of the tread.

I thought it felt a little bit colder than usual (is there a usual?) this morning on my short commute in. The forecast was for warmer temperatures. This morning, the sidecar wheel came up a couple if times while tooling around campus. There have been "bumps" near the curb where the snow gets really packed down from pedestrian traffic on right turns. The first time was a surprise but the others were expected. In all cases not a problem as speed was low and recovery as simple as reducing throttle.

Maybe this is a gimmick but I'm hearing about more and more of these treadmill desks. I think if you are really tied to a desk then it may be good but I still prefer to get out and about.

Posted using the BlogGo app. It posts only the small version of the photo and they aren't "clickable". That's probably to save bandwidth so you can post from the cellular network. Very convenient but I'm not sure I like the limitation.