Perfesser

This technique is what got me to thinking about this in the first place, I stumbled on to the camera

EDIT: all info now in the first post. Found a webcam that might just work out of the box, delivered today. It already has 6 IR LED's mounted on it. I think all it will need is a visible light filter placed over the lens assuming it has the framerate needed. $25 CDN. KINAMAX Infrared NightVision / 6 LED / USB 2.0 / 1.3 MegaPixel / WebCam with Audio Microphone http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=1567081&sku=M501-1160&srkey=KINAMAX%20Infrared%20NightVision You do need to remove the IR filter. Unscrew the camera lens, look at the back of the lens assembly for a red tint, that's it. With a knife I scraped off (no popping that sucker off) the glued on plastic washer that holds the IR filter in place(1/8" square glass), screw the lens back in. Fine threads, plastic, and it's the manual focus for the cam, use caution. Webcam (made in China) 1 inch dia. foam balls (made in the USA!! Floracraft, Ludington Mi) at a craft store, 16 for $4 (coated a few times with white glue(also made in USA) to stiffen em up) Reflective tape (made in Canada!) at auto supply store $7 Hat in stock (one of those high shapes that are fairly stiff, the ones you wouldn't wear out in public anyway, made in China) 3 screws

I found foam balls at a craft store in Canada called Michael's. Tape at Canadian Tire. Putting up a separate post about the camera I found. IR camera WITH 6 IR LED's for $25 CDN.

True enough. Most Japanese cars sold here are built in the US or Canada, domestic cars would be better but if you must......hell, my job depends on it. There isn't that much profit in the price of a car these days 85% is material(mostly bought locally) and all those labour costs go right back into the system. Canada is the biggest supplier of US crude oil (20%)and natural gas. America's Top Annual Suppliers of Crude Oil in 2007 The United States imports approximately 62 percent of its oil. Canada supplies approximately 20 percent of these imports, and Mexico contributes 10 percent. But over 30 percent come from regimes that are less friendly or stable, including Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola, Iraq, and Algeria (respectively the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th largest oil importers to the United States). http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/oil_imports.html Plenty of produce year round from California. Cal strawberries are cheaper here (in Ontario) even when ours are in season!! Not better though. Do your part and look at the labels, pay a bit extra for domestic. It will end up back in your pocket. Especially look for local produce, when your farmers are gone, you'll have to buy whatever there is, wherever it comes from. If you can get it right from the producer(farmer) you cut all those middle men out, you pay the same but the farmer gets a better cut. Real food is produced by farmers, dunno where that crap in a box comes from or what it's even made of but it ain't what God intended for you to eat. Those middle men search the planet for the lowest price, not the best quality, not the best for your economy, not the best for your health, only the best for their bottom line.

I haven't seen any mention here of this site. http://www.tomshardware.com/us/ It took a lot of the guesswork out of building a PC for me anyway(there was another site I used as well but damned if I can remember). Plenty of good reviews on other components as well, like what's the best value in fast RAM for gaming this week. As with building a car engine, a good PC is about a balanced package. Spend $ where you need it. No point in putting in a huge camshaft before headers and an intake. Just like buying an expensive video card without knowing it's being strangled by the motherboard. Look for a section called

1 This is an ATI card?

After having them I think pedals should be bought before a throttle quadrant, they're that useful. On one note about CH pedals, my old mobo was USB 1.0 that has no overvolt protection unlike USB 2.0. I had a ton of strange issues, random crashes, slow operation, so much so that I gave up and took it in to a shop (twice) where they stress tested the hell out of it and every time it passed perfectly. I bring it home and same thing. After I put a new mobo and CPU(Asus P5B, Intel Core Duo 2.66) in (now 2.0 USB) I find out my CH rudders had a short that was feeding back into the mobo. Unfortunately the CH pedals did not survive the journey from the second floor window to the patio and I'm now cheerily flying Saiteks. If you're having computer issues and have CH pedals, try unplugging them.

Thanks for all the tips guys, I like the reflector route and will pursue that for now, just to save on the complexity and I like the light weight as opposed to the battery system. Guaranteed someone in this house will have it on the floor and then run over it with the office chair to the detriment of the tender bits (no names). The IR webcam is not in stock.... 2 weeks ............. grrrrrrrrr

Now there's something obvious I hadn't thought of .......... ~S~ The LED's I found are from Kingbright Corporation in California are already flat topped have an 80 degree half angle. I couldn't find them anywhere in the catalogue but an inquiry got an answer the same day. Trout doesn't have a camera yet so it will be even easier for him, he might just be able to get an IR webcam with the LED's built in. I found one at Tiger Direct for $26 CAD, hell I might even go buy it and save the trouble of all the rest. What are you using for the reflectors?

Just beginning to gather parts for this setup, found a supplier for the LED's in the States. Any "I wish I knew that before I started" tips?

Lets call a spade a spade, the new software sucks. I just mapped my controls through the game with the exception of the center button inside the left hand thumb wheel that I bound to F7 for my Teamspeak PTT. I think it's called a clutch (supposedly for disconnecting the prop while engine starts). And I can't remember how I even got that to work, just that it took 3 or four tries, each time giving up in frustration till I got it. You could do a search for X52 profiles and download someone elses.

The JATO rocket car is almost for sure a hoax but the 2008 Darwin Awards are alive and well at http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2008.html For myself, I've always been in favour of removing all the warning labels off of everything and let nature take it's course, we're only diluting our species by continuing our current course.

A while ago I thought I could get the brake feature on the rudder pedals to work as a Push To Talk button. The brakes only use one pedal, not both. Dunno what you use or if you use pedals but my stick has a pinkie shift button, maybe shift+toe button as brakes and toe for PTT? Never could get the programming right (hate the new SST software) and gave up but

Read times are around 8ms for a 7200 drive, 4-5ms for a 10K. Dunno the read times for the 15K Hard drives fail folks. Everyone needs a second as a spare. So 2 smaller drives are better than one big one. I have 2 in my system, a 75G Raptor as well as a 35G Raptor, had em both for a few years now. Even when you have unrecoverable issues with one drive you can often transfer data off it before it becomes unusable either from hardware failure or a corrupt OS. Install your Operating System on both drives, it will only boot from the primary and ignore the OS on the second drive. If you ever have a problem you just swap the wires and it boots off the second drive keeping you and your data safe. Even if you are one of those who feels the need to re-format regularly you can clear one drive to the other(documents, pics, dowloaded programs), do the format, and swap data back fast without all that downloading...looking for disks... Whatever drive you have now, get a small 10K RPM drive(or faster), run your programs off that as your primary, any drive is fine for storage...anything but games really.

We had a lot of issues with TSO, for some it worked perfectly from the start, I was one that never got it working properly, seemingly for no definable reason. I gave up when I got the G15 keyboard, there's a program to put it on that display. G15 TeamSpeak Overlay by Schmads.

Hello folks. ~S~ You were kind enough to invite me on your TS as a guest of DD_Trout a few days back and I had lots of fun. Thanks. If I didn't spoil my chances then I figured it's safe to ask to join you folks in some flying as a DD. I don't see an official "join DangerDogz" thread anywhere so I'll post here. I'm in Canada, Ontario and most would say I speak passable english. I'm house trained(no young pup), I don't drool, chew sneakers or chase cars (still have this thing about the girls though....) I take off safely, don't crash into teammates very often, occasionally even land. I'm currently flying with the [CHG] tag but that's from a different game entirely, no pack loyalty issues here. Before you ask, I have my own home reno stuff on the go and have no time for yours, the boss would be jealous. And if I'm buying the drinks it will have to be Forty Creek Whiskey. What say folks? Room for another dog in the kennel? Perfesser