Reloaded HASH and battery works

After weeks of wasting our Saturdays on valuable cultural visits to temples, historical sites and bakeries with half off cakes, we made it back to the HASH for a strenuous and beautiful run. However, the rare event of the day was our dinner at the famous Fire & Ice restaurant, one of the most expensive ones and the one with the best pizza in Kathmandu. The scene was set by our view of two Buddhist monks, dressed in their dark red garments, sitting at a table at this expensive restaurant eating pizza by candle light.

Clarification, the HASH does not refer to the consumption of illicit herbal medicine, but to an event where a large group of wonderful people get together to run under a set of pre-established rules. Hash House Harriers, google compatible.























The week started with the assignment to start building as many PowerCentres as we can, aiming at 20. The PowerCentres are the boxes encasing the 12V lead acid batteries that contain circuitry to protect the battery against overcharging, charging too quickly, discharging too much and has a little display that shows how charged the battery is. These devices are connected to the PedalPower in order to charge the battery or the small 6V batteries in their UserBox are connected to the PowerCentre to charge the 6V battery. You can also plug lights and other devices directly to the PowerCentre.


















My focus over this task was getting the UnderVoltage Protection to work. This is the protection against over discharging; if the battery is discharged more than it should be, the voltage across the battery will drop and the UnderVoltage Protection will interrupt current between the battery and whatever device was draining the battery. The problem was that those that were assembled already were either not interrupting the connection at all or doing it at undesired voltages (we are aiming at 11.3-11.5V). But after days of testing component by component and evaluating at what voltage each of the Zener diodes interrupts current (there is an uncertainty to the value they claim to have for Zener voltage, so the individual zener voltages will vary by +/- 0.5V) I managed to fixed some of them and build a few new ones.

Most of the week also carried an overwhelming expectation for Thanksgiving for the 20 or so people that attended the dinner at Rosie's flat on Thursday. Friends of friends were included in the emailing list, gate crashers were welcomed and the gathering ended up containing a large group of people that didn't know each other. So was the fantastic collection of people that we managed to gather, without previously knowing, an additional Dartmouth alumnae who is working in Kathmandu, Arthur McKeown '97. Unfortunately, is nearly impossible to find turkey in Kathmandu, so Katherine Ensler did an excellent job with 2 whole chickens instead. That, with the traditional cranberry sauce and an exquisite gravy left everyone deeply satisfied. Ultimately it was the pies, apple pies, pumpkin pies and a delicious carrot cake of my creation, that really stuffed the attendees.

More circuits, street food & bandas

As uneventful as working weeks can be, this wasn't one of them.

The week kicked of with more data collection on our cell phone charging process. We've been charging it mostly directly off the 6V battery with varying resistances in between, usually between 1 and 10ohms. This approach seems to be working very well at the moment and has giving promising results. However, the 6V battery is used in what EcoSystems calls the UserBox, a small wooden box with some internal circuitry that protects against discharging the battery too much or too fast. This box uses an RCA jack as its output, and between tricky connections there and funny electronic behaviour going on inside the box, it's actually pretty hard to get the mobile phone to charge off the RCA jack. Mainly because the boxes are design to cut off current when it hits 400mA, which the mobile phone sometimes does.

A photo of the UserBox on the right.

















Our ultimate solution has been to just provide a mobile phone charger that works off the 6V batteries. Firstly because it is easier and cheaper to make these and everything that is needed is locally available, if not just over the border in China. And second because we have seen that 6V batteries like the ones we use are more common in the market than we thought. Providing a charger that works directly off the 6V batteries would allow anyone with a battery of that type to use them, and not just those that have bought the UserBox. The catch is that we want to protect the battery from over discharging, for what I will be trying a cheaply assembled Low Voltage Disconnect (LVD) to go on the charger this week.

Our office, with Mike diligently reading company emails.

















The photo below deserves some comment. It is the most useful thing I've created at the office so far. On the far right you can see a Step-Down Switching regulator, a more complicated charger that turn out to be inapplicable within the parameters that we are working with. On the middle left there's a Low-Voltage Protection circuit used with the 12V batteries that are charged with the PedalPower generator. I assembled it with the purpose of testing 11V Zener diodes one by one. And on the top and bottom of the board you can see a bunch of LEDs, 55 in total. This is what I call the Mobile Phone Discharge Unit (MPDU). It is used to discharge the mobile phone battery fast enough so that we don't have to wait too long and slowly enough so that we don't damage the battery. When first assembled I was fascinated by the fact that your tiny and seemingly weightless mobile battery could power so many LEDS. You could light up your whole house with your phone!!!!


















On account of this new discovery, which I made about 2 months ago I had a funny and awkward encounter with a shop owner. A while I found myself in the market for light sensors. I new where to find them but I didn't know what they looked like. When the man behind the counter gave me an LED looking thing, I gave him a skeptical look back. I really didn't trust this man, or at least not his knowledge about electronic components so I had to find a way to test this LED looking thing on the spot. Naturally I figured that if it was an LED it would light up with any mobile phone battery at hand. Damn! I left the mobile at home... So I ask the shop owner if I can borrow his mobile. As I start to take it apart in order to use the battery, Mike jumps in out of nowhere and demands me to stop. He found it rude and impolite. As a good friend I am, I followed his judgment and bought the 'light sensor' without testing it. The afternoon ended with my retreat back home, sad and regretful of losing the opportunity of using some random person's phone to light me up.

As the working week continues, Mike and I celebrated that it was Wednesday yesterday. After merry times by candle light and the bottle of Mount Everest whisky, it was time to hit the street food. Puri Sabj, cream roll, street momos and yogurt with cereal bars all made our night, each one of them for about $0.50 or less. The beauties of the sub-continent are endless.

Street buffalo momos on a leafy plate.

















As for today, we have been told to work from our flat due to bandas (protests) going on all over the city. Just yesterday there were 2 young adults killed by people that claimed the murders to be on behalf of the Youth Communist League, and the whole country seems to be rioting about it today. Many businesses are closed, cars on the streets are few and UN and Red Cross convoys seem to be everywhere.

Swayambhunath and, Australian times?

The weekend kicked off with a little gathering on our side of the town. We had the remarkable pleasure of taking Rob Dashwood (http://dashdoeskathmandu.blogspot.com/), his friend Flo (good climber from Austria) and Avigail Shai (overall wicked girl from Israel schooled in Australia) to our favorite dining place, this family owned restaurant with 6 tables that sells Puri Sabj for 30rupees (about US$0.40). After such joy, the night could not end there, so the multitudes joined us back at our flat for ice creamed bananas with chocolate syrup, whisky and a silly American film.

Mike, Avigail, sleepy Gemma and Rob

















Saturday brought the entertainment that only an outstanding piece of literary work can. My day was spent going from one cafe to a restaurant to the next, just to sit, have delicious tea and join the adventures of Gregory David Roberts. His book, Shantaram, is among the best pieces of written materials I've ever encountered in my life, second to Charlie Brown's comics. Quote from an Indian fellow living in Delhi: "If you are going to read one book about India, it has to be Shantaram".

Even though the book has been gripping my actions an thoughts for the past couple of days, Mike managed to convince me to go to Swayambhunath, what foreigners call The Monkey Temple. This tourist destination in located at the top of a hill on Western Kathmandu, and it is actually an incorporation of several small Hindu and Bhuddist temples around a single giant stupa, all united by the beauty of hanging colourful praying flags flapping in the wind. The symbolism is present in every wall, every step and every little detail, from padlocks to hundred year old candle holders. It is an artistic and spiritual experience that is mildly diffused by the surrealism that there are monkeys, jumping, playing, fighting and feeding all over the pace.

Mike standing close to the stupa and a splendid Sun shinning behind him.

















Of course, like every other encounter with beauty and spiritualism, this one didn't come without a reasonable amount of physical effort required of us. To reach this site we had to climb some couple of hundred steps while monkeys maneuvered from trees to praying flags and back. The climb, made simple and effortless thanks to a season of trekking in the mountains, provided us with a wide open view of the whole city once we reached the top. A view that, had the city not been shrouded by a mantle of smog, would have been unique, far reaching and fascinating.

The Eastern entrance to Swayambhunath, with the steps and its monkeys.

















A side view of the stupa at the top.






















Biggest statue of Buddha in Nepal.

















Ultimately we ended up our day at the Lazimpat Gallery Cafe, a small place to have delicious food while enjoying the beauty behind international art. On this occasion, the works of an Australian artist, who happened to make all this collection on a roof next to Swayambhunath, were accompanied by the pleasant and exquisite music of 2 American fellows and a third guy. This third guy had a hint of unique romanticism, a grey and white haired man who wore a suit and sandals to play the saxophone in Nepal, a land foreign to his own. With such an unique character in the room, the familiar folk/blue grass music characteristic to American idiosyncrasy and the people who all shared the same joy, I could not but feel exhilarated and at peace. A feeling that was intensified by the presence of my fellow travellers Rob, Avigail, Gemma Pillars and Catherine, and the amusing jokes of the Australian ambassador.

However strong this Australian presence was, I cannot help to feel that the Australian presence was diminished by the beautiful Belgian woman I had the pleasure to share the table with. In a flick of a second, I happened to learn a lot about the Belgian presence in the Nepal and the place where they all like to eat French fries. Tina, as she introduced herself, taught me a lot about a different side of Pokhara that I hadn't heard of before, a more boring and uninteresting side of the city that only older working expats get to see. And in the heat of the conversation we came to share our interest in Rishikesh, a small town in Northen India, were she is heading to today. Just one more reason to surrender myself to the adventure of going to Rishikesh.

Chasing the full moon

Never did I think that I'd be counting the days till full moon. Night by night we looked up to see the bright moon growing behind the thick layer of smog hovering over Kathmandu. And when the day arrived we left the office early, met Rosie and Diana Whitney (Rosie's friend who she met while trekking and who's dominion of the Nepali language is both outstanding and scary) and got on the cheapest taxi we could find heading towards Boudhanath.

Boudhanath is one of the main tourist sites in Kathmandu. Is the biggest stupa in the world, a beautiful and outstanding white temple with Buddha's eyes near the top with dozens of colorful prayer flags hanging from the top to the buildings surrounding it. Once a month, when the full moon rises, hundreds of people gather to worship, pay their respects and entertain many of the tourist that come to witness this beautiful event. Bhuddists, Hindus and even tourists will clockwise walk around the stupa, while some other devoted monks gather on one side of the stupa to sing/pray and play simple instruments around a HUGE pile of food that keeps growing throughout the night thanks to donations from hundreds of people. Most importantly, there are another few dozen people around lighting candles or offering visitors to pay a small amount to light a candle. Thousands of candles are lit throughout the night and later, under the full beauty and splendor of the full moon, they are placed on the stupa.

The ultimate scene is something like this:


















We then proceeded to find a rooftop cafe where we manage to gather about 15 people to enjoy the view, the full moon, good momos and the fantastic Everest beer. Oh, forgot to mention Linden. The one and only Linden Mallory '07, another Dartmouth alumnus, has joined us in Nepal this week. He will be working with a mountaineering guiding company and spending about 3 weeks in Nepal. Just another friend to share the nostalgia of Hanover food with.

Among other events in the week were a few work related occurrences. Work has been very productive the past few days, after days of testing data collection we've discarded the possibility of reproducing a commercial cell phone charger that can work off 6V due to input-out differential limitations. A couple of step-down switching regulators were made, similar to the one shown below, and found inapplicable in our case. Our next approach, which has been giving very good results so far is to simply connect the cell phone to our 6V battery with a 5ohm resistor and a simple Low Voltage Disconnect (LVD) circuit. I happen to be very excited for this LVD circuit, because it seems that can be easily and cheaply manufactured and could be directly applicable to our micro-hydro efforts in Rwanda. (see related blog for more information)

Step-down switching regulator I was trying to reproduce this week

















Gathering circuit components in Asson, central Kathmandu, has happened a couple of times this week. However, it is never an entirely successful trip because we can't ever get exactly what we want, so our work turns into working with what we can get. On this particular day though, as I sweat and suffer to get the shop owners to understand what I'm looking for, Mike is chats to a guy that owns a shop that repairs and sells guitars. The final product is the guitar you see below, played by a young child who seemed very interested in learning how to play while I discussed with another shop owner whether he could order a specific voltage regulator for me. After hearing that he could order any components but they would take a month to get to Kathmandu, I turn around to see Mike receiving bubble gum from this 10year old kid.

I have chosen to interpret the purchase of this guitar as Mike's way to reduce the 95% of our time that we spend together, especially now that Brendan has gone back to the states for 3 weeks. I have responded to these acts tonight by buying a book about a Australian criminal so that I have something to do with the extra lonesome time that this guitar will bring into my life.


















Diana and I standing by a table full of candles at Boudhanath

















Other highlights of the week include our ice cream + bananas + melted chocolate gathering late at night and the realization that some of the UN cars that drive around have signs that say "NO AK-47s", or at least that's how we interpreted it. Both events are photographed below.

Diana, Rosie and me attacking the vanilla ice cream with bananas and melted chocolate

A worthy return

After memorable and inexplicable occurrences in the Khumbu region, we made it back to Kathmandu. A worthy return it was.

An amazing journey it was, one that only those that have carried all they need to survive in any type of weather in the middle of nowhere could understand. Breathtaking landscapes, hard and strenuous hikes, cold climbs, encounters with very special people and a continuous race against disease were all present. It was a formidable character building experience through the mountains from which I will only share one particular moment on this blog.

We were already done climbing our first peak, achieving an altitude of over 20,000feet (6,000m). Brendan had decided to go home early and Mike and I started the 3 day trek to our second peak. On our second day we come to a familiar town where we bought bread, cheese and pasta for the coming days. We also heard that somewhere near the town there was a small temple up on the mountain. From the village we were able to see it up, a few hundred meters up on a nearby mountain; a 20min hike perhaps. How mistaken we were. It took about an hour of steep climbing and route finding. After hard work however we reached what was an abandoned small temple, seemingly built for a spiritual retire.

And that was exactly what it was, even for us who were only there for a short time. We sat in silence on flat rocks, listening to the water running in the river going by the nearby town, a few hundred meters below us. We sat feeling the wind rushing through, colorful praying flags dancing in the air and nothing but astonishing mountains ahead of us and a few birds circling between us and them. At that time nothing but absolute peace would reign in our hearts and minds. We wanted to stay there for weeks, thinking about the absurdities of life but like every other climber with a mission, our feet demanded us to keep moving.

There were many such moments. Some more adrenaline filled than others, like the time Mike got us on the wrong route up a mountains and we ended up doing some alpine rock climbing without being roped up or having safety gear on. But with every adventure a magnificent story came out of it, and wonderful lessons followed. The most valuable one probably being that it isn't unethical to score left overs from rich Europeans when you are running out of money and want to eat.

A fair amount of the photos we took have been posted in the Picasa album for this blog. The photo below should work as a link to it.

Picasa Nepal: Mountains, Bridges and Batteries album

You will notice that Sam I am features in a few of the posted photographies. Sam I am, in all his grace joined us for the entire trip. We were very careful on cutting weight down. For example, we cut our toothbrushes in half just to save an ounce or two. But Sam I am came along and never failed to represent the good spirit and the proper breakfast that every well hearted person should start the day with: Green Eggs and Ham.

It was an incredible journey.

Upon our return to Kathmandu we tried to overcome out hunger and weakness by overstuffing ourselves with the cheapest and most delicious food we can find in the area. Living in Kathmandu has suddenly turned to be about food and hitting the 50% off at bakeries after 7:30pm.

Despite our weaknesses brought upon us for carrying 55pound packs for 3 weeks and the diseases that we are still trying to overcome, we have renewed and strong energies to keep working on a 9 to 5 schedule. We have been working hard for the past few days in order to get this 6V cell phone charger out and running as soon as possible.

Our new approach to this problem involves using what is called a Low DropOut voltage regulator. Unfortunately these components are not to be found in Kathmandu and ordering them to be delivered here would take too long. So we are trying a different option and that is using a much more complicated circuit that uses a non-Low DropOut voltage regulator and that could potentially function under the desired parameters. For those more technically inclined we are using a MC34063AP1 regulator, see the applications sheet AN920-D.

Hopefully we'll have some working prototypes very soon. In the meantime Brendan has gone back to the states to attend med school interviews and we hope he will be bringing some key electrical components back from the land of promise.

On other news, we attended a Halloween party hosted by Rosie's boss last week. A spectacular night it was, full of laughter, delicious momos and new exotic bars. But the character of the night was our lit up carved pumpkin. Mike spent all afternoon carving it in his preparation for the elections. Can you guess who it is?

Second round

Our excitement of flying into the Khumbu region was shredded entirely when after waiting at the airport for over 2 hours the airline decided to cancel all flights. But looking at it from the bright side, it gave us the opportunity to acquire some additional gear in Thamel and the trash bags we had forgotten to buy previously.

Above all, coincidences brought some happy times consequence of the events at the airports. As we were cuing to get in the airport, we met two lovely girls, also Dartmouth graduates, Liz Spence '08 and Mandy Dauten '08. We met later on in the night for some delicious Dhaal Bat and apricot shisha. It was a lovely evening where Liz Embick also got to join us for a while.

Mike and Liz Spence sitting on the cushions at a lovely rooftop cafe.

















Dark, but clockwise from bottom left: Liz Embick, Mike, Liz Spence, Mandy, Mana and Brendan

















We are now heading to the airport for a second attempt in getting to Lukla. If everything goes according to plan you will not be hearing from us in the next couple of weeks, but amazing stories and beautiful photos of Sam I Am will follow.

Rivers or mountains, October is the month

The month when Kathmandu witnesses a disproportionate influx of westerners. The streets of Thamel and even the alleys of Patan seem to be overwhelmed with Americans, Europeans and even South Americans with all sorts of different plans. Some may be here volunteering, working with NGOs and others may even own a business. But the great majority have made their way here with plans to go trekking, mountaineering, kayaking or paragliding.

On that note, I made the point to Mike that we should cancel our plans to climb the big peaks just to stay in the capital, where the party is at now. Silly thinking from my part of course. Excitement has overcome all reasonable thinking in the past couple of hours. We even forgot to buy trash bags because we just wanted to rush home and pack. But our weeks of meticulous planning have insured our safety and there is nothing to worry about, we have taken every precaution to have all the gear we need and information required.

Mike, Brendan and I will be heading into the Khumbu region tomorrow morning on the 7:45am flight to Lukla. If all goes according to plan we'll be on the trail by 9am, enjoying the great views and the painfully heavy packs. All of this was made possible thanks to one wonderful girl who flew in from Valdez, Alaska today.

As we waited for Liz Embick '08 in Thamel today, Mike expressed his hunger and desire to get a snack. On that note I remembered telling Liz that we'd have lunch with her upon her arrival. Hunger was getting stronger, and we fell into the impulse of buying some baked goods. As we are coming out of the bakery we discern an almost empty micro-bus driving directly towards us. This wasn't an ordinary micro-bus; this was a micro-bus driving through Thamel, a micro-bus with a kayak on the roof. At that time both Mike and I thought alike and realized that it had to be Liz. She has brought our brand new mountaineering tent that will keep us warm for the next few weeks and has literally saved our lives. Once again, god bless Alaskans!
















Liz, Mana and John (Liz's friend from Alaska who is also here to paddle) at another rooftop restaurant