Folding Camper Build V

I have continued to work each weekend on the camper build. Here is the progress now in a animated GIF:

The insulated bottom section is now attached to the hinged top and front. The door in the front has been framed out as well as the skylight on the top. Next are the sides.

Folding Camper Build IV

Last weekend I finishes the insulation and support structure.

This weekend I finished the decking. It feels stiffer now and heaver too. The floor is now approximately 1 inch thick. Notice I support it now on the frame in three places. I may experiment with going back to two bars.

Hopefully the rest of the build goes faster. The walls don't need to support any significant weight so the framing will be lighter and should got fast. I intend to build the front wall with the door next then the top and sides.

Folding Camper Build III

Over the last two weekends I have continued to work on the camper floor. The first 3  feet will likely have the 6"X6" matrix since this it where I will be stepping into the interior. I have completed 2 feet of the insulated floor panel and am prepared to do the next foot next weekend. Here is the first foot.

And here is the second foot.

Once the third foot is completed I will use a spacing like this for the last five feet.

Folding Camper Build II

This weekend I got the bottom runners installed on the base. It took longer than I thought.

After all four runners were install and the glue set over night, I put it on the conduit frame. This frame will have more height but I was interested in looking at the bottom flex. I am reconsidering the 6"X6" matrix in the floor in favor of just 8 cross runners 90 degrees to the bottom runners. The floor does not need to be that strong particularly in the rear very narrow section since there would be no way to stand there at all. In the picture you can see the four runners on the bottom and on the left a set of removable wheels to move it around easier.

Maybe a non-linear framing pattern will be used. This will provide plenty of strength by the door where I step to hold my weight by having them closer together and then getting farther apart as they move to the rear.

Folding Camper Build I

I started the build of my folding camper last weekend. Starting with the base. The base is 4X8 feet using 5mm plywood and 1X6's around the perimeter with 2x2's in the corner. All joints are glued and screwed.

Here is the initial fit check and clamp up.

Here after the 4X8 rectangle was built, I glued the 5 mm plywood on the bottom. I screwed it every 6 inches or so but needed addition clamping force from various other weights. 

The bottom being only 5mm (<1/4 inch) thick is not strong enough to support any significant weight and will provide little insulation. The bottom will be further built up to form a sandwich of  two 5mm panels, foam and thin wood strips forming a Structural Insulated Panel (SIP).  Below I am constructing a 1 foot square test panel. I needed all my clamps for this glue up. This panel has a 6"X6" grid formed with 1/4" X 3/4" wood strips and 3/4" thick foam insulation. This insulation is the type with a plastic moisture barrier on each side with one sided silvered. I got mine at Home Depot HERE.

Below is the cross section of the test panel. The arrows are showing the 3/4" thick foam insulation from the corner that I cut off. I used this panel to validate the strength. It was tested with a load of over 150 pounds spanning 12" and had minimal deflection. There will also be runners on the bottom of the base to protect it and add more strength.

Now that I know the panel will be strong, I need to build this out on the base panel. The wood grid will have 128 squares in the foam matrix since the wood strips are spaced every 6 inches. This will take some time to do but seems to be worth it in term if the strength and light weight properties. The walls and roof will not need this grid and will be lightly framed.

Aerial Photography using a Pole

I was looking for a low cost way to create a Aerial Map of my backyard since the resolution on Google Maps was not high enough. I thought about using a balloon as outlined in this article --> HERE. Then I though maybe I could use one of my telescoping antenna supports to get a small camera in the air and use the same methods. I think I could have gotten Mapknitter to work for me but I stumbled on  Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE). I made the below image by putting my old iPhone 4 on the end of a 20 foot pole and turning it while capturing video. This software can do many other things and is worth a look. The best thing is that the application is free!

I am using a cheap wide angle lens on the iPhone (clip on type), this helps since it is not very high in the air and allows it to "see" more of the ground. I simply just twisted the pole while capturing video.

Once you bring the video into ICE, you can select the start and stop time of the video to do the processing on. The video segment I used was only about 8 seconds long. The application takes all the images in the video (e.g. >15 frames per second) and matches them up and stitches them together to form the larger composite image... magic!

VMWare 6 Home Lab II

I have now successfully cloned VMs and trouble shot my vMotion issue. I have vMotioned a running WinXP VM from one ESX host and back. The WinXP VM is running with minimal performance but does run. HA tests are next. I really would like a system with 32 GB and a Solid State Disk (SSD).