richfiles

FINALLY! The LAST package from China showed up, delivering my timing pulleys and belts. MONTHS of waiting for parts... MORE than half a year, and boy, once I had everything, did I ever put things together! There are still parts I need to get... Hardware like screws, etc. The two metal plates, right angle bracket, and a few more spacers, but I'll explain what's left to do nearer to the end... First, I cleaned up the 6mm tube's ends and slid the two small pulley wheels on. I left a small amount of clearance for the motor side, to accommodate mounting screws, and secured the left pulley to the tube. I used my center punch to mark the tube where the two set screws lined up on the right pulley. The right pulley is going to secure the tube to the motor shaft. Drilled out and aligned. I suppose I could have done this before mounting the pulleys, but ehh... The piece taped above is one of the spacers I will be using to create the mounting frame. I cut the motor shaft tube slightly shorter than the spacer. In order to secure the 6mm tube to the 4mm motor shaft, I used a hardened steel ball bearing, taken from a gutted ball bearing, and placed it into the hole. The set screws are not long enough to go the additional depth without being bound by only a few threads (at least on the flat side of the shaft). The ball bearing makes up the difference, and was a simple fix that I could use with on the hand materials. A 90s laptop HDD motor was brutally sacrificed for this donation. A hammer and chisel and even a dremel were used. Absolutely nothing survived. Except the BBs. Here I demonstrate posing in a work like fashion. No one is fooled. Who is holding the motor? No one, that's who! No work is occurring here! Like those faked fast food photos on the menu. It does allow me to point out that the point of a set screw (or in my case, the ball bearing held by a set screw), is not for the screw to be the primary point joining gear to shaft... Instead, it applies a directional force that causes friction along the entire opposing mating surfaces. This is much more surface area than just the ball point of a metal sphere. Here we see the completed motor drive portion of the tape drive assembly. This is also a good point to begin explaining how this will go together. Regarding the spacers I pointed out above... Well, there will be two parallel plates of metal, secured together by those spacers. The left plate will have the bearing block mounted to it, and the right plate will mount the motor. The uniform spacers will keep them properly aligned. Going with a pair of plates separated by spacers makes for super simple construction as well. It's just a pair of plates, and drilling a few holes... That's it. My "totally not CAD, and drawn with nothing more than a Mac equivalent of MS Paint" diagram from nearly 2 months ago ended up being spot on! This post is getting pretty long, so I'm gonna end it here, and post the sensor wheel assembly and the total progress in a second post, to immediately follow.

Oh, that is NICE!!! And I've already sent a request, asking if they sell the switches and guards in bulk (though I have a VERY easy means to create the guards, and for quite cheaply as well).

USPS Shipping Partners. Nuff said. My parts for my Kerbal Instrument Panel's Tape Meter drive assembly have FINALLY been received by the USPS system... Today, on the 28th... The order was placed on Sept 15th The seller got it shipped on the 30th It arrived in the US on Oct 11th Got through customs on the 12th... And has sat with a USPS shipping partner till yesterday. It finally was received by USPS, on the 28th... Accounting for the 15 day delay due to the supplier backlog, it spent 11 days in overseas transit, and 17 days (likely delivery is Friday, so total of 19 days) in US transit... In what universe should domestic shipping take longer than international! 1 day in customs, 16 days at a shipping partner, and 2 days with USPS... I sense a weak link in the chain...

[snip] That printing company seems to have fallen through. They just sorta stopped replying to me. I guess they didn't wanna deal with such an awkward, one off, low run job. Seems rather unprofessional. Least they could have done was state that they didn't think they could successfully perform the project to my needs. I still need to determine what type of ink would be best suited for the project, as it needs to survive flexing on a tape being run over rollers. Ultimately, It looks like I will be stuck doing this one by hand. The ideal rig will likely be a simple jig to hold the tape securely and flat, and some sort of hinged arm that I can mount my rubber stamps on. I most likely will need to use tape to create a masked area to represent the "end of tape" zone that would sit between >9999 and 0m. I'll have to use something like pushpins to secure the tape in place by it's appropriate sprocket holes. I just hope the house don't completely wear out before completing the while thing. On my own build thread, the tape meter has actually been my currently active project, with me mostly hurrying up and waiting for parts from China... Just waiting on the timing belts and pulley wheels, which are taking their sweet time. After that, I plan to assemble the timing pulleys to the tape drive, and construct a mechanism to both drive it, and sense the absolute position of the tape. It's all gotta fit underneath my navball instrument, which is pretty bulky, but I work out all those issues in the build thread! Still have not tackled the tape printing though...

My thing to whine about... I want to be done with spinning rust, but SSDs are simply still too expensive for mass bulk storage solutions for regular folk. I'm sorry, but I can't justify the still massive cost to go pure solid state yet, and I just want to be done with yet another point of mechanical failure...

One worry off my back... The motor appears to have been flown, and is now in the US... Or at least in a shipping crate on the far side of US customs. Now I get to wait for it to trickle it's way into the US mail system. The Pulley wheels and belts arrived on the 8th... And it's now the 18th. They are still in "Shipping partner facility", and are technically not in the USPS system yet. 10 days... Looking at other items tracking history... Arrival at the US to delivery was 15 days... Ugh... I'm still looking at a good chunk of next week to get the pulleys and belts, and likely Halloweenish, or possibly even November before I see the motor! I HATE all this WAITING! That motor better be a suitable ratio for what I need! Given the time delays between deciding a part is needed and receiving said part, I sure hope I judged the ratio requirements accurately! **EDIT** FRIDAY!!! The motor made it into the USPS system, and it is saying delivery Friday! Timing belts and pulleys may or may not arrive by then, but if their arrival and time in transit with a "shipping partner" match my other shipments, it'll likely arrive close to the same time. **ED2T** Motor arrived! I was worried about the torque of a motor with such a small gear ratio (at 6 volts it is rated at 280 RPM, so it's a bit speedy). After some basic testing, I think it'll be fine. At 6 volts, I couldn't stop the shaft with my fingers, and current went up from 73mA at no load, to around +400ma, the peak on the small power supply I was driving it from. That leaves me more than confident it'll run whatever friction a pair of rubber belts add to the system. I also connected a reed switch and battery in series with my pulse counter, and attached a magnet to the shaft, to see if the motor speed matches up with the rated speed. I set a 60 second timer, and released the reset on the pulse counter when I started the timer. When it hit zero, I pressed the hold button, and got a pulse count of 294, which is well within a reasonable margin of error of the rated 280 RPM. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the motor. As for the timing belt and pulley wheels... They have been stuck in Greenwood Indiana for the past 10 days... Stoopid™ shipping partner... Pitney Bowes... More like Pitiful Slows... It's infuriating that the US is being the slow part of this. My general understanding, is that these shipping partners sit at one of the lowest priorities, so will sit and sit until other things are sorted before them. It's aggravating... If it were closer, I'd consider trying to pick it up in person... And further shipping updates... It apparently left the Greenwood shipping partner on the 16th... DAYS ago. It's still not been received by the USPS system, but at least an update finally got logged. As of my prior edit, that detail had not been logged yet. Hopefully it means SOON™

Small updates... I've got the bearings, the steel tube, the flange adapter to mount the large pulley wheel to the 6mm absolute position sensor shaft... The timing pulley wheels and belts are also already in the USA (currently sitting in some facility in Greenwood Indiana)... Aaaaand... The motor is still stuck at the airline in China. I still have no idea if it'll even get shipped. Apparently, a lot of small packages ship in free belly space on passenger flights, and with the Rona out and about, passenger flights are drastically reduced. New restrictions have barred batteries and magnets on some Chinese flights, and apparently my 4mm shaft motor got hit by that, and Chinese customs refused to load it. It was resent by way of a different shipping method, and has been sitting around "Handed over to Airlines" for the last 8 days... I have no idea if it was refused a second time, if they just haven't found a flight with free space in the belly to load it onto, or what... At this point, I'd have been happy for it to ship by slow boat, cause I'd probably have gotten it already! I did have a small product quality scare... The bearing blocks look fine, but the bearings installed look like trash, with one even being dented. I feel 95% convinced I was sold salvaged bearings... Whatever. They aren't in a precision or a high speed application. If they work, they work... The REAL problem was the brass tube I bought. when it arrived, I measured it, and the outer diameter was spot on at 6mm... Perfect! Inner diameter was... less so... One of the tubes was 4.4mm and the other 4.5. They weren't even consistent between each other, and they were so out of spec I could never have used them on the 4mm motor shafts! I was VERY unhappy with the product quality. Fortunately, I had also ordered steel tubing, realizing i probably shouldn't mix a trio of aluminum, brass, and stainless steel all together. I might end up with some sort of galvanic corrosion over time. I ordered stainless steel tubing... And I hoped and prayed that it was closer to spec than the brass garbage was! Well, it arrived in the mail today, and the first thing I can say, is the tubes were VERY roughly cut. I had to file and deburr the ends first, before I could take any measurements, but thankfully, I am able to confirm that they were much closer. One is nearly spot on, at 4.02mm, while the other two were a little wide, at 4.09 and 4.11mm. Ultimately, I have one tube for absolute certain that will work, so I'm fine with it. That's all that matters! Now it's just a matter of waiting for the timing belt and pulleys to arrive... and to wait for the motor... I'll also have to figure out how best to frame all the various components together. Probably a sandwich of plates, separated by spacers. It's simple, and doesn't require anything more complex than a drill to make.

Welp... I mopped and swept and vacuumed and scrubbed the walls and toilet and tub and sinks and put the new blue water thingy in the toilet tank, and used the foamy bubbles... We have really hard water at my apartment, enough that I buy my drinking water from a water purification shop just down the street from me (literally 7 blocks) for 25 cents per gallon. I have a 5 gallon dispenser in my kitchen... Anyway... Scale and crusty crud always build up in the sinks, and it's always a pain in the ol' cockpit warmer to scrub and scrub and scrub that stuff away... My hands and wrists are sore, my back hurts, and I want a shower SO BAD, but the landlord could knock at any moment... So nope... Shower can wait. Today was a little depressing too... I had not really gone into the back room and dealt with any of my cat's stuff, nor gotten rid of her old litter box, etc... I really hadn't done anything in there at all, save for some emergency spot cleaning, in regards to the... accidents... that she had before becoming so mortally ill. It's not like the room was dirty... I had done a thorough deep cleaning literally a week or two before... Ultimately, it was time. She passed on May 15th... It's October already... I put all her toys inside her little "kitty cave" that I'd made from the plastic shell of an old blue and white Mac monitor. It had been fully gutted, and had cushions inside, and she could sit inside where the screen would have been and curl up to nap. I put it away on a shelf. Her window cushions were all packed into a milk crate and placed on said shelf also. Her favorite toy, her froggy, has sat on my work bench though, since the first day she was gone... Here I sit, really wanting a shower, with a sore back and worn out hands, waiting for a landlord that could have been here an hour and a half ago, but has decided to put my apartment much later on the home invasion list... Here I sit, utterly devastated that I'm not bribing my little sweetie girl with tuna and shrimp (that was her favorite) so that I could snatch her up and put her in the dog sized kennel I got for her (only the best), cause she never liked strangers in her place... I will never do that again with her... I miss her so much...

My landlord put notices on everyone's door today... Surprise inspections tomorrow. I've been wanting to do some "deep cleaning" lately... I guess that means I'll be up late tonight doing said deep cleaning... Grr...

As a fan of anime, I often rely on fan subs to be able to enjoy stuff... Today, one of the most prominent fansub websites shut down, and I am hugely bummed out by this news. This easily sets the hardcore anime fan back a decade, in terms of difficulty in finding new and old content. I feel very bummed out about this fact.

"Exception: Shipment failed to leave country of origin warehouse"... Guess which part it is... Hint... It begins with an "M", and ends with an "otor" The new motor that I found, with the 4mm shaft... The one that shipped right away... Well, it's SOMEHOW managed to run into issues with shipping, and I do not understand why. Why can't I seem to be able to order a stupid motor and not have someone utterly drop the ball.

I bought a book last week, and it just arrived! I've been looking for this book for years. It's not unobtanium... It's just expensive. It typically costs around $122-190, and i have a digital copy, so it was never an expense I could justify. When I saw a copy pop up for $12.95, I jumped at it. I saw a similar thing happen in January, but the seller never shipped. I assume it was a drop shipper, and they found they couldn't get the book lower than the price I paid, so they just never sent me anything... It was annoying, but whatever. I took that gamble again, but thankfully, the seller pulled through! I got the $122 book for $14 shipped! Not only did the seller pull through, but it's an original printing, and the hardcover edition, no less! I never even noticed the listing mentioned it was hardcover! My complaint... They put a STOCK STICKER ON THE SPINE!!! NOOOOO!!!! I had to carefully peel it off. SO annoying!!! So why does the book matter to me? (Spoiled simply cause wall of text, plus a video, and mostly positive stuff... except the very last thing...)

Once I realized the motor I was looking for apparently just flat out didn't exist in any meaningful manner, that's exactly what I ended up doing. I already made a post on my solution on my Kerbal Instrument Panel build thread, but I looked and found 6mm OD/4mm ID stainless steel tubing. I'll Loctite the tubing onto the shaft of a much more readily available 4mm motor shaft, and then i can mount the two 6mm bore timing pulley wheels to the extended motor shaft. I also ordered a small 6mm ID pillow block bearing to support the other end of the motor shaft. Since I'm cutting the shaft to length anyway, I can give the it enough length to actually support it by it's end.

So, the last week has been... Hectic... I ordered all the parts, all centered around that *perfect* motor I'd found... The supplier on AliExpress never updated their stock, and had run out, and were not getting more. Just great... So I look elsewhere, and find the same type of motor on Ebay the next day... IT WAS THE SAME SELLER!!! I didn't know whether to laugh or scream or both... Ugh! Anyway, the issue, is all the timing pulleys had already been ordered, and the ones for the motor had 6mm IDs. The motor I found had an extra long 6mm shaft, that would let me reliably mount a pair of pulley wheels to, rather than just one. Larger motors that typically had shafts that long tended to be either 8mm shafts or threaded screw shafts. Smaller motors with 4mm shafts just weren't long enough to secure two pulley wheels. I searched for a solid week, trying to find the right motor, and kept up coming up short. In the end, I came up with a remarkably simple solution that will let me use the parts already ordered, with one of the more common 4mm shaft motors. A brass tube. 6mm OD, 4mm ID. I'll Loctite the brass tube over the 4mm motor shaft, essentially installing a 6mm shaft onto it. It's super simple! If I wanted to, I could even get a longer set screw on the inner timing pulley wheel and drill out the brass tube over the motor shaft's flat, allowing the inner motor to have a set screw set against the 4mm motor shaft. Would be simple enough. Anyway, the diagram below should make the plan clear. As I said, it's actually a super simple solution! And since I can cut the brass tube to whatever length I like, I also went ahead and purchased a few 6mm ID ball bearing pillow blocks, so I can actually support the end of the shaft. There will be pulleys tightened up on these, and they aren't going to be 180° out, so there will always be a directional force pulling on that motor shaft. The extra support will help reduce wear on the motor. The motor was selected for it's peak output speed, and voltage range. I selected a 6 volt rated motor, as that's a voltage I can easily drive off of a small motor driver board, controlled by an Arduino. The peak no load speed is 280 RPM. divided by 60, that's 4.6 RPS, or approximately 1.3 seconds to perform a complete cycle (6 rotations of the tape drive input shaft). For a position reset, since the halfway point on the tape is 3 turns to home position, it shouldn't take more than about .64 seconds to reset the tape meter, if it ran at peak speed. In reality, it'll be slightly slower, as one must accommodate for ramping up motor acceleration, and then ramping the motor speed down again to stop. I can't imagine a reset taking more than 1 second, even taking motor ramping into consideration. For practical display purposes, the motor would run at a much lower speeds. It'll certainly be PWMed. I haven't determined how I'll correlate desired position/sensor position error into motor command yet. I could do it a few ways. A proper PID controller driven off the error would likely work. I could also possibly do a lookup table of error/rate of change/motor speed values, so the system just drives motor at X voltage based on degree of data/sensor error. Furthermore, if I discover that I can't get a fine enough resolution of motor control, I DO have some motors on hand already that are geared much lower. I can still mount pulleys on them using the brass tube. The lower gearing means finer control, at the expense of rapid tape movement. What that would mean is that a... Rapid unplanned decent might get tape lag, and that tape resets would probably take a few seconds. I have considered, in addition to the aqua green LEDs to edge light the tape, the addition of red LEDs to indicate rate of change exceeds the instrument's capability. Basically, if error increases at max motor speed, the red lights come on to indicate tape meter value is unreliable, and to fold your tray tables in the upright position, place your head between your legs, and kiss your retrograde surface goodbye... Cause you're probably not gonna slow down in time to nail the landing... Only you!

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I was JOKING!!! For the love of God, I was just joking!!! It seems I found the exact same SELLER on ebay... I just... I'm so tired... I wanna just sleep a whole stupid day, and maybe dream of a world where workmates at Shenzhen warehouses actually do their job and track inventory...

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I HATE stupid, absolutely incompetent suppliers that can't even keep their inventory straight. Just got the most aggravatingly cheery "Hi! Sorry we forgot to update our inventory, so no motor for you! Plz cancel and we'll refund you"... Complete with the stupid cheery emojis... I just can't even... I just paid $57 for a whole pile of parts TAILORED to install around THEIR MOTOR!!! ARHGHnjbfbbdabfbKLMbfbgf Every part I bought had to be ordered to match the bores and shaft diameters of other parts, so all of it would actually fit together... Ugh!!! Now I'm not only BACK to searching for a motor, but now, cause it had a 6mm shaft, I'm now locked out of the more common 5mm shaft motors, unless I WASTE MORE MONEY and just buy extra parts! I'm so frustrated with these absolutely unreliable suppliers, I swear if my hair don't fall out, I'll start pulling it out! This is an untenable level of incompetence, over such simple concepts, like keep track of your freaking inventory! Now I'm back to searching... Most of this post was copied out of a Discord chat, so I wouldn't need to retype it... I think I got all my "choice words" removed from it... Oh, am I angry though... Absolutely livid... **UPDATE** Found the exact same motor on ebay... Now let's hope it's not coming from the exact same source...

I finally worked out a solution, figured out all the parts, and ordered everything I'll need to build the drive mechanism for the Radar Altimeter Tape Meter for my KSP Instrument Panel. Delivery date: As late as October 22.. This is assuming all the parts even ship... I've had huge supply issues out of China cause of the pandemic. Not all supply chains are at full capacity.

Update... I worked out a belt arrangement (in red) that uses the stock belt that comes with the 6:1 ratio timing pulley set I found, plus a second pair of 1:1 pulleys and a second belt. I didn't worry about the specifics of adding the idler wheel into the mix, as this arrangement can work without the idler, though I may or may not add the idler just to bring the sensor wheel closer to the back of the Navball housing. I also found a planetary gear motor with a 6mm diameter, 42mm long shaft... This is PERFECT!!! I added a pair of 12 tooth timing pulley wheels with a 6mm ID to the order, so now I have 4 pulley wheels, 2 belts, a motor, and a flange adapter to fit the large 10mm ID 72 tooth wheel to the diameter of the absolute position sensor's 6mm shaft. The 6:1 ratio pair also had the 12 tooth wheel with the 6.35mm ID part, so it fits the Tape Meter's drive shaft. ALL the parts to complete the drive mechanism of the Tape Meter are now on order! Now let's all hope the three suppliers pull through. I upgraded all shipping to a tier with tracking. Cost a little more... worth it. I'm really excited about this! I was tempted to keep on trying to figure out what I need for the Carriage Meter as well, but I wanted to get this ON ORDER NOW, since this stuff could STILL take till October 22 to reach me... if it all even ships... I can really only work on one thing at a time anyway, so really... There isn't any point in rushing the other parts. I can work those out while I wait for this, cause I ain't getting any more work done on this till the parts show.

Every job is easy when you have the right tool. That bevel gear was held onto that shaft with loctite, a set screw, and a locktite bonded roll pin... For a flippin' tape meter!? They literally don't build 'em like they used to. This was merely a display device for a dial on a piece of high end 1960s era test equipment! I tried several times to remove the roll pin, but it was very tight in it's hole. My press wasn't big enough to give me enough leverage, and I didn't have a V-Block the right size to securely rest the bevel gear on. Took it to work, asked my boss if he had a push pin and block that'd work for it... Took literally 3 minutes to find the tools and do the job. I had to smile when he mentioned he made the narrow V-Block himself, way, way back when he was in shop class. That's a satisfying feeling... To know a tool a man has created himself is still getting regularly used, decades later. I love it! This pic is an old one, but is relevant here. It shows the clearance available around the underside of the navball... And yeah... I ended up deciding the hardest arrangement would be the most ideal arrangement. The navball is just too far shifted left, and I want to bring it closer to the center of the instrument panel. It's just too important an instrument to be off to the side. This helps. I initially had been looking at some larger timing pulleys, but found some smaller diameter ones. The small pulley is only half the diameter of the bevel gear. I'll unfortunately need a very long belt (the second longest the manufacturer offers, in fact). They are currently backlogged, due to the pandemic, and are not even currently selling the large belt separately. I'm still waiting for a reply to find out if I can even get the long belt. You can see a 1:1 scale drawing of the navball instrument, as viewed form the side and bottom. This configuration requires the use of an idler wheel, which I'll make with a pair of ball bearings, as seen. There is a valid alternative solution though... If I buy a dual shaft motor, I could theoretically use two shorter belts. One short belt and two small 1:1 pulleys on one side of the motor. The other side will have a 1:6 ratio, and be farther back, enough to allow the sensor wheel to sit behind the navball. I need to order the pulleys ASAP, if I want them in October yet. Sadly, no US sources, and the Chinese sources are all struggling to keep up... This is gonna be a difficult purchase, to say the least. Still trying to get some other parts since May!

It's kinda a habit to just do a select all, and see if anything unusual highlights.

Here's the mod most of us use. The general idea, is that the Mod communicates over USB to an Arduino or similar device. the Arduino sends and receives packets to and from the mod. It needs to interface to various devices (be it toggle switches, buttons, joysticks, etc, or to LEDs, meters, or digital readouts, or even to other Arduinos or similar controllers). Some people fit the entire controller mod on a single Arduino. Others (like me) will have several controllers, each doing their own prescribed tasks, and all communicating back to a central controller that will handle the USB data packet.

That's a great video on the subject. I recently finished building a custom mechanical keyboard, and it scans the keys on a similar principal. Where it differs, is that int he keyboard setup, you have direct access to a number of rows and columns. By scanning each row, one at a time, you can read whether a key in each column is pressed or not. The cost is more I/O pins, but the benefit is a much higher number of keys scanned in the same time a shift register might scan only 8 inputs. Both are viable methods of scanning for inputs. One can also replace the buttons used in the example with transistors, so that a logic level state can be monitored by the scanning method, which inherently requires that the controller be able to both selectively sing and source current flow, e.g. how it does with these pushbutton switches.

Don't be afraid to segment the project into any number of dedicated microcontrollers. The code for each one will be simpler, and it will indeed make each one more responsive. I have no idea how many arduinos my instrument panel will have when finished.

I use a Kester No Clean flux (which I usually still clean anyway). It's got the electrical properties of Pthht. More likely, there's a short to the controller, and with all outputs but the caps lock LED trip-stated (high impedance, aka, floating), if that wire is making contact with something it's not, then it's preventing the drivers from shutting off, and holing it right at the switching threshold... That's my guess. Additionally, I have twice now run a wire under the controller, and had significant resistance with getting it to reach the other side. The LED wire to the connector was one of those two wires. If it snagged a component, and the insulation tore... That could explain it. On that note, I need to spend the rest of my day at my workbench, working on circuit... boards for work, and I don't have time to look at my poor keyboard right now...

It's ONLY been since October 2015 when I first conceptualized this project. It's FINALLY assembled... Every wire soldered, everything screwed shut, ready for firmware... And when I run the controller's test program, I get random floating voltages on the LED drivers... Drivers are identical to the caps lock LED driver... That works perfectly... But nope! There's a floating voltage and I can't quite find it. I don't know if I shorted a wire while modifying the LED drivers to be run from a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter), and then back to PWM control by the controller (when I switched from serial controlled LED brightness to controller driven brightness)... I tested as many of the connections as I possibly could with my meter, and none show up as shorted, yet a 10KΩ resistor couldn't pull the input signal high (which should have shut the LEDs off). Weirder yet, is each of the 4 LED drivers have a varying degree of off-ness or lack thereof of off-ness. They all turn on just fine, but when I try to turn them off, usually one or two of the 4 banks will glow dimly, and maybe one will be barely lit... It's just... REALLY ODD... I DREAD the thought of having to do rework, cause it's all hand wired. I'd be better off just running new parallel runs of wire. My biggest concern is that I have a short to the controller itself, from when I ran an LED control wire \under the controller to reach the magnetic connector... It is... not a simple task to remove it. I mean... Just look!