Power indicator LED, voltage gauge

There were a couple small enhancements I wanted to make to the solar-powered stereo. 

First, I found that it was easy to forget that the stereo was on after I was done using it, since the only indication the amp was turned on was only visible from the back, in a closed-door compartment. So I wanted to add an indicator visible from the front that the stereo was on. I figured it would probably be relatively easy to do with an LED. 

Though it turned out to be a little tougher than I expected, because the LED needed to operate on the same switch as the amp, which meant opening up the amp to solder it onto the switch.  Since I was going to do this work once, it seemed smarter to just make an external power jack on the amp that could be used for any expansion in the future.

So the parts I needed were the DC barrel jack, an LED, a resistor to bring the 12v down to the 2-2.5v that LEDs work at, and eventually a clear lens for the LED when I mount it in the case. A couple of good places to get these kind of parts are Mouser, DigiKey or Sparkfun. Here are some links to products reasonably close to what I used:

DC Barrel Jack

LED Red 5mm, 2.0v 

4.7 kOhm 1/4 Watt Carbon Film Resistor 

5mm clear color LED lenses

And here are some pictures of the process:

You can see in the pictures where we drilled a hole in the casing to fit a new power jack. Then we used a multimeter on the continuity setting to find the side of the power switch terminals that was after the switch, attached the positive there, and ran the negative to the negative near the input power jack.

Once there was a jack to plug into, we cannibalized the cord from an old power supply to connect the LED and resistor to the newly added output power jack from the amp (the resistor goes before the LED on the positive side).

Then just add the clear cap when installing into the case for extra waterproofing. 

Another issue I was having was that, having no easy way to see the charge level of the battery, I was using it too much without charging it enough to compensate, and the voltage rating rating had dropped below 12v (healthy range is maybe 12-12.6v). I could just use a multimeter to check the voltage on the battery directly, but eventually when the case is constructed, the battery will not be easily accessible by design, so it'd be nice to have a quick way to check. I could solder an ultra low-power voltage gauge into the same circuit my new LED is on (or maybe even a  "Watt's Up" RC Watt Meter & Power Analyzer), but the voltage gauge is $30 (and the Watt's Up is $50) and the solution I settled on here was considerably cheaper and required no soldering:

That voltmeter just plugs into a cigarette lighter (like the one I have on my stereo easily accessible in the storage compartment) and gives a reading for the battery's voltage.  Should make it quite easy to keep an eye on the battery's charge to ensure it doesn't get too low.

Speaking of Multimeters, I came across a really affordable Digital Multimeter on Amazon (currently it's selling for $17) that even does auto-ranging, has an auto-off feature, and a household battery checker. It seemed like too good of a deal to pass up: 

I recommend the video that is featured on the Amazon listing for that multimeter, because it follows the classic infomercial formula.  I swear that same narrator does every infomercial you see on TV!

 

Previous posts about the Solar-Powered Stereo project: 

Solar-Powered Stereo (test build)

Solar-Powered Stereo (casing and schematics)

Solar-Powered Stereo (part 1)

Solar-Powered Stereo (test build)

All the parts arrived for my stereo, so I took the measurements from the SketchUp model I mentioned in the last post and built a mockup case out of cardboard.  I mounted the parts to the cardboard, and soldered together all the wiring according to the circuit diagram (also covered in the last post).  Here's some pictures of the results:

I cannot endorse Jim Beam, but there box sure was the right size for the job, and pretty darn sturdy! I think this will hold until I have a chance to build a wooden case.  

Here's a video of the stereo in action:

Here's the previous posts about the Solar-Powered Stereo project: 

Solar-Powered Stereo (casing and schematics)

Solar-Powered Stereo (part 1)

Solar-Powered Stereo (casing and schematics)

There's been a good amount of progress on the planning for the solar-powered stereo, so I wanted to share a few things.  First, the casing.

I want to make the case out of wood (so it can easily be built to a custom size), and as it turns out, my old college roommate has gotten quite good with woodworking, and when I visited him recently, we talked about making the case ourselves.  We made a mockup in SketchUp (the free CAD program) and were able to come up with a pretty great way to fit all the pieces in a pretty compact size. Here's what we have so far:

We put the speakers in a diagonal arrangement, and then in the opposite diagonal we have the battery and a storage compartment that will allow access to the controls for the amplifier, and also have audio and power connections for iPods, etc.  The back panel and door to the storage compartment are not yet designed or shown here.  On top is the solar panel, which we plan on removing from the plastic housing it comes with, recessing it into the wood on the top, then adding a sheet of plexiglass over it (the solar panel is glass and as a result pretty delicate, so it will be necessary to put a protective layer of plexiglass over it. There's a little extra wood at the top to secure the plexiglass down.  The sides, top and bottom will be pine wood, and the front panel will be simple plywood.  It will be recessed in a bit, making it easier to build, and also allowing for a speaker grill material to be placed over it.

The overall dimensions of the casing are currently 11 1/2 inches tall, 14 inches wide, and 5 1/4 inches deep, which I think is about as compact as we can get with these parts.  These dimensions will probably change slightly as we build it out, but this design should be fairly close to the final result I believe. 

On the electronics side of things, here's the diagram of the circuit I'm going to use for this stereo:

The battery is on the left where it says 8Ah (amp hours).  It's necessary to have a fuse to prevent the power in the battery from overloading anything, and that's the 3A (3 amp fuse). At the top is the solar panel and it's charging indicator LED (comes with the panel), the AUX is the cigarette lighter, and the Amp is the Amp.  The speakers and audio input are also in the diagram.  The amp, battery, cigarette lighter, and solar panel all have grounds. Normally if the case was conductive, you would just connect the grounds to the case.  But I'm planning on a wooden case, so it will not be conductive, so I will just tie all of the ground wires together instead.

For this project I plan on using 16 gauge wire (though according to the American wire gauge standards, maybe only 24 would be necessary, but might as well have some overhead) , and the 3 amp fuses I will use are the ATC type, though it's probably possible to use other types, but the fuse and fuse housings must match in this regard.  Here's some additional items I bought on amazon to complete the wiring:

Hopefully all the electronics parts will arrive by early next week, and I can wire everything together and test it.  

Here's a link to my initial post about the solar-powered stereo project:

Solar-Powered Stereo (part 1)

 

Solar-Powered Stereo (part 1)

So my roommate decided a year or two ago that he wanted a stereo that he could take with him on camping trips.  It would have to be completely solar-powered so he could charge it in the daytime, and play music on it all night, and it should also be able to charge whatever iPod, iPhone, or USB device was supplying the music.  It should also be rugged to survive being packed with camping gear, getting caught in the rain, and even going down a river in a canoe.

What he used was

  • a pair of boat speakers,
  • a solar battery minder/charger,
  • a sealed lead acid battery (like you'd find in a pocket bike, motorized razor scooter, or alarm system),
  • and a class-t stereo amplifier,
  • all fitted into a utility dry box.

The end results were pretty good, and he kept the cost as low as he could so that in the event it fell out of the canoe into the river, it wouldn't be the biggest tragedy ever.

Seeing how successful he was on his project, I wanted to make my own, so I bought a bunch of things on Amazon yesterday: 

I spent a little more for name brand speakers, hopefully it'll be worth it. 

I also might want to have a case made out of wood so I can customize the size and shape, and hopefully reduce the overall volume (though it will probably way a bit more), and find a way to make everything not move around if picked up by one hand from the side. 

I might have a custom case made by a place like this: 

Could cost upwards of $100 though... 

 

Update 8/6/2013: Exchanged some products so updating the links here. Solar panel arrived with a small crack so I returned it and bought another one that was 1.8W instead of 1.5W. The battery also arrived with a dent in the corner (came shipped in only packing envelopes), so I returned that and bought a better reviewed one from Chrome Batteries.  Hopefully they ship better.

How Japanese-Style Management Gave Birth to the Corporate Slave

Since I started working in Japan I, like many other foreigners who come to work here, was particularly surprised by how dedicated my coworkers were to their jobs.  Even coworkers that weren't particularly interested in the work they were doing, and were not compensated in a manner I would consider befitting to the amount of work and overwork they would do, would put the company before themselves and toil away endlessly at their desks.  From an American point-of-view, it was hard to think about it without the word "slave" coming to mind.

A few months ago, my Japanese friend who used to work in America with me pointed me to an article called "How Japanese-Style Management Gave Birth to the Corporate Slave" that drew some connections between how Japanese companies are managed to this seemingly slave-like behavior employees exhibit.  I found it to be such an interesting article that I went on to translate it to English, (as well as some of the other articles by the same author that are referenced in this article).  

How Japanese-Style Management Gave Birth to the Corporate Slave  - By Eiji Sakai

(Original: 日本的経営が社畜を生んだ理由 - 酒井英禎)

"'Corporate slave,' it's a word used to ridicule employees that have a strong loyalty to the company at the expense of their private lives, who put their work at their company before everything else. One interesting topic in regards to corporate slave theory is the blog of a self proclaimed "foreigner NEET (Not In Employment, Education or Training)" [link broken] who couldn't hold a job in Japan and later got a masters degree in Australia and is currently working in Singapore. 


Recently I have written several articles including "Working With People From Another Culture, " and "Overtime is Shameful, " that criticize the labor environment in Japan. I once worked at a local business in Canada for about two and a half years, and later lived in other countries such as Korea, China, and Vietnam, and had the chance to observe the working habits of the local people in those cultures.


One thing I can say is, the work atmosphere and way of thinking in the Japanese workplace is vastly different from that of other countries. Additionally, although naturally the working environments in North America (USA, Canada) and the rest of Asia (Korea, China, India, Vietnam) are different from each other, they still have more in common with each other than they do with the working environment in Japan. In other words, Japan alone stands out as having a particularly strange working environment. 


Recently I came across a book that does a good job of putting this difference into words, and explaining it well. It's called:

The Cross-Cultural Management Guide from Asia

Author: Takashi Kawatani

Publisher: PHP Institute

Release Date: Nov 2003

Format: Paperback

 

The author, Takashi Kawatani, is a specialist who has been teaching cross-cultural management to Japanese businesses in China and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Countries for many years. The author used survey results to create fictional crosstalk between Asian managers and Japanese Bosses, and the results are particularly interesting. This is because it appears to indicate that the corporate slave is a direct result of so-called Japanese-style management. It's a bit long, but I'll directly quote the book below.


In regards to the theme "Drawing Plans for the Future," Asian managers had the following comments:

"I Want You to Express Your Expectations and Objectives" 



“Please explain what must be done to achieve our goals (requirements), what you want us to do (expectations), and the direction and objectives you're aiming for (expectation), not just numerical goals to meet. Telling us how to do this with detailed step-by-step instructions is welcome and helpful.

In the past, there have been employees who have quit because the Japanese management does not have clear goals. 



Having to set our own goals because we're not being given enough direction is something even us management level employees are not accustomed to. 



The company president should focus on spreading the company's culture, and sharing the company's mission with all employees.”

The Japanese boss responds to this in the following way: (Like I mentioned, this is crosstalk, so naturally the two conversations do not mesh.)

"Think About the Intentions of the President" 



“I really want to come up with a way to give clear instructions. But I think rather than waiting until these orders arrive, it is the work of a manager to think for themselves about what they should be doing. I want you to look at the big picture of everything, and learn to be able to make decisions on a higher level. Don't fixate on your own narrow area of responsibility while ignoring the circumstances of the company as a whole. 



I want you to become sensitive to the profits and trends of all departments, and become the driving force that pulls this company and its management together.



I want you to make all decisions by putting yourself in the standpoint of a manager.”

Wow, this is really amazing. We've all seen Japanese bosses like this, haven't we? The Foreigner NEET mentioned above would surely write this boss off as your typical company slave. I feel like the Japanese companies contracting with these IT development companies from other countries are generally saying the following: 


  • "I want you to make all decisions by putting yourself in the standpoint of a manager.”


This really highlights the essence of Japanese-style management: that every employee should carry out their job at the company with the intentions of a manager. Employees shouldn't ask questions, but instead make presumptions. Instead of having others teach you working techniques, steal these techniques from other employees. Even if their positions at the company are relatively low, it's easy to understand why, these corporate slaves look at their surroundings through the eyes of a manager and press forward, toiling away to the point of severe overwork.

  • "Don't fixate on your own narrow area of responsibility while ignoring the circumstances of the company as a whole."

By telling their workers to not "fixate too much on your own small area of responsibility and overlook the circumstances of the company as a whole," 
Japanese companies are causing this problem by ignoring the need to effectively share responsibilities. It's as if each person doesn't have any predefined area of responsibility. In a real emergency situation, it's natural to have all employees come together to deal with the problem at hand. But because Japanese companies deal with every request a customer makes even on a whim as an emergency situation, this kind of "social overtime" continues to be a problem. 


Japanese bosses tell their employees "Think about the company 24/7. If you can put yourself in the shoes of a manager, it should become clear what you should do. Therefore, there's no need for me to give you detailed instructions." In contrast to this way of thinking, the managers in Asian companies are saying "We're struggling to serve more than a single purpose at the company. In order In order to function better, the boss must set clear goals.“


By the way, the way of thinking for western managers is almost identical to that of Asian managers. To them, orders from the boss are everything, and they don't think about the company in a wider perspective very much. Also, carrying out the tasks in your own area of responsibility is considered to be sufficient. 


At a glance, from a manager's viewport, a Japanese boss might even seem ideal. But the problem is that seeing things from the standpoint of a manager is easier said than done. To begin with, the employees at the bottom of an organization's hierarchy aren't in a position where they are receiving the kind of company-wide information they need to be able to take a commanding view of the situation. In that position, if they are told to "behave like a manager," it's likely that the only way they can answer this request is to toil away working endless overtime.


Furthermore, it's ridiculous to ask these low-level employees who receive low levels of compensation to work in the same fashion as highly compensated managers. Due to the lifetime employment system and the seniority system in place in Japan, when employees are young, they have to work hard but are compensated poorly. But long-term employees are rewarded when they middle-aged when their work not only becomes easier, but their salary increases dramatically. Most likely If the lifetime employment system were to go away, the motivation for young workers to slave away at their jobs would completely disappear. 


Of course, the Japanese boss' way of thinking is only effective inside of working environments that employ the lifetime employment system and seniority system. But unfortunately, when it comes to working together with external people with different values (such as specialists and foreigners) this way of thinking does not work very well.

(Bonus) Looking at Japanese-Style Management from a Software Engineering Perspective

In the western style of management (as well as in Asia), the areas of responsibility for every department, as well as how these departments interface with each other, is clearly defined. Each employee or department etc can be though of as a module, in the way of the programming concept of a class, where the implementation is encapsulated and thus independent of other modules. And the system is able to work as a whole thanks to this loose coupling of many independent modules.


In Japanese companies, each employee or department's responsibility and interfaces with other departments are not clearly defined, and each module references other module's private variables. In other words, the modules are tightly coupled. This becomes a big hindrance when you want revise business workflows or do outsourcing.

In software engineering, loose-coupling is thought to be more desirable than tight-coupling. In a loosely-coupled system, there is a small, fixed amount of overhead created by the interface, but in exchange for that modules can be treated as independent parts, making the code simpler, and improving maintainability. So this enables the programmers to be more effective when replacing code and responding to changes in specifications.

I think it might be interesting to think on through these points more thoroughly in the  future."

 

Working With People From Different Cultures

Again on the topic of Japanese business culture, here's another article I translated from the Japanese language blog of Eiji Sakai, a Japanese software engineer and with a CPA from an American university and an interest in economics, culture, and technology.

This article is called "Working With People From Different Cultures" （異なる文化をもつ人たちと働くということ）

Working With People From Different Cultures

Nowadays, due to the spread of the Internet, interaction with people from around the world is more and more common, and it's becoming an age in which we must cross national borders and do daily business with people from other cultures.

Can Japanese companies respond to these changing times? Japanese companies are far too specialized for Japanese culture, and I wonder if it isn't the case that only Japanese people can work in them.

For example, I want you to take a look at this. It's a blog entry from a Japanese man who lives in Singapore, and calls himself a "foreigner NEET" (Not in Employment Education or Training), because he was unable to hold down a job here in Japan.

This entry is entitled: "The correct way to use paid holidays is to have fun." [Link appears to be broken now.]

In this article, Mr. Foreigner NEET severely criticizes the assertion made by a certain website that "paid holidays are not for having fun, they are provided for when you get sick." Paid holidays, along with being a legally established right of the common worker, are the employer's obligation. It is not expressly established how paid holiday should be used. So of course, it should be the case that you can use them for fun as well as for when you get sick. Many countries also have mandated that companies also provide separate paid sick leave. But it is also true that in Japan there are a lot of companies in which it is understood that paid holidays are only to be used when you're actually sick. It seems that there are very few people in Japan who actually use all of their paid holidays every year.

Now let's imagine the situation in which a foreigner comes from abroad to Japan and starts working at a Japanese company. We'll say he is given two weeks paid vacation a year. But when he tells his boss he wants to take two weeks of vacation, his boss tells him that will be difficult. How exactly is his boss supposed to explain this situation to his new employee? The foreign employee will likely stress that the employee handbook says that he gets two weeks of paid vacation a year, so he should be able to take time off. But if the boss explains that this is Japan, and in Japan you're expected to use only half of your paid holidays, will his new foreign employee understand and consent to this requirement?

Consider the English-speaking world, where if a company's rulebook specifies that an employee shall be allowed a certain number of paid holidays, that is exactly how many he or she will be allowed to take. It's not common practice for the official stance to differ greatly from what happens in reality. For businesses in the English-speaking world, all the rules are expressly stipulated in the employee handbook, and the gap between what's written there and how the business is actually run is small, and it's not common to hear "Well, it's not a written rule, but it's just common sense to do it this way." I feel this makes it quite suitable environment for people from various cultural backgrounds to work together.

Even if Japanese companies were to imitate the way English-speaking companies work, it would probably be hard for them to surpass these companies in terms of performance. Japan has a long, independent history, and that has fostered a unique culture here. I think what's important now is to thoroughly contemplate what the essence of Japanese culture really is, and to create a new form of Japanese culture that adapts to the age we live in, where it is necessary to work and associate with people of various cultural backgrounds.