Smokin' Part 2

My previous post described rib smoking techniques for using a standard vertical smoker. As most people don't have one of these hanging around in their garage I have documented my alternate technique for getting similar results using a standard weber-style kettle charcoal grill.

The meat preparation is the same as the previous method (basic pork rub and remove lower membrane), for the grill setup I fill a full chimney of charcoal and soak the wood chips.

Fill the charcoal into half of the grill and add the pre-soaked wood chips, you will immediately see smoke and steam being produced.

Place a disposable aluminum pan next to the charcoal and fill it with 4 cups of boiling water.

Next, the Ribs go on the grill over the water pan for indirect cooking, bone side down. Tent the ribs with aluminum foil. The foil keeps the smoke close to the meat. Place the lid on the grill with the air vent over the meat to steer the smoke in that direction. Also, open the bottom and lid vents to about half.

So here we are after 3 hours, the heat has died down significantly in the last hour and a half, but this is OK in slow cooking. Next you can move the ribs over the charcoal, apply some barbecue sauce, let it bake on for 5 minutes, flip, repeat a few times. Be sure to watch for flare-ups though, you can easily burn the ribs and sauce if too much fat drips onto the charcoal and starts flames.

In addition to seeing the meat pull off the bone, a good sign that you have a well smoked piece of meat is you will see a smoke ring.

This smoke ring is the outer pink ribbon you see around the edges of the meat from the smoke seeping into the meat.

So there you have it smoked ribs in under 4 hours with a standard charcoal gill.

--Dan

Smokin'

Ah spring ... that time of the year when the flowers start blooming, the grass turns green and the thoughts of a young man's heart turn to barbecue.

I took advantage of the fine weather this weekend and pulled the smoker out of the garage for a nice smoking of barbecue ribs. As with all momentous occasions I thought it necessary to fully document the process so that in the ages to come people can look back at this and wish they too had dinner at my house on Sunday.


So here's how it all went down...


I started off in the morning by preparing the meat, in this case I used standard pork ribs and began the preparation by drying them off with a paper towel to get rid of most of the excess moisture from the packaging. I then proceeded to remove the membrane on the back, this allows more of the smoke flavor to seep into the meat.
Next I applied a basic dry rub to the meat (brown sugar, salt, cayenne pepper), wrapped them in foil and put them back in the fridge for a few hours.
Around Noon I started to prepare the smoker, in my case I use a vertical smoker with a water dish (this produces a steam affect and keeps the meat moist). I put a full chimney of charcoal on while I soaked the hickory wood chips, I also left a few unlit charcoal briquettes in the bottom of the charcoal pan, this keeps the heat going longer.



Once the charcoal was ready I filled the hot coals into the charcoal pan, added the hickory chunks (now thoroughly soaked) and placed the water pan above them. The meat went in and the smoke was quite thick for the first hour or so.


With the meat in and the smoker fully prepared I used the vents to regulate the temperature to around 225-250 degrees. After about 2 hours the temperature started to fall into the 200 degree range but I kept them going for another hour. If I were doing larger cuts of meat I would smoke them longer (5-6 hours) and have to swap out the charcoal, but because ribs are relatively thin cuts I thought 3 hours was a good amount of time.
At about the 3 hour mark I moved the ribs to the gas grill to finish the last 20 minutes, at this point the ribs were fully cooked and fairly tender, although they did not fall off the bone. (The only ribs that fall off the bone are the ones that are boiled Rob, and that's barbecue heresy, properly cooked ribs should come off of the bone cleanly, but not fall off). Another sign of properly cooked ribs is that when you cut into the meat you will see a smoke ring, that is a line of pink around the exterior where the smoke has permeated the meat. The other thing to look for is the meat should have begun to shrink back from the bone, exposing the tips of the rib bones. The gas grill is really just for applying barbecue sauce so I basted both sides of the ribs, let them cook for 5 minutes, flipped and basted again. I repeated this process about 2 - 3 times until there was a nice thick layer of barbecue sauce around the ribs.
During this time I had also been preparing all my side dishes on the grill including potatoes (diced red potatoes with olive oil, salt, pepper, and dill), veggie kabobs (sweet onions and bell peppers), and sweet corn (that is the pot on the side burner).


And here is the finished product, well worth the 4 hours it took to make.


--Dan

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The Go Button

As you may know, I am a Database Administrator of the MS SQL Server variety. For those of you who do not know what all that entails (Hi Mom!) ... basically I spend all day (except when I am in meetings ... which is all the time) writing, modifying, and executing SQL scripts. In doing so I find myself hitting the F5 key quite often to execute a script, so much so that I have on occasion hit F5 at the end of an email in an attempt to send it, only to find that my browser is refreshing and I get to rewrite the entire email.

So I got to thinking; executing scripts, compiling code ...etc should not be done by mildly hitting F5, rather it should be a statement with gusto. In this regard I have built myself a giant red button that can be pounded to execute a script It is USB and mapped to the F5 key. Check out below for instructions on how you too can make one.


The Supplies:

-Logitech Mouse (the cheap USB one) -Big Red Button (AllElectronics.com) --Old Backup Tapes

I removed the actual tape from the backup tapes and drilled them out with a 1" bit. I also drilled holes to insert bolts and hold the stack together.
The mouse came apart quite easily with only a single screw. The soldering was also quite simple, I soldered two wires to the active pins of the middle button switch, then connected those leads to the switch hardware using the NC connector (normally closed circuit). For the switch lighting I pulled the red LED the optical mouse uses and soldered it in place into the original light bulb socket, then wired the socket the the original LED leads. I initially tried to use the bulb that came with the button, but it proved to require too much current and was quite dim, it pulled so much current that when you hit the button the USB device disconnects. After all of these are hooked up I placed the mouse hardware in the housing (wrap most of it in electrical tape so it doesn't hit the bolts holding the contraption together.

All that remains then is to install the Logitech SetPoint drivers and use the software to map the middle mouse button to any key you would like.

--Dan

Power Supply Circuit Design

I have been somewhat delayed recently, waiting on parts to arrive and trying to figure out how to power my Consolidated Nintendo console. I have settled on the idea that I would like to have the power supply for the cartridge based systems combined, and since I will have a Wii power supply nearby anyway I plan on using that. I do not intend to power each system simultaneously, rather only one can be on at a time. This prevents the circuit from overloading if the current gets too high, and there will be a central A/V out anyway so there's no point in having multiple on at a time.

Because I am new with circuit design, what turned out to be a rather simple power supply design took me quite a while to come up with as I spent alot of time reading up on the components.

Here are the specs:
Power Input: 12v 3.7A Wii Power Supply

Power Output(s):

3.3v 2A N64 - 1

12v 1A N64 - 2

5v 1A SNES (RetroDuo)

5v 1A NES (NOAC)

The N64 requires two different voltage inputs simultaneously, one at 3.3v where most of the processing and current goes, then another at 12v, but only around 800mA. The other systems run off of 5v and 1A should be sufficient current. I have added fuses to prevent an overload. The intent is if more than one system is powered at the same time a fuse may blow. This design also assumes that the Wii will be unplugged while the Cart based systems are plugged in.

I am going to be posting this on a game console hacking board to see if I can get some feedback if this is a workable circuit and will not be too much of a fire hazard.

--Dan

Sidebar: Arcade Project from a While Ago

I decided to write a post to document one of my previous projects that had not been broadcast over the internets yet. So here it is in summary:

I found an old Arcade Cabinet by the side of the road(Some lame game I had never heard of) and decided to make something cool out of it. The end goal was a dedicated Arcade cabinet but I didn't want to spend alot of money. I have seen numerous projects where people have built MAME (computer arcade emulator) into arcade cabinets, but these tend to be costly and complex (however they can include 1000's of games). My simpler solution was to hard wire one of those plug and play TV games into the cabinet with arcade quality controls.

With this in mind picked up one of those plug and play TV games that has Ms Pacman, Galaga, Pole Position, Mappy, and Xevious. I then proceeded to order some arcade controls, a few buttons, a joystick, and some player 1/player 2 buttons.

After gutting and cleaning out the old arcade cabinet I repainted it and mounted a 19" TV inside.

The control panel came next, using 3/4 " MDF board I drilled out and installed the controls and wired in hookup wire to connect to the game board.
I dismantled the TV game and removed the original control leads to replace them with my new controls. Thankfully the manufacturer labeled the PCB so soldering the new controls was a snap. I also replaced the battery power source with a hardwired power source.
The end result is a cool arcade cabinet (now in my sons bedroom, he is the luckiest 4 year old ever). As you can tell it could still needs some finishing work (bezel to cover the monitor harness, fancy marquee on top etc...)

It was a fun project and we still play it regularly. I of course maintain the high score in Galaga, while my wife cleans up in Ms Pac-man.

--Dan

Cutting down the SNES

Progress continues...Most of my parts have arrived, and I got an old broken NES that I will cut down (the one I drew all over is my brothers and since it is actually working I didn't want to cut it up). The aluminum panel came today and all my switches and connectors arrived Saturday.

I ran into some trouble on the Retro Duo with the NES cart slot not working well (it doesn't release cartridges well and it looks like some pins are bad). As a result I decided to separate the SNES board and focus on that for now. I may end up getting another NES component so the two are completely separate. There are a few manufacturers that make a NES on a single chip and they are relatively cheap. This will also simplify the switches and power source.

So I pulled off the bottom connector to the NES board which is not needed for the SNES function, I then wired in the A/V out and 5V in direct to the SNES board. In addition I removed the switch and wired it to always on (I will control the power from the source) and bypassed the reset switch.

This also cuts the board down very small, I think next I will set the SNES aside and start some work on the N64, once I get the power and A/V off of the N64 I will try mounting both to the Aluminum panel I picked up.

The NES board has been removed with the A/V and Power directly connected to the SNES board (thank you Retro Duo for labeling the board). In the lower left corner where I hardwired the switch to have the SNES always on and bypass the reset.

I was happy to see that everything still worked after tearing the whole thing apart. The Retro Duo is surprisingly sturdy.

--Dan

The Carnage Begins

Well, I have gathered my major components and started tearing down the consoles. I have found that the motherboards of the N64 and Retro Duo are quite small and should fit well. I have also ordered some smaller parts. A few original NES power/reset switch assemblies that I will relabel as power buttons for each console, I think I will just have one reset switch hooked up to all of them though, and at 20 cents a piece I had to get 10 of them (you know, i could accidentally break one and need a spare....or find other stuff that needs retro Nintendo push buttons). I also ordered a 12"x24" sheet of 1/16" aluminum panel that I will cut into the mounting board for the cartridge based systems so they are completely separate from the Wii...hopefully this will also act as a bit of a heat shield.

Here are some pictures of the motherboards, I think the next step will be to rewire the switches.


Here is the Retro Duo board. Controller ports look like they will be easily extend-able since they are not attached to the board directly I just need to extend the cables. The power switch (upper right) and the reset switch (just south of that) will need to be moved, I think I will also pull the A/V out so I can consolidate them with the N64.

I was surprised how small this was. The PCB is only 6.5" wide. I will have heat sinks attached to those chips though since they put off a good amount of heat.

--Dan