Cube of Letters

In an effort to post more often, with half baked semi successful projects rather than comprehensive completely solved ones, I give you:

The idea was to take each letter and extrude it, cutting it out of the square. Having three letters lead to some juicy geometry on the inside…

The fail part is, I could not dig the supports out. A thin piece snapped off as I struggled with it. I would have to print it in sections and glue it together.

Also note that the interior has shells that are not joined to the exterior.

My next attempt is/will be a coaster. Of my name. I would like to get it such that I can print it without supports.

Tools used for this: Blender.
Workflow: add text, convert to mesh, remove doubles, mesh cube, Boolean, difference, export to STL, net fab, repair, export part.

The Prius X-Dashboard

My car’s dashboard has.. mutated. It grew .. stripes. Precision stripes.

What? Why?

Well, it’s a 2010 Prius. They added the “guide” marks to the rear backup camera starting in model year 2012. I wanted guidelines. So I lined the car up in our wonderful parking lot somewhat like this:

And I used some model stripe tape (Michael’s) to mark it on my rear view monitor:

Repeat on the other side, and now I have a much more precise backup camera. And I didn’t draw on the display.

BAMF! (the sound, not the acronym)

3D Printing Adventures

It has been forever since I posted. Life has been happening – first, my we had a vacation in Florida. Then, my step father died. Then, my cat died. And I’ve been trying to catch up ever since. I’m not caught up yet.

Just before all of that happened, though, I had started playing with a 3D printer. I left off with almost getting a successful print of a LEGO block.

Since then, an abbreviated list of what I have learned:

PLA is Awesome

It is much, much easier to print larger parts with PLA. It works very well on the Solidoodle:

Brought the extruder temperature down to 175 or so (hint: watch for signs of oozing as the extruder warms up, and you’ll know what the safe zones are)
Print cold on Blue painters tape. However, for larger prints, they do peel slightly, so its sucked the tape off the printbed before.
Print 85C on heated bed. Sticks VERY well, to the point of ripping Kapton tape off for big prints.
PLA holds more heat in, so it stays soft and droopy for longer than ABS. Thus, adding an external fan (thank you Step Son for giving me your extra fan) cools it down quicker and prevents drooping and lets the layers continue to look crisp.
PLA smells better.

The Best Infill was Rectilinear 20%

I did the same print over and over with different types of infill. The best, most consistent one was rectilinear – which ends up looking like a bunch of squares. The other fancy ones.. HilbertCurve, OctaSpiral – cool ideas, but very often ended up with unsupported infill layers, which lead to lots of droop and havok on the inside.

This was partially motivated by large ABS prints lifting all the time, I was trying to figure out “least infill possible”, but in the end, PLA solved that problem.

Home Depot did not carry M3 screws

And thus I had to special order those from Amazon. This is to get a longer Z-stop screw so that I could clip on a glass plate or other such thing to the print bed.. so that I can prep a plate, rather than prepping a print bed, for a print. I’ve heard that ABS on Slurry on Glass and PLA on heated glass are awesome. I still need to get some glass – a friend suggested picture frames. #pendingExperiment

Printing Models and Finish Them Is Fun

So far, I’ve done two Yoda’s, R2-D2, a Dalek, a Weeping Angel, and a TARDIS.

I’ve done some painting with Enamels now; I have more to learn about Acrylic and base coats #pendingExperiment.

The best part is giving them away (if I don’t want to paint them myself) to other people who would love them and keep them and call them George.

And that’s all the time I have to write for now. Later!

Watching TreeHouse Videos Quickly

In November, I signed up to be a mentor for Code Louisville. It’s a program where people use TeamTreeHouse (as made available to anybody living or working in Jefferson County by Louisville Free Public Library) to study up on stuff, and work on projects, and if they need help, they can ask the mentors during their weekly class/lab.

For the first Two Months, I stayed current on all the videos, and quizzes, at TeamTreeHouse. You can see that from my profile on the right.

Unfortunately, I do not have the 10 hours per week necessary to do this properly. (Well, 5 hours for watching videos, and another 5 for working on a personal project).

I still want to keep up (so that I know what the course is teaching the students, so I can help the students when they have questions), so now my mission is to stay up on videos, while not taking the quizzes that come after each video, in the most efficient way possible. (Note: possibly Windows specific, YMMV):

Step 1: Subscribe to the iTunes feed.

Every video lives somewhere like this:

Go up to the “course” level URL instead: , and there you will find the magic button:

The actual link address is something like this:

itpc://teamtreehouse.com/library/javascript-foundations.rss?feed_token=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

Which, if you convert it to http, and get it in a browser, looks like this:

I.E. It’s a plain old RSS feed. However, the itpc:// causes it to open in iTunes as a podcast, where you get this:

Note. At first, you don’t get all the episodes – I had to tell it to “show old episodes”, and I had to click the little cloud icon to download each one .. there’s probably a way to do that easier. I clicked on each one. I was at work, so it downloaded fairly quickly.

Step 2: Watch them with VLC

Then, instead of watching the episodes with iTunes, I find them on disk, and watch them in VLC. I go as far as to create a VLC playlist to get them in order:

Then, while I’m watching them, I can speed them up:

[ , ]	Slower/Faster in 0.10x increments If the speed gets higher than 4x, it cuts audio out
=	Resume normal speed
Shift-Left-Arrow, Shift-Right-Arrow	3 seconds left or right

I find that watching at 8x, I can tell what the subject matter is fairly easily. If I find something interesting, “=” + a couple of Shift-Left-Arrows, and I watch that at normal speed (or sometimes only double-speed).

I just watched 3 hours of video in an hour. And I don’t think I missed any detail. Nice.

In another half hour, I can catch up to where the class(es) would have me be at.

Seiki 39” 4k TV as a Monitor

Keep in mind that this is 2014; this is the first generation of this monitor; that being said: I would not recommend using this as an all-day development monitor.

The exact item: Seiki Digital SE39UY04 39-inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz LED TV. When it dropped to $405 on Amazon, I jumped at the possibility of using it instead of a portrait 1080p as my main coding window. (Side note: I used CamelCamelCamel to track the price)

It arrived, and it turned out I didn’t have anything that could drive it. I went out and purchased an NVidia 700-level card which had HDMI 1.4 outputs on it.. hooked it all up.. and..

It is HUGE.

And it is Painful.

Problem #1: Refresh Rate

I could not tell at first what was “not right” about it. Eventually, i figured it out – as can be seen from this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf4Op9UspbE]

Low Refresh Rate

As I move a window around on a different monitor, the motion on this monitor lags behind. It might be due to the refresh rate – or it might be due to some kind of latency – but the effect is about the same as using a PC over a somewhat laggy (100ms?) remote desktop connection. [Edit – actually, its more like remote desktoping into a machine, and then running a VM which does not have client tools, and then trying to use that VM. The annoying bit is that I try to move the mouse to a certain spot, but I keep over/undershooting]

The problem is due to HDMI 1.4 only being able to handle a 30hz refresh rate at 4K resolution. HDMI 2.0 would fix this – but this TV does not support it. (yet?) It looks like DisplayPort would handle it, but the TV did not have a DisplayPort input either.

Problem #2: Sheer Size

I am used to snapping a window to full screen, left, or right.

With the right software (Winsplit Revolution), I can snap a window to various parts of a 6×2 quadrant as well.

Either way, snapping windows on this monitor did not work for me. The only place which felt “right” was snapped to the middle column in the monitor – everything else was too far away, too high, or too big. I would have to physically move my keyboard to once side of the monitor or the other, to focus on a window that was snapped there. (Given, I have progressive lenses, and pretty bad astigmatism; perhaps younger eyes would not be troubled as much)

Instead, the solution was to revert to non-maximized, non-snapped windows – keep each window as small as you can get away with, and they all just “float” in monitor space. The monitor truly is big enough for it.

Problem #3: Bifocal Nightmare

I have bifocals. Actually, no, I have progressive lenses .. the limit as number of focals approaches infinity. With my bifocals on, I could NOT crane my neck up high enough to actually focus on the top of the monitor, from a 3 foot distance or so.

So, I switched to my computer glasses. Single focal length across the entire frame. It mostly worked, except.. the left and right sides of the monitor – were far enough away – that if the center was in focus, then they were not. The monitor really is that big.

Watching 4k Video on YouTube

Wildlife in Ultra 4k – The picture was amazing.

Elysium Trailer – Fail (for me)

Once again, the 30hz made it pretty unbearable. However, I have this same problem at most movie theaters as well – whenever a camera pans, I can see individual frames, it is not “smooth motion” for me. I might just be defective.

Conclusion

Don’t buy one … yet. Not till there’s a way to do 4K at 60Hz into it. Or if you are going to, first spend a day as follows:

Bring your refresh rate on your 1080p monitor down to 30hz, and leave it there for the day.
Move your monitor away from your normal line of sight – to about 45 degrees away from where your keyboard and mouse “face”. [Edit: don’t point it at yourself! Leave it angled away from your line of sight.]
Change all your fonts to be really small. Really really small.

If you can live with these things.. or if you have a need to work with really large excel spreadsheets, which this was a BOSS at), then go ahead and buy one. For $400, its pretty awesome.

I’ll be shipping it back on Wednesday (after the snow storm). Back to just 3 monitors for now.. with the middle one in portrait mode. I’ll live.

Solidoodle: Printing a Lego-Like Block: Success

First, what are the actual measurements we must match? Taking multiple measurements:

A: Diameter of a nubby: 4.92mm, 4.90, 4.89, 4.89
B: Width and Length of a 2×2 square: 15.84mm, 15.89mm
C: Height of a brick (ie, 3x a thin): 9.57mm, 9.59mm

Then, using NetFabb against the model (click image to for link to ThingiVerse):

A: 4.8mm
B: 15.8 mm
C: 9.6 mm

My guess is that they reduced the size of the nubby because it would ooze a bit; the other two dimensions appear to be about right.

And the printed out ones:

Slice	Scale	Flowrate	A	B	C	Fit?
0.3mm	1.0	0.6	4.67, 4.82 4.69, 4.79	16.07 15.93	9.64 mm	Very Loose

Interesting! The nubbies are coming out a bit smaller, but the part is a bit bigger. The height is within 1 layer of where it could or should be.

Now, I want the part to print out nice and snug. Its hard to measure, but it looks like the receptor diameter for tne nubby is about 4.8mm – ie, they’re using a flex of about 0.1mm to keep things snug. So, I want to print out with a diameter above 4.8mm.

Lets try something at Flowrate 0.65, just to see what happens:

Slice	Scale	Flowrate	A	B	C	Fit?
0.3mm	1.0	0.65	5.02, 4.8, 4.95, 4.86	15.93 15.84	9.73	Pretty good!

And what do you know! It fits! Pretty snug-gly!

Although, due to a hole in the original .STL file, the entire bottom of the piece got replaced with a solid face.

Mission Accomplished. 0.65 might be the answer, although it disagrees with the single-wall-thickness calibration.

Solidoodle 2 Pro 3D Printing: Frustrated

I am having difficulty

My Lego-like pieces are not sticking to each other, let alone to regular Lego’s.
Many many of my prints are curling up from the bed.
My 4? 5? attempts at an iPhone case so far have been incorrectly sized.
My hexagonal infill is not pretty.

Here is What I have Learned

When printing really large parts, be aware that ABS filament shrinks. For example, the XY(Z) thing above was 2” while printing (measured with caliper), but as it cooled from 210C down to 27C, it shrunk to 1.98”.
Enclosures are very important at keeping heat in, which helps a model not-shrink too quickly. Quick shrinking can lead to bends in the structure.
As the ABS shrinks, in larger parts, the top shrinkage can pull the bottom part off the bed. There are ways around this.. rafts, permiters, skirts, windex cleaning, hairspray sticking, kapton tape, and the heated bed.. As of yet, i haven’t figured out which combination of things will get me a reliable bigger print.
The Doodle was pretty well configured when i got it. And my tinkering has made it worse.

Of Flow Rates and Stepper Motors, Oh My

As of right now, I’m refusing to learn how to flash/reprogram the eeprom in the doodle. Luckily, the number of steps for the X Y and Z axes are almost dead on. However, the filament stepper is not – its pulling definitely more than 120mm for every 100mm it ought to be pulling.

Luckily, there’s a setting in slic3r that accommodates that – Solidoodle’s config files shipped with a default 0.6 ratio. The result, I thought, was a bit blobby while doing infill. Also, all the documentation said I should have a 0.4mm nozzle, but the configuration was set at 0.5mm; likewise, I was using 1.75mm plastic, but the config said 1.68.

So, i “fixed” them. And slowly, as I scream in 40-minute-delayed frustration, I’m setting them all back.

Luckily, that’s all I’ve had to deal with. Here’s all the things that Solidoodle did RIGHT with the printer, that I have not had to deal with.

Correctly configured stepper motor sizes
Correct power levels for the X/Y/Z/etc motors.. potentiometers.. something something.
Belts are correctly tensioned
Bed is Level
Bed is appropriate distance away.
Nozzle assembly, no jams.

So, GOOD JOB Solidoodle. You did good work here.

Dealing with Spooling

The provided spool holder – bit of a nightmare. It mounts to the back of the printer, but with the XY going all over the place, and with a brand new spool, the slack allows the cable to “fall over” on itself, and it gets wrapped up on the spool handle. My initial solution was to hang a bungee cord from the rafters (I’m in the basement) and run the filament through that – so that gravity is applying a tension for me.

My wife came up with an even better idea: Suspending the Spool from the ceiling with the bungee cord.

Lost My Sense of Direction .. Finding It

I feel like I’ve lost my sense of direction. Where am I trying to go with this printer, and how do I get there?

Part 1: An Education

I’m definitely getting that. Hoo boy. And I’m glad for it. At some time.. next week? next month? I’ll be giving a Lunch and Learn at work on some, or all, of this stuff.. and taking the printer in to work so that other folks can use it, possibly to print their own printers. After what I’ve experienced, if I was to do this again, I’d plunk down the extra money and get an even more pre-built solution – like the Doodle ‘4. I hate messing with stuff. Good luck you guys.

Part 2: Specific Goals

To clear my head up .. which way do I need to / want to go? I need to get this back to being a pleasurable experience, even if I’m failing along the way. (As my wife would say, stop being a booger!)

I Want To [Print]	Why?	To Get there, I need to:	Priority
Super Serious (not) Lego Minifig Scale model of our current house, possibly with cute little furniture.	Something inside me.. about representing reality. Its why I do video as well.	Figure out how to print large prints without warping.	C5
An iPhone case	Because then I can print customized cases for my friends and love on them. Q has already requested a Dragonball Z case.	Get better at exact sizes, large model heat shrinkage, and printing large prints without warping.	B3
Lego-compatible Blocks	Because I’d like to incorporate lego nubs on my models, so they are cool.	Work on wall widths and flow rates, print some calibration pieces that “ought” to stick together, and work on bed lift	B2
Super Action Figure	For my nephew Cam, and for my inner 8-y-o.	Just make time to print a LOT of prints. And precision printing as well.	C4
Pendant thingies	Because its something my wife can doctor up and make into cool stuff.	Already there. Just need some design work in Sketchup. Which means I need a design from my wife of what the border should look like.	Q1
Have things figured out enough so that Brandon and Doug can print their printer parts.	I like being of service and enabling people to investigate cool technologies	Large print bed lifting and precision.	B1.5

So What is Next? (Given unlimited time)

Play with their 0.6 ratio default, +/- for More or Less ooze. Figure out where the parts DONT fit, and where they DON’T stay together, and go halfway.
Double check bed leveling and clearance.
Print in 0.3mm instead of 0.4mm for a bit.
Do some Pendants so that I have a sense of accomplishment.
Print some connector parts, get the connections worked out.
Retry the Lego’s after connectors are connecting.
Retry the iPhone Case – with skirt, with raft?, add hairspray, foam core heat shielding, no scaling – measure – apply scaling and retry
Retry a 2” or 3” print, try to figure out bed lift. (Skirt, raft?, hairspray, heat shielding)
Take over the world.

Make it so, #1.

3D Printer: Solidoodle: Day #1

I received my Solidoodle 2 Pro yesterday. I’ll spare the unboxing video.. suffice it to say, no instructions, but I knew that. The instructions are online at http://www.solidoodle.com/start-here/

I had trouble with the print drivers at first. I gave up, and switched to a laptop (the laptop that will go with the 3d printer to work when it goes) and it worked fine there.

Here are my first four prints (from left to right)

I didn’t have the printer homed correctly. Ie, the printer thought it was at 0,0, but really it was at 100,50 or something.. so as it printed, it would hit the physical limit, and throw the print head off, and each successive layer moved out further.
I didn’t trim the ooze of plastic from the print head before it started printing, and that little strand of filament bunched up on the build plate.. which made an obstacle for the print head to bump into.. and then the build popped up off the plate.
The build popped up off the plate during printing.
Having borrowed my wife’s $18 Hairspray (she’s getting me cheaper hairspray today), I finally got a good print. Thank you beautiful wife.

The print is a request from my nephew Iman (@PokeIman_Master) .. it’s a Legend of Zelda Tri-Force. This was done at 0.3mm resolution (the 3rd roughest).. you can see some of the lines don’t quite meet. Its not 100% solid.. I used a 10%? 20%? honeycomb fill pattern on the inside. Supposedly took 16cm of filament.. 21 minute print time, probably $0.20 of material. I think I’ll be doing the same print again at 0.2mm after I do some calibration prints.

The print quality as compared to the Makerbot2 at LVL1 .. not as good, fer sure. It might be the table I have it on (it shakes while printing), it might be the speed the printheads are travelling at, etc – there’s some tuning to be done. Its technically the same print nozzle size, I should be able to improve quality.

I’m a wee bit excited. It’s a good thing I’m not working from home today, I wouldn’t be working. As it is, I need to stop writing this at get back to being billable.

Prius: So Far

I recently picked up a 2010 Toyota Prius III. Here’s what I think about it.

Feature Review

Feature / Details	Reaction	I Wish…
45MPG in WINTER!	BIG SMILE on my face.	No regrets. Looking forward to better numbers in summer.
SKS (Smart Key System) I don’t need to put a key in the ignition; just have it on me as I approach the car (Driver’s side only in my trim)	I LOVE this. I’ve started trusting that the Key is In My Inside Pocket, and just go use the car. The best part is not having to fumble to unlock the car as I walk to it.	The better trim levels have this on all doors and the hatch; I’ve found myself wishing I had the upgraded trim – like when approaching the car with groceries.
Having an Electric Motor. Note that any power to the electric motor was at some point power from gas; either recycled from the brakes, or directly charged from the gas engine.	Parking Lot Stalking with Cool Whizzing Noises, up to 35 mph (slow acceleration) Dead silence when stopped.	LOVE IT! It would be nice to have a larger electric motor; I believe the Plug-In-Hybrid does this.
Navigation System	I’ve had better in a Garmin. $150 to update unless I can find a year old DVD on eBay. DVD-based NAV system; 2D only; some voice command stuff NICE: exclusion zones.	Regretting getting this option; however, having a NAV screen built in is nice. I do like the use of the same screen for all the other functions (Bluetooth, Sirius, rear camera)
Backup Camera	Using it every day! Very good idea of where the back end of my car is.. little things like stopping before backing out of the driveway and pulling through parking spots.	I might be adding a little marker to denote where “center” is on my screen. Clear plastic overlay, of course.
Premium Speakers	Maybe a little tinny (I had to turn treble down), but the Bass is nice and full.	No regrets. And the dial goes up past 11. I’ve had it up to 42.
Sirius XM	Disappointment! The signal fades in and out all the time; at first, the sound was worse than FM. Also, the SCAN system can’t jump past gaps in blocks of channels.	PriusChat (link) yields that the antenna is crap. Can be replaced. I might punt this feature entirely, just get a portable player with its own antenna.
XM Nav Traffic It adds an overlay of traffic and provides road construction warnings.	Currently in a free trial mode. Will continue to use and evaluate. It only covers the interstates around here, which I mostly stay off.	Probably won’t keep this subscribed.
Bluetooth Integrated Phone	As long as I initiate Siri from the phone, I’m fine. I avoid the Bluetooth phone controls on the car steering wheel; they only dial phone calls. I hardly ever do phone calls. The in-car phone audio quality is wonderful.	I wish there was a dedicated Siri button. The car acts as both a Phone-receiver and as a audio-player for the phone; there’s some confusion when it tries to control the phone and Siri gets involved.
Bluetooth Integrated Music (This was streaming from Pandora)	I’ve used it with Pandora and some music playlists so far. Have to be careful, as soon as I select the BT tab, it starts playing music on the phone – not sure which app sometimes. (answer: the last app that was playing music)	I sometimes miss text messages because there is no ding on the phone anymore (if I’m not listening to music on the phone). i might need to turn auto-connect off and try that for a bit.
CD / Mp3	The 3-CD-Changer loads behind the NAV screen; I haven’t played with this yet (and may not, as I have my iPhone)	I’m thinking about putting together some DVD’s of my favorite MP3’s and leaving them in my car
Double Glove Compartments	Molly gets the top one, I get the bottom one. No more jockeying for space. Have to be careful when opening the bottom one, it just drops (and hits Molly’s knees)	LOVE IT! No regrets
Heads Up Display – Speed	I like it. Although its not that much different from having it behind the wheel. Digital readout takes a little getting used to.. can’t “feel” the needle move.	I wish it were easier to turn some of the detail off – there’s a separate HUD button in later years (2012?)
Heads Up Display – HSI	Very necessary for doing Pulse-and-Glide (link) and other Prius driving modes	Mine has some screen burn in from this screen. It interferes with the next screen:
Heads Up Display – Consumption	At first I did it with 1 minute intervals; then I relaxed down to looking at 5 minute intervals.
Heads Up Display – Trip History	Every time I fill up for gas, and I reset trip A, I’ll get a new bar! I love it!	I have this history available for both Trip A and Trip B. My plan at the moment is Trip A = Gas Tank; Trip B = road trip.
Heads Up Display – Energy Monitor	Now that I have a feel for the car, I don’t use this display.
EV, ECO, Power, and Normal modes	These only change pedal response; Ie, how far do you have to push in to register a certain level of “driver demand”. I use Eco Mode to fine-tune when doing fancy Prius things; If I want to feel peppy I switch back to Normal.	If you put pedal to the metal, you always get the same power. Image source: priuschat
Solar Package	Supposedly, runs the vent fan to keep the car cool during hot Arizona Days. Its Winter. I haven’t tried it.	Louisville doesn’t have much direct sunlight. Cool idea, but I’m not sure i did the right thing paying for a car which had this package.
Sunroof	I love opening the sunroof and windows during summer.	no regrets
Dedicated USB Port	I use this to charge my phone; leaving 2 12V slots still available for other stuff.	no regrets
Non-circular Steering Wheel	I find I like it. It gives me a larger steering wheel with good leg room, and when I’m turning it, it has a sturdy grip on the bottom. The slight difference in feel is a good non-visual feedback of where I am in a turn.	no regrets
Push-button Park	I love being able to go from Drive into Park without stopping in Reverse. Use this all the time at the Sonic Drive Through line when getting my wife some Tea.	no regrets
Two rear windows	I like it! in some situations, I can position my eyes so that the bar obscures bright headlights behind me.	no regrets
Climate Control	It runs on electricity, not a belt – so the Gas Engine does not need to be on. So, I could leave the car in Park for an extended time, with climate control, without wasting gas.	no regrets Note: Heat depends on the engine being warm.

Stuff I do not have on the car that I would consider in a future car

SKS on all doors – definitely. I might even do the home-replacement-of-door-handles to make this happen. Maybe.
Lumbar Support – this comes in at the Prius IV level and up. Goes with Heated Seats most of the time.
Auto Cruise Control – If I drove the interstate for my commute, I would use the snot out of this. It is basically a “slow down and follow” option while you’re cruising. (I use cruise control all the time)
Parking Assist – I doubt I’d pay for this package, but I’d sure like to use it at least once. It automatically steers your car into a tight spot.
Lane Keep Assist – It watches the road, and if it finds you drifting over, it moves you back to center. This would be good for me, as apparently my steering drifts if I’m looking around / at something else (according to my wife).
Holy Shit Don’t Die Brakes – It watches the road, if a collision is unavoidable, it does the best it can to kick the brakes in and pre-tighten seatbelts. There’s a warning: It might get confused if you pass somebody on a curve.
Power Seat Adjustment – Its a simple thing. Its no big deal. But its nice. And its also only in the advanced trim levels.

Summary

I like this car. I had a slight case of buyer’s remorse on the options I didn’t get, but that’s fading pretty quickly.

Planned Modifications

WeatherTech Floor Mats and Cargo Mats – at some point. http://www.weathertech.com/product-education-center/floorliner-digitalfit/gallery/
Antlers – when I find them. They are somewhere in the basement. (not a picture of my car, but close) I checked the basement. Not found. Maybe next year!
Upgraded NAV DVD if I can find one for under $50. (Not having the Westport road exit is annoying)
Separate Satellite Radio System (maybe)	That maybe is growing smaller and smaller. I think it might be replaced with a Pandora One subscription.

Selling and Buying a Car in Louisville

For the last week I’ve been doing a lot of Car Analyses. Some of it was trying to figure out how to judge one car over another; another was visiting my history of cars, and determining satisfaction, and pinpointing my motives. This is what I’ve figured out; I’ll start with the most useful first:

My Experiences with Places to Sell or Buy a Car in Louisville

CarMax

Will usually buy at the bottom end of KBB trade in value, unless <= 50k, then gives a decent price

Will sell at above KBB Value. *

* = better quality cars than we’ve bought anywhere else.

Cottage Car Sales

Better buy value than CarMax

Sells at below KBB Value usually (but small inventory and some quirks)

Sam Swope Honda World

Best value for the Honda that we sold them

Haven’t bought one from them myself.

Disclaimer: commentary above is based on 1 statistical sample in some cases and may not be significant.

In the end, we got $2000 more for our 2008 Honda Accord Coupe from Sam Swope Honda World than we would have at either Cottage or CarMax. Terry Smith there was very professional, courteous, and prompt; no pressure of any kind; I would definitely do business with him again.

Evaluating the Worth of a Car To Me

When I was in the throes of trying to make a decision between a X and a Y, I needed some way to evaluate the cars. Here are the tools that I found:

UsedAutoGraph.com	Mileage vs Sales Price Active Listings vs Active Auctions Overall value decline How long does the car last Popularity
http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2010/reliability.html	Its somewhat buried in the Edmunds website, and really i should give a link to identifix, however, look at that URL. I could very quickly look up any make/model/year and find years to avoid.
http://autos.jdpower.com/research/Honda/Civic/2010/ratings.htm	Another awesome URL, gave a quick overview of the quality of the car.
Car Max Inventory	Pictures of cars. Mileage. Feature availability.

I also used a formula like this:

Consider a 2010 Honda Civic EX for $16k with 42k Miles on it.
According to UsedAutoGraph, it holds its value well (should not die) till 100k, probably even viable to 200k. Knowing myself, I’ll find a reason to upgrade, so lets say 150k miles instead. Approx end sale price then is $5K.
So I would get 108k miles for approx $11k, yielding around 10 cents a mile from the purchase price.
at MPG of 25/36, I would get about 30mpg out of it, at $3.50/gallon yields 3.50/30 = 11 cents per mile gas price.
So the car would be about 21 cents per mile, for me.

I did this same analysis for the cars we had owned till now. I always thought that the Honda Pilot that we bought was a complete gas hog.. averaging 15 mpg.. however, the sale price vs the buy price made it BETTER than the Ford Focus that we also had. I would not have thought that. (Then again, the Focus had an encounter with a Deer which dropped its resale considerably)

Picking through CarMax Inventories

We pretty much knew we were going to buy the next car through CarMax, or at least use a CarMax car as the baseline to compare against. My general approach was:

Use them for test drives to figure out which car we want (year differences, trim level differences, lie down in the trunk of the car, etc)
Assume that we will NOT be buying the car from the local (Louisville) CarMax
- This freed me from the necessity to make the decision NOW.
Search their inventory for the right mileage, color, options nationwide. We could also look at the CarFax history (for free) and see where the car used to live (avoiding Florida due to Salt damage).
Spend $99-$299 and arrange a transfer of the vehicle to Louisville.
- At this point, the car is locked in as mine. But it might take a day to three weeks to execute.
- This gives me time to reflect and really decide if this is the car for me.
- Good thing, because that Ford Escape that I ordered.. ended up having second thoughts and choosing not to buy it.
- To CarMax’s benefit – I cancelled the order fast enough, they had not loaded it on the truck, so they gave my money back (they didn’t have to). (Well, i was transferring a different car, so they moved it to the second transfer).
The car hasn’t arrived yet; I’m in that reflecting place. So I can’t say what happens next; but it will probably involve test driving, and then buying this car.

Filtering CarMax Inventories

They have a LOT of cars, with a LOT of options. Here’s how I tackled that, in an Excel Spreadsheet:

Initial search: No filter, just the make/model/year range, sorted by price, and or mileage. Pull the first 10 into the spreadsheet. Get a baseline, the corners of the grid. This is the least / most amount of money I would spend on that car type. Chart it. Bubble chart using a function to show age by bubble size.

Successive Searches: I narrow it down by features, getting more and more selective. I pull each of those into the spreadsheet, but as a different series. I layer the series so that the more specific ones drown out the less specific ones.

Result:

Using this approach, I could easily see that if I wanted X set of options, the lowest miles for the price was at Y, but if I added Z option to it, then that drove the price up by Y2. Ie, how much car am I willing to spend on. Note that I inverted circle sizes, so that newer cars were bigger circles.

Note that while filtering in CarMax, I really like how they show numbers next to features. This helps me figure out what are “standard” options and/or are packaged with each other. In this screenshot example, (106) is standard across everything, while the Satellite Radio Ready is a much more selective. I got pretty good at it, being able to choose 3-4 options that narrowed down the car to exactly what I was looking for.

Summary

Its been a crazy week. Its been a fun research process. In the end, I have a car on order that I cannot wait to get my hands on. I even made a picture of it my desktop background.

I hope some of these tools are useful to you in your future. Enjoy!