Today I had to figure out how to read temperature from an Omega HH506RA thermocouple signal conditioner/datalogger. The HH506RA is a nice little unit that reads temperature from two thermocouples (type K, J, N, T, R, S, or E). It can display the temperature on its LCD screen and communicate them to a PC over RS232 or USB. The PC connection is optically isolated, which is very nice because RS232 and USB are both notorious for causing noise problems via ground loops.

I’ve put information on how to communicate with the unit up here for future reference.

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I got some padded shorts last week, which was definitely a good move. Things were already painful enough last weekend after a 39 mile ride. This week I went for 45 miles on the same route and felt pretty good through the whole thing. Well, I felt like I was going to keel over and die after 40 miles, but at least my ass wasn’t in pain too.

The stats: 45 miles, average speed 13.1 mph (half a mph better than on last week’s 39 mile ride!), max speed 27.6 mph again (downhill of course), riding time 3h23, total time something like 4 hours.

Once you get off the bike path, people get a lot friendlier. I got a bunch of nods from other cyclists biking around Carlisle. While struggling my way up at 8-9 mph what the CRW site describes as a “mild rolling” hill I even got a big smile and a wave.

Click more for the map.

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