Pipe Organ part 4

In case you missed the earlier blogs about the Pipe Organ I have described the various groups of pipes in our new organ: one group already in use located in a former Sunday school room upstairs above the conference room can be heard behind the new grillwork over the altar space called the “Swell chamber”.

Currently the on-going work on the opposite side of the front of the Sanctuary in the room just off the Choir Practice room; it is called the “Choir Chamber” near the top of that stairwell.  If you’ve glanced into the room at the top of the stairs, you may notice the large “wind trunks” where the air flows up from the basement.   You would also notice a number of “wind chests” that feed the air supply out to a row of pipes. As of yet, the pipes have not been assembled into that Choir Chamber.  In the next few weeks, we are looking forward to having the pipes appear like a spring phenomenon of the wind chests growing a whole crop of new pipes and to hear their voices emanating from the room.

A wind chest provides a row of holes for the organ pipes to sit on. The wind chest also manages the air flow to go up to the individual pipe to make it play when the right key was pressed on the keyboard at the organ console.

The pipes for a given row or a “rank” will play if the stop had been pulled out for that group of pipes (see my previous newsletter description for which “stops” will be available with our new Choir Division).

 
To be sure we all appreciate the construction project, which is part of this organ installation, I have included photos of the airway from under our new Choir Chamber.

On each wind chest a large air supply comes into the row of pipes and awaits the key press which activates a tiny magnet. That switch activates the pipe by inflating a leather pouch that allows air to flow up into the pipe. An individual relay switch (in a bank of relays) controls which one will let the channel of air open for the flow to the selected pipe.

Jim & Eric in Great Division, and Pedal Division with Wind Chests in background

While it may seem like too much information it seemed to me that the whole organ operation begins with the wind source, which is located in the Church basement. Alarge motor with an enormous blower attached provides the wind which is fed up thru the floor to feed the multiple divisions of the organ in multiple rooms. The blower is connected to the main wind trunk and the supply of air gets sent to multiple ranks of pipes at the same time. The wind trunk comes into the Choir Chamber as an 8” flexible tube and then splits into smaller 3”, 4”, or 6” piping in flexible tubes or PVC pipes (they are literally the same as are used for residential drain pipes).

Choir Chamber, Wind path
and Digital Control

The air supply comes primarily from a large blower motor in the basement, with a big three phase 220v motor to supply the stops and ranks that the organist chooses. The organist can simultaneously select multiple sets of pipes and multiple notes (but, of course, not all of the pipes at the same time!).

While the airflow up to the Choir Chamber is not very interesting, it is a vital part of a new organ installation. It is just a plywood box, but the main wind “trunk” gives a distribution method to the smaller pipes feeding into each wind chest for a set of pipes.

Wind Trunk construction

The main wind “trunk” provides airflow into each wind chest, the PVC pipe, or Flex pipe tubing according to the need: sometimes 3” or 4” but can be as large as 6” to feed a multi voice rank that has larger pipes. All of the air pipes are sized according to the types of organ pipes they supply and the demand for the air pressure into those pipes.

PVC and Flex tubing,
provides wind into the Pipes

Some (such as the French Horn, and Tromba ranks) require higher air pressure, and the air is run as a separate line.
To summarize, the groups of pipes each have wiring into their wind chest that controls which pipes will be activated; and each group of pipes needs to have their wind supplied into the row of pipes. With those two resources, it is just a matter of delivering the signals from the Pipe Organ Console into the chamber. The notes the organist plays on the keyboard are transformed into the music we hear in the sanctuary.
Next week, if things go well, our first few notes in the Choir Chamber, will be able to join those we’ve already been hearing in the Swell Chamber. A few topics I’m still interested in sharing with the newsletter community is the way that different pipes make sound that is similar to flutes, trumpets, or other orchestral voices, while other pipes play sounds we associate with a traditional pipe organ.

I have been organizing a whole series of questions about the organ, and our project of installing the Aeolian Skinner Organ in our church in Barre; as always if you have any questions you’d like me to add – I will include a few of easy ones in my writing; and I was thinking to organize a session after church one Sunday for Eric or maybe Peter to also chime in.

Pipe Organ part 2

To continue from my last article about rebuilding our Pipe Organ, I will keep describing all the various groups of pipes; one group that has been already working is located in an old Sunday school room (above our conference room) which is called “Swell chamber”.

Now, our work has continued for the “Choir Chamber”.  Next time I’ll describe how keyboard notes are played and connect to relays, wiring, electromagnetic, and pneumatic (air pressure) actions to enable the flow of air to an individual pipe.
In short, there are various mechanical, magnetic, and electrical aspects of the action which provide an air source going into a pipe.

For this week’s article, I just wanted to describe the “voices” of the pipe organ to compare those to the “Stops” on our organ console which enables each group of pipes. Pipe organs universally have multiple stops to control which type of instrumental sounds will be heard. Whether it’s an old pump organ, a theater organ, a church organ, or even a huge instrument like the tabernacle organ in Salt Lake City, Utah or so many immense Cathedrals in Europe, they all have multiple “stops” or knobs to pull out which an organist uses to select the sounds we all hear.

 For our new pipe organ’s voices in “Choir Division” here’s a photo of the stops on our console.  

Console “Stops” for the Choir Division

 A stop may be named for woodwind instruments like “Flute”, “Clarinet”, or brass such as “Trumpet” or “French Horn”; they imitate those instruments. The pipes don’t actually include a clarinet reed, or a trumpet shape. Also, you may note a number on the “stop” (the knobs that we pull out) which is a reference to the pipe’s size or length for that specific voice or “rank” (e.g. the 8 means the longest pipe is 8 feet long).  A Principal 4, or the Flute 4, means the pipes are shorter, and will play notes an octave above ‘middle C’ (and, Piccolo 2, plays two octaves above ‘middle C’).

Other stops have names like Dulciana 8, Celesta 4, the Sesquialtera, Unda Maris 8, and “Cor Du Nuit”, so yeah, for some of the names of stops it does help to speak multiple languages like Latin, French or German and a few words of Italian as well. If you don’t know what our rank of Quintadena pipes will sound like you may want to google on it, to see and hear what we have to look forward.

While the photo above makes it clear that none of the pipes are in place yet in the upstairs “Choir Chamber”, there has been a lot of progress in getting the electric wiring setup; there are also blower connections, wind reservoirs and wind trunks that provide airways to feed the rows of holes for each wind chest.

To look a bit closer at location of our Choir Chamber:

The Choir Chamber,
with no pipes installed yet

• The “row” of pipes (each rank) will match the “Stops” from the console.
  We labelled the wooden toe boards to associate the stops at the console to each of these rows of pipes.
• The row of holes in each board are spaced to allow the pipes to be stood in place above the boards (you notice the holes get closer for smaller and smaller pipes).
• There are wires to control each row of pipes (but, not visible in this photo).
• The “wind” trunks and channels to provide air into each row is also supplied underneath the table (but, also not visible);  don’t hesitate to stop by and look!

 In the coming weeks we will repeat this “view” as our work in the Choir Chamber progresses.

I wasn’t sure if it was obvious to the BCC community that the organ Eric has been playing for the past year is active as only one portion of the full organ we will ultimately have at Barre Congregational.

  As I mentioned last time, if you have questions please about any of the information above feel free to call or write (and if I don’t know the answer I will coordinate with Eric and Peter W. to find answers);  we plan to follow-up with additional newsletter details in the coming weeks and will include a few of the most common questions we’ve all been wondering about the organ.

 

Sense

A bit of an update… now that we have a few years worth of experience with our “Sense” monitor having tracked our Electricity consumption, and Solar Power generation.

Current Use — real-time updates for each device

Or, better yet…. is the summaries of “always on” or “unknown” along with some circles for high usage devices when it knows what the device is. And, it quite often does (or, let’s you make intelligent guesses — and, those guesses are often guided by your neighbors and “crowd sources” estimates for other similar devices.

Like, our “Wine Refrigerator” is a guess, but based on similar bar-top units that have a similar pattern of on/off cycles and how much power shows in the load chart over time. The more general histogram over the course of a day, or even over the entire year’s worth is also helpful:

Notice the evening, and specifically at about 7:00pm spikes high when we’ve gotten home from the office.

The year’s trends… are even more striking. Notice in both hourly and monthly examples, it’s the solar power (yellow bars) that are clearest data detail being displayed (in comparison to the green bars of power consumed).

and, Conclusion

more EV travel experiences

A quick visit to Brattleboro VT, at Exit 1 in Vermont on I-91. Roughly speaking, an hour and a half from home; ~90 miles, one way.

We stopped near downtown Brattleboro, based on guidance provided by our Plug-Share App (on iPhone, but also available on Android).

Downtown Brattleboro, VT

Note, the “funnel” icon, is handy — if you’re not careful you may find a Tesla charging station when you don’t own a Tesla. But, even more common scenario is where you’re needing a fast charge (because you want/need to stop for only an hour) you don’t need a 3.3kW or 6.6kW charger; you can filter those out and only search for a 50kW charger.

Yea, there’s a Burger King and even a Hermit Thrush Brewery nearby. But, our destination was the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital.

An EVgo Card, linked to our
family CreditCard makes it easy

The quick hook-up meant we started charging within a few minutes of parking the car… means no fuss ease-of-use. It’s as easy as buying gasoline. Or, let’s just say: if you’ve done it a couple of times.

EVgo, gets an update from the vehicle

The screen, makes it look easy — when the car is plugged in, it can communicate with the charging station to share the approximate time required to get 80% or better for you to be on-your-way (this screen, was captured after the car had already been charging for ~15 minutes).

Now… 70 minutes later:

So, we can make it home.

The dashboard agrees with the CHadeMO (of course)

It’s worth mentioning, that when the car says “213 miles” after having used a fast charge — it’s actual mileage may vary. The Fast Charge percentages drop off more quickly than a regular Charge overnight at home.

The “Fast Charge” cable, and Plug-in Adapter is huge!

In case you haven’t seen the connector, it is huge.

The cost…. on our bill: $20. (ok, yeah — actually $19.90)

Another footnote:

We have noticed a few times, when the second cable for an EV charging station is in use, we can’t get the first one to start charging (until the second owner returns and unplugs!)

But in Brattleboro — we were pleased to see that it allowed us to plug-in and walk away…. and, showed us this screen:

When the other user has completed their charge, ours will commence. Yes, we trust it will work!

And, better yet!! It sent us an email notification — about 15 minutes later, and the charging started.

New SmartHome strip light roll

Right upfront, to clarify: these are for indoor use only!

The low cost product does not require a vendor specific hub, or proprietary gateway in order to use more than one roll. And, by the way: it comes with a little remote control (infra red) and doesn’t need a WiFi or a “smart phone” but claims to work with a proprietary smartphone app, called “Tuya smart” (jury still out, it wasn’t easy/obvious).

We paid: $27 (for the two rolls on one power cord and controller; which gave us 50’ total — good color, and “ok” white. We paid too much, the Amazon price now shows $17.

Initial impression: four pin connector, that plugs into controller has “plus side” which is not marked. (that’s the downside, and the upside: it doesn’t matter, plugging in wrong just meant it didn’t work…. no damage done, flip it around and it works.

I added the “+” to remember the connection side toward the arrow

Yay — works great for “fixed installation” and just power it on, returns to the previous setting. It will remember the last color selected, and brightness, and mode …it’s very easy to use. Set it up, and forget it.

Here’s the instructions (as available from Amazon, from the vendor). It seems like if you power-off, and power on repeatedly…. it should start flashing, but it doesn’t. (I was using the remote control, to “power-off” — but they literally mean: “unplug it” and plug back in again!)

It’s worth pointing out — there’s no indicator light… it’s just the strip of lights that starts flashing. And, furthermore, there is no “reset button” or ANY button at all, just literally unplug the lights, and plug them back in. By the 2nd or 3rd time of plugging them in…. they begin to flash! Continue with the setup instructions 🙂 and, yes … it needs to be a 2.4MHz WiFi, rather than 5MHz.

The “purchase price” on Amazon, should be $17 (I’m going back, to get more strips at that lower price).

Remote works great, App …hasn’t worked yet

The QR code is cute , and very convenient on the controller’s case — but, not necessary if you can remember the name of the App, it comes right up in the App Store by searching for Tuya Smart.

Compare/Contrast: check the IKEA roll of (a) color, or (b) white LED lights in long strip — minus the Voice or App control, but if an on/off external switch is used they compare well.

12-25 all the fuss about conjunction

Jupiter and Saturn – aligning like never before; well, to be clear this did happen 800 years ago, and maybe even again way back at the birth of Christ for those shepards to see.

The “event” even inspired me to install a new astronomy App.

My suggestion, is called Solar Walk2 and works a lot like Star Walk 2 (both Applications are from Vito Technology).

You can “visit a planet”, for example Saturn, and not just recognize the rings, but see all of the moons —

Notice, the close in planets near the sun…. just become a blurr relative to the distances from Jupiter or Saturn. Even if we’ve placed the Sun and inner planets on the other side, you can see the little blue ball that is earth.

I like Solar Walk, because it makes it possible to appreciate the relative distances of things in our solar system. The scale, or perspective of step back far enough to see how tiny our little planet is — and, even how small the Sun is in relation to the furthest planets…. it makes it plausible to take it all in. Like you might need if you were a space traveler hundreds of years in the future.

Back in closer to the Sun, and Earth from “home” we can pan, and Zoom, and look outward, towards Jupiter.

Now, if you travel out toward Jupiter, and see the alignment so that Saturn still beyond (great coincidence, is that Pluto is out beyond them both). It’s another 500 million miles.

The “view” from earth… just over the horizon as the sun sets (well, earth spinning away from the sun)

A feature I really like is the “visivue” tool bar button.

It makes it possible to imagine the details of the planet’s surface while compromising some of the scale accuracy. I love the effect):

More details become clear when you zoom in, to notice the moons, or like the rings around Saturn —

Just a reminder, it’s called: Solar Walk 2….

And, made by the same people that make Star Walk 2. I can’t vouch for the Android version, but I love the iPhone version — and, a $5/year investment that I truly use all year long.

Day One Week one

On the first day, we rested.

No, just kidding … we worked. Diane had received her notification that a new Samsung Galaxy S9-Plus was going to be delivered by 8:00pm Tuesday. So, we were at work (we left a note for the Fed-Ex delivery person, to assure they don’t send it back).

Welcome to the 21st century, and a brand new mobile phone. and we were pretty sure, it would mean it comes before 5pm while we’re away; and the voice mail message made it clear, we should expect the package. If we don’t want to arrange a location to pick it up, we need to leave a signed and dated note that a driver can easily see at our door.

We did all that. Fed-Ex delivered. No fuss, no muss, no bother. Literally three days from when she ordered it; A new phone! (Should we explain that Diane has used a Windows based, Microsoft smart phone for about five years).

Maybe we should also just make clear that our data plan of 2GB per month is almost exclusively used on one device (mine) and that her Windows phone has never consumed even a small fraction of that data allotment.

With an Android “latest technology” from Samsung — that story may change. Truth in story telling: it’s NOT the “latest” because the TV ads have been touting the new Galaxy 10 features. But, even using a Galaxy 9 means the “facial recognition” feature is pretty cool (is that WITH the reading glasses “on” or do you need to remove them?).

In any event, on the first day connecting to a Google account was working within minutes of powering on.

Should we also mention… from the time you power on, the delay before you start using the phone is measured in seconds — that’s pretty quick! Even if the phone were completely off, you could power it up and take a photo within 30seconds.

And, next, connecting on our home’s WiFi was almost as quick – so, we could have used a web browser to immediately ask Google “how to disable Bixbie?”

Who thought a button dedicated to the voice response system was a good idea? I mean, we are getting used to Alexa on our Amazon Echo but still find Siri useless. So, the jury is out on how frustrating the voice attendant can be. Let’s turn it off!

A phone call from Robin (our oldest daughter) and a complete dyed-in-the-wool believer in Google software tools, operating systems, browser, and everything else they make — advises that the auto-assistant is one of the first things that’s needed to be installed.

Who, wait… let’s slow down, we haven’t even opened Facebook.

So, on day one of week one, there’s no “App Store” purchases of any sort … and, other than a few contacts that got entered (magically?) it’s just the basic functionality that we’re figuring out. Haven’t even made a call. It keeps saying, “dial #8899” which is the message it says when you dial #8899…

This device is not yet registered.

Well, on the second day… before breakfast we were able to “make a phone call”; and, suddenly the flurry of incoming TXT MSGs also start working.

Yay, the device is registered!!

A smart phone, is acting pretty smart, it knows how to make calls; and it can do TXT MSG and even browse the web. Should we expect anything more than that?

One piece of advice that Robin provided was wise beyond her years: “you don’t need to register as a Samsung account”, and “you don’t need to use the Samsung Store”.

It makes sense that Samsung has a copy of every utility that Google provides (it’s similar with Apple: you can use Apple Maps, or if you prefer, use Google Maps; you can use the Google Mail “App” or just stick with the one from Apple. So, the same questions arise with Samsung…. or any other manufacturer.

Diane doesn’t need to use Google Mail, nor does she need the mail that is built into the Samsung; it was just an example.

She does want Dropbox. The best way of sharing photos from her devices to keep them nicely organized on a home computer and to be able to share any into Facebook or Instagram — it’s flexible, secure, and free. Dropbox wins the prize for being the first App loaded from the Google “App Store” called Google Play.

There is no doubt that Drive.Google.Com would probably provide a similar feature set that Dropbox offers, and Microsoft had “one drive”.

The other early download in the race to get setup with a new SmartPhone was the IM features that works with Facebook and Instagram.

So far only a couple of apps and a whole lot of searching for the right phone numbers and addresses for our family contacts. No matter how well organized a list of Google Contacts and Outlook emails and Christmas card spreadsheet and family tree genealogy … it’s never quite gotten consolidated in one place.

So, backing up, and taking it slow is a good way to get started with a new Android smart phone, and … next week we’ll summarize week two of the first month.

E-Cars — which one??!?

We visited the VEIC “Drive Electric Vermont” event on Saturday (Sept 16). They have a web page (see: driveelectricvt.com) but one of the most valuable takeaways from the event was a quick reference sheet (see full image, below). Well also, maybe the absolute best take-away was the collective opinions from actual owners who would freely discuss what they liked about having an electric car — it was excellent how we could ask: “so, is there anything about an electric car you don’t like?” and they gave honest answers which were thoughtful, and sometimes frank, and not-at-all like speaking with a car sales person. Oh, and, yes there was a car dealer there — it was a pleasant experience to speak with Shearer Chevrolet, their sales person was super nice, and had done her homework in learning about the Volt and the various models and options available.

For the uninitiated, VEIC is the Vermont Energy Investment Corp, which funds the “Drive Electric Vermont” efforts. They have often provided us information on home heating, or other energy saving ideas — they always provide a wealth of information, and seem to have the real consumers in mind for everything they are involved with!

The event was on the Burlington Lakefront, on Lake Street.

Burlington National Drive Electric Week – 2017

The table in the brochure lists MSRP prices, battery sizes, and range for most of the popular “all electric” cars, and also listed the “hybrid plug-in” models.

The most practical electric car options from our visiting the event: Nissan Leaf ($31k), with 100mi range on a 30kWh battery; the Ford Focus ($29k), with 115mi range on a 33.5kWh battery; and, the Smart Electric Drive ($25k), with a 68mi range on a 17.6 kWh battery.  There’s a footnote about the SmartCar, because they don’t have a dealership here in Vermont, but there are some in nearby states, and of course an on-line option too.  There were plenty of other choices for e-Cars too, but these three came to the top of our lists (and, we’d admit we are focused more on the completely electric, so your own investigation would likely come up with other options as well).

We talked with owners of the VW e-Golf, who were enthusiastic. A couple of Tesla owners were also pleased with their purchase (one guy has owned a Tesla for almost ten years and had then actually purchased a second one which he said he has now driven for almost 100,000 miles). The stories of software upgrades on a monthly basis were pretty entertaining. It’s nice to hear of a car company who can deal with software as a corporate asset, rather than just coping with it almost like a liability, which seems to be the norm in the auto industry.

A number of people made comments about the “lack of a spare tire”, most manufacturers seem to have made a similar decision regarding the spare tire (some of the companies view that “run flat” tires are an acceptable compromise. The Tesla owner commented that those tires run rough, or just don’t have the performance of a normal radial tire.

We especially enjoyed talking with the couple who live in Bradford (and, she drives to Hanover for work) where the real-world issue of having no plug-in parking spots meant using the home charger most every night. They have a 110v outlet, rather than the 240v option, and it seemed like it is manageable. It does seem very clear that you change how you drive, and start being more conscientious about your driving destinations.

A few “references” for the reader who is seriously interested in MORE DATA:

• VEIC – report <LINK>   (it’s a PDF file,  ~43 pages)
• WCAX – video <LINK>  (~1min 10s) titled: Electric Car Ownership is Up

https://www.veic.org/docs/resourcelibrary/veic-drive-electric-vermont-case-study-march-2016.pdf

http://www.wcax.com/content/news/Electric-car-ownership-up-444927683.html

Boston Globe, article.

In short, well… we are holding off — but, we will likely make our NEXT CAR an electric choice. We have a 15-20 mile commute, and it seems like a perfect fit — especially, because we have a second car for those days that we can’t share the commute together, and we know that at least having ONE electric car in the family seems like the right thing to do.