Author: Radar

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.

Plans: Keep an eye on the air conditioner and the NodeMCU’s

• 07:00 up and sipp’n coffee.
• 08:00 Walking around the block.
• 09:00 Blogging
• 10:00 Showered and getting organized.
• 11:00 Nap
• 12:00 Paralleled solar charge controllers to see how that works.
• 13:00 Still watching air conditioning and solar provided power.
• 14:00 Assisting the refiling of our home records.
• 15:00 Watched Bar’s interview on CNN (Internet)

Narrative: I’ve added sections that a significant amount of resources are invested in almost every day.

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NodeMCU Status: Temperature sensors are dropping out and I don’t know why.

My cave temp is a little warm since I stopped circulating the air with the air handler.

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One temp sensor of the seven I installed yesterday dropped out. I don’t know if the sensor or the wires are bad. I’ve installed new sensor and wires as indicated below.

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Solar Assist Status: MPPT Tracking solar charge controller wastes a lot of energy on partly cloudy days. When a cloud blocks some of the sun the SCC drops the load for about 30 seconds each time until it can restart the startup sequence. On a normal cloudy day that may happen every five minutes! I tried to parallel a vanilla (not MPPT) controller to capture the wasted energy. The first problem was that the controller didn’t carry the negative lead so paralleling it pushed the 40V from the panel to the load. (Good thing I started using diodes on the power supplies.) I separated the six panel array into four and two. Connected the two panels I separated to the vanilla controller and then tied it in parallel with the MPPT controller. The power delivered by the panels is much more consistent with the vanilla controller assisting. What I was trying to address was the total drop of power while the MPPT controller reset, which it seems is working. When the MPPT drops the vanilla controller keeps the power consumed by the power supplies LESS than the output power of the inverter. (Which means I can leave the solar panels engaged on partly cloudy days because the power consumed is always less than the power delivered. Where I am going to find more of these controllers I don’t know. I bought it a LONG time ago.

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Battery Bank Status: The two 35AH batteries on the primary UPS are getting too warm in the garage, I need to move them. The garage gets over 90 degrees and that’s too warm for active SLA batteries.

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The bottom section is two 15A 24V power supplies that work alongside the solar panels and provide power for the 300W inverters on the right side. The idea is that during the day a relay connects my computers to the 300W inverter. The inverter gets its power from the solar panels with a redundant power backup if it gets cloudy. As long as the total power consumed by the power supplies is LESS than the total power provided by the inverter the system worked.

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Homestead Air Conditioner: The air conditioner evaporator tubing is oil logged and preventing the four sections from cooling evenly. It doesn’t seem to be affecting the ability to cool our home in the middle of the summer months. The fix is to replace the coils at a cost of $1500 or the entire system for $8000. The current thought is to replace the entire system in September.

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Protests of Racial Inequality: Portland protests are described differently by all parties. The Video’s tell a story that’s not in the newspapers. The Portland police needs to engage the agitators and damage caused after 11PM and why has a curfew not been set?

“The current riots across the country are American terrorism — violence for strictly political ends, aimed at frightening a nation into obedience.” Seattle Radio Host Gives Narrative-Busting Account of What’s Happening in City: ‘Evil People’

“Federal officers protecting federal property are now the targets of demonstrators, not the instigators of violence. The real blame lies with progressive city leaders, who have all but promised violent protesters that they can act with impunity.” [WSJ]

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Feelings:

Tomorrow:

Retirement:

Accomplishments:

Noteworthy:

Project Engineering:

Purchases:

Repairs:

Pi News:

Religion:

Family News:

Media: (Instagram)

Arts: (Movies watched)

Health:

Injuries:

Travel:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: I’ve fallen terribly behind in my postings because I’ve been working on a house project that just got out of hand. I’ve also spent a great deal of time trying to figure out where I stand on the Portland Oregon protests. We are sheltering in place with plenty of food and supplies. I have not employed all the new bullets I have in this blog. (I thought I’d have more time… LOL)

Plans: Work on my Blog. I’ve not filled it in for several days and it would not be fruitful to just make something up.

• Progress
• 07:00 Cleaning up my Blog of days that I haven’t completed.
• 08:00 Checked on my Instacart order this morning.
  • Cleaned up the unfilled days in my blog and moved them into the future.
  • Completing the previous blog entry.
• 09:00 Checked out the news, Portland protests are being subdued, albeit slightly.
• 10:00 Updating this blog page.
• 11:00 Evaluating solar charge controller. (It doesn’t recover very well with clouds)
• 12:00 Time for a nap.
• 15:00 A couple NodeMCU’s have stopped sending data… Added 2nd DHT to them…
• 16:00 Talked with Instacart, they’ve given me $5 and reported it to their IT.
• 17:00 Did a bit of browsing the Internet and updating the Virus info on this page.
  • Could not find details if the Feds are going to rebuild the fence in Portland.
  • I like how they always refer these as “Mostly Peaceful” demonstrations… LOL
• 18:00 had two slices of bread, making some soup for dinner.
  • Added a smart plug on the air handler, it will record the power usage which should correlate to the Air Conditioner usage pretty well.
• 19:00 Decided to have ham and beans for dinner.
• 20:00 Played a game of scrabble with the wife.

Narrative: First thing i’ve started doing today was moving the days that I hadn’t blogged into the future since I won’t need them. The best I can hope for is to remember what I have done for the last four days and post it here.

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Our air conditioner has been acting up for several weeks. One time it stopped working in the evening for several hours before it jumped back into life again. I had taken the outdoor unit apart and was looking at the wiring when it came back to life.

We paid a repairman to come out and look at the unit on Monday 20 July. The assessment was that the evaporator in the air handler was oil logged and needed replacement for $1500. The replacement of the entire system was about $8000 so we’re planning undergo that in September.

Until September we have to stretch the performance of the air conditioning as much as we can. I put several NodeMCU’s to work recording the temperatures of the air to find out what’s actually happening. (I thought it was freezing up, there’s no data to support that assumption.) The only performance problem I have is that the supply sensor is saturated most of the time at 100% humidity with the moisture coming off of the coils.

As you can see below the most dramatic problem was that the thermostat was not holding the temperature.

I took the thermostat off the wall and found that the batteries installed in the unit had leaked corroding the area pretty badly.

I took the unit apart and used lemon juice to neutralize the alkaline battery acid. I then rinsed the circuit board with water to get rid of the lemon juice. Next I rinsed the board with alcohol to get rid of the water. Dried it off, remounted it and found it to actually work. (I thought I might have to buy a new one, they’re not cheap!) There are small artifacts in the screen, but it’s legible and it works!

Here’s the small temperature swings after fixing the thermostat!

I also used a hair dryer to cycle the expansion valve in the evaporator core to flush out the oil that had collected in the tubing. It helped a little, but the oil flows the other way when it’s heating the house? I also checked the power consumption hoping that the thermostat was the cause of the slightly higher electric bills. It’s a little lower, too soon to actually know the results though.

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I’ve been using NodeMCU’s and Home Assistant to log the temperatures I am using to assess the air conditioner. Occasionally they just stop sending data. When I’ve looked them with an O Scope the challenge from the NodeMCU is correct, but there is no response from the DHT22. There’s so many possibilities for interrupting the DHT I’ve doubled up the DHT22 sensors on each NodeMCU except the garage. (3 of them)

Feelings: Portland protest violence has to stop!

Retirement: I get my first Social Security check in three weeks.

Protests of Racial Inequality: Portland demonstrators tore down the fence around the courthouse last weekend. They were not challenged by local police for destroying public/government property. Now other cities are suffering because demonstrations for Portland have sprung up across the USA.

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, neighbor has COVID-19.

Plans:

Narrative:

White Fragility: An academic with experience in diversity training, DiAngelo coined the term “white fragility” in 2011 to describe any defensive instincts or reactions that a white person experiences when questioned about race or made to consider their own race.

Feelings:

Tomorrow:

Religion:

Family:

Education:

Government:

Media:

Arts:

Business:

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, neighbor has COVID-19. Our air conditioner is flakey and we’re trying to assess our options.

Plans:

• 07:30 Up and eating cereal for breakfast.
• 08:30 Instacart shopping
• 10:00 Getting prepared for Air Conditioner repairman.
• 11:00 Lunch
• 12:00 Organizing
• 13:00 Helping assess the air conditioner.
• 14:00 Need a new evaporator coil!
• 15:00 dinner is beans and ham
• 16:00 Reading about Oregon protests.
• 17:00 Blogging.

Narrative: Spent most of the day getting ready for and helping the air conditioning guy assess our system. He has to come back at a later date and install a new evaporator coil for $1000. We can run the fan on a higher setting until the new coil gets installed.

Feelings: I am uncomfortable and that’s just what BLM wants.

Media: Online news was very dark today, not a lot of encouragement.

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, our neighbor has COVID-19.

Plans:

• 07:30 Up and Blogging while breakfast is being made.
• 08:00 Eating breakfast.
• 09:00 Having a family discussion and getting ready for church.
• 10:00 Church services
• 11:00 Lunch
• 12:00 Instacart order too big, we’ve ordered it today.
• 14:00 We put groceries away and took a nap.
• 15:30 Catching up on the news while wife makes din din.
• 17:00 Dinner was terrific.
• 18:00 Blogging.
• 19:00 Ordered PP45 Orange connectors for my 24V distribution.
• 20:00 Watched movie with wife.
• 21:00 Bed

Narrative:

Feelings: Feeling vulnerable reading about the violence in Oregon.

Tomorrow: Heating A/C guy will be checking our A/C unit.

Engineering: Shortened the 15A power supply wires that run the 300W PSW Inverter by half and ordered some 8AWG wire. I also ordered some orange PP45 connectors for my 28V distribution.

Religion: Sunday services were pretty good, need to listen to it several more times though.

Family: Got word from Nevada that the Shark vacuum is working great!

Education: Looks like Gwinnett County will be opening in the fall. 🙁

Media: Lopsided and inconsistent, it’s awfully hard to find the truth these days. We are still social distancing from FB.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, neighbor has COVID-19

Plans: Celebrate someone’s Birthday.

• 07:00 Up, eggs for breakfast.
• 08:00 Walking around the block.
• 09:00 Writing Birthday E-Mail message.
• 10:00 Online with the music Ministry.
• 11:00 Lunch
• 12:00 Nap
• 14:00 Took a present to a friend.
• 15:00 Reading the news
• 17:00 Blogging

Narrative: It was a hot day today, but the air conditioner is holding up! The power usage is a bit high, but we’re comfortable.

White Fragility: We still do not have a way ahead for our relationship with “Black Christians”, I cannot get into a discussion with them about police actions years ago.

Religion: We’re still not meeting in person and the tall pole in the tent is Gwinnett county has to open the buildings.

Family: A friend of ours had a birthday today. Both my mom’s are doing ok. My sister and brother are also in good shape.

Education: Gwinnett County is pushing forward to reopen in person classes this fall.

Government: Wearing of masks is inconsistent and hostile preventing us from shopping in person because both of us are “At Risk”

Feelings: Activists are seen hollering at police that their actions to protect the city infrastructure during riots are illegal. Ok, take names and send them the bill for the cost of the riot! (Put up or Shut up!)

Tomorrow: Sunday services.

Engineering: I put a Internet controlled socket on the fan under the bed that is responsible for keeping the master bathroom dry. The fan will run during the daytime and turn off at 9PM.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accomplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, neighbor has COVID-19.

Plans: Bring my Node MCU’s online.

• I didn’t keep up with the times today. My friend has a birthday tomorrow and I spent a great deal of time on that today.

Narrative: Air Conditioner seems to be holding up although the humidity seems a bit high. I powered up a NodeMCU with a humidity sensor today to get a reading of what it actually was.

As you can see it was just under 60% this morning. The temperature was comfortable for the most part. The the Air Conditioner rarely runs on high cool and when it does the temperature recovers very quickly.

The 160W bench power runs on solar power beginning about 08:30 in the morning. I plugged a fan into the power strip raising it to just under 200W on a 300W inverter. The 2x 100W solar panels facing east and the 2x 100W panels facing south could not fully support the 200W. (I found that Odd since the SCC was pushing about 10A.) When I checked the components yesterday the 12AWG wire from the SCC was pretty warm, so I replaced it with 10AWG wire. Today the 12AWG wire from the solar panels to the SCC was warm, I replaced those wires today with 10AWG wire. The inverter was still drawing current from the power supplies because of the 48″ of 10AWG wire TO the inverter. I moved the 2x 8″ 10AWG wire to PP75 adapter that I made for the refrigerator UPS onto the inverter as a test and the SCC then had enough copper to support the inverter with a 200W load. It took me about 30 minutes to construct a second 2x 10AWG-PP45 to PP75 pigtail so both the UPS and the inverter each had one. It did surprise me that a short 48″ 10AWG wire was insufficient to carry a 10A load at 28V. After replacing both wires the current to the Inverter DROPPED ~10% to 9Amps. Apparently the higher supply voltage actually available at the inverter improved the efficiency. I made two more pigtails for the other two inverters later in the afternoon.

Mom’s solar setup will also have these issues since the voltage to the 48V SCC is roughly 32VDC at 10A over 400Ft of 12AWG wire! She has adapters that can push 48V towards the SCC, but I’ve not tested it.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, our neighbor has COVID-19.

Plans: Need some Weed/Feed

• 07:00 Up, eating breakfast.
• 07:30 Out for a walk
• 08:00 Instacart Order, he shopped two batches.
• 09:00 Our Instacart frozen was ok, but we were missing the deli.
• 10:00 Finished Instacart fiasco, getting organized.
• 11:00 Lunch and a Nap
• 13:00 Vacuuming and cleaning
• 14:00 finishing solar panel connectors.
• 15:00 Mow front lawn
• 16:00 Recover and eat din Din.
• 17:30 Mow back lawn
• 18:30 Shower and recover.

White Fragility: Found a good website, i’ll fill this in eventually.

Feelings: I wish that the “Protesting” didn’t involve threatening violence, it would make listening to their demands more palatable. Walking onto a judges lawn threatening to “Burn Down the House” is not acceptable.

Tomorrow: Friday, bread delivery.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Taxes are DONE! Sheltering in place, our neighbor has the virus.

Plans: Take a dinner to a friend and church in the evening.

• 07:00 Up and eating breakfast.
• 08:00 Cleaning
• 09:00 made a set of solar panel cables similar to what mom has.
• 10:00 Delivered a meal to Dekalb County.
• 11:30 Back home, cleaning up
• 12:00 Instacart build, and delivery.
• 13:00 Nap
• 15:00 Blogging, Air Conditioner working good at 96 Degrees outside.
• 16:00 Cleaning
• 17:00 Looking at the weather.
• 18:00 Mow lawn
• 19:00 Get ready for church.

Narrative:

White Fragility: Because of its thoughtfully-crafted agenda, values and mission, BLM is unmistakably incompatible with Biblical Christianity, and the many reasons Christians have to reject this movement can easily be found at BlackLivesMatter.com. According to its own “herstory,” BLM was founded by three black women, two of whom are self-proclaimed “queer.” The-stated-goals-of-black-lives-matter-are-anti-christian/

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Thursday

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.

Plans: Get organized

• 07:00 Up eating breakfast, coffee, planning
• 08:00 Walk around the block
• 09:00 Blogging, call mom.
• 10:00 Nap
• 11:30 Get Tree out of storage to dispose of it.
• 12:00 Back home, lunch and blogging then another nap.
• 14:00 Checked AC and blogging
• 15:00 Mowing lawn
• 17:00 Eating din Din
• 18:00 Watching news looking for wire guides
• 19:00 Helping Pam
• 20:00 Blogging

Narrative: Air conditioner is working pretty good for a hot day, discharge temperature was about 62 most of the day. It dropped to about 60 in the evening which is about as low as I want it to go. (Any lower and I would be worried about it freezing.)

Took the tree out of storage that was full of mice droppings, it needs to get into the trash can this week.

Need to order a new cover for the water pressure reducing valve, I gave mine to our neighbor. She’s trying to sell her house and I thought giving her mine would be easier than trying to find one at the last minute.

White Fragility: It was pretty cool today when Mr. Trump called the media out for not counting the number of white people that have died.

Feelings: We’ve kinda have had a hard day emotionally with all the discourse going on these days.

Tomorrow: Church Wednesday and taking a meal to a friend.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes
Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes
Did I DMBT be happy? Yes
*Did My Best To