Check temperatures for Pahrump pump house every week.
Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey
Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
Nancy’s Will, i don’t have a copy but she’s working on it.
Arizona Land
Take wet cell batteries back
Check Mom’s accounts
Fix mom’s printer working
Hire an accountant for the estate taxes.
Hire a lawyer for Arizona.
Run generators
I am still working/improving my solar powered sensor in the back yard. This has been a learning experience; solar panels produce significantly less power than I expected. Streaks of cloudy days have also been longer than I had anticipated. (Like six cloudy days that could not provide 10WH/Day of power from 20W of solar panel.)
The temp sensor is in the PVC pipe and the batteries+charger circuits are in the tub.
I now have a working timer that turns on/off the sensor SBC so that it runs for 1/10th the time. (And 1/10th the power consumption.) Now we’re at 20W of solar, 192WH of battery to support 1.3WH/Day. (20W@5Hr=100WH with full sun)
The first timer was so short that the SBC A/D never arrived at the battery voltage.
9 Minute timer with 100 uF capacitor
To lengthen the “ON” time, I changed to a 220 uF capacitor which also increased the overall time to 19 Minutes.
19 Minute timer, 220 uF
The next challenge was the weather is not sunny and the batteries are depleted so I charged them manually today.
Charged the batteries to 13.5 volts.
The 2x 10W solar panels are providing more power than the sensor is consuming even on a cloudy day. I know that because the voltage is rising, albeit slowly.
Now that the batteries are somewhat charged, the sun can top them off.
Next thing I want to know is current, charted current. The input of these 8266 boards is a 1/3 divider (Since the internal voltages are 3 V)
Soldering stage 2, it’s beginning to look like I’ll need this board to reduce the power consumption.
Days and Days of little or no sun have taken their toll on the batteries.
The batteries
The left (Darker) side is where the timer was 9 minutes, the right side the timer is 30 minutes. The ratio/power consumption is the same since it stays on longer with the 30-minute timer. The only difference is that the longer period allows the measured voltage to achieve quiescence. (Not changing/more accurate.)
Wife cooked us up some eggs for breakfast. It was a very pretty day today.
The FCC sent me my license to operate and my callsign this morning. I got to work on getting my 2M radio setup. It took about 2 hours to run the coax through the attic, into the garage and through the garage wall into my cave. I thought I had to remove several cables from that opening to allow the connector though the wall. (Those wires powered the most critical items in my network so they could be run on solar. As it turns it out, the connector still didn’t fit and pulling the power wires out was a waste of time.)
I am terribly forgetful, so I printed a couple labels with my call sign and the “Phonic Equivalent” so that it is readily available.
I need to come up with a way of recording the audio from the radio for instant playback. It would also be handy to capture the frequency on the display if I am scanning.
Check temperatures for Pahrump pump house every week.
Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey
Received Magic Jack for mom.
Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
Nancy’s Will, i don’t have a copy but she’s working on it.
Arizona Land
Take wet cell batteries back
Check Mom’s accounts
Fix mom’s printer working
Hire an accountant for the estate taxes.
Hire a lawyer for Arizona.
Run generators
Run 2M cable, Done
Timer is now reset by NODEMCU making it even more efficient only when needed.
I received the 555 timer circuit boards that I plan on modifying to the circuit above.
I need to cut some of the runs on the board so that I can insert components at those pins.
Tuesday Feb 14th, Valentines
Wife cooked us up some eggs for breakfast. It was a very pretty day today.
The FCC sent me my license to operate and my callsign so I got to work on my 2M radio. It took about 2 hours to run the coax through the attic, into the garage and through the garage wall into my cave. I had to remove several cables from that opening to allow the connector though the wall. Those wires powered the most critical items in my network so they could be run on solar. (As it turns it out it still didn’t fit and pulling the wire out was a waste of time.)
