upcoming experiment: DIY camping oven

I’ve been thinking about proper baking for a while. Biscuits. Cookies. Pizza. Back when I lived in a house I was a Coleman gear fanatic: I had about a dozen stoves of various vintages and a similar number of lanterns. I brought one multifuel Exponent with me as a backup stove (it fits neatly in

Organ Mountains NM / pizza experiment

I got my immediate business done in ELP and withdrew to the Organ Mountains national monument north of Las Cruces, NM. They’ve made some changes since I was last here, putting up a barrier on the north side of this trail. Land recovery, one supposes: This cuts the available spots in half (south of two-track

bringing old Pi boxes back online

While I was in Wally World my devices were updating over their wifi (repeated in the van). Two of the devices were a Pi and Pi2 I brought back online. The Pi 3 does the DVR duties and the others have just been sitting in a plastic pencil box.  They are small enough I brought

Solar harvest under 100% overcast / tilted v. flat

Today is 100% overcast with medium light. There are no shadows and you can’t tell where the sun is in the sky by casual observation. It’s not optimal, but this is why we overpanel. We would expect a couple of things under such skies: reduced harvest compared to clear skies, decreased delta between tilted and

predicting the sun’s path

Yesterday I badly misjudged when the sun would “set” behind the mesa to the south. Using the manual method I judged the sun would start to be hidden around 3:30pm; in acuality I had direct sunlight until ~5:15p. Now there’s not a lot of power available when the sun is very low in the sky

full day of mounted + portable harvest

Today I will be planning and storing for the next move. which will happen tomorrow morning.   Since it will be a homebody day I will set the timer to go off 2x/hour and will record the solar harvest.   This morning’s temps were ~40F and it will get up to ~70F this afternoon. Clear skies.  Winter

reconfigured the portables

I think I mentioned earlier that I have a 10A mppt that has been sitting idle.  It’s wired into the DIY converter project, but I haven’t been connected to shore power in 858 days at this point so the 10A has been gathering dust. theory / limitations Yes, 10A is undersized for 200w of panel:

adding solar panels, pt 2

{I actually started this yesterday but the terrible WordPress block editor ate it} The previous adding more solar post was top of mind yesterday, but the overall idea has been kicking around ever since my solar harvest fiasco in the Oregon NF.  I was in a relatively open area but so surrounded by tall conifers

chirp via flatpak

“Debian testing” has remove python2, and chirp hasn’t been updated to use python3 yet. You can use the repo version (from Feb 2020) or do it with flatpak. I have little experience with the latter (and wanted features not present from Feb); here’s how it’s done: install

observation: early morning alternator blast

{note: this was started on Nov 21 and held in Drafts while I tried to massage it into something readable} Woke up this morning and the sky was clear blue; the sun was fully over the low hills to the east. Should be a good day for solar harvest as soon as the sun gets