SSD upgrade

The Dell came with a 128gb SSD, which was business sexy several years ago when it was new. I’m dual booting win7 and Debian Linux on it. Enough room for that but I want to use it as a mythtv back end. It’s already running most the time lately, controlling a small cryptocoin miner ASIC.

tiny Alpicool compressor fridges

In the last day or so I’ve run across a few instances of Trebor talking about the little Alpicool fridges.  They are tiny inside (15L, 20L, etc) but inexpensive and tiny outside, too.  I take Trebor’s opinions quite seriously; he is a thoughtful and informed fellow. And I don’t need much fridge space.  I have

lesson learned: the maligned Peltier cooler

I got sidetracked on the Lessons Learned project;  forgot at least two topics.  This one is about is about chilling drinks and food on the cheap. A few years ago I picked up an Igloo Kool Made 32, a 32qt peltier cooler/warmer, at a thrift shop for $10.  For that kind of money I could

How MPPT works – video

Here is a MT50 display connected to a 4215BN mppt controller.  The controller is holding Float voltage (Vfloat).  Note that the screen we see here is stats on power coming from the panels into the controller.  No down-conversion or charging/load amps are shown here. So little power is required to hold Vfloat that the controller

Backchannel: BMS and rationality

from this post: Those advocating running without a BMS are the ones advocating overcharging/undercharging cells— that’s the definition of “out of balance”. When you have to lie about someone else’s position, to smear them, that means the facts don’t back your position. The lack of self-awareness is crushing. First, no one is advocating running barefoot. 

Lesson learned: clothing and laundry

Reminder, relevant to this post:  the RTR outing, 13days OG (isn’t “off-grid” what the kidz mean when they say that? 🙂 was a test of my boondocking retirement plans:  13 days at one site 1 day of travel/resupply repeat The clothing I took with me would be a trial for what I could get away

charge controller wishlist

I was polluting this thread with thoughts as they came to me, so moving them here. I’ve been thinking about an open source solar charge controller / display project run from raspberry pi or similar, shared on git. Abstract away the hardware details so you can tie it to as $$$ hardware or cheap as

Lesson learned: climate control

Temperature swings in the desert Humidity wasn’t as low as it could have been out there, so day/night swings were about 25 degrees or so.  Let’s say 40F at night and 65F in the daytime.  Lower humidity would have allowed that to drop another 15F at night.

Lesson learned: hygiene

backstory This may be heretical for the ‘dweller crowd, but I hate baby wipes.   <–  That’s right!  I said it!  I don’t like the smell (fragrance) they put on it.  I don’t like the foaminess.  I don’t like the sensation.  Ugggg. Another challenge for me is my skin is naturally quite dry.  I am anglo

Lesson learned: solar power and loads

For both personal and practical reasons my solar config was the most researched and planned part of my build.  It was time to see what she could do on a boondocking run. Lesson:  the build has abundant power I built the solar and house power system on the cheap.  3x 190W mono panels were bought