It was cooler early

At 11am it was a very comfortable 77F inside the bus as I worked on soldering my unlocking circuit together. By midday the temperature has risen to a sweltering 106F. That's when work slacked off considerably.

This is the basic unit. The three wires to the left are from the key switch. The middle wire is also positive though polarity is unimportant for this circuit. The wire on the right is negative and two more wires are yet to be installed that will feed to the linear actuator. The polarity of those wires is important.

Just to escape the heat, I slipped outside the bus to install my key switch. That was relatively easy. I started by cutting the hole for the part that protrudes through the body skin. Tightening the circular nut was somewhat of a challenge as the back of the unit rotated. Thus, I squirted Great Stuff in around the back of the switch and waited for it to harden.

Once the Great Stuff had hardened, I tightened the nut and covered the switch with tape against the rain that threatened. I'll have to get one of the sprung electrical socket covers to protect and conceal my brightly chromed switch!

The new plan with the power supply is to have it separate from the lock control unit. That way I can change whether it's powered by a PP3 battery, the bus batteries or 8AA batteries.

My next shopping trip will have to include a socket cover, some impact adhesive to attach the control unit to the bus and some more spray paint as the grey of the socket cover does not match the bus, or at least the last one didn't anyway.

I had hoped to have finished with the locking control unit today but what with the heat and milady having problems with her house AC unit, I didn't make as much progress as I would have liked. It didn't help that the cordless drill battery decided to quit and the charger refused to charge it!

Just then, thunder began to roll and that, ladies, gentlemen and those that fall into another category, was that. Although it's now cool, I didn't fancy working with a soldering iron inside a bus with the power cable lying across the bare ground.