I never ever seem to order enough!

A couple of days ago my latest pair of switches arrived. These will be used or one will be used for either the other bedroom light or the other galley light. One has already been used in the bathroom so now the bathroom light actually works as intended.

Now in the immortal words of the prophet: “Now I can see shit!” There won’t actually be a lampshade on this bulb. I just didn’t see the point of having the bulb all hidden and looking pretty when bathrooms are places not to sit and ruminate nor to sit and think but to attend to other, more pressing matters.

Today during my work break I was very happy to be able to sit inside the bus in the pouring rain with my electric light on in the bedroom, sitting at my desk, writing my blog. That’s not all I did though. One of the things was to start to seal the gap around my electrical conduit as it goes through the cockpit floor. Now I will have to put another - smaller hole - in order to pass cables through to charge the driving battery from solar power and to accept incoming power from an external solar panel or wind generator.

Looking at the muddle of wiring at the back of the bus, I might replace the diode assembley I built with one of the half-assed bridge rectifiers. Remember I bought one. Now it looks like I’ll need three.  That’s the problem - everything is growing organically. I like the fact the half-assed bridge rectifier has screw connections. This makes life very easy. Once that’s installed, I can work on installing my kill switch. Idly I thought about two kill switches - one for the solar panels and one for the battery. I’d like to be able to switch the battery off while the bus is in motion.

A few days ago I bought two more of the LED solar lights just to have the tops as lampshades. Those have now been prepared, ready for use. One will go on the bedroom back wall and one in the galley. I’m not keen on the one that came from the $1 solar light. Somebody gave me one of those useless closet lights - the kind with the pull cord that looks like a light bulb but is woefully underpowered and runs off 4 AA batteries. While the bulb bit fits nicely over my LED lights, the bulb even when frosted correctly is just bulky and ugly. I’m going to say that I slowed its progress to the garbage pile rather than halted progress.

The plastic tie I had on the front door lock snapped yesterday. It was quick and easy to replace. It had done well in lasting over a year. It’s probably way past time I sought a more permanent solution, however. That’s looking like an interesting challenge.

Now that was what I did on Wednesday. This weekend was a little lackluster for progress. The only thing I did was to connect the front and rear solar panels. That was by no means straightforward as I had to be doubly sure that there were no short circuits that could burn out either panel.

The bird’s nest at the front has largely vanished. I’ll tidy those cables up a little more but that’s nowhere near as bad as the wiring looked previously. On the bottom left is my new bridge rectifier. It seems to work better than expected and is a great distribution panel for my solar panels. Up in the center is a diode array that prevents a reverse charge from blowing my solar panel. On the top right is a charge controller that’s currently lying idle. That will eventually be used to keep the bus driving batteries topped up. The unused top of the bridge rectifier will have cables from an external solar panel connected to it. I’ll install a cigarette lighter socket under the bus where I can plug in an external panel. Most panels seem to come with a cigarette lighter plug as a connector.

At the back of the bus I’ve just tied my front solar panels into the diode array protecting my rear solar panels.  \Certainly it looks like a bird’s nest but short of punching holes through the bulkhead to hide the mess, there’s little to be done. Mind I’m all in favour of cables, plumbing etc being easily accessible for ease of maintanence and modification.

I didn’t get down to doing my plumbing inlet nor did I do my solar inlet. The list of things needing to be done is shrinking rapidly though. The solar connection was one of my major projects. In fact that was a project that caused me great concern because of the risk of damaging three solar panels.

As many of you know, I love photography even though I don’t do much these days. After selling a ton of Canon equipment that never really lived up to the hype, a while back I re-equipped with a single secondhand Olympus camera with its single standard lens. I really don’t know why they bothered asking for money for it - it really was incredibly cheap. I’ve noticed that digital cameras are something you only ever buy secondhand. I recall paying $1,200 for a Canon 30D back in 2006. When I eventually sold it having hardly used it in 2012 I got less than a quarter of my purchase price back. Today if I tried to sell a similar camera, I’d be lucky not to get slapped for asking for money.

Anyway, that’s all by the side. The picture shows a camera battery charger. The killer here is it is running off a USB power source. I don’t even need 12v to power it! I’m so pleased about that. I’m still going to install my other power cables. In fact I bought some extra wiring to take care of some of my requirements though I have as yet to get a suitable fuse box. Speaking of fuse boxes, I’m now out of spare 1 and 2 amp APC fuses. I guess I’ll just have to order some.