Ouch Problems

My back is still hurting from when I twisted it the other day. Ignoring that, yesterday I went shopping to get myself some connectors for my solar system. The wiring on the solar connectors is red and black. The wiring on the connectors from the car parts store is white and red. The really crazy thing though I only discovered today - the red is not the same on both connectors. Thus red goes to white and black goes to red. Very confusing to be honest. The wire gauge seems a little light too. I’d have expected heavier.

Now I discovered that having spent a while with a gas soldering iron yesterday soldering connectors to my volts, watts, amps meter. I connected to my test solar panel and nothing happened. Switching the wires around and it worked.

That was not a major issue. I decided to try charging a 7AH SLA battery that I bought in Radio Shack’s closing sale. I’d glued a cigarette lighter adaptor and USB adaptor to it so I figured it would work just fine charging it from the solar panel while checking my cigarette lighter voltmeter. Well, that was the plan.

The first place I put the panel it was in shade and didn’t charge so I put it on the hood of the bus. Then I decided it could slip off so I picked up the battery having disconnected the solar panel. Somehow I lost my grip on the heavy battery and it fell to the ground. It must have landed on the voltmeter as that was smashed. The top came off the battery. The battery looks OK but I wouldn’t trust it now. The only good thing - the USB/cigarette lighter part looks undamaged though I did glue it to the top of the battery which popped off.

After I’d glued it, I realised that had been a silly move. Looking at what was lost however, though there was probably more money than I realise, all that stuff was redundant. The voltmeter was not great at telling me the bus driving battery voltage (which is why it was purchased). The SLA battery had been superseded by a subsequent battery and the 12v adaptors are of a style I just don’t use Net loss some money that had been spent anyway but nothing vital. The solar panel also landed on the ground but was light enough not to have suffered.

Yesterday I changed the charge controller again to a simpler variety. It’s still PWM not MPPT - not that the difference adds to a hill of beans - but works better. Now instead of solar and battery voltages showing up as the same voltage I get a read out of both.

The battery voltage there was 13.5 while the solar voltage was 13.8. Now that the battery has charged some, I’ve noticed that everything seems to be behaving better than before. The fault must have been that fancy charge controller. Not the one that went bananas but the subsequent one too.

I’ve been thinking about making money from my new knowledge and expertise on school bus conversion and solar/wind power. I’m probaby going to a bus meet sometime this autumn, all things being equal, and will probably put some displays together. At the very least it will help new people understand how to do things. At best it will maybe get me some trade teaching others how to do everything. Whether any money comes my way remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, I disconnected the timer I put on my fans. That was really interesting because even with the fans in the off position, there seemed to be voltage passing through them. Not enough to move the fan but enough to make the fan go thump each time the wire was touched. Now that is a current loss and that looks likely to be the timer as the culprit. Both fans do it so the common factor there is the timer. That is the problem with an over-clever timer. If it ran off a 9v battery that needed to be replaced every 6 months things would be fine. as it is, it has an internal battery and recharges off the 12v power supply. That’s just adding to the problems. I just don’t get why these electronics people keep forgetting Keep It Simple, Stupid! Something simple that works is far more appreciated than something that does everything and is a pain in the neck to use.

My fan timer is a pain in the neck because I have to set the fan times using a digital display and button poking. Who’s got time for that kind of namby pamby nonsense. Give me a dial with setting I can put and a duration. Done. Run it off PP3 and done! Clearly I need to raise my solar input to cover such wastage. I’m already most of the way toward that goal. I only need to plug a solar panel in in the cockpit, placed in the bus window. That will provide ample power.

Out of interest I compared the old 5 inch CPU fans to my current fans. My current fans have no problem blowing my vent covers open. The CPU fans didn’t have the power. That was an interesting experiment. Speaking of which, my plan for the laundry is to have a 5” CPU fan blowing on the laundry. That will get it drier a lot faster.

Finally, that old battery - the one that got dropped. As it’s now untrustworthy I thought I’d put a bolt across the terminals and retreat to a safe distance to see what happened. Sadly, I had nowhere safe to do that. The other alternative would have been shooting it but it seems I’ve been asked to quit shooting things up at the back of the property.