13.1V v 9.88V @ 20:30

Earlier in the day I went and switched out the charge controller that seemed to need a capacitor on the motors. While I don’t mind putting a capacitor, I realised overnight that since this was the only charge controller that had demanded one, it was probably duff. Looking at my rapidly depleting stack of solar controllers, I had three. One that I took off that was 20A, the one that had just decided to be problematic and a further controller.

These are the two duff controllers. As I’ve already said I don’t get too much luck with electronics. It doesn’t matter how much they cost, where they’re made or where I get them from. They just don’t seem to stand a great chance of actually working. It’s pretty much of a lottery.

As it so happened, I had a spare 30A controller. While I was at it, I measured the voltage on one of my built-in voltmeters and found it was 13.1 volts or a bit more. That was pretty good for a 12v battery. I set the fan on automatic and left things well alone.

Returning to the bus at 20:30 I checked the voltage with the onboard volt meters at 13.1v. That was excellent. The voltage coming from the solar panels was by now 9.88v. I’m so glad I put an extra meter in to measure just panel voltage. By virtue of the fact I could measure thee voltage using the voltmeter on the USB port, the charge controller has clearly not thrown a wobbly when the fan came on (if it came on - I’ve not checked the settings).

I don’t know why people want to blame Chinese electronics for being particularly unreliable because it’s not the case. I’ve had so many things that are electronic that just didn’t work, didn’t work as described or stopped working (usually just as the warranty expired), from a variety of countries and sources and at widely different prices that I have little faith in throwing money at electronics in the vain hope that paying more yields better results. Once bitten, twice shy!

It doesn’t matter how much it costs. If it doesn’t work, it’s wasted money. Finger pointing as some do, saying “You bought six Chinese controllers when you could have bought one by an American company in Fartstaff New Jersey” doesn’t really help. It’s like the British thing where the British guy just says “Should have bought an XYZ. I had one you could have had but I threw out last week”.

Checking the 13.1v on my new battery testing expensive $12 meter showed the battery barely into the amber yet offering 13.1v. Something amiss there. One of the major problems is the metering equipment is just as likely as the actual equipment to be bad. Electronics no matter the source, really are that flaky. In all the time I was in Britain I had two multimeters and both worked. They probably stil work. In my time here I’ve had an analog multimeter that just froze with the needle half way across the scale and a digital multimeter that no matter whether the batteries are new or not, just displays random numbers. I’m guessing that as prices don’t increase much, things are just made ever cheaper and to ever lower standards. There comes a point though where you’re not just scraping the bottom of the barrel but excavating underneath.

I’m still waiting for the SAE 2 pin (Hopkins) to cigarette lighter adaptor to arrive. According to the tracking it has been in New York since the 24th. It has had ample time to walk down on its own. I can only assume that USPS has hired some illegal immigrants that can’t read English and are knocking on every single door in the land asking if it’s the right address. Ten to one it’ll end up at some political party headquarters where it’ll end up being used as a sex toy.

Meanwhile... Those with long memories will recall I broke my fingernail back in March using a power tool. For about the last month I’ve been trying to keep the nail stuck together and stop the broken end from falling off, exposing the nail bed. Yesterday I figured the nail had grown out enough to remove the glued on fake nail.

There we have it - the nail has almost completely grown out. I believe - without checking - that I broke it on March 4th. It has thus taken 4 months to grow out. Now I don’t have to go around looking like 1/10th of a fancy woman!

As far as the charge controller is concerned, I’m just hoping it doesn’t start to pulse like the previous one when the voltage gets low. That was annoying and should not have happened.