Working towards goals.

Today I didn’t really feel like lying on the ground under the bus doing the necessary wiring and tightening a few nuts and bolts so I worked inside instead. Because my extraction fans have such a high current draw they have been defeating my house battery. All is not lost however. 

On eBay I found this nifty little battery protecting circuit. My current thought is to power the fans directly from solar power. I can install a simple bypass relay that will route power to the fans straight from an external solar panel. The current switch is just there to prevent the fans from starting before there’s enough power to run them properly. In the event insufficient power gets to the motor, the coils could heat up and burn out.

So far all I’ve done is set the threshold voltage to 11.5V to turn the power off and 18v to turn it off again. Just in case the panels provide too much power!

I had a go also at installing my DVR for the rear camera. I tried a splitter since the video feed through doesn’t seem to work with my system. Bizarre but there you are - this is how Chinese stuff works or doesn’t work. One thing I did was to snip off the microphone connector since there’s absolutely no reason to have a microphone or an audio track. If somebody shoves their car under my back bumper all I need is a video file showing they did it and that I was not reversing.

I ran into a snag, however. It seems my power drills are too big to fit into the space available. I could drill the mount holes for the unit with no problem. The problem came when I wanted to drill the hole for the cables to go through. In the end after hunting online I found that 90 degree drill converters were available. Locally they were $20 or more. Online I could get one for $6, shipped. I ordered one.

In other news I’ve been having problems since 2014 with my 2007 MacBook. It started with the screen going dark and needing the brighter and darker buttons to be toggled. Then the battery died so I thought it was the battery. I bought a $20 battery on eBay and it worked - for two weeks then that battery died. I semi-retired my MacBook and started using tablets. I went through a huge number of Android tablets before finally, 3 years ago, finding an end of line iPad Mini. That I’ve been using ever since. It’s good but the memory is minimal and it needs regular flushing. It’s also not something I can do much with other than web consumption and blogging. Even with a keyboard it’s not that great.

Recently I had another go at my MacBook. I bought a new battery but not an actual Apple battery - I didnt want to spend $200. Then I found the hard drive wasn’t reading correctly so I got a new hard drive for it. Then I couldn’t find the operating system disk to reinstall the operating system. I bought a new disk and tried to reinstall but it didn’t go well. It needed an update and refused to update over wifi. I bought a cable to connect directly to the router. It still wouldn’t update. I downloaded the update onto a memory stick using a windows system. Then I tried updating that way. Again, no joy. It refused to update.

With a lack of ideas I put a Linux CD in and installed Linux. That kinda worked but the screen kept going dark so I could not see whaat was on the screen without shining a bright light at it. All very strange!

Ok. This is a bus blog so why am I prattling on about my laptop issues? Simply because in the beginning my updates were all done on my MacBook and because I find computers far easier to use than tablets. Now the reason I had a Mac was because I really find Windows is user unfriendly. It seems though that I’m looking now to replace my MacBook with a new computer. I know how much money I have and how much I make and how much I can afford. The problem is I really hate spending money. While at a stretch I could probably afford a MacBook (and I did see B&H with a 2017 mmodel for less than $1,000), I’m thinking more toward a $200 Windows 10 model and installing Linux instead of Windows.

I saw this one in Best Buy. It looks like it could be a good deal but only if I can be sure of ripping Windows off it and putting Linux on it. I just don’t like Windows and Windows has been bloody awful in so many of its incarnations. Let’s look at them...

1. Windows 3.1 - This was actually quite good and was before the centralized registry
2. Windows 95 - This crashed an awful lot and introduced people to losing loads of data as being ”normal”.
3. Windows 98 - Continued the same crash ridden, data losing as Windows 95.
4. Windows ME - Not quite sure what improvement this was but it still crashed and lost data.
5. Windows SE - pretty much the same as ME but with a different name.
6. Windows NT4 - pretty good actually save for a problem with bigger hard drives and no USB support.
7. Windows XP - introduced a centralized permission slip. If microsoft wanted to kale the operating system they could by simply not allowing me to use it. Big brother strikes.
8. Windows Vista - bloody slow and probably some kind of joke Microsoft played on the public.
9. Windows 7, 8 and 10 - no experience but I imagine they will show all of the truly stupendously evil traits of the previous Microsoft operating systems. 

When Vista came out in 2007 I upgraded to a Mac. Now my Mac is probably beyond redemption and since its creator is now in the next world, it’s probably time to try Linux again. I did use Linux quite seriously a few years ago. I used it as a server and I used it as desktop computer. It worked really quite well. I gather the Asus was designed to be used with Linux but hasn’r Been sold with Linux installed. Given the price of $200 as opposed to $1,000 or more, you can see why I’m looking at Linux and this little Asus!

Remaining to do are little things like a solar input at the back, wiring up the new battery holder and installing the recorder for the back camera. While I’m at it, I’ll install a recorder for a yet-to-be-installed front camera. I did have an idea of using a camera that I took out of my car afte it blew a fuse. That needed a new USB connector to be soldered on. That connector arrived in the post today and I duly soldered it on. Whoops! It was the wrong gender!

Somewhere I have a gender changer plug but I’m pretty sure that is also the wrong gender. 

Today seems to have been a day when nothing really went to plan. I’m hoping tomorrow is better. It was almost warm enough to go under the bus. I just didn’t feel like it though.

Dumbass things that bus converters do!

Over the years I have seen some crazy things that bus converters do.
1. Covering over or welding shut emergency exits. The word emergency is important. If you cover over or weld shut emergency exits then you run the very real risk of dying in your bus should an emergency occur. They’re put there for a reason! In a real Bus evacuation, the aim is to have the bus evacuated in under two minutes and that’s as a school bus with hardly any flammable materials inside. A motorhome conversion is a tinderbox on wheels!
2. Removing the bifold door from the front and replacing it with one of the rather useless RV doors or even worse a house door. The bifold door has many advanatages including durability and having glass panels the while length. House doors with glass have not got the right kind of glass and could be very dangerous.
3. Raising the roof. If you need to raise the roof then you’ve bought a bus that’s too short. That’s a buyer’s error. In any case, how much standing will you be doing in a bus? I’m six feet tall and my head does not touch the ceiling of any known school bus. I should know - I drive the blessed things for work.
4. Removing interior ceiling and wall panels in the vain hope of making the bus warmer inside by replacing them with wood. It’s a bus - it’ll leak heat through every oriface and every surface. There’s just no way of doing it economically.
5. Believing their busses will last forever. They’ve been sold by a school district. They’ve been hammered by bad drivers and have had accidents poorly repaired by underpaid and overworked bus mechanics. They’ve had their oil changed once a year instead of every 10,000 miles. That’s three times over the recommended changes. They’re not going to last forever!
6. Whining about insurance. Nobody is going to insure a self-built bus conversion. Nobody is going to inspect a self-built bus conversion. The best you’re going to get is a standard collision only policy.
7. Not knowing how to drive a bus. That’s one of the craziest ever things. A bus is twice the width, twice the length (or more) and three times the height (or more) of an average car. It’s also ten times the weight. The braking system is different - powerful air brakes as opposed to the pathetic hydraulic brakes of a car. Driving it is a very different experience.
8. Not performing a pre-trip inspection before driving their bus. Tyres, lights, fluid, belts, brakes, horn, wipers etc all have to be inspected before each trip.
9. Not doing annual or mileage maintainance.
10. Believing internet baloney about it being possible to get highway speeds out of a school bus designed to spend 90% of its life on back roads and dirt tracks. Sure - it might be “possible” to get more than 55mph from a school bus by tinkering with the engine, it is not prudent as it shortens the life of the engine.
11. Repeating internet baloney. There is no such thing as a bad engine or a bad transmission. The problems reported by bus conversion owners are almost always down to bad driving, bad maintainance or bad modifications.
12. Whining about the costs of running a bus. Tyres are costly $250 - $500 each or $1,500 - $3,000 for all six. Servicing is costly at about $1,000 a go.
13. Buying a school bus with no idea about parking regulations where you want to park it.
14. Believing a bus conversion will be cheaper to live in than renting the cheapest mobile home. Sure - it might be possible but it’s debatable. The cheapest parking will be a lot of land in the countryside outside zoning regulations.

I see those as the most common whines online. There are more. I see so much craziness online. One of the craziest is that people pay redneck bus converters to convert their busses for them when it would be so much cheaper just to buy a used motorhome.

I have converted my bus and done everything myself. I have not paid anybody to do anything. I made my own cabinets - did all my own carpentry and after teaching myself to weld, did my own welding. I attended no welding classes nor did I watch any welding videos. I used the cheapest welder I could get and was told soundly by online groups that I could not weld, could not weld using that welder etc. Well, my welds hold strongly and are in use. That should tell you everything you need to know about internet advise!

Latest news

I decided a while back to put a second battery in place for my solar system. Thus a while ago I welded one together and later bolted it into place. That was where things stayed for a long time since work at 12+ hours a day is pretty exhausting.

The other day I tried to install my new DVR unit thinking it would be easy. Indeed it is supposed to be easy. In fact though, it is anything but easy.

Needless to say it’s probably Chinese. There are two video connectors and two audio connectors. One is for audio/video in and the other for audio/video out. It’s supposed to sit between the camera and monitor. Try as I might though and I could get it to record video nicely. I could not get it to output the video to the monitor. Thus after thinking for a while I decided to put a Y connector (which has been ordered but has yet to arrive) so that I can read the video signal and show it on the screen without having to process it through the unit (which seems to lose the signal).  More testing will be needed so I’ve been unable to install it yet. In anticipation I ordered a pair of microphones (I needed one but they came in pairs) thinking this would be my front video camera controller. I will probably buy another to do my front recording if it works just fine for recording my rear view camera.

Today though as it was wet there was no hope of working under the bus. Thus I worked inside. As many of you know when I last moved hours I did what I normally do and emptied whole drawers into plastic totes to go through later. I’ve done that 3 times in a row now! Thus I have plastic totes filled with goodness knows what. So I spent the day going through totes.

I didn’t find the key to the gold vault or a signed confession by the real assassin of JFK. I didn’t find the lost ark either. I did, however, find that I had an awful ot of just plain trash. Most of what was in those totes was old court documents, old pay stubs, old bank statements from banks I no longer use and thousands of receipts - most of which were too faded to read.

The amount that passed through the first sifting reduced the quantity from 5 boxes to 4 and I’m sure I can reduce it yet further. I have yet more boxes to go through. Most of the stuff in those boxes I have not seen for upto nine years. It all has to be gone through though. Some of it is inspiring letters and cards from my late mother. Those are definitely keepers since she won’t be sending more.

One thing I found is my surveillance clock. It’s a neat little clock that looks worthless but records anything that moves in front of it. I’d used that years ago to record somebody that kept breaking into a place I used to stay at. Now though I’m afraid it has seen better days. Despite being quite expensive, the plastic was cheap and has just become sticky. It’s not that it has got sticky it’s that the plastic has begun to break down. I’ve heard of this happening before with some of the Panasonic cameras. I’m sure I have encountered it before too.

You can probably see the oily sheen on the surface of the plastic. There’s nothing as far as I know that can be done when plastic breaks down other than to throw it away and buy another. I’m sad because this is a $50 surveillance device but on the other hand it had served its purpose and I have better devices now.

I looked out of the bus window and saw what appears to have been a buzzard that was dragging a wing on the ground. When it saw me, it hopped away, dragging its wing. Figuring it was badly injured I went to grab my rifle so that I could put the thing out if its misery without it having all the pain and fear as some other animal tore it apart alive. By the time I’d loaded my rifle and put the magazine in, the thing had vanished. I just hope it has a quick and painless end with no fear.

One of the things I kept finding was old second generation phones. I have so many defunct Virgin flip phones that it’s not even funny! I’ll have to try charging them and copying down any numbers etc. Then I’m not sure what on earth I can do with phones that are on networks that no longer exist short of using them as rifle targets or fishing weights.