Curiouser and Curiouser cried Alice

Looking around, I couldn't see Alice. I guess the big limousine must have taken her away. Needless to say the thing that has been curious over the past few weeks has been the battery power problem in the bus. It has been totally mystifying as 35W should be perfectly adequate to power both my door lock and my security camera and charge the batteries. Needless to say I had an extra 30W added to that lot.

Anyway, today my last (the very last) pair of solar panels arrived. They're 10W panels from eBay that are allegedly Aleko but I do not see the maker's name on them. Could it be a Chinese forgery of a Chinese product? Surely not - the Chinese are far too inscrutable for that! Indeed, the suspicious mind within wonders whether it's part of an equally inscrutable Chinese plot.

Putting a meter across them, they produced power and on the 250M setting on the meter, the amperage swing half way across. Whatever that means, it's probably good. I have no idea what half the funky things on that Walmart meter are actually for. Resistance and voltage yes - I can cope with those.

Putting my watt meter on the panels produced a big fat nothing. As a test, I put the meter on a 30W panel and got a good reading. Putting it on a 5W panel yielded nothing so I'm betting that watt meter has a high threshold.

Today I checked on the battery. It has power going into it from a 30W panel, a 15W panel and two 10W panels. This means it has power coming in from 65W. I even put a second 30W panel on the ground facing the sun. After a while I checked the battery level on the charge controller. It read 86%. That was excellent. Since the sun has been belting down today I have been getting plenty power. I was therefore somwhat puzzled a while later to read 72% on the battery.

Turning the power to the bus off for a while, I was perplexed to see the battery was even lower later. Nothing could be using that power! I turned the solar power off and left the batteries hooked up solely to the charge controller. When I looked later, the battery level was even lower. This began to give me an idea of what the problem might be. It's either a duff charge controller or a duff battery. There's an off chance something might have attacked my wires, causing power drain but while it's not inconceivable, it's unlikely.

There are two batteries in the system. One is a Harbor Freight 35AH battery. The other is a Duracell 35AH battery. Both are the U1 size.  If one of those is bad, it should be my suspect Harbor Freight battery but it could also be the Duracell. I shall have to remove them and see which one it is. For the moment I'm not quite sure what the problem actually is. I have narrowed it down to likely candidates.

I tried my flexible solar panel today. It's allegedly 60W but I can tell you right now that is a complete fabrication (eBay sellers lying again, really). It should, pointed directly at a bright sun, have produced 5A. That's more than enough to power my car tyre pump. That takes 4.5A. Nothing though - it didn't do a thing. My watt meter did read the incoming power at between 6 and 16W. So, it's not a 60W panel as sold. In fact I believe it's probably a 15W panel, possibly a 20W. Nothing more than that. Basically, it's good for charging cellphones on the go.

I do seem to be coming across nothing but garbage on eBay. I did decide never to buy on eBay again and started buying from Walmart. I really don't know what's happened - it's as though eBay has become as bad as it used to be back in 1995 - pretty much like the seedy bar where you could go to buy your own hub caps back.

The sun was pretty bright. As can be seen here, that flexible panel was churning out a massive 9W, lending credence to my theory that it's actually a 10W or 15W panel and nothing more.

Today I pulled the card out of my C-DVR that's hooked up to my backup camera that I've set as a dashcam on the bus. I had some ropy video but adequate to show what happened in the event of a collision or somebody doing something stupid on the road. Once I can get the power problems sorted out on the bus then I will put a relay in the console that will power the C-DVRs from solar power when I'm parked and from the bus battery when I'm driving. That'll probably need a line from the ignition switch. Looking at the video, I could see fairly clearly everything that was going on in front of the bus.

A few days ago, another backup camera arrived. I connected it to my portable screen and was perplexed to find the image was on its side. After some cursing and bafflement due to the non existent instructions I figured out that the camera rotates and swivels in the mount. It also has a flush mount that will allow me to mount it flush with the skirt above the back bumper. That will save me a lot of hassle as I broke the last camera as it protruded.  That in turn will allow me to use the replacement camera I did get before, as a replacement for the top camera. This time I'll put a rain hood over the top camera as water seems to have seeped into it, despite claims of waterproofing.

As far the new solar panels - they'll need some testing before I'll use them. It could be that they're no good. Who knows, from eBay any more? The only reason I got them from eBay was because Walmart was up to their usual price trickery. Watch prices of things on their website and you'll see them going up and down like a whore's drawers. I can literally see a different price every day on some items. The solar panels they had which said "Aleko" on them were $18 each then suddenly they were $25 each. That was when I went to eBay. They're back down now to $17.98! Of course Walmart's trickery doesn't end there. Their "Free delivery" isn't really free when they tell me at the same time I can save $1.18 by picking up from the store (which fortunately happens to be right close to my work place).

A few days ago a Renology Rover arrived. It was half the price it cost everywhere else at Walmart so that was an online purchase. It's absolutely bloody massive. Given the issues I've been getting with power (which are probably a bad battery) I figured a top notch charge controller might help. Certainly it might help by milking more power out of the panels in low light situations. I'm going to have a battle to find somewhere to put the new controller!

One of the other things I did today was to make some foamboard masks. I cut out two, the size of my 20W panels with added flanges and two the size of my 10W panels also with added flanges. The flanges are the aluminium angle strip I'll rivet to the panels in order to secure them to the bus in the manner of my rear panels. It's pretty much a template to see the best arrangement of panels at the front. I have a single 15W panel with built-in screw holes right now. I have to replace that as the plastic bezel was damaged by vandals. That makes it unsafe and I don't want it falling in front of my face when I'm driving. I have a feeling I'll be putting a single 20W panel with a 10W panel each side. I might end up with three 10W panels - it all depends on what I can work out as being best.

Checking the battery a couple of hours after disconnecting everything bar the controller, the controller informed me the batteries were at 43%. I've got the controller set to where if the batteries are at an actual 50% capacity then the indicated capacity will be 0%. Thus right now the batteries are probably somewhere around 70% actual charge. That tells me that (since the indicated capacity dropped from 86% to 43%) I probably do have a dead battery.

At the moment I have a Duracell deep cycle and a Harbor Freight deep cycle. Neither particularly impress me. At $100 on average for a battery, they're not that cheap either. The ideal would be a lithium battery but they're completely outrageous prices. I just have to identify the dead battery and replace it. The Harbor Freight battery was purchased in July 2018 so it's around 18 months old. The Duracell battery seems also to have been purchased in 2018. I'll have to test both and see what happens. I've suspected the Harbor Freight battery for a while. I hadn't realised they were both as new as they are. Maybe my next purchase will be a battery tester?