A lot of work and no visible change

Today I did a lot but nothing really noticeable changed. On Friday on my way home from work, I popped into Lowes (hiss, spit) and bought four reels of wire - red, green, white and black. I also had some leftover twin wire from my last project which was to install a car dashcam as a security camera for the premises here.

Today the plan was to build up a cable, install that cable and some SAE power sockets. Then I was going to find the solar power cable and run that to the built-in front and rear cameras to power them 24x7 as a security camera setup. I didn't quite get that far though.

Making up the cable took plenty time. I ended up duct taping all the cable ends to the mirror bracket on the bus then taping them all together in a little bundle every 8 inches or so. That didn't take too long though I'd have liked to have done it faster.

As the cables came off the spool, they tried to tie themselves into knots. Were I doing this a lot more, I'd have a workflow set up with the spools all on a single spindle, combining through a funnel and I would be pulling a bit and taping, pulling a bit and taping. 

It is a fairly hefty cable bundle. When eventually I ran it down through Carpenter's cable conduit I noticed my bundles (there are several) are about as bit as Carpenter's original cable bundle.

The length I needed was not massive. There you are, around 6-8 feet of 14 gauge cables. The twin cable will carry power from an SAE connector to a subsidiary charge controller that will keep the driving batteries topped up. The red and black cables will take power from two solar panels placed inside the windshield to the main conduit under the bus. That feeds into the charge controller for the house batteries. The white and green cables take power from the front solar panel and feed it into the conduit for the house batteries. Both sets of panels feed into bridge rectifiers just in case bizarrely there's something amiss with the wiring though I check, check and triple check everything before I make a final connection. If I so much as turn my head away, I check again just to make sure nothing has moved and that I've not forgotten anything. It is this meticulous approach that has probably saved me from burning out solar panels etc.

I had a look at the Aleko solar panels I'll be mounting on the front of the bus. I have three (one is on the way). As can be seen, they're all 10w panels. I put my little blue wattmeter on one and got over 22 volts. That's welcome! I didn't put a load on it because I need to buy some spade connectors in order to connect to the panel. I could probably do with some flex core speaker cable to take power from the panels too.

Popping the cover off the connector site displayed some Chinese wickedness. There is no blocking diode on these panels. I must check the 20W panels to see if there's a diode on those too and while I'm at it, the 30W though I believe there is. 

Fortunately, before Radio Shack jumped into the deep dark abyss that failed retail stores vanish into never to be heard from again, I picked up some diodes. In fact I have quite a lot of diodes. I picked up diodes, switches, fuse holders etc by the armful in their closing sale. Since then I have seen a lot of Radio Shack merchandise being sold for profit on eBay by opportunistic scalawags. 

While I was working in the bus - which took most of the afternoon - and didn't seem to achieve much, I noticed the plastic string holding my beaded seat cushion in place had broken. The real string that I put on to held the top of the back in place seems to have been unaffected. I'm assuming the heat and light from outside had a detrimental affect on the plastic.

This is probably the best picture of today's operations. The three black disks are SAE connectors. The two on the left are connected to each other and they feed through to a bridge rectifier, taking power from the dashboard mounted solar panel (I can put two) to the charge controller for the house batteries. The SAE connector on the right takes power from an extra windscreen mounted solar panel and will feed that to a subsidiary charge controller to keep the driving batteries fresh. Now that's the one thing I couldn't walk away with and say it was working. I connected a panel and could get nothing out of it at the other end.

I've been trying out some push-fit cable connectors. So far they seem to have worked well. I'm not so sure that this is where the problem might not lie. I do have some screw terminal connectors and since this just connects one device to one cable, I could replace the push fit with screw down. That would eliminate one likely problem area. The other is there's a chance that the cable was damaged when I was tightening the steel conduit. I didn't inspect it but did notice the cable wrap was not damaged so the cable should be fine.

While I was removing the access panel I put in the front of the bulkhead above the windscreen, I noticed some of the screws were just pushing into place rather than actually tightening. I'll probably have to redrill all the holes and install rivnuts. That'll sort that lot out! I have ordered some steel rivnuts but eBay claimed they were coming from the USA but I found after I'd ordered that they were really coming from China. That's a let down! That'll also take forever since imports from China are all being screened for the Chinese supervirus. I do have some aluminium rivnuts which are fine for things like my panel. Not so fine for anything heavy though the current front mounted solar panel is fastened on using four aluminium rivnuts.

Looking inside the bulkheads I noticed that the screws for the existing solar panel are visible inside the central partition of the bulkhead. That's welcome news! The three new panels will be fitted to an aluminium frame and installed on the front, replacing the damaged panel. The damaged panel still produces power - it's just mechanically unsound.

Once the new cable to the subsidiary charge controller is working the plan is to identify the cable for the solar power supply. I'll tap into that and feed power to the front and rear cameras. That'll add an extra layer of security. The step after that is to change the front solar panel to the three 10W panels. That'll give me 30W instead of the current 15W for not much extra space used.

All the work done today was pretty much tidying things up to make them more user friendly. The only new feature was the connector to charge the driving battery. I did remove a diode setup I'd been using and replaced it with a very nice bridge rectifier block. The block just looks tidier but adds no extra functionality or anything else for that matter.

I did run into every problem known to man on the way. I'm definitely going to have to hit the stores for blue female spade connectors, blue fork connectors, red fork connectors and so on. I'm also going to have to order some 8-32 rivnuts. I do have some 4mm rivnuts on order but since they're coming from China and not California as claimed on the eBay advert, God alone knows if they'll arrive, when they'll arrive and what viruses they'll bring with them.

The one reason I ordered the third solar panel was because it was likely already in the country before the latest Chinese virus came out. I can see the price of stuff from China rising rapidly as the world restricts movements of goods from Red China. I'll solder wires to the panels and spray inside the connector boxes with insulation. Then I'll solder diodes to the wires once they're inside the main bulkhead.

A few days ago I bought a 10-24 tap and some 10-24 security screws. I'll drill the brackets the solar panels will mount to and will tap the panels so that I can just screw them in place. The security screws I've chosen are Torx with the central nodule. That'll make it very hard for anybody to remove the panels as bits that will fit that kind of Torx screw are few and far between. The aluminium angle I'll just rivet to the bus.

Well, that's about all I have time for. I started about midday - after the sun began to shine and it warmed up a little. I finished when darkness fell. Nothing can be done with solar after dark, strangely enough. I wonder if I write a strongly enough worded letter to Mother Nature whether I could get 24 hour sun?