A rainy day

Today started cold and rainy. Not a day for doing much with paintwork, that’s for sure. Thus I ended up swapping out two lighting units.

The lighting unit as supplied had the cable going out through the back of the unit. This one, I rerouted the cable through a new hole at the top of the unit. It looks pretty good.

Turned on, the light looks good and produces a reasonable amount of light though even my modifications to the light - frosting spray and painting the reflector white haven’t improved things that much.

The most successful light was at the back in the store room. I’d previously had trouble reading the display on the timer and on my charge controller and had to use a flashlight. Because I sprayed the inside of the lens with a diffusing spray, the light is much softer than the previous bare bulb. It’s thus possible to see far better. In addition, the light itself is far brighter. That will make retrieving stuff from the store room much easier.

There is one light remaining to replace. That will have to wait until next time. I have tested the light and seen where it will work best. In order to install it, I want to replace the switch for the voltmeter with a button. That button I will take from the other USB power unit on the other side of the bus which has two voltmeters.

The new light is the same as the one in the bedroom - I decided to go for angled lights that shade the eyes from direct light - this will make reading that much easier. I’m all for making life easier. 

The USB charging panel to the left of the first of today’s lights is where I’ll be removing the red pushbutton and switching out the dead left side voltmeter. I’d had that wired in with the switch for the power sockets and it just burned out. Clearly it was not designed to be constantly on.

To the right of the USB panel, on the beam above is the new voltmeter. I actually have two spare voltmeters - both red. I believe the one on the previous box is blue and I was planning to replace it with red. That would make far more sense to me as red does not destroy night vision.

There have been a couple of ideas regarding the button and the two voltmeters - one gives me battery voltage and the other gives me solar voltage. I had thought of putting a relay in that is powered from the battery and which then gives me both voltages. Then I realised that was way too complicated and simple DPST or DPDT switch would be more than adequate.

Meanwhile the paint on the aluminum sheet is now fully dry but as per normal - all of the paint will take up to a month to harden fully. I will start working on the gutters next weekend. By then maybe the new lights will have arrived. I was going to go with more of the 3 inch clearance lights on the corners but I didn’t order enough. Having to order more I just went ahead and ordered two of the triangular amber lights. I’d already taken delivery of two triangular LED lights. I will try to make use of those. If they’re wrong then they’re high enough it would have to be one nosey inspector to get up there to look for the numbers on them. If they got up there and found them wrong then I’d go with that and take their recommendations.

Next weekend I’d like to try replacing the vent over the driver’s compartment. In theory I should be able to get up there with the stepladder.

Finally, I’m writing this entry on my iPad and Chrome really doesn’t seem to like my iPad as the display flicks up and down constantly. Thus, it’s very hard to see exactly what I’m typing. Even on Safari I get the same problem so perhaps it’s a blogger problem. Maybe Google just doesn’t like iPads?