Two steps forward

Today I welded ends on the mold I made for the plaster that will form the basis for my aluminium casting/welding. That went OK but I did have the amperage up a little high for the 1/16th rods I'd pulled out. This resulted in one turning into a sparkler. I turned the amperage down from 70 to about 45. That worked and I completed welding the two ends on.

Following the welding, when everything had cooled, I mixed some plaster-like stuff that I bough a bag of in Lowes. I have no idea what exactly it is. It seems somewhat soft so it could be gypsum. Needless to say there was just a brand name I'd never heard of before on the sack and no description of the contents. It was a white powder so it could be plaster. On the other hand it could be a lot of things but somehow I doubt I have a sack of Heroin. 

After the "plaster" had seemingly set, I scraped it level pretty easily using a piece of metal. That was a huge clue that it wasn't really plaster. I'll have to see how it goes when I play a blow torch on it next weekend. For the moment I shall put it in my car so it can bake dry in the heat.

After the debacle of the Chromebook, I went and bought a cheap laptop. This actually works and I've now installed Linux Mint. Windows never got a look in. As soon as I switched on, I pressed F2 and got the bootloader. 

I really wanted to load Raspbian but it didn't seem to want to run on my new Asus. Instead I put Linux Mint which will do pretty much what I need. The wifi driver didn't like the built-in wifi board so I had to use an external wifi dongle but that was fine. There won't be wifi where I'm going to be using it.

Meanwhile I had a response from HP that indicated that they didn't think an awful lot of their Chromebooks. In fact one representative pretty well called it a cheap android tablet with a keyboard. Well, if HP thinks it's trash then it must be.

As for the Chromebook, HP said they'd escalated to a higher level of help and they'd be in touch in a few days. I told them the Chromebook was waiting to go to the shooting range as a target. Interestingly a friend from Britain tried a Chromebook and called it a false economy. They couldn't do anything worthwhile with it either. I at least tried to put Linux on it.

A product warning!

A few weeks ago I was researching cheaper laptops that would charge off USB or 12v. Well, I found a Chromebook. It ticked all the right boxes. It charged off a 120v USB 3 charger that could likely be replaced by a 12v to USB 3 charger. It was $140 from Best Buy and even better there were instructions online how to delete the God-Awful ChromeOS and install Linux.

So, I bought the Chromebook and it arrived. That was where the problems started...

The instructions for installing Linux and running it never worked. Somehow on the initial startup I did get Linux to run but only from USB and it never ran again.

Since that I have been scouring every website and every set of instructions available to get the blessed thing to work with Linux. Everything has been a miserable failure. At this point I should just quietly have returned it but I found a YouTube video where a guy took the back off and unscrewed one screw that was apparently a physical firmware lock. Then he could run Linux.

I duly undid the screws and pried up the edges of the plastic insert. There was something holding it fast in the center that was clearly not a screw. Looking further, it did not look remotely like the circuit-board shown on YouTube. I quietly clipped it all back together and checked whether it all still worked. 

As I don't really want to spend weeks trying this twiddle and that twiddle in order to try to make it work with Linux, I'll just have to throw it in the closet. I suspect in about 6 months I'll pull it out of the closet, find it's still not possible to get Linux to run on it and end up throwing it on the back of the pickup for a one-way trip to the dump with the rest of the household refuse.

Do yourselves a favor - don't buy a Chromebook aka Junkbook. It's just a prison that keeps you locked into a Google system and restricts what you can do. Judging from the fact the only apps available are Android, there's be no working software for it either. It really is a totally unusable piece of junk and to cap that off, it can't even be used offline.

My aims are...

• A laptop.
• Runs off USB/12v
• Takes Linux
• Can be used offline

Well, the HP Chromebook, according to online data checks all of those boxes. The reality is though that it does not take Linux and hence cannot be used offline.

As I have now got pry marks around the insert, I can't return it. It appears I was gravely misled by the lying buffoons online. Sometimes online information is good, sometimes it is bad. There's no knowing until something is tried.

As for the cost, it just annoys me that I have to write off a $140 mistake. There's nobody to blame but myself for believing online technical information. My existing laptop is an Asus that came with Windows 10 but which now runs Linux. The new laptop was intended for a specific project and something cheap I could leave in the car while I am at work. Something I could have all the non-personal information - something that I would never use for email, web browsing etc, where no passwords would ever be stored.

No cement yet but two projects were worked on.

Project one for work today was to go over the windshields with a paint scraper. I have to say that they're probably cleaner on the outside than they are inside now. The first thing was to spray lightly with paint remover just to soften the paint then it was a case of scraping followed by wiping down with paper towels. 

The end result is that the windows look better but there's probably another session to be done. It won't be long before that glass is up for renewal anyway. There are chips galore and the edges are clearly delaminating.

As I was up on the roof, I peeled the tape off the newly installed roof vent. Then I emptied a watering can down it and made a right old mess inside. Fortunately it's hot so it all dried in a couple of hours. 

I had been expecting seepage since the water was flooding out of the weep holes in the vent. My thought is that the weep holes might be too small. I'll have to wait and see. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are supposed to be rainy days. I'll put a funnel under the vent inside the bus and a length of tube from that to a 2 liter bottle. If it rains heavily and water accumulates in the bottle then I'll know I need to put a roof over the vent or perhaps change the vent out.

Meanwhile the two high-dome convex mirrors I bought have not fared well. It's not spray paint on them. It's some kind of reaction with the grey Walmart bags that I had covering them for a few weeks while I was painting the bus. This is rather disappointing to be honest.

In other news I did discover an actual computer that will charge off the power from a USB socket. It has to be a 3A USB3 socket but it will charge. The only problem is that the computers concerned are Chromebooks. They're great if all you want to do is send email, browse the web etc but for anything else, they're horrible. Great for couch surfers but not practical in the real world. I'm currently investigating how to remove ChromeOS from them and replace it with a standard Linux operating system. They have possibilities.

Nothing exciting here, move along now!

Yesterday I quickly made up a pair of cables with jumper connectors on them and put them in the battery compartment. The aim there is to connect to the second solar controller with the eventual aim of keeping the driving batteries topped up via a small solar panel hung in the windshield. That really does not need a huge panel as all it'll be doing is stopping self-discharge.

Today I welded together two pieces of steel angle. The next step will be to fill that with concrete. After the concrete has set it'll be smoothed with cement and a piece of aluminium bar pressed into the cement to act as a mold for when I weld aluminium bars to go over the windows on the one side of the bus. That way there will be limited aluminium runoff, the two bars will be lined correctly and heat will be concentrated rather than wasted.

The intent had been to go under the bus to do the brake lines, to connect the solar connection I made up and to switch out the connectors on the batteries. None of that happened largely because Saturday and Sunday I was unwell. Definitely not Covid. Today I was just exhausted. 

 

Producing gas for cooking

Today was one of those days when I was so exhausted from the work week that though there were big plans to go under the bus and work on brake lines, nothing major really got done. Instead it was a series of side projects and side-side projects. 

As some of my readers know, I have an interest in robotics. For a long time I have thought about getting a screen to run off a Raspberry Pi for occasions when a network is not available. It would be possible to configure the Pi to run as a hotspot but most of the time it runs off the house network. To change that, it is possible but I would need a screen as a backup in case something went amiss. Thus today I took delivery of a cable that can connect the Pi to a backup camera screen that I have spare. It's a microscopic screen but should be OK for configuration if need be and it runs off 12v. I have been asked if I ran the bus off a Pi but the answer is no. The Pi is for other things.

One of the other side projects involves producing hydrogen gas. To this end I have two dollar-store stainless steel knives set up in a bath of salt water with a cap over the cathode designed to collect hydrogen. In this case, the hydrogen might have chlorine gas mixed with it but the point is just to produce hydrogen via solar power. So far the experiment has been running just over a month and has produced some very small bubbles. I do not expect to produce a meaningful quantity of hydrogen in the experiment. 

It seems that producing two mols of hydrogen (about the quantity needed to fill a garment bag) takes two full days at 1 amp. I can pretty well guarantee I'm not getting that much. Mostly the experiment has been running off a 15W solar panel placed in a non-ideal location. The fact there are gas bubbles is encouraging but it might take many months to generate anything meaningful.

Another project today was to put handles on two of my hinged solar panel pairs. This makes them much easier to carry - like a suitcase. There is no latch as yet to keep them latched together. That might come in time but as Lowes (hiss, spit) had no worthwhile latches, it might take a while.

With hydrogen production, salt produces chlorine gas - not ideal and in fact quite dangerous. For an experiment however, that's fine. If the gasses from both anode and cathode were mixed and it was just pure water then I would produce Brown's gas which is an explosive mix of hydrogen and oxygen. This would work well for cooking but isn't the safest thing to use.

To put it simply, this is a fun experiment but won't likely yield enough hydrogen to cook anything with in a reasonable amount of time. 

Today I broke a rule and answered somebody's post on social media. Every now and then I want to contribute and I always get my head snapped off for bothering. Somebody posted that they were going to buy a school bus and didn't know where they were going to park it. They said they'd asked their boss about parking in the company car park and he was not happy. Well, that's a no then. My suggestion was that if it was not possible to locate a parking space before purchasing the bus it would be better not to purchase the bus. That was shouted down as being rude and negative which is pretty much all that happens to real suggestions on social media. All people go there for is positive affirmation of their own ideas. Putting it bluntly, it encourages conversations like this.

• Hey, y'all, I had this great idea about jumping off a bridge onto a  busy road. 
• Yeah, why not do it. Just think, you could get a day off work.
• My aunty jumped off a bridge into traffic and won $10,000
• No. Don't do it - that could kill you.
• Don't be such a nasty person. She has a perfect right to jump off a bridge!
• You're horrible - your should leave this group immediately and see a psychiatrist.
• I'd be banned if I told you what I really think of you and your dog stinks.

It's all about the poster getting positive affirmation of the poster's own ideas. Nothing about honest discussion or honest opinions. Nothing that advances the person or their personal development. In fact, because the poster can block everybody that disagrees with them, it leads to really dangerous situations where dangerous ideas cannot be countered. One example from the bus would would be poorly secured large or heavy items in a bus such as cast iron woodstoves which in themselves are a whole new level of danger and stupidity. 

As far as social media is concerned, the problems are vast. The person giving advice might know what they're talking about but might also just be copying (with errors) what they have read elsewhere. Indeed they might not even own the equipment they're discussing and might just be yet another unemployed individual posting about the way they think things should work. So many people, for example, were nasty about my welding. The fact that I can beat my welds with a sledgehammer and they don't fall apart never changes their attitudes. Put together a weak weld that looks pretty and they'd be full of praise.

Basically, I'm not big into social media. Here's the thing - if somebody is always on social media or has a huge number of posts over a short period then perhaps that's all they do. There are always more talkers than doers.

Worked on the leak

Today was a hot day and the week had been exhausting. Working from 6 til 4:30 with about 3 hours of breaks during which I have to sit and nap in a hot car is not refreshing. Due to the Covid situation, the work breakroom with its delicious air conditioning is closed. 

So today I did get to the bus. The first thing I did was to set out my hinged solar panels and run the twin extraction fans. Those 5 panels produce 50W between them and are aimed squarely at the sun. The other 80W of solar panels are not aimed directly at the sun but pick up plenty power.

Turning the twin extraction fans on, there was ample power from the panels. Strangely though over the 30 minutes the fans were running, the battery level went down from 100% to 90%. Within 10 seconds of turning the fans off, the batteries were back at 100%. I'm not sure why that's happening when there's surplus solar power and nothing is being overloaded.

I regard my hinged solar panels as a great success and the next project will be to hinge the two 20W panels. That should give me 90W of hinged panels plus two separate 30W panels, two flexible 10-12W panels, an epoxy 5w panel and the 15W Harbor Freight panel.

Following all this, I attended to the leaking light fixture. Today I smoothed some of the caulk that I've been using around the edges of the mount. If there's a leak in the mounting caulk, that'll sort it out. If it's leaking elsewhere then I'll attend to that in due course.

Meanwhile I also had another go at caulking around the sheet of plywood installed over the two windows I blocked off. I need to apply more caulk but needed the stuff installed to cure first. Then I can see where I need to put more. The last stage will be painting it.

The solar panels I've been using are pretty darned heavy which is why I'm really glad I'm using small panels. For panels that can just be set outside and taken in at night or in bad weather, those light epoxy panels seem ideal. The flexible panels are just horribly expensive.

The 5W epoxy panels are available on eBay and are very light, having no frame. If they were available in bigger than 5W or 10W I'd have bought several just to put up inside the windshield and to place outside as required. This is a market that the solar industry seems to ignore. Perhaps making cheaper panels without those heavy aluminium mounts just makes the panels sell for too little money? I like the flexible panels - not for the flex but for the lightness. Imagine one screwed down to a lightweight plastic or wooden frame. It'd make life so much more pleasant.

How to find a leak!

Three problems were resolved today, all within an afternoon. How about that for progress?

The first problem - now that the control console can be opened and closed properly, having put rivnuts in place of the widening sheet metal screw holes - was to eliminate the buzzer. As per the circuit diagram there was a wire (in this case two wires) coming from a master plug. Those wires disappeared through a hole under the console so like as not they're going to come out in front of the heater fans. It really wasn't worthwhile looking for a way to remove those wires so I just capped them.

Having put a little red cap on the wires I traced the video cable. There was a problem in that I was not getting video from the new camera. It had been working but tracing the video cables proved fruitless. Everything in the console looked good so I just closed the console and left it at taking the buzzer out of the circuit. 

But wait, there's more. While I was in the console, I removed the horn switch that I had installed and the wiring that both I and the hillbillies had used because the horn actually works through the steering wheel button. That was a task well done.

The next step was to check to see if the video cable was disconnected at the back. Indeed, it was. Now it is reconnected so there should be no more issues.

While I was working in the bus it began to rain. Within a few minutes water began to come down, dripping in two places off the head protector above the back door. 

Earlier in the day I'd looked using an endoscopic camera inside the back of the bus and found no evidence of leaks but had discovered some rusty spot welds. Nothing I can do about those! Not having my endoscope, I put my finger up and felt around. I felt wetness.

There was a line of wet coming from the wire to my door side top marker light. That's the leak likely identified. None of the others appeared to be leaking. I'll have to go back up there and squirt some form of sealant up there just to seal around the wire. With luck, that will be all the leaks dealt with.  The front marker lights need to be checked for leaks too. That can be done another day though.