… I had 5 hours 38 minutes of restful sleep and 1 hour 14 minutes of restless sleep. I can see that I’m going to become pretty annoying with this Fitbit thing.
But don’t worry – it only synchronises the data when I charge it up off the laptop. That’s about once every three or four days, I reckon. And if I charge it up off a plug then it will be even less frequent than that.
But it must have been the restless bit when I was away with the fairies. And just for a change last night, with something that doesn’t happen very often at all, I was an observer in this one.
For some reason the star of last night’s show was a woman. She needed to be somewhere at 08:15 and it was now 07:55 so she reckoned that she had a couple more minutes to loiter around before she needed to leave. But just as she was about to go her husband shouted down from his window that he would take her if she could wait a couple more minutes. It turned out that her husband was a medical man of some description and in taking her he was leaving a couple of patients unsupervised. While he was away something went wrong and he was hauled up before the GMC. It was held that as the nature of his wife’s voyage was something medical, he was not wrong to attend to her, but in abandoning his other patients for that period he was guilty of a lack of good judgement.
The alarm awoke me and after breakfast I went and had a shave and a shower (and to charge up the Fitbit off the laptop – hence the data – while I was in there). And I nipped down to the magasin de presse quite early for the baguette – before the crowds arrived.
Lunch was of course on my wall, and I saw the Grima come dieseling in. I was going to take a photo but I found that I had left my phone behind. But it was nice up there in the sun – I really enjoyed it.
For tea I put a mug full of lentils in the slow cooker at 17:00 and by 19:30 they wee done to a turn. With the left-over mushrooms I made another mega-curry with enough for three more days.
Good news on the blog front. I’ve now caught up with where I wanted to be. I have however lost 48 entries somewhere that don’t fall in the “unclassifieds” and don’t fall in the “updated” either. I’m intrigued to know what is the issue with them.
But what I’ve done is to start at the beginning – july 2009 – and go through looking for missed days – days which have been conjoined into others. I’ve already found eight or none that I have missed and which now have pages of their own.
Two pages in particular from my 2010 visit to Canada – this one and this one – have taken me all afternoon and quite rightly so.
They were immense and it gave me an opportunity to put into practice the idea about which I told you yesterday – to write up my daily adventures in North America on the blog rather than on the website – although I might do that as well in due course.
Now I’m going to go for a 10-minute stroll. I’ve done this the last couple of nights as the Fitbit is telling me that I’m not having anything like enough exercise and that I’m sitting around far too much.
Sentiments with which I concur wholeheartedly.
The children where I worked once were given fit bits to see how much exercise they did. The more enterprising took them off and put them on top of a fan that vibrated badly….
I’m in the midst of a battery puzzle if you check my blog. I’m just not getting anything predictable or reliable out of my batteries. Or rather, a specific $20 10ah gel cell.
I’ve just posted a 200-word essay on your blog as a commentary but it disappeared into the ether. But reducing your charge cut-off to 11.1 amps is a bad move. The batteries will be straining at that and the charge that they will need to take will generate so much heat that it might warp the plates. And if they touch and short out you will have another problem to deal with.
But what are these batteries that you are buying? Are they “proper” deep-discharge batteries where there is plenty of room for them to expand and contract, or are they these cheap batteries designed for things like burglar alarms and doorbells where they charge up over a period of weeks at a couple of milli-amps and then just operate for a couple of seconds?
Those batteries aren’t designed to run for minutes on end and they aren’t designed to handle high charges like 10 amps.
Well, that’s weird! I can’t see your comment either. It’s not even in spam.
My batteries….
I have a 5ah battery from Radio Shack. https://www.radioshack.com/products/radioshack-12v-5000mah-sealed-lead-acid-rechargeabl
I have a 10ah battery from eBay a bit like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/12V-10AH-Universal-Multipurpose-Rechargeable-Sealed-Lead-Acid-Battery-with-F2-/141246538281?hash=item20e2f32229:g:FEQAAOSwLEtYlSbT
I have a pair of 7ah batteries from eBay. Same brand and model but one maxes at 12.9v and the other at 13v. A bit like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-FirstPower-12v-7ah-for-Scooter-Bike-Battery-Replaces-7Ah-Yeuyang-6-DW-7-/292165402029?hash=item44066a3dad:g:R5gAAOSw4DJYlp4o
My current drain…. fan 2.5A. Door lock – not yet applied but negligible. Circulation fans 0.5A but not yet applied.
Charging from a pair of 10W panels with a 15w panel to be linked in at some point.
To be quite honest, you’ll go nowhere with batteries like those. They aren’t going to handle the kind of work that you want to do. They are just things like burglar alarm batteries where they take a trickle charge and a brief cycle of usage.
Now THIS is the kind of thing that you want – a couple of these or maybe just one of its bigger brothers.
http://www.energiedouce.com/batterie-gel/521-batterie-gel-serie-pro-fabricant-europeen-12-volts-26-ah-3700908500301.html
Notice that it’s a “deep cycle” – that means that it’s built to run low (although nothing like as low as 11.1 volts) and then take a good charge. Translate the text into English and have a good look.
And when you look at the price, it’s not much more than the stuff that you are buying
I notice the warning triangle seems permanently on with that 10AH battery. Could it be the eBay batteries are garbage?
I looked around and the 26ah seems to be SLA here. They also seem bigger than my .50 cal ammunition box which was going to be my battery housing.
That all has me wondering whether the Harbor Freight battery is better (with a 20% coupon). If I slung that under the bus in a bracket assembly bolted on, aside from shielding the contacts against water by using spray on insulation, the battery cage doesn’t need to be more than an open cage.
https://t.harborfreight.com/12-volt-35-amp-hour-universal-battery-68680.html?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
Really, I’d prefer this was in the cockpit in a steel box.
I’m not sure of the wisdom of putting a battery in a steel box. Imagine what would happen if you dropped a spanner or a screwdriver.
Of course these are big, heavy batteries. The bigger the battery, the more room there is inside for the plates to flex in the heat without short-circuiting against each other. And the heavier they are, it’s because the plates are more substantial so that they can absorb the heat better without flexing.
That Harbour Freight battery looks much better than what you have, that’s for sure. But people comment on its light weight, which they perceive as an advantage. As I said just now, I would see that as a disadvantage. But it’s not expensive – it’s far better value than what you have right now and it’s more appropriate for your system, although there are better..
The battery that you have – it’s just not up to the job. It’s like that camera lens that I was looking at the other day – someone had given it one star out of five. Why? Because, would you believe, it wouldn’t fit their camera. It’s probably a very good lens, but just not right for them.
As for the battery, build a box inside the bus somewhere where the cables can be the shortest. Have a vent to the outside and one of these computer micro-fans against the vent, wired up to the INPUT on the charge controller (make sure that it can handle 17 volts – they are usually 6 – 24 volts) so that as soon as the panels pick up a charge, the fan will extract the gases.
Make sure that your cables are proper heavy-gauge (I use 6mm, whatever that is over there) and that all of the terminals are clean, crimped and soldered.
And put your panels flat on the roof – nowhere else.