Day Fifteen Twentythird

Day Fifteen to Twenty Third

As we’ve approached christmas I’ve become increasingly busy with real world things and so have had less time to do any adventures.

Solarcene.community

The good news is that with the latest power schedule and a few good days of sun we’ve managed to keep the whole system online. It didn’t help that the certbot certificate expired for 24hrs which I didn’t realise (just assumed that the server was offline) but it was an easy fix. Its going to be a long winter though so will keep me busy trying to keep things running on minimal sun.

During the recent poor weather the battery got so low I had to switch to my emergency portable battery, this got me thinking about other sources of temporary power. Looking around the garage the other batteries I have charged are 2x Ryobi 5Ah 18V and 2x Makita 3Ah 18V which I use for various power tools. I’ve therefore bought a Makita battery socket with a 18V to 12V stepdown and also a Ryobi to Makita converter (all from AliExpress). My plan is to install a rotary switch to control the source of 12V for the system and allow me to switch from the main battery to backup sources (either a cable to the portable battery or to the makita socket). Using a Ryobi 5Ah battery and running the minimal system (mastodon off so 5W (0.4A) draw) we should be able to get 5Ah / 0.41A = 12h. While this isn’t much and it will be tedious having to switch batteries it might be just enough to keep the system online.

Psion hacking

I’m still waiting for the arrival of the bluetooth modules as discussed in my previous post - I’ve therefore resisted the urge to start opening up the Series 5. I have done more research and have started to identify the pins on the Max3212CAI chip close up image and datasheet. I’ve started to repair an Revo Plus (16Mb) device, I’ve replaced the battery and i’m rebuilding the hinges at the back of the cases, unfortunately the pins have broken through so need to rebuild some very small plastic tubes. I’ll take pictures and do a follow up post in the future.