Uvalde Homecoming

Thursday - Yesterday afternoon and evening, I volunteered to help distribute free snow cones in Uvalde during their homecoming festivities. I believe we distributed around 700-800 free snow cones. It got pretty hectic at times. 

There was a bonfire set up. The fire department had several trucks in attendance keeping an eye on the fire. It’s interesting that there is a burn ban in place but I guess they must get some sort of waiver plus all of the fire trucks nearby .

No pictures of the parade as things were getting pretty hectic at that time. But there were quite a few entries in the parade.We were pretty busy from around 5:30 to 7:30. After cleanup, I had dinner at Whataburger with friends before heading back to the RV. IMHO one of the best burgers around is Whataburger. They are as good as In-N-Out. The fries at In-N-Out are better but they don’t offer gravy on the side…

Misc…

Monday - I made a batch of furikake Chex mix for the Monday social hour here at the park. It’s just like the regular Chex mix except for the addition of furikake and soy sauce and deletion of Worcestershire sauce. Other than that, it’s about the same. 

Tuesday - We went to an optometrist in Castroville, and it was great. Nice office, friendly staff. All in all, a wonderful experience. It’s been a slow process finding routine appointments on the road. Since 2020, many locations haven’t been accepting new patients. 

As usual, my prescription changed only slightly, so I opted to not replace my glasses. They work fine, and I currently have sunglasses that attach with magnets to the lenses. Very convenient.

I installed a security light on our shed with LED lights that only draw 12watts. Quite a difference from the non-motion-sensing halogen lights they replaced. I still need to bypass the switch that controls power to the light. Maybe, tomorrow’s project…

Wednesday - It's a very pleasant 68°F mid-morning. I wish it were like this every day...

I bypassed the switch for the security light, and now it is powered whenever the shed is powered. The next "project" was a minor hack on the Victron Lynx Distributer on the class C. There are LED lights that indicate power and an LED for each fuse to indicate a blown fuse. These only work if you opt for the Lynx Shunt, which costs more. To enable the circuit board, I picked up small buck converters that output 5VDC from 12VDC and wired them into the provided cable and, what I believe, an RJ9 plug. I need to pick up some ring connectors for the 24AWG wire to the 8mm screw terminals on the Lynx Distributer. 

Success! The green light indicates no blown fuses. 

I had indicated that I would help serve snow cones in Uvalde this afternoon/evening. 

 

Playing With Solar

Friday - I had to renew my passport as it was expiring in around five months. A couple of weeks ago, I used the online renewal process and the site indicated that I should receive the new passport book by 12/1/2025. I assumed that the current government shutdown could push that date out even more. The replacement showed up in today’s mail. I guess that part of the government is still working and, it’s working well! 

Saturday - This morning, I tilted the solar panels roughly south to see if it makes much of a difference. While up on the roof, I checked the output of each panel. Open circuit voltage on both panels were 22.5V, so good. The short circuit current was not as good. One panel was 7.6amps and the other was 6.3amps. When they are wired in series, the lower current kind of determines the max current of the string. On both the class A and class C, I’ve noticed that the max current rarely goes above about 7amps. 

Sunday - This graph was generated today (with the panels tilted to the south at about the optimal angle. I would’ve expected something closer to 10amps. Though I may need to have the inverter/charger disabled so it would stay in bulk. 

Day to Day Life - SKP

Tuesday - It's a warmer morning today, but at 77°F, it's not too bad. I'm sitting outside for the morning test session, and there is a nice, light breeze. Unfortunately, the wind is supposed to pick up around noon and have gusts up to 33mph. 

After the morning test session, I rode the Ural to the local hardware store to pick up an 8’x2x6. It wouldn’t fit in the Jeep due to the length but it’ll easily fit in the Ural. The guys at the hardware store got a kick out of it. I need the 2x6 to mount to the ceiling of the shed for the hanging bike rack. The ceiling joists are spaced 2’ apart and this gives me a lot of flexibility on the position of the bicycle rack. 

Wednesday - The bicycle rack arrived this evening and I felt obligated to get it installed. The 2x6 is twisted a bit so it wouldn’t fit snug to the ceiling. But it’ll work. I used some bungee cords to prevent the hooks from coming off the seat and handlebars. This was a problem that I had with a similar rack in Fairbanks.

We went into San Antonio today for an appointment. It was north of the airport so quite the slog through city traffic. And, the north wind along Hwy 90 added to the driving stress. 

I also drained the fresh water tank, the water heater, and blew out the water lines on the class C. I still need to pick up some RV antifreeze for the traps. While I had the RV parked in front of our lot, I also removed one (of three) of the solar panels to reinstall on the class A.

Since I had moved the solar charge controller from the class A to the class C last spring, I needed to pick up a replacement. I didn’t repeat my mistake not taking temperature into account. The other charge controller maxed out at 100VDC input from the solar panels. With the four panels wired in series, the voltage could exceed 100VDC when the air temperature drops below about 35°F. The new charge controller has a max input voltage of 150VDC. I’ll start that installation tomorrow. 

Thursday - I reinstalled one panel onto the class A and they are wired in series. Since they were previously installed here, it went pretty quick. 

The next task was installing the new charge controller. It is physically larger than the previous one but the old wiring was just long enough. After powering it on from the batteries, I connected to it using the Victron software, downloaded the latest firmware, and ran through the configuration. I then turned on the switch to the two panels. 

The most challenging part was getting the new controller recognized by HomeAssistant, the home automation/monitor system I’m using. Communication is via Modbus over WiFi from the Raspberry Pi running VenusOS. It turns out that only a slight change was needed in the Modbus YAML file for it to start pulling data.