Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Bright Lights and Grey Skies

The electronic flasher came today from Amazon. To install it, I just needed to make three jumpers with male and female spade lugs at each end. These were inserted into the plug on the wiring harness and matched up with the appropriate terminals on the flasher unit. It works great. I then installed the LED bulbs in the front turn signals. I like this one particularly since it has the projector lens on the front making for a very bright turn indicator. After installing them, I figured that I may as well order them for the rear turn signals as well. The flasher works as advertised and maintained the same flashing rate even with the lower amperage LED bulbs.

Since they are LED, I now have the option of connecting them to the Skene Design Photon Blaster electronic module. One cut wire and a splice later, I had the left turn signal connected and tested. The left signal now has that distinctive flicker and really is pretty visible. The right turn signal is a bit more challenging as there is a single wire from the headlight shell, where all of the wiring is located, to the sidecar and is for the front and rear right turn signals. amber parking lights on the rear are not permitted so I will need to run a new wire for just the right-front turn signal. I have not started this task yet.

Update - I ran the wire from the sidecar front turn signal and connected it up to the Skene module. It is a lot brighter than the parking light on the sidecar and the flicker really makes it easy to see.

And, the solar is working. I set the charge controller to do an equalization charge so anytime the array voltage (red line on the first graph) is high enough, the controller will push the battery up to whatever is needed according to the battery temperature. Since the batteries are on the cold side, the equalization voltage is around 15 volts. The current is low as the batteries are fully charged. The only thing drawing power is the CO/propane detector and the Raspberry Pi monitoring the charge controller.

The weather was very dreary today. Not cold (50°F) but overcast. Everything is gloomy and grey. The following video is just a short loop around town and is sped up 8x like the previous couple of videos. I keep thinking of simply adding voice over to the sped up video and make it a vlog. But that seems like a lot more work...


6 comments:

  1. We have had an utterly gloomy grey spring as well. It was sunny for a few days and we are going back to cloud and rain. Ugh

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    1. You do have that nice ocean to enjoy but it has been a dreary spring. We are going to a family reunion in Vancouver this summer. I'm hoping that we get at least a few sunny days...

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  2. I have a truck salter with a vibrator on it and the traditional filament bulb tail lights last about a day before breaking. Do you think these led bulbs are more durable or are they just as vulnerable to extreme vibration?
    BTW, I enjoy the videos.

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    1. Like most LED light, these seem to stand up to vibration. But due to the lens at the end of the bulb, they may vibrate more inside of the socket. In other words, I don't know. I liked this particular bulb because of the projector lens so that they would be especially visible directly in front.

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  3. Richard,
    I'm glad that you needed something to do. :)

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    1. Maybe I should have said that messing with video is one way to avoid other tasks...

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