Saturday - It’s a beautiful, 65°F day with clear skies and a slight breeze. Perfect weather for sitting outside. I participated in the morning test session. There is an air show a few miles away and earlier this morning, quite a few jets flew over the area at low altitudes. Pretty loud!
I have another Shelly 1 that I’m going to put in the RV bathroom somewhere to trigger the water pump. I don’t have a use for the dry relay contacts yet but I may think of something.Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Tucson, AZ
Thursday, March 23, 2023
MQTT and Leased Lot
Thursday - I tried something new (for me) on the home automation front. It's been around for quite a while but I had never delved into it. It is a lightweight messaging protocol of the Internet of Things (IoT) using a publish and subscribe model. I installed an MQTT broker on the Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant. I set up an automation to subscribe to the Shelly 1 that I had installed in the RV control panel. I added a physical momentary push-button to the control panel and it sends an MQTT message out whenever the button is pressed. The automation will close the relay and power is supplied to the water pump for some specified period. Currently, for testing, I have it set to 5 seconds. Something else that we have been working on for a while is a place to park the RV when we aren't traveling. We are leasing this space and it has a concrete pad for the RV with a 218 sq-ft building with water and 20 amp power. The covered patio is 9' deep. There are full hookups for the RV (water, 50amp power, and sewer).
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Tucson, AZ
Monday - Getting ready for another test session. It's 74°F so just about ideal to be outside. I did figure out how to add a button to the HomeAssistant interface and use the button state to trigger the automation. Now, I'm working on another D1Mini to add a physical push button to do the same thing. I plan on having physical buttons in the kitchen, bathroom, and possibly the wet bay to trigger the pump automation. For testing, I just have the pump running for 15 sec but the time can be easily changed.Today, it was kind of windy with some stronger gusts. Nothing as strong as the winds in Yuma and Quartzsite. Today's small project was helping the neighbor mount his bike rack to the back of his Jeep JK. They have two recumbent bikes so it wasn't a regular bicycle rack. I broke a drill bit when modifying the rack to hug the back of the Jeep a bit more. Later, he showed up with a replacement set even though I only broke one bit. Pretty nice!
Sunday, March 19, 2023
More RV Automation
Sunday - Today, I used a small iot device called a Shelly1 to allow home automation control of the RV water pump. Not to replace the switch but operate in parallel. I created a HomeAssistant automation to turn on the pump for ten minutes and then shut it off. Since we usually used the water pump for short periods, this would allow the most common uses by just pressing a button. I just need to add some momentary switches around the RV to trigger the automation. The pump status light on the front panel even registers correctly when the automation switches on the pump.
There is also a pump switch on the HomeAssistant dashboard to turn the pump on/off as well as enable/disable the automation. This is the first Shelly device I've used and have some other plans such as enabling the battery heaters. Since they can be controlled by HomeAssistant, it would be possible to develop some interesting automations such as enabling the heaters based on a variety of inputs such as battery temperature, battery SOC, solar panel voltage, time of day, etc. I may even use one to remotely start the generator.
Saturday, March 18, 2023
TMC
Wednesday - The speed on the free WiFi at the Tucson Medical Center (TMC) is pretty fast. This is the result through a VPN as their WiFi is unencrypted. Then again, it’s 6 in the morning.
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
Sabino Canyon
Monday - This morning, we went to Sabino Canyon. This is a National Forest location so we got to park for free using the National Park senior pass. We took the tram tour, which was abbreviated due to high water, and it was about an hour long and included audio narration via earphones. The tram made three stops along the way to take some pictures. Lots of saguaro cactus. The last stop was at the dam at the bottom end of the canyon. The park is a beautiful location though it was crowded especially on a Monday. It felt like a weekend. Most people were walking along the road and it may be what we do the next time we visit.
Sunday, March 12, 2023
Battery Box Cooling Project
Friday - Most of today was spent messing around with the D1mini microprocessor. I think I've run into some CPU limitations. If I added one of the small OLED displays, it wouldn't reliably connect to WiFi. If I set the PWM frequency, which controls the fan speed, too high, WiFi would disconnect and reconnect and the temperature wouldn't reliably feed to the HomeAssistant server. So, it is back to "simple mode" and I'm just measuring the temperature every 15 seconds and recalculating the fan speed (as a percentage) based on my hard set lower and upper temperatures and the minimum fan speed. For testing, I used 20% as a minimum, 25°C as the lower temperature, and 37°F as the upper temperature. The fan speed is linear over that range from 20% to 100%. If the temperature is below the minimum, a relay cuts power to the fan as even with PWM at 0, the fan would still be turning.
I did this on a project board and now will be moving the project onto a breadboard which will fit in the small weatherproof boxes I've been using for these microprocessors. All of these components are incredibly cheap and I still have a small bin of these bits and pieces from other projects.
One of the differences between the D1mini and the other 8266 microprocessors is that everything is 3.3V instead of 5V. So I’m using a bi-directional logic level converter between the microprocessor I/O ports and the other components. Very inexpensive component and it seems to work. I’m not running the PWM signal through it to the fan just the temperature sensor and relay board.At 4 on Fridays is the park-sponsored happy hour with complimentary drinks (free beer, wine, soda) and live music. It’s too loud to carry on a conversation but it’s nice. This is the group that we’ve gotten to know during our time here. Last fall, most of them were across the street.Thursday, March 9, 2023
Tucson, AZ
Tuesday - The Jeep went in for its second free oil change and tire rotation. The dealer advertises a free car wash but, apparently, the machine is broken. The change interval is 10K miles, which has been since the last oil change in Athens, TX.
My e-bike was not working properly and it turned out to be the cadence sensor bracket was bent, probably from the chain which had come off during the storage process. It’s kind of difficult getting the bike into the basement storage due to the weight. It’s a bit awkward.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the Magnum remote had a lithium battery preset as part of the remote. I used it for a while but have switched back to the CC/CV setting for flexibility. The LFP setting has an absorption voltage of 14.4V which is fine. The float voltage is 13.6V which is also fine. I’m currently using 13.8V. The absorption time can be set to whatever you want with both settings and I’m currently using 30 minutes. The difference is the re-bulk voltage or the battery voltage where bulk charging starts. The LFP setting is 12.8V and I’m using 12.9V. The difference seems small but with the LFP setting, the battery discharges to under 20% before it starts bulk charging again. With the 12.9V setting, bulk charging starts around 70%.
The behavior with the LFP setting is discharge, followed by float charge to not complete, then discharge again, followed by float to not complete, etc. until it eventually gets down to 20% which could take days. Too unpredictable.
Wednesday - Participated in the morning test session. Only one person is testing. The number seems to be dropping as more in-person sessions are happening. The person passed easily for his Extra, which is the highest amateur license available.
I started working on another 8266 microprocessor board for the battery compartment. I hope that it is able to connect to the RV WiFi which is in the very front cabinet. This one is to monitor the temperature inside of the battery box and possibly the batteries themselves. Initially, I will be controlling a PWM 12V fan designed for computer cases. It is variable speed from 200 to 1800 rpm with the 8266 sending a PWM control signal based on the air temperature above the batteries. This is something that new for me...
Thursday - Another microprocessor project for today. This is for controlling a PWM fan to ventilate the battery box. It’s been a while since I had worked on a project.
Monday, March 6, 2023
Setting Up in Tucson
Today was a day to relax a bit, clean up the dirt and dust. Washed the Jeep as it was filthy. The free Internet doesn’t work very well as the park is pretty full so we are still using cellular data.
Monday - Ahhh! Nice to have access to this amenity again. I have nothing against boondocking but this is nice. At 4pm, we met with the group that used to be across from us the last time we were here. They call their get together AA for attitude adjustment.
Saturday, March 4, 2023
Travel to Tucson, AZ, and Boondocking
Saturday - The windshield work was done this morning and I was on the road to Tucson at around 10:30. I was planning to fill up in Tonopah and take the highway to Gila Junction but road construction forced me through Phoenix. At least the gps routed me south and west of downtown. I stopped at the T/A in Eloy, a bit east of Casa Grande, and filled up. The savings was $23 on $190 of diesel. Not going to complain about that.
I arrived back at Far Horizons RV Park at 3:00 and were parked and mostly set up by 4. For dinner, we went to Jason’s Deli for their fantastic salad bar. It’s nice to be back in Tucson.
Boondocking in Quartzsite and Yuma was fine and we really can go for a while on our tanks. The generator used about 2 gal of diesel/day as we would need over double the solar to meet our daily requirements. We used almost a full tank of propane for the furnace. If the generator was running to recharge the batteries in the morning, we ran the heat pump instead of the furnace as it heats up the main living space much faster. The refrigerator worked great maintaining the refrigerator temperature at around 35° and the freezer around 0°F or colder. We didn’t use the chest freezer as we didn’t bring much frozen items with us. Grocery stores were convenient enough.
Boondocking isn’t free. We spent $80 for LTVA permits, about $150 in diesel, and around $80 for propane. Plus, I gave the windshield shop $100 for electricity. Our primary reason was to spend time with friends who were out there and we had a great time.
Windshield Work Part 3 - Quartzsite, AZ
Wednesday - It's too windy today for any work on the RV windshield. The opening is covered with plastic. I hope it holds up to the wind and rain.
There is a test session scheduled for this morning with one person signed up who happens to be in Fairbanks plus one more who hopped in at the last minute. And, since it was last minute, he wasn’t prepped ahead of time and probably didn’t read all of the requirements. But it was all good. He passed easily in spite of the stress of a last-minute test.
Around 11am, it started to rain sporadically. Just enough to get the pavement damp. It continued throughout the afternoon with a total of 0.25” of rain. The wind changed direction so I ended up rigging a tarp over the plastic covering the windshield opening.
Thursday - Sunny but not really warm this morning. It was just after noon and 57°F with a light wind from the north. Hence the cooler temperature. I turned the RV around so the back end is now facing into the wind. The fiberglass/bondo is being sanded in preparation for primer/paint/clear coat. The cardboard is the height of the windshield and is much easier to maneuver than the heavy windshield to measure where to cut the additional fiberglass. After marking the cut line, the straight part of the top was trimmed. The glass was set in place using short sections of the rubber seal and the upper corner cut line was established. The glass was removed and the fiberglass was trimmed.
Friday - A much better fit than before. Both the body and the windshield are now fully seated into the rubber seal. Before, there would be a ¼" gap between the body and the rubber seal when it was fully seated on the glass. Around a half inch was added all across the front and around the corners. In some areas, such as this corner, almost ¾" was added. This corner was one of the most problematic locations.