Day 69, 70, 71 - Texas - TT

Thursday (69) -Today, we ventured to Cleburne State Park which was about 45 minutes north of here to share Thanksgiving with some RV friends. We distributed ourselves meeting the guidelines of the park but still had an enjoyable time. Four of us had amateur radio licenses, which was a surprise to me. The sous vide turkey surprised many as they, like us, usually don’t care for the normally dry white meat. 

The state park was off the beaten path and Google had us winding through farms and ranches on these small roads. I’m glad we didn’t have the RV. We did need to purchase a day pass for $10 before arriving as they are limiting the number of people in the park. It felt pretty empty. 

Friday (70) - I re-figured out the code and wiring for the ESP32 microprocessor for the lights and sensors above the swivel rocker. I’m trying out the ESP32 instead of the ESP8266 that I’m using everywhere else since it does PWM (pulse width modulation) in hardware. I’m controlling the two LED lights with a TIP120 darlington transistor to handle the current of the two LED light fixtures. It’s been a while since I had set it up. I’m also using a DHT22 temperature/humidity sensor as it is more accurate than the DHT11. Now I need to start working on the touch sensor again. Another minor difference is that this microprocessor uses 3.3V logic instead of 5V. Just something else to keep in mind…

Saturday (71) - Cold and rainy day. I messed around with the ESP32 some more. Installed an OLED display with the outside temperatures and played around trying to make a functional touch capacitative touch sensor. 

Day 65, 66, 67, 68 - Whitney, TX - TT

Sunday (65) - Today was rather cool (temperature). I pretty much stayed inside trying to recreate one of the configurations for the Wemo D1 Mini microprocessors that got reconfigured a few months back when I rebuilt the HomeAssistant server on newer hardware. I’ve been putting it off until we were somewhere with decent Internet. 

Monday (66) - I did another remote ham radio exam this morning but the testee was a no-show. Apparently, this was only the 3rd out of hundreds. So, it was a training opportunity for me to fill out one of the online forms to track exams. The other form is for submission to the FCC after an testee passes. That's one of those no-errors-allowed or else the batch file fails at there FCC. 

I'm trying out the Mac feature of extending the desktop onto an iPad. It's kind of a handy feature when doing these radio tests due to the number of windows you need to monitor. Here I have the iPad connected via USB but, supposedly, it works with WiFi as well. Things got confused when I was using another USB connection to my iPhone for Internet at the same time as extending the screen. But it actually works.

I've been talking to Garrett from Diary of a Family about some RV repairs. He just completed a certification course in Athens, TX, and is quite knowledgeable on repairing the RV portion of this rig. We have a long list.

And, I've been continuing to work on the Smart RV projects now that we have at least so-so Internet. An Internet connection is needed for compiling and generating new firmware to download to the microprocessors.

Tuesday (67) - Two more tests today. The first at noon and the second at 5pm. The Zoom room usually goes active around 30 minutes before the scheduled exam. I think that many of the other volunteers enjoy the short period of socialization especially during these days of social distancing. We picked up a handful of groceries for a Thanksgiving potluck with some friends of friends. I believe the plan is all outdoors.

Wednesday (68) - The turkey breast is in the sous vide. I browned it before double-bagging it since it needs to cook for 24 hours. Seasonings are bay leaf, sage, Herbes de Provence, salt, olive oil, and sugar. Temperature is 131°F as recommended by the Joule app. I’m pretty sure that this is the same recipe as last year. I’m using the Joule sous vide appliance this year. The temperature control seems to be more accurate plus it connects the app on my phone to set time-temperature directly from the Joule app. And it sends notifications to my Apple Watch. I know, gimmicks, but I like gimmicks. I also made some cranberry sauce w/orange. A couple more items which I’ll make tomorrow morning.

Last night, I ended up bringing in the awning due to a rain storm with high wind gusts. I really didn’t get to see if my HomeAssistant automation to turn off the lights worked. 

Day 62, 63, 64 - Whitney, TX - TT

Thursday (62) - Perfect temperature today. 75° now at 2pm. Blue skies and a light breeze. I picked up some groceries this morning at the local grocery store. Not as much variety but I was able to pick up some stuff for Thanksgiving next week. I’m looking forward to the sous vide turkey already. 

This is the most set-up we’ve been in a while. Our site is pretty sheltered from the wind so the awning is out and staked down. Got a few tasks done around the RV done. Probably only a few hundred more to go...

Friday (63) - We drove to Waco this morning. Uneventful drive though we were surprised that how crowded the roads are compared to Arizona. Uneventful is a good thing. 

Several stops including a Pet Smart, HEB (a large grocery chain), and Chick-fil-A. Delicious spicy chicken sandwich. Plus, fresh tamales from HEB. By "fresh", I mean actually made in that store. We picked some up last year and they were wonderful.

Saturday (64) - The campground WiFi isn't really fast but I've been able to update my MacBook and MacBook Pro to Big Sur from Catalina. I think it was about a 12GB download on the MacBook Pro and a bit less on the MacBook. It looks similar but behavior is slightly different especially as it relates to security.

It looks like holiday baking season has begun. Since we are on a 30amp connection, we have to plan our power consumption. Times like this is when a propane oven would be preferred. The convection/microwave uses about 15amps all by itself. We just turned off the A/C and switch the water heater to propane as they are the other big consumers of power. The washer/dryer is also running and the dryer uses a lot of power as well. Right now, we are using about ⅔ of our max power.

Day 61 - Whitney, TX - TT

Today felt like a long driving day. Probably because it was the fifth one in a row. In reality, it was about 320 miles which does make it the longest of these last travel days. We are at another TT park and it’s one that we’ve been to before. And, like other TT parks, it’s first come first served. But we do have a 30amp full-hookup site and the power looks good. The front A/C is running and the inverter/charger is pushing 85 amps into the batteries. And the voltage is still 121VAC. In Chehalis, it would be down to about 105VAC and breakers would be tripping. We just need to be conscious about what’s running before turning anything else on. 

Since we are done traveling, I’ll go back to the 2-4 days per post again.