Got my 3 miles plus in early this morning… nice and cool. Had a few other walkers and joggers out today… some are the same ones nearly every day and some are new? Once the walk was over I fixed a bowl of oatmeal and got my juice and sat on the back deck having breakfast. The dogs went out but didn’t venture off the deck this time? usually they are all over the place, maybe they wanted my oatmeal? I am sure Morgan (the black dog) would eat it… he is the proverbial Mikie… “He’ll eat anything” (although the original was he wont eat it, cause he won’t eat anything… but the reverse fits here… Caught him with another rock just after they went out at 12 before I went in to town..? not sure what is going on there but he likes rocks?
After my breakfast and cool down I got out in the shop and got back on my power controller project… was having some problems getting it to adjust but finally got it working to come on at about 13.2 volts (when the alternator has kicked in) and shut down about 3 to 4 minutes after the power drops below 13 volts (when the car is shut off)… I know you can use things like the cigarette lighter socket but there is a lot of surge voltage there when the car starts and this controller will hold the equipment off until the voltage levels after the car starts… cuts out the things called transients… I think one will go in the motor home to run the APRS radio but also the tire pressure and brake monitors… the tire pressure one goes to beeping on cold nights when the tires pressure drops so I have to shut it off when we park and this will do that job for me… one less thing to forget? or making things a bit more convenient or complicated , take your choice… I may even mount it in the hidden area by the driver and just run the switch and control LED’s to the 12 volt socket area? But that is another project for later.
This was controller #2 in the finished stage and being tested…need a bit of clean-up there…
I shut down at the testing point and went in for lunch… nothing exciting there except the street into campus was over run, and people were standing in the street… actually weren’t really going to get out of the way either… it was Bid Day for the Sororities and boy what a mess… parents involved in this as well… Just think about all that Drama from last week, this thing started Wednesday last week and ran until today… visiting each of the houses and putting on your best face and picking where and them picking and all that picking must have been painful… ha! Cause they were all out in the street and the snow-cone guy was doing booming business , as was the party piks folks
The finally parted enough for me to drive through and there were cars on the other side coming this way too? And this scene was at every house we saw… I think this year will have a very big freshman class?
After lunch I got back and let the dogs out… and went to work on the controller tests… came back in and found this…
Dogs on the left and cat on the right… don’t seem to bother them to all sleep on the couch..?
Back out and got all the parts started into the controller #3… Had to stop for a trip to town, fill up the jeep with gas and pick up a cheap pizza and some other stuff (Sherrie did)… I had forgotten that Monday night was even cheaper for the pizza… $4.34 for a large… yep I am cheap and it was ok, not a great pizza but hey… we had supper, and leftover enough for another meal on less than $5 for two people… can’t cook for that unless it is canned beans… or my oatmeal…
After dinner back out to the shop and got the final wiring done on the controller #3 (below).
This is controller #3 finished up but not tested … had to go back to finish it this evening… will test tomorrow.
Now it needs to be tested and set the on and off voltage point, close to 13.2 volts… I sure could use a bench variable power supply… using my big one is difficult as I have to lean way over to adjust it’s voltage and have to unhook it from the backup battery to get more accurate volts… but it works so why bother..? I don’t do enough of these projects to warrant buying another supply.
So that was my day, boring as usual… doing things I like to do…
WD0AJG