Posts in category "project"
-
Changes To Solar Controller Setup
A few days ago, we got the exterior of our house painted. I had to move a lot of things out of the way for the painters so they can paint in every nook and corner. During that time I had to disconnect my solar controller electronics setup. What that means is that the solar charge controller takes over the responsibility of deciding when to charge my battery and when to disconnect the grid and let the load run from the battery + solar etc. Unfortunately the way it handles switching between battery, solar and grid is not as optimal as I’d like. Don’t get me wrong, it does a good job, but I always want something better which is why I built my own electronics and software intelligence to go with it to optimize the hell out of the solar panel output.
...continue reading -
Time To Take A Decision
In one of the previous posts I explained how we hoped we might buy a farm along with a friend near Thirthahalli. Thanks to COVID-19 we could not execute the plan. Whether that is good or bad we are not sure. But that trip and those discussions got us more interested in starting an organic farm of our own. We were still not clear on many aspects though. Should we go for a place that is close to where we currently live so we can frequently travel to the place and take care of it until we are ready to move. Or should we buy something far away leave it without developing it until we are ready to move. This post is all about how we made that decision.
...continue reading -
DC Energy Measurement Using INA226
In an earlier post I wrote about measuring DC energy using PZEM 017. If you recall, I ended the article with a couple of remarks. One was that the device was unable to measure current below 0.02 A. But the bigger problem was that the device could only measure current in one direction. It is uni-directional current sensor. I cannot use this device with my UPS to measure charging and discharging current since I need a bidirectional current sensor in that case. After some searching around I found a few options and one good sensor which is the INA226. So here is a write up of my experience with it. This can get a bit technical, so if you are not into electronics, give this a skip.
...continue reading -
Dark Theme In Jekyll
Did you notice anything different about the blog? Well, I introduced a dark theme. Can you find how to change the theme by just looking at my blog? No? If you’d like to switch the theme to dark or light mode, read the last section of this post. Now, some of you may know that I migrated my blog from WordPress to Jekyll. Jekyll for those of you who don’t know, is a tool that transforms markdown text into static websites and blogs. If you are left wondering what all that mumbo jumbo was about, then it will perhaps serve you better to skip this post :). For some time now, I have been wanting to add a dark mode for my blog. But it never came up high enough in priority to give it my attention. That changed with the new year. I decided to add dark theme to my blog in 2024.
...continue reading -
Our First Step Towards True Retirement - Part 2
Happy new year everyone! I want to continue where I left off in my previous post, so if you haven’t read that, I suggest you head over there first to get some context. The year was 2022, and like I mentioned in the previous post, we were thinking about farm life and were not sure if we can adapt to it after living in the city for such a long time. Since a few of our unschooling friends were living on farms far away from the city we thought it would be a good idea to visit their farm and see how they live and take care of their daily activities in such remote places. It will help us answer some long standing questions.
...continue reading -
Our First Step Towards True Retirement - Part 1
If you have been paying attention to the last few posts, you know that we are cutting down our sustainability efforts here at home. We first stopped rain water harvesting. Then slowly started to reduce our organic gardening footprint. None of these decisions were taken on a whim. They were deliberate and well thought out. While I mentioned some of the reasons for slowing down the projects, one reason which I did not mention was that we were not finding enough time. Yes I know, it sounds strange coming from a person who (and his better half) have completely retired and have not worked for money for more than 5 years. Yet, here we are. We finally realized our long-held dream of becoming owners of a farm and that kept us busy.
...continue reading -
DC Energy Measurement Using PZEM 017
You might remember that I have been looking for an accurate DC current measuring device for a long time for my solar project. The hall effect sensors I have been using in my solar project was inaccurate. Basically the zero current point drifts quite a bit depending on the ambient temperature and power supply voltage. While a shunt would give more accurate zero cross overs, I did not want to modify my setup to use it. You see, the problem with shunt resistor based sensors was that they have to be inline with current. Which means I have to remove a bunch of wiring from my battery and UPS and insert these sensors inline. I was not willing to do that. However I recently came across another project which would be a good fit to test out these shunt resistor based sensors. So I tried a couple of them and what follows is my experience with one of them.
...continue reading -
Converting a USB printer into a WiFi Printer
We have an old USB laser printer which was purchased in early 2012. It has been in fine working condition since then. I rarely use it because usually there is nothing much to print. We do the occasional flight ticket print outs. Once our daughter was born there was a little bit more printing. I changed the toner just twice in these 11 years. Anytime anyone in the family needed a printout, they would connect their laptop to the printer via USB and print. Although it wasn’t that much of a hassle, I wanted to make the printer a wireless one. This post is about how I achieved it. As you can imagine, it can get technical and if you are not into computers and software, it is better you skip this one :).
...continue reading -
Solar System Comparison with MKBHD
Some of you may already know MKBHD, a popular youtuber in the tech world. He recently posted a video about the going completely solar and not having to pay an electricity bill for a whole year. It is a very well made video which explains how the solar panel system works with batteries (off grid) and with net metering (on grid). Although I don’t have net metering and I am not completely off grid, so mine is a hybrid approach. Still, if you watch the video it will help you understand how my setup works (sort of). My setup is closer to the hybrid system explained in another video. Anyway, I wanted to compare my puny setup with MKBHD’s setup and see how I compare. So here goes.
...continue reading -
Accessing My Home Network From Anywhere
There are two kinds of apps that I build when I am working on my personal projects. They are either apps that are confined to my home network or ones that run on the web. Examples of apps that run on the web are my investment planning app or investment recommendation app. I can access them from anywhere. Examples of apps that only run in my home network include home automation, drip irrigation, solar power management, etc. These are apps that are running on android devices, linux PC or ESP8266 boards and are connected to my wifi. You cannot access them from outside the home network.
...continue reading