the road to Purgatoire

Note: I am updating this post with pics. It took several hours yesterday to upload a half-dozen pics using a tool that handles resumed transfers and reconnections well. I am thinking about making an rsync wrapper for such duties since it seems to handle connectivity problems better.

narrow strip of USFS land

I’m camped alongside the road to Purgatoire Campground. This thin stretch of NF land has at 3 or 4 camping spots marked with Camping signs; it’s forbidden elsewhere. There were were several tasty spots on the way with a bit of signal but those were in Colorado state land where camping and dogs are forbidden.

water

One of the amenities listed is potable water via hand pump. This strongly suggests the water is coming from the creek that later runs past my camp. Admittedly with the benefit of filtration by the earth between the creek and pump.

Made pasta last night since there is so much water, and coffee & malt-o-meal this morning. Normally I don’t boil water for instant coffee but I did so in this case.

neighbor dogs

Speaking of dogs, left the van this morning and nearly stepped into dog poop, suspiciously commensurate with the size of the neighbor’s free-ranging small dogs. Definitely not coyote.

solar

I’d prefer to harvest 2kWh/day. Most of this will have to be in the morning because it’s raining each afternoon. I think 1.75kWh is more likely.

• Fri, Jun 27th - 1.5kWh, reached 60% SoC @ 13.6v. Portables put out later in the day.

series harvest in partial shade

Another example of how series arrangements can function in partial shade.

In the first pic you can see about 60% of the array is receiving direct sunlight. The second image is a screenshot from the Victron 150/45 at the same moment.

After accounting for cosine of solar zenith angle and system losses the array, if unshaded, would have made ~540w. When shaded as shown the actual harvest was 344w. The string’s rated Vmp is 90.9v; note that the MPPT found Pmax at 40.75v or 13.58v per panel.

set up the portables

Rain is forecast in the afternoon for all of the 14 days at this site. I am loathe to set up the portables but thought it would be wise. Instead of attaching the 2x2 to the panels I laid the 2x2 across a bucket and leaned the panels on it. Seems to work, and much less cussing involved.

set up the tags

Got all the tags set up and they seem to work. When I went into the Google app settings I see that it now defaults to “all networks” (participate the way Apple’s AirTags do). This should really get the Google network running.