Weekly

I have reached the end of the week without posting. Not a succesful week in terms of meeting my self imposed deadline for completing the bench. However, I am not beating myself up about it. I have made progress and some of the lines that emerged today appear good to me. I am aiming to try and hone things down to simpler forms. 

Meanwhile I made some decisions about which bits of aluminium etc would make it out of my vast collection of junk to become part of the solar modules I am building. None of the glass I had on hand seemed to be the right size, but then I hit on four small window glass panes that used to live in my daughters room and they were just right to build four 9v panels. A good size to start with. I have now soldered up enough cells to make two and they are bonded into place with silicon on their backs. Trying to fix things down seems to be the worst course with these cells. They need to be able to expand and contract freely as they become very hot in the sun. Window glass is not a good choice, but it will do for a first try. We have all the glass cleaned up and I found a load of half inch H shaped extruded aluminium that is now cut to mitres for frame pieces, so when the rain stops I should be able to wire them up and see whats watt..

I also recieved a batch of a different form of cell that is ready encapsulated in glass. These produce a higher voltage, but low amps, so not as good value. They are significantly more nifty than the fragile cells as they can be soldered up in any configuration without worrying about blasting them to bits by breathing a little too deeply or sneezing. I need to do some calculations, but it looks like they should be able to charge up a phone or media player pretty easily. I am wondering if they might power a Laptop in suitable quantity. My Internet research this week has been on voltage regulators and I found sufficient knowledge there to get one such off of an old video card and solder it into a circuit that should give a regulated voltage of between 3.3 an 9.8v adjustable. Pleased to see that work yesterday evening. Unfortunately the unit is only good up to one amp, so probably no good for the laptop.

One other activity in the week was a day spent on a little insect screen maitenance ready for the summer. The bugs are starting to increase in number and when we get to the other side of the rainy season we will be swamped. I cut new joints in an old aluminium screen to fit a different sized door and my daughter redid the mesh on that. We also bought and fitted a kind of vertical roller blind mesh unit that gives easy access to the veranda.

We have had our first few centipedes of the season, one monster and a few medium sized. The cat is proving his worth in pointing them out. He is also a couple of points up with me as he does not seem interested in chasing the tree frogs, which I was concerned that he would. Still no sign of their eggs as yet.