I brought my No. 22 Great Divide Titanium bike to Evolution when I found out that my bottom bracket was making creaking and crunching noises during my last few rides. Finally the crank nearly seized up on my last ride.
I was not sure whether it was the bottom bracket or the crank shaft. I have had wonderful services from Evolution before, so instead of taking apart the crank and the bottom bracket myself, I decided to leave my precious with the capable gentlemen at Evolution.
They did not disappoint. They treated my bike with respect and we had excellent communication in terms of expectation setting; what needs to be done; and the replacement parts that were required. Chris was very knowledgeable and thorough and made sure that I knew all the options.
In the end I got my bike in the best time possible, under these pandemic schedules with scarce parts. Super thankful to the entire team at Evolutions and especially Chris for making it all happen without any surprises.
I will not hesitate in bringing my bike to Evolution again for any type of issues in the future.
I recently upgraded all my WiFi access points to the Unifi UAP-U6-LR and UAP-U6-Lite. This will elevate my home to Wi-Fi 6 capable.
This was extremely exciting as my 802.11ax capable devices can now get between 100Mbps to 400Mbps depending on where we are in the house. It seems even the 802.11ac devices got about a 30% speed bump.
As a result of this upgrade, two UAP-AC-M mesh and one UAP-AC-Pro access points were retired from my house. I don’t recommend buying these devices any more since the Wi-Fi 6 devices from Ubiquiti are way more capable with higher performance and increase range than their 802.11ac access points.
However, the honeymoon period did not last long. After about a week, HomeKit devices started to show the dreaded “No Response” labels. Specifically, I had connectivity problems with Leviton Smart Decora Dimmers. In the past, all I had to do was recycle the HomeKit device and it was all good. Another episode of HomeKit and Leviton dimmer switch nightmare was experienced and documented by my previous blog post.
In this particular instance, the Leviton dimmers were able to join the Wi-Fi network and I can validate that with the Unifi Controller software. However, our HomeKit App was not able to connect to the dimmer switches. It took me sometime to figure out that the dimmers were unreachable by other Wi-Fi clients, but was reachable by computers that were physically wired to our network.
I found out which access point the dimmer switches were connected to and ssh into the access point to see if I can ping those devices, and sure enough they were unreachable. Below is a screen capture of the ARP listing from the access point.
Normal ARP listing from the Wi-Fi Access Point
When the dimmers were unreachable, the HW address was set to 00:00:00:00:00:00. After rebooting the culprit access point, I was able to access the offline dimmer switches again from the HomeKit App.
In summary, when HomeKit devices are offline with the dreaded “No Response” labels, here are the following things to try:
Ensure that local DNS is working properly and caches are emptied so that the latest data are available;
Ensure the device itself has acquired a valid IP address that is from your network;
Ensure that the device is reachable from the HomeKit App, typically from your iPhone or iPad;
Back trace the physical upstream networking equipment that is connected to your HomeKit device such as switches and access points and see which requires rebooting;
Apple could improve the HomeKit experience by allowing users to perform a full backup of the HomeKit configuration and reset the Home and perform a restore. Unfortunately, the closest thing that I found was from the Home+ App, but they do not restore device connectivity just their configurations.
When HomeKit works, you are literally like god, able to command light and switches with your voice in your home. When it does not work, it is extremely difficult to debug, due to a lack of diagnostics and logging.
After this update, my current networking layout now looks like this:
This spring, I installed solar panels on our green house. This project gave me the experience and knowledge of what I wanted for our house. In August of this year, we finally took the plunge and initiated our solar project for our house.
After much research, I settled with the following three vendors:
They all had a web presence and I initiated contact either by phone or with their online registration. For all three, I provided my postal code, my utility bill or usage, and they were able to prepare a quote for me to review. My initial request was for a grid-tie hybrid solution consisting of: Solar panels, and batteries. Specifically, I wanted to perform a full backup of my house electrical demands in the case of power outages. I wanted to avoid a typical solar only, net-metering, grid-tie solution. I also did not want a partial backup solution where certain high inductive loads such as air conditioners and dryers will not be available.
All three vendors came back with a simple solar net metering solution, the one that I specifically said I did not want. New Dawn Energy Solutions was the only vendor that gave me multiple options, one of which was a partial backup solution, which did not meet my full house backup requirement. With this initial misunderstanding, I thought it would be best that I spent sometime detailing exactly what my requirements are. I proceeded to create a slide deck with this purpose.
Long story short, getting a common understanding of my requirements was still a challenge for the vendors with the exception of New Dawn Energy Solutions. I was able to directly contact the engineer who prepared and designed the solution. This was during the weekend, and we were able to quickly clarify what I wanted and what New Dawn Energy Solutions can provide.
I decided to select New Dawn Energy Solutions and proceeded with a contract with them. While we await for permits, New Dawn Energy Solutions also helped me to start my energy audit for the Canada Greener Home Grant Program. Under this program, we can potentially get up to $5000 CAD back. The first of two audits was already performed by EnerTest. The auditor was super friendly, detailed, informative, and efficient. I would recommend EnerTest if you are going after the same program.
The current solution look something like this, but it is subject to change after an on site engineering assessment.
Our Solar Setup
As of this writing, the first energy audit is now completed. Now we will await for the engineering assessment and the required permits.
I am excited to generate clean energy and will no longer be guilty of enjoying the full capabilities of my air conditioner during the summer heat.
This morning I found out that the Ontario Government has made official Covid-19 Vaccine Receipts available through their website (https://covid19.ontariohealth.ca).
To download your receipts, all you will need is your Health Card. If you are like me and took a photo of your Health Card on your phone, it may not be sufficient, because information from both the front and back of the Health Card is required.
The service will allow you to download a PDF document for each dose of Covid-19 vaccine that you have received. To make it more convenient, I use the Preview app on my Mac to aggregate the data from both doses into a single PDF document. I then attached the PDF document on my iPhone’s Notes App for easy access should I require to show proof of my vaccination in 2021.
I also placed the information on my secured NAS server so that it can be accessed by any devices that has a secret link from the Internet, and generated a QR code for easy access for any third party that requires my proof of vaccination.
In the end, it looks something like what is shown above/right.
I also created a Siri Shortcut on the phone for easy access.
Now I have to repeat and rinse for all members of the family.
I like riding my bike but not cleaning my bike. Unfortunately cleaning my road bike especially the drive train is a necessity. Of course the most difficult part, the chain, is notoriously difficult to clean correctly.
In the past I have tried chain cleaners that look like the one on the right. In short, they don’t work.
SRAM Powerlink
The next evolution is to adopt a chain like the SRAM Powerlink or the Connex link, which can be easily taken apart. I still have to manually scrub the chain and it seems like no matter how many times you scrub the chain, it is still super dirty. Finally I came across the following YouTube video:
The host uses an ultrasonic cleaner and his result was really impressive. I went to Amazon and got myself one.
Flexzion Commercial Ultrasonic Cleaner 2L
I took off the chain and put it in the ultrasonic cleaner with a “cap” full of Simple Green all-purpose cleaner from Canadian Tire with hot tap water. I then run the cleaner for 10 minutes. After the first cleaning, the chain already look pretty spectacular. I lift the chain and repositioned it in the cleaner and run it for another 10 minutes. Took the chain out, rinse thoroughly with my garden hose, and put it back on. Here is the result with no scrubbing:
Click above to enlarge
Another nice thing about using this technique is that while the ultrasonic cleaner is doing its job, you can scrub the bike down. This bike cleaning session is the easiest one yet.
In summary, I highly recommend that you get an ultrasonic cleaner!
Update: Someone asked about cleaning the ultrasonic cleaner. There was no issue whatsoever. The grease did not stick to the container, and all I had to do was pour the dirty liquid out and give it a quick rinse. That was it. Simple. I see others on YouTube use a ziplock bag to contain the chain and the detergent, but I opted not to do that.
At this point in time, all of our family members have our first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and we are awaiting our second dose. As the Delta variant of the Covid-19 vaccine makes its way around the world, numerous reports are indicating that those who only have their first dose are only 33% protected from this variant.
Of course knowing this fact creates an a certain anxiety and urgency to get our second dose. Although we all have our second dose already scheduled when we got our first dose, those original schedules are weeks away. York Region today from 8am started taking appointments for rebooking second doses. This is of course very welcoming.
Unfortunately, as expected the scheduling web site experience leave very little to be desired.
I visited the site at around 7:50am, and it told me that I was in line and I had a 10 minutes wait. At this point, it is very reasonable, since it officially starts at 8am. I took the screen shot above, and as you can see the waiting time hasn’t really gone down and we have already passed our initial 10 minutes. To make matters worse, at around the 5 minutes mark, it immediately presented the booking form.
My sons who visited the site at 8am sharp got a waiting period of 1 hour. You can see how discouraging for some can be. Never mind vaccine hesitancy, it is these types of frictional booking experience that probably also discourages people from getting their doses. I really don’t understand why it is taking the organization so long to get there act together. Perhaps I’m being too harsh.
On the plus side, I did finally manage to book all members of my family for our second dose, because the site did allow me to make multiple bookings without having to virtually re-queue.
This is an update to my Sunroom Project that I detailed in a previous post.
After the installation of the solar panels, there was a question of whether the solar panels had enough juice to keep the batteries charge for cloudy days or night time operations. After a few days of operation, the observation is a definitive “no”.
The overall load of water pumps, fans, and temperature sensors amounted to be about 80W. The two solar panels (100W each, equaling 200W) during sunny days will only yield enough to cover this load. The less than optimal positioning on the sunroom’s roof will deprive the solar panels in operating in their optimal efficiency. Even on a really sunny day the panels may have a little surplus to give back to the battery, but nothing close to offer a continuous charge to the battery. Most of the time, the solar power is just enough to power the load and leave the battery as is. Left unattended, the batteries will slowly drain to nothing, as it is being discharged during cloudy days and at night times.
Automatic Transfer Switch from Amazon
So much for going entirely off grid! Since it is a sunroom, the roof based real estate is a bit precious, and two panels is as much as we wanted to take away from the sunshine that feed the plants. Not all bad news, we still have the opportunity to time shift our power needs from the grid, from peak time to non-peak time.
For the past few days, I had to go out to the sunroom during the evenings and switch the battery from solar power and back to the grid via the 480W DC Power Supply, so that it will charge itself back during the night. This is of course super inconvenient. What I needed is an Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS). Something like the one shown on the left offered by Amazon.
The price was pretty exorbitant, over $150.00, much more than what I wanted to spend. When there is a need, there is an opportunity to invent. I thought this is such a good opportunity to create my own ATS.
My ATS will be a simple 12V relay powered by the battery itself, and controlled by a WiFi capable microcontroller like the ESP32S that is perfect for the job. With a bit of searching on Amazon, I found this gem, a simple 12V relay that is only around $16.
URBEST 8 Pin JQX-12F 2Z DC 12V 30A DPDT
At most, the relay only needed to handle 10A, so the 30A rating is a total overkill, but good enough for my purpose.
I already have an ESP32S that I purchased earlier from AliExpress or Ebay. This is a WiFi enabled micro controller that can be programmed with the popular Arduino IDE. They were less than $5 a piece when I got them, and was literally sitting on my shelf awaiting for a project such as this. The master plan is as follows:
click to enlarge
The EPS32S will remotely control the relay, which physically makes contact between the battery with either of the solar controller or the power supply. The when is determined by a remote server on the same home network. The ESP32S will periodically post the battery voltage status and the current state of the relay to the server.
Using this approach, I can place the majority of the smarts on the server instead of the micro controller. I can also change the logic without having to reprogram the ESP32S.
The ESP32S comes with many GPIO pins. We will make use of three of the GPIO pins, one to detect battery voltage via a voltage divider. The other two will send a pulse to a simple latch that will drive the switch position of the relay. The latch will use a popular NE555 chip in bistable mode. Here is a simple schematic that I put together.
click to enlarge
I prototyped the above circuit on a breadboard and using a desktop power supply to simulate the battery.
Everything worked as expected, and I proceeded to solder everything up on a PCB.
Below is the Arduino sketch that I wrote for the ESP32S to report the battery voltage and the relay switch state to my server.
#include <WiFi.h>
#include <HTTPClient.h>
/* Server and WiFi configurations are fake */
#define SERVER_IP "192.168.1.5"
#ifndef STASSID
#define STASSID "##############-iot"
#define STAPSK "##################"
#endif
#define uS_TO_S_FACTOR 1000000
#define BATT_VOLTAGE_GPIO 36
#define GRID_PULSE_GPIO 25
#define SOLAR_PULSE_GPIO 26
float volt = -1.0;
RTC_DATA_ATTR int currentState = -1;
void setup() {
pinMode(BATT_VOLTAGE_GPIO, INPUT);
pinMode(GRID_PULSE_GPIO, OUTPUT);
pinMode(SOLAR_PULSE_GPIO, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(GRID_PULSE_GPIO, LOW);
digitalWrite(SOLAR_PULSE_GPIO, LOW);
Serial.begin(115200);
Serial.printf("Connecting to %s..\n", STASSID);
WiFi.begin(STASSID, STAPSK);
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(250);
Serial.print(".");
}
Serial.print("\nConnected with IP: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
}
void pulse(int pin) {
digitalWrite(pin, HIGH);
delay(200);
digitalWrite(pin, LOW);
}
// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
WiFiClient client;
HTTPClient http;
digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);
float v = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < 200; i++) {
v += analogRead(BATT_VOLTAGE_GPIO);
delay(2);
}
volt = v / 200.0;
Serial.print("Voltage Read: ");
Serial.println(volt);
http.begin(client, "http://" SERVER_IP "/autoTransferSwitch.php"); //HTTP
http.addHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
// start connection and send HTTP header and body
String postStr = "id=sunroom";
postStr += "&volt=" + String(volt);
postStr += "&state=" + String(currentState);
int httpResponseCode = http.POST(postStr);
digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);
Serial.printf("Response code: %d\nResult: ", httpResponseCode);
String instructions = http.getString();
Serial.println(instructions);
String result = "nothing";
long sleepTime = 5L;
char buffer[100];
strncpy(buffer, instructions.c_str(), 100);
const char d[2] = ",";
int field = 0;
char* token = strtok(buffer, d);
while ( token != NULL ) {
if (field == 0) {
result = String(token);
}
if (field == 1) {
sleepTime = atol(token);
}
token = strtok(NULL, d);
field++;
}
if (result.equals("solar")) {
pulse(SOLAR_PULSE_GPIO);
currentState = 1;
} else if (result.equals("grid")) {
pulse(GRID_PULSE_GPIO);
currentState = 0;
} else {
digitalWrite(GRID_PULSE_GPIO, LOW);
digitalWrite(SOLAR_PULSE_GPIO, LOW);
}
http.end();
Serial.print("Sleeping for seconds: ");
Serial.println(sleepTime);
esp_sleep_enable_timer_wakeup(uS_TO_S_FACTOR * sleepTime);
esp_deep_sleep_start();
}
One nice thing about the ESP32S is its ability to go into a deep sleep where it can keep its state with almost zero power. This way, the micro controller doesn’t act as a power sink for the entire system. I took advantage of this feature, so that the server can also tell the ESP32S how long it should sleep.
On the server side, I have a simple PHP script that will take into account time of day, and the current battery charge.
<?php
date_default_timezone_set('America/Toronto');
// I've changed the location to protect my own privacy
$lat = 42.9293;
$log = -102.9478;
$zenith = 90;
$nextWait = 900;
// The voltage levels are ADC readings from ESP32 (divided by 10) and not actual volts
// voltage level when battery is fully charged and can either be used or be charged with solar
$solarChargeLevel = 280;
// voltage level when battery is okay to be used with or without solar (come off of grid)
$okChargeLevel = 260;
// voltage level when battery must be charged (get on grid)
$mustChargeLevel = 252;
$now = time();
$sr = date_sunrise($now, SUNFUNCS_RET_TIMESTAMP, $lat, $log, $zenith);
$ss = date_sunset($now, SUNFUNCS_RET_TIMESTAMP, $lat, $log, $zenith);
$srStr = date("D M d Y - h:i:s", $sr);
$ssStr = date("D M d Y - h:i:s", $ss);
$logFile = "/home/kang/log/autoTransferSwitch.log";
$dateStr = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
header("Content-Type: text/plain");
$id = isset($_POST["id"]) ? $_POST["id"] : null;
$batVolt = isset($_POST["volt"]) ? $_POST["volt"] : null;
// -1 = initial, 0 = grid state, 1 = solar state
$currentState = isset($_POST["state"]) ? intval($_POST["state"]) : -1;
file_put_contents($logFile, "$dateStr, " .
"device reported: battery voltage: $batVolt and current state: $currentState\n",
FILE_APPEND);
if (!is_null($id)) {
if ($id === "sunroom") {
$action = "nothing";
$b = intval($batVolt) / 10.0;
// During day is defined by one hour after sunrise and one hour after sunset
$duringDay = (($sr + 3600) <= $now && $now <= ($ss - 3600));
$duringNight = (!$duringDay);
if ($currentState == -1) {
if ($b <= $mustChargeLevel) {
$action = "grid";
$currentState = 0;
} else {
$action = "solar";
$currentState = 1;
}
} else if ($currentState == 0) {
// We are charging from the grid
if ($duringDay && $b >= $okChargeLevel) {
// During the day we want to use solar or the battery as much as possible;
// This is a trickle charge so that we can take advantage of the sun.
$action = "solar";
$currentState = 1;
} else {
// Otherwise charge until battery is full
if ($b >= $solarChargeLevel) {
$action = "solar";
$currentState = 1;
}
}
if ($b >= 0.985 * $solarChargeLevel) {
// We are getting closer to fully charge so
// reduce communication interval from 15 min to 5 min
$nextWait = 300;
}
} else if ($currentState == 1) {
// We are either using the battery or the solar panels
if ($b <= $mustChargeLevel || $now > $ss + 3600) {
// Charge the batteries if we must or one hour past sunset
$action = "grid";
$currentState = 0;
}
if ($b <= 1.025 * $mustChargeLevel) {
// We are getting closer to require charging so reduce
// communication interval from 15 min to 5 min
$nextWait = 300;
}
}
// for testing purpose
// $nextWait = 15;
echo ($action . "," . $nextWait);
file_put_contents($logFile, "$dateStr, $batVolt, $action, " .
"sun: [$srStr - $ssStr], new state: $currentState, wait: $nextWait\n",
FILE_APPEND);
}
}
The above state transition logic is pretty simple to follow so I am not going to explain it in depth here. There are a couple of features that I like to expand on.
By default, the sleep time is 15 minutes, but the server will shortened it to a shorter interval of 5 minutes when the battery is near empty or full. This sample frequency should be enough for the server to make the appropriate switching decision. Once a switch in the relay has occurred, the sleep time can be reverted back to 15 minutes. For debugging purposes, I can also change the server script to a very fast sample rate of every 15 seconds.
The other feature is the account of day and night time. This first version of the algorithm will attempt to use solar and/or battery during the day, and only charge from the grid when it is absolutely necessary. If we do charge from the grid during the day, we don’t need to fill it up, but only charge it to a level that can be used again. We will then attempt to top up the battery about 1 hour after sunset.
My ATS is now installed and operating for an entire day, so far so good and I don’t have to go into the sunroom any more to perform a manual switch. The algorithm can be further enhanced by getting additional readings from the solar controller, but I didn’t want to go through the trouble. I think what I have so far should be sophisticated enough. We’ll see.
2021-06-18 Update: After several days of operation, I noticed that the ATS, more specifically the ESP32 micro-controller hangs or fails to wake from deep sleep after a few hours of operation. Upon further investigation, it may be a combination of unstable supply voltage (from the battery), memory leaks of the standard WiFi libraries or the usage of String types. I am not sure. I had to re-write my ESP32 Arduino sketch to include a watch dog reset as well as perform a timed, software triggered hardware reset of the controller itself every 30 minutes or so. I also eliminated the deep sleep functionality and simply resorting to delays and resets. It has been running for about a week without any hiccups.
The AP’s are connected to Unifi Switches running 5.43.36.12724 firmware
The AP’s are separated into two AP Groups. One of the AP Groups contains the 3 AP-AC-PRO and one of the AP-AC-M. This latter group was the problematic group. The other AP Group which contains the remain 2 AP-AC-M continue to work flawlessly throughout incident. From here on when I reference an AP Group, it is the problematic group that contains the 3 AP-AC-PRO and 1 AP-AC-M.
It all started yesterday when I noticed that my WiFi was a bit slow in the backyard and I wanted to change my radio configurations on one of the AP-AC-PRO and one AP-AC-M in the same AP Group. After the provision, the AP went disconnected as shown by the controller.
I ssh into the problematic AP-AC-PRO and discovered in /var/log/messages that there were many instances of the following log entry:
syswrapper: [state is locked] waiting for lock
I attempted to reboot the device but the device remained in the same “locked” state.
Since it is inconvenient for me to physically reset the AP, I attempted to reset the device via ssh using the command:
syswrapper.sh restore-default
Unfortunately, this did not always work because it immediately just shows the same locking message:
syswrapper: [state is locked] waiting for lock
I had to reboot the device via the command line reboot. As soon as I can ssh into the device after reboot, I immediately execute the restore command as above. This took a lot of trial and error because my timing is often off. When I miss the window, I will get the lock message again. I find that my chances are higher if I first forget the device on the controller first.
A quick suggestion to the Unifi team. It would be nice that the restore-default command if not able to restore immediately due to the lock, would at least set a flag in persistent flash memory of the device so that on the next reboot it will perform the restore then. This feature will safe me A LOT OF TIME!
Once the device is reset to factory default I proceeded to reconfigure it to the WiFi networks that I had. Unfortunately, when I try to provision the changes (adding the re-adopted device back into its original AP Group that is associated with the WiFi networks), it went into the disconnected state again. To make matters worse, the other AP’s in the same AP Group started to misbehave. Some would go into a provisioning state and followed by a disconnected state, while others go into an adopting state. This is of course very unnerving and frustrating. However, this observation lead me to remember a previous episode that I experienced a few weeks ago.
When I updated the controller to 6.2 and upgraded the AP’s firmware, the AP exhibited a similar locking issue. The solution that I employed was to restore to factory default and re-adopt the device. However after readopting, I assigned the AP to a brand new AP Group which I associated with the original WiFi networks. Simply adding the device to the original AP Group did not solve the issue.
When I tried this solution yesterday, it did not work. The device continues to go into a disconnected state immediately after provisioning when I added to the new AP Group. After many hours and much experimentation, I decided to erase all the WiFi networks and the problematic AP Group. I recreated the WiFi networks, and created a new AP Group and proceeded to add each AP one by one (after a reset to factory default). In summary here are the final steps that got me out of this pickle:
Forget all AP’s in the affected AP Group.
Remove all WiFi networks from the AP Group.
Delete the AP Group.
Delete all the WiFi networks that was associated with the above AP Group.
Re-create all the WiFi networks and associate with a brand new AP Group.
For each AP, use ssh to reset to factory default, adopt, and add them one at a time to the AP Group using the controller web UI.
Since there were four AP’s (3 AC-Pro and 1 AC-M), I waited until the AP is fully connected and can service WiFi clients before I continue with the next one.
I am documenting this so that I can share with Unifi support. This has happened twice now, and each time I spent multiple hours to try to get my WiFi network working. In these pandemic times, WiFi is as important as electricity and plumbing. Since Tier-1 support was unable to resolve this issue, waiting for Tier-2 support (around 24 hours) is a bit “hard to swallow”.
Any ways I am glad that I was able to resolve this and brought my WiFi networks back up and running with the 4 affected AP’s, FOR NOW. However I must admit, these two episodes have made me apprehensive of making configurations to these AP’s, thinking that the next provisions will result in many more lost hours.
I hope the Unifi team can use this information and see if there is an issue relating to AP Group provisioning, since this seem to have triggered the issue in both cases.
YouTube viewing has been one of our favourite pass times during the lock down nature of the Covid-19 pandemic. I personally have been watching quite a few channels on how to use LiPO4 cells to build rechargeable battery banks for solar applications, primarily for off grid purposes.
We have a sunroom in our back yard that we used during the summer to grow some vegetables. It has some electrical needs such as water pumps, a temperature sensor, and a fan. Currently there is an electrical socket, fed from the house, that we plug these devices into. We thought it would be a good project to try to get our sunroom off grid. This would be a good learning project.
The first task is to build a 12V LiFePO4 prismatic cells battery bank. I purchased 4 3.2V 100Ah battery cells from AliExpress. The cells came with bus bars so I did not have to purchase those. However, I did have to buy a battery management system (BMS) to balance and manage the charging and discharging of the battery cells. It was very tempting to buy a BMS from AliExpress, but I decided to be cautious and purchased one from a US vendor with the accompanying and preferred quality control. The company Overkill provides a 12V BMS specifically for four LiFePO4 battery cells in series.
It took a very long time for the batteries to arrive from China. I suppose the pandemic could be one of the many reasons for the delay. Once they arrived, I connected in parallel and proceeded to perform a top balance procedure with my voltage limiting desktop power supply. This step is required because each cell will have a different voltage potential from each other. We want all the cells to have the same voltage potential to maximize the capacity that we will get from the aggregated 12V battery bank.
Cells in parallel being topped balanced at 3.65V until zero current
To top balance all the cells, first I hook up the cells in parallel and charge them at a constant voltage of 3.65V. The charge will continue until my desktop power supply shows zero amp going into the battery. This process took a very long time, almost 2 days.
Once the cells are balanced, I reconfigured the cells in series and proceeded to hookup the BMS and the pure sine wave 600W inverter I purchased from Amazon. I had to buy 4 AWG wire, once again from Amazon, because the 10 AWG wire that I purchased earlier was not going to be enough if I want to discharge the battery at 600W which is going to result in more than 50A of current at 12V. I used the remaining 10 AWG wire for solar controller and panel hookups. I also got some XT90 connectors so that I can easily plug/unplug the solar charge controller, solar panels, and potentially plugin charger. I will talk about the solar side some more later on.
All wired up. The yellow XT90 connector is to either a solar charge controller or an external DC charger
So now that we have the guts of our 12V LiFePO4 battery pack, we need to find a suitable home for this thing. My wife had an extra plastic filing box hanging around which is perfect for this.
A filing box is perfect to fit everything
Custom grommets and added a PC fan
I needed to drill some holes to fit a 12V 120mm PC fan for ventilation, and a couple of 2″ grommets so that we can pass plugs and connectors through the box. The fan will be powered by the inverter.
At this point we have ourselves a 1200Wh portable super battery pack that can power up to 600W of electronics, which will be great for road trips. If you plug a 20W iPhone fast charger and charge your phone, it can continuously charge for 60 hours (2.5 days). That is a lot of phones. If your MacBook Air ran out of juice on the road, then this battery pack can power a 45W charger for your MacBook Air for more than a day, and also charge your computer fully. Quite a handy thing to have for emergencies.
Doubles as a 1200Wh portable battery bank
For the solar panels, I purchased two Xinpuguang 100 W flexible solar panels from Aliexpress. They were about $1 / Watt, a pretty good deal. I hook the two panels together in series and got a Victron BlueSolar MPPT 75/10 solar charger to manage the charging of the batteries. The charge controller can accept a maximum of 75V and outputs a maximum of 10A.
The charge controller will automatically adjust the amperage and voltage to the battery bank as required ensuring optimal charging scenario. During a sunny day, it will run the sunroom load from the panels and any remaining current will goto charge the battery. At night, the battery will run the sunroom.
Today, we installed the entire setup. The battery is placed inside the green house to give it some precipitation protection.
The panels are latched to the roof of the green house, one on each side.
The BMS unit has a bluetooth connection and an iOS App. I can use my iPhone when in bluetooth range of the battery to see if the battery is being charged or discharged.
I took the following screen shot of the app today at around 5pm EDT. You can see that there is no current going into the battery and no current going out of the battery. This means the sun is powerful enough to run all the pumps and other electrical appliances in the sunroom. Pretty cool!
It is still too early to tell yet whether there is enough sun power to charge the battery and run the electrical devices in the sunroom in a sustainable manner. My current suspicion is that the two panels are just enough even on a full, bright, sunny day and at peak hours, to power devices and also provide surplus current to charge the batteries.
Here is my overall connectivity diagram:
We will let the system run for about a week to see if this is sustainable during the summer months or not. If not, then I will have to create an automatic transfer switch so that we can intermittently recharge the batteries during the evening with an optional 480W DC charger, which I also got from Aliexpress. This charger can operate between 0-24V and 0-20A. To charge the battery bank, I have set it to a constant voltage of 14.0V and allow the output current to flow unrestricted. This should charge the battery fully in a little over 4 hours from scratch.
Overall, I learned a lot from this project and what a great way to spend the pandemic indoors. This could be a precursor to a DIY Tesla Powerwall Project. We’ll see.
Today my wife and I got our first dose of Pfizer BioNTech Covid 19 Vaccine after probably more than 14 months since the first lock down notice from 2020. Of course it is still too soon to declare victory, as our second dose is still scheduled 3 months from now.
On a related note, the Ontario government has also declared the AstraZeneca vaccine will no longer be available as a first dose: “the decision was made out of an abundance of caution.”
CBC Article on AstraZeneca
I can’t help but think that this sounds a bit contradictory to what the government was peddling a few weeks ago. It kind of makes you think whether their 3 months guidance between the two doses of mRNA based vaccines is warranted and backed up by facts or not.
Regardless, this is another case of inconsistent information provided by our institutions. It certainly will continue to chip away at the credibility of the same institutions.
I hope we learn something from episodes such as this. In the meantime, both of our sons, who are age 17 and 16 should also be eligible for Pfizer or Moderna soon. We are now just monitoring our local clinic schedules to see when they can be booked. Fingers crossed, and three months cannot come soon enough.
