NOMADICISTA

It's not like I depend on them for life support or anything. Sounds like your life may depend on not using them in the house unattended though. Maybe they could be re-marketed as greenhouse fumigators. It also sounds like the design work of a company that made the disco power amp that a friend boug...

Is it always the same failure mode on these things? Could you save yourself some future work by modifying its design a bit to prevent the worst of the damage (extra fuses that blow before the MOSFETs nuke or an add-on cut out that senses the demise of the oscillator or PWM control and crowbars the d...

For utility cover I guess you could use a computer UPS instead of a solar battery powered inverter. The UPS can auto-start a generator too. Curiously, those Enphase inverters will only work with the higher voltage panels. They have a quite high minimum voltage of 25-40Vmp. The new ranges of Sharp po...

Just as an aside, I was at the local DIY / garden store at the weekend and they are now selling these cordless electric cylinder mowers. Not sure how good / powerful they are but I might give one a go as it would save using the mains mower on our small lawn and I could charge it up from my solar pow...

Hmmm... I had to spend a day re-wiring the amorphous solar array again! Despite my cunning plan to limit the open circuit voltage to below 70V, the zener shunted array caused the charge controller to act a bit weird. It would go into absorption charge mode before the other charger (they used to be m...

Is there a risk that other things apart from the feed wires are heating up too? Like the internals of the batteries themselves?

In the budget today, the government confirmed that a second car scrappage scheme will be starting from next month that will allow a 2000 Pound discount for trading in any car over 10 years old when buying a new car. So, I'll get to buy the Insight after all

More importantly, one reason that the petrol hybrids get higher mileage is because the engines are really ~tiny~ for the application they are installed in. Without the electric assist, they would be dangerously slow. Undersizing the petrol engine has a significant savings in fuel, and the electric ...

The government here made their announcement yesterday but hybrid cars aren't "green" enough. They will (from 2011) offer a 2000-5000 Pound trade in scheme, but only in respect of electric-only cars. So, I'll be keeping the Accord for a while yet. I can only afford to run one car and so it ...

Thanks, I'll give it a go when the bits turn up from the shop. I've got lots of spare 12V coiled relays kicking about. No sooner had I mentioned that I have a project this summer to build a 24V battery charger than what should I pick up at the first of the mega car boot sales this year but a 3A full...

Well, I went for my test drive today. The newspaper item on the car had said it was based on the FCX chassis but the guy in the showroom said it was actually based on the Jazz model. Anyway, it's a pretty good drive. It's very quiet and you only hear the engine if you're pushing it hard, when the CV...

Yep, the new Insight owes most of its chassis to the FCX hydrogen fuel cell car they are piloting in the US. I guess it's how they are making the limited production run of the FCX pay back. By re-using the chassis for a mass production (Prius killer) car, they can re-coup some of the development cos...

The new Honda Insight hybrid car is out in the UK and I'm signed up on Tuesday for a test drive. Looking through the brochure it looks quite good. 1.3L petrol engine with a in-line electric motor and a new 100V NiMH pack. Unlike the hybrid Civic, the Insight can supposedly drive for some way (they d...

Good call Sharkey! Luckily, it takes a couple of days to get stuff delivered from the electronics store so I hadn't started playing with the relay yet. It almost certainly would have caused trouble as the UPS has a big transformer in it for powering its electronics and charging the 12V battery. Whil...

The weather has been kind this week so I began re-wiring the amorphous array for the triplets running at 51.7V configuration. The frames for the 15W panels are somewhat modular and I had a spare T bar (the broken one that I mended with super-glue) to make up a pair of two panel expansion units. All ...