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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 4th, 2024

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  • Yeah, I mean apocalypse scenario is not my main goal. But it’s nice to have a contingency plan if shit would hit the fan.

    This is my second season with the caravan, I had an apocalypse sailboat before that. I put 2x100W on it for the first season, added another 2x100W this season while going from 160Ah lead-acid to 300Ah Lithium. It’s a night and day difference there already.

    I’m plugged in most of the time, either for air conditioning or heating - the Mrs wants her comfort. There’s a three-way absorption fridge (220V, 12V or gas) that draws like 110W. I can still be unplugged for three nights or so with that running; which makes long distances or overnight ferries possible without ruining food.

    And if we want to stay somewhere without shore power we can flip the absorption fridge to gas and be cooking with gas as well. The compressor fridge chest that sips 30W usually sits in under the awning in front anyway.






  • I don’t power all of it at once, and not direcly off of solar. I could maybe fit another 200W worth of panel on that roof, but for 4000W I’d need seven caravan roofs. That battery is the buffer and it’s a beast. At 300Ah I have 4kWh to pull at 1C.

    The fridge sips a nice 30W. Panels put in ~2kWh on a sunny day. So thats a 1.7kWh surplus for running heavy loads - enough to max out that inverter for an hour a day. That’s plenty for microwaving or pumping water.


  • If power is down for good, then getting water is the main priority. If the pumpa don’t run the water tower is losing pressure fast. I have 40 litres jugged up in the basement at all times for the first few days.

    When that dries out my neighbour has a well that we’ve hooked up to five properties. Mostly for gardening, but it is potable. The pump needs power, though, so I’d pull an extension cord over to my caravan.

    My caravan has 400W of solar, 300Ah LiFePO4 and a 1.5kW inverter. Also a meshtastic node with an antenna on the roof. That’ll keep the food cold, and laptops charged. It can run a microwave or hotplate, too. I’ve got 20kg of propane if I need to conserve power.





  • Pros:

    • I have the source. I don’t have to wait for fixes or features. I just do it myself and send a patch or PR upstream.
    • I can run it on just about anything, and well.
    • Sane defaults and handling of user permissions - by design
    • Modern filesystems that don’t silently rot your data
    • Full control
    • No forced updates
    • No telemetry

    Cons:

    • Not a priority for pro applications
    • Not fully POSIX compliant

    I haven’t used windows in almost 30 years, but… I probably missed some games at first that DOSBox couldn’t run well (yet). Not a problem any more.


  • I’ve written a couple.

    My job requires a lot of troubleshooting, almost to the point of reverse engineering. I’ve spent many hours reading and getting through logs.

    Now I have an agent who can one-shot stuff half of the time, and n-shot the 4/5 other times. And it learns from experience.

    I enjoyed experimenting with it, and now it’s a timesaver for my team.








  • I bought a Prusa MK1 kit back in 2014. It was the right choice at the time. 3D-printing was finickier and you had to know your machine inside out. It’s since been upgraded to mk2.5.

    It’s starting to be worn out - bearing are giving up, belts are tied, cables are experiencing metal fatigue. I bought a flashforge ad5x for Christmas. It’s just a lot of printer for the money. The ceramic heater broke, but I got a new on warranty. It’s been quite reliable, and a lot faster than ye olde bedslinger.

    Looks like flashforge might be pulling some shenanigans with the firmware, but there is opensource mods to save the day.