Dancing Rain

11/05/2024

Aurora Borealis from Portland, Oregon

02/04/2024

This is as much progress as I can make this weekend. 38 of 65 neopixels are working.
I need to go to dollar tree to buy more headphones to harvest wire from.

This is so much trickier trying to use a picnic table at the homeless shelter as an improvised soldering station.

Once all the lights work, I can get to the real fun: firmware.

25/01/2024

The Apple Macintosh turns forty today.

01/01/2024

The first video I've made in over a year. I should explain the tree... but I'm fighting a serious case of depression.

Happy New Year

12/05/2023

Tinkering with code that turns a text file into a picture of wiring.
Because I don't have the homestead house to wire.
So I made virtual wires to play with.

Yes, I totally lifted pictures of switches and outlets from the web.

The wires are cubic splines, because... math nerd.
Yep. I totally made up a wiring description language for this.

21/03/2023

Happy equinox!

21/12/2022

25/08/2022

Donations are needed to help with the homestead. My minivan needs repairs.

PayPal.me/zzDancingRain
Cash app : $zzDancingRain

Go to paypal.me/ZzDancingRain and type in the amount. Since it’s PayPal, it's easy and secure. Don’t have a PayPal account? No worries.

11/07/2022

Well, folks, it looks like we're going to lose the land for the homestead, unless we can raise $5k in a hurry.

Also, we're out of drinking water and flat broke.

PayPal.me/zzDancingRain
Cashtag: $zzDancingRain

Go to paypal.me/ZzDancingRain and type in the amount. Since it’s PayPal, it's easy and secure. Don’t have a PayPal account? No worries.

28/06/2022

I finally made my first homesteading video. I filmed it back in early May, and it's taken quite a while to get it edited.

https://youtu.be/W034_6xS0bI

Building the first incarnation of the solar power system for the homestead.400W worth of panels, 200Ah (2400Wh) worth of battery capacity, 500W inverter.So f...

21/06/2022

Wishing everyone a happy solstice!

Happy summer if you're in the northern hemisphere!

Happy winter if you're in the southern hemisphere!

02/06/2022

For the moment we're using "indirect" solar power for our modest electrical needs. (Charging phones and a laptop)

On the left, on 100 amp-hour lithium iron phosphate battery, running the inverter. This makes it easy to move the inverter to wherever we need power at the moment. (Don't tell G.I. Joe... The inverter is made by Cobra!)

On the right, the other 100 amp-hour battery, charging from the solar panels.
When the battery powering the inverter gets low, we swap them.

10/05/2022

First temporary solar setup at the homestead.
It's partly cloudy today, so the output is bouncing between 65 and 263W.
Not bad for laying the panels flat on the ground.

Also, I only have one of the two 100Ah batteries attached.

Sadly, my camera's battery died while I was hooking up the charge controller. I may need to re-shoot that video.

Anyway, the next thing is to hook up and test the inverter.

07/05/2022

This is just a taste of how badly U-Haul screwed us over.
https://youtu.be/EXCHo4GKlOM

U-Haul really screwed us over.My periodic table, and almost all of my lab supplies are gone because of their idiocy.Please help Ameilia and I recover. We're ...