Rainbow

We came home the other night to find a lovely windy evening, with rain in the distance. Then the rainbow came out. It just kept getting better and better - until the rain drove us in.

We have no pictures of it, but today was the third day in a row in which we saw moose on the way to work.

In other news, we just got back from a meeting at the fair. There are big changes that will be quite upsetting to the weaving guild. We have traditionally gotten free passes for booth sitting, in which two people sit with the weaving entries, do fiber arts demos, sell raffle tickets, hang out and enjoy the people for three hours or so. No more booth sitting passes, no raffle ticket sales, no chatting up new members. I've missed being at the fair for the last several years because we were always travelling in August. Now we're here and the fair is going to be a sadder place without friends in the guild space.

Update: We can always buy our own fair passes to do the booth sitting. We'll see if the gang is up for it.

Sea ice images

OK, it's a bit silly, but I want these online somewhere for a game for an online Python class. I may end up not using them, but who cares? These are pictures of sea ice to the west of Greenland back in May.

New England

I know I owe you some Europe photos, but meanwhile, we were in New England last week. We went to a Gordon Conference in Biddeford, ME at the University of New England (no photos) and to a Tai Chi workshop in Exeter, NH (no photos). What I should have gotten pictures of was a sea kayak adventure on one of the afternoons at UNE. A former fisherman runs a sea kayak rental across the water from UNE and over 30 of us took advantage of a lovely day to try it out. He took people across the water, 12 at a time, and we were on the third and last trip over. One fellow didn't want to go in a solo kayak and it got down to the three of us, so we took pity on him and I paddled with him while Rob went solo. He did fine.

Between the two events, we went up to Wiscasset, ME to see a couple friends, Bill and Esther. We stopped in Portland, ME on the way there to see a lighthouse, then Esther took us to see another lighthouse. So I do have a few photos to show:

Portland's Head Light

Rocks by Head Light

The new fog horn and some more rocks

Pemaquid Point Light

Rob and Kate at Pemaquid

One of the sights on the road to Boston

Australia

Wow, nothing here since April? Well, we had a cold wet summer in Fairbanks and had to leave town to find summer. We spent a week in each of Boulder, CO, Ontario, Canada, and Woods Hole, MA, all good.

The latest news is that I had a PET scan last week and it is clear of lymphoma. The possible fibroids still light up, but haven't changed, so the doctor isn't going to make me see an OB/GYN at this point. Next check is in six months.

Early in October I got to go to Australia for work. People there want to model the Great Barrier Reef (and more) using ROMS and they thought I might be able to help. I don't have pictures of us in the office, but can share some other pictures from my trip:

Apple store in Sydney.

View from train station in Sydney.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos in Canberra.

Ochre exposure in Canberra.

Australian magpie.

Melbourne docklands.

Indigo in Melbourne botanical garden.

Great Ocean Road arch.

Koala in the wilds at Kennett River.

Kookaburra at Kennett River.

Lizard in rainforest part of Great Ocean Road.

Sheep across the road from 12 Apostles.

Some of the 12 Apostles on Great Ocean Road.

Wind-blown hair.

Circular tidepool near Hobart.

View of my host's favorite secluded beach near Hobart.

Take DIY Off Grid Energy Control to the Next Level

Off grid energy control just got easier.   Currently, I use a low power laptop to log and do some rudimentary control of the power system.  Drawbacks are it requires 120V.   I can turn the house off and turn it back on when the laptop battery gets low.  The generator is turned on/off via AUX relay using voltage set points and other basic controls provided by the Outback's MATE and FlexNet devices.  Another AUX relay is controlled by another voltage set point, timer and wall wart and another relay to drive the generator block heater.  I have a manual override switch to turn the block heater off if we expect to get power through solar or wind.  Is there a better way to get more control?

The Raspberry Pi would be a good next step, but I need a rock solid solution.  Introducing the MotherBone(TM)PiOne(TM) motherboard from APlus Mobile, Inc. (System Reference).

There are an amazing amount of features on this board.  Pair the motherboard with a Beagle Board Black (BBB) and you have an amazing low power supply and controller that can snuggle right into a 24V off grid power system.

With the data logging system, nominal power use is about 76W.   Bringing the house down to minimum levels at night and during the days, I can reduce the load to about 22W.  That is a 70% savings during non-peak utilization and I can still log data and turn the power back on when needed.

Another smashing feature of this board is on-board USB ports and five, FIVE!, solid state relays.  With the BBB and some fancy Python programming, we can use the relays to improve our current situation above (or even geek out and go nuts with more relays).

Example Application

MotherBone(TM)PiOne(TM)+BBB+Linux+Python

Outback Mate (ver 1/serial) + FlexNetDC

USB #1: Mate serial input (logged by python): Shunt and battery voltage data.

USB #2: Outdoor temperature sensors (4 channel DS18S20)

USB #3: Indoor temperature sensors (4 channel DS18S20)

Relay #1: Replace the Mate AGS on/off.  We can now throw this relay when we know the block heater has been running for a predetermined time.

Relay #2: Replace the block heater circuit.  Turn generator block heater on/off.

Relay #3: Override for on-demand heat.

Relay #4: Dump load on/off to heat trace to water tank.

Relay #5: Vent fan on/off for generator shed.

Now we have full control over generator functions.  Instead of doing some funny business with the Mate's AGS settings to pre-heat the generator before it turns on, we can actually do the programming.  When the voltage is low, turn on the block heater.  After two hours, turn the block heater off and turn the genset on.  After we are done charging, turn the genset off.   We can go further, depending on the outdoor temperature, vary the amount of time needed to pre-heat the generator.  If it is darn right balmy outside, we can just turn the generator on.

The generator shed does get warm!  Now we have a relay and temperature sensors to turn the fan on and off in the shed.

During the winter, we occasionally have to dump extra power.  For now, it just is dumped to a heater in the garage.  We can MANUALLY, plug in a heat trace to our water tank to absorb some of the load or AUTOMATICALLY with the new control system.  For this relay setup, we use the low power relay from the MotherBone(TM)PiOne(TM) to drive a high power relay (RIBU1C).

What is relay #3 doing?  Heating systems typically use low voltage 24 V AC and thermostats to provide an "on-demand" signal to the burner control.  If the thermostats are set at 70F, when the temperature falls, the thermostat will send a "demand" signal to the burner by closing a relay on the 24V AC circuit.  Should we have a way to detect that power will be coming in the future and we want to delay the heater from coming on, we can use a relay to "break" the circuit -- temporarily overriding the "demand" signal to the heater.  If it gets below a lower set point, say 65F, then we can turn the relay off allowing the heater to turn on.  So, this relay on the 24V AC we would be using the N/C function instead of the typical N/O function.

Let's get this board on the market so we can play!  Kickstart it today!

Catching up

The snow has since melted off the grill, but it was a great layer cake of snow for the longest time:

Snow on the grill

Recent sunrise

Felt skirt and tie-dye experiment on scarf

By the way, we had sun come into the house today! First time I've seen that since November.

New stove

Here's a picture when I still had hair:

Kate and Rob with hair

 We got a new wood stove, big enough to heat the whole house from the downstairs. Monday the chimney sweep came and gave it a clean bill of health - better than the old one upstairs.

Kate and the new wood stove

The scarf look

Smile for the camera

 In the pictures above you can't see the whole scarf, but the colors are better than the image below. I made this scarf in grad school with a friend who wanted to learn batik. We spent many joyful hours with melted wax over a sterno fire. We also learned a lot about color theory, this being yellow and turquoise dye. The designs are from a Chinese paper cut book I just adore.

Whole scarf

 The fan really is turning:

Stove as the star