Epic solar boat adventure - Extension poles

Part of the latest design plan is to be able to raise the solar panels when my little boat is going on an epic adventure, rather than just a day trip.

During transit on the tralier, I want my solar panels as close to the deck of the boat as I can make them so they dont fly of in a direction of their choosing. I want them to be a little more under my control that the wind might, so keeping them low means I get a bit less wobble. If you don't know what I'm talking about, get a neighbour's kid (don't use one of your own) and see how much more they move about if you lift them up high on a post.

That's physics at work.

Or something.

But anyway, if you built a carport on 300ft long broomsticks, it would fall over in the first stiff breeze. But the same carport would hand it just fine if the broomsticks were only 4 foot tall. (I presume you drive a Ferrari)

So I want my solar panels to sit atop their low rise roof in 110 kph transit, but be extended to a more convenient height when I'm on an epic adventure. I don't mind stooping a bit to get under cover, but it will drive me nuts if I have to crawl under the panels if I ever need to sleep on board.

So..

The in the low rise version (road transit, and day trips) the solar panels will sit at around 400mm high.

In high rise mode, they will sit at more like 1200mm high.

In order to move from low to high mode, I figured I'd mount the entire frame on hinges so I could add the extension tubes first to one side, and then to the other by lifting the frame with one hand and adding the extension tubes with the other.

But I have a problem. I cant wrap my head around Newton and his pesky rules...

If I mount a 1.8m cube of grow house frame so that all four of it's legs are hinged to enable it to tilt around an axis running front to back of the boat, will it fall down, or will it's integrity be maintained by the structure of the top.

I realise the answer is going to start with "it depends", but arggggh!.

I want my old brain back.



120 Things in 20 years wants to start using the invention engine again. It's always worked much better than this brain thing.

Epic Adventurer - Thinking - something actually happened

Something actually happened!

I did something.

I secretly fed a duck and a turtle in a park near a hospital (Where there are "please don't feed the wildlife" signs, but I picked at the bark and leaf litter on the ground, and fed other bits of the wildlife to the other wildlife, so I figure...

Where's the crime?

anyway... they looked hungry and made pleading sounds, so I fed them some other things

but I guess I DID feed them things that (if I could read exoskeleton facial expressions) looked very frightened, and screamed in utter misery the entire time...

But anyway...

after that, and more importantly, I have more stuff in my brain that I did the other day.

and that feels a little odd

It's been a while.

I've had a tummy ache.

They thought C17H19NO3 might help so gave me lots of it for ages.

Lately it feels like there's been a eighteen month slow leak of stuff from my brain rather than the thing I was going to say but forgot a bit...

So I've got that going for me.

But today I continued on from the other day, and actually finished some work on my solar boat that may have actually got me a little closer to something.

Which is nice.

It doesn't sound like a lot. To anyone who hasn't tried to make a trailer's wiring communicate with a car's wiring it wont sound like a lot, but if you have, and you know either something, or nothing about electronics, you'll know that having your brake lights strobe when you turn left is actually a reasonabe outcome. At the very least, the person behind you knows that something is about to happen, and they should probably change lanes and get as far away as they can.

Not such a bad outcome as far as safety is concerned.

But what works even better is a system that uses the correct lights where they are appropriate!

Who knew!

But the best part, is that I wired it up, hot glued it in place, plugged it in...

And it actually worked.


Today at least, physics does my bidding.


120ThingsIn20Years - Bam!

Epic adventurer - New solar panels

Bullwinkle III is about to be born.

Bullwinkle was the first incarnation of my little boat. It was originally a SunDance 4.3m one man racing catamaran.

I went halves in it with a friend.

It was old and slow but built solidly.

We broke it.

We fixed it up, but it wasn't strong enough to put it under the kind of strain that a boat sees when it's under sail, so the sail had to go.

I put a 1.8m square of marine grade plywood on it and turned it into a fishing barge. I added a large deep cycle battery and an electric trolling motor. This gave me a range of around 6km which is surprisingly enough to catch lots of fish and more importantly, lots of blue swimmer crabs. This incarnation was Bullwinkle II. With the aid of some rope, and some plastic hand reels as pulleys, two empty milk crates as seats, and a pram wheel as a steering wheel, it was quite comfortable. the only downside was that people kept boating up to us to see if we needed help because we looked like a sinking dingy. A sinking dingy with two people standing on it fishing.

Then came Bullwinkle II.V which was essentially the same as Bullwinkle II but it also had a 3hp two stroke motor, but that was just annoying.

So today I spent the money I've received from you nice people clicking my blog's ads on two new 180w solar panels. They have apparently been built, and are now being put on a ship in China.

Thanks clickers.

Thanks China.

Thanks boats.

So now I can finally build Bullwinkle III.

I have the hulls, the decking, a motor, the frame of my 1.8m grow house (the one that let the sun dissolve it's cover), and an office chair.

That should be plenty enough junk to solar boat the length of the mighty River Murray.


120 Things in 20 years just remembered that I hadn't ever gone camping alone, so the night before last I drove to the river with my swag, and tried it. Nothing bad happened.

Epic adventurer - Solar boat trolling motor

I got one step closer to setting out on my zillion mile epic adventure on the mighty Murray river, on my little solar powered boat.

That step included testing just how much juice I was going to need to run the trolling motor, and seeing if the solar panel I have will provide enough.

My boat is a displacement hulled catamaran. That means it doesn't do the skimming across the top of the water thing that most other racing cats do, so it's very outdated for racing, but it floats well, and the hulls are very low drag.  At their widest, they measure only 20cm or so. They are 4.2m in length, so they slide through the water without a lot of effort. Probably even slicker than a kayak.

The result of all this is that I can tick along at walking pace with an electric trolling motor on it's slowest setting.

I like walking pace.

In fact, aside from jet aircraft pace, and insane motor bike pace, walking pace is my favourite pace.

So I think, the result of all that is that I should be able to power my little boat with my single solar panel. That question has been nagging at me for ages. My solar panel says it delivers a maximum of 230w at 37v and also mentions 7.5 amps or so.  I think that means that at 12 volts after an MMPT solar charge controller, it will offer the battery a maximum of 19 amps. Probably much less.

But...

I just put my trolling motor in a bucket of water (large bucket) and ran it through my multimeter. As far as I can tell, it draws around 12 amps on the lowest speed setting. I'll be taking a 120 amp hour deep cycle lead acid battery. From memory, before I had the solar panel, that battery gave around 5 hours cruising when I ran it down to 11v. But my memory is terrible for stuff like that.

Also as far as I can tell, I think that means I should be able to cruise for a reasonable amount of time each day. There's also the option of running a bit faster during the middle of the day, when my solar panel is generating the most power. It would be nice to leave the battery with a healthy amount of charge at the end of each day so that I could use some for light, charge my phone and UHF radio, and to power a laptop so I can get some blog posts out.





I'll probably want to set up camp each afternoon when there is still plenty of light, and get up early each morning to pack up camp and get under way when the river is at it's best. If I leave a full battery at the end of each day, I should be able to set off at first light, and then make up the charge by the end of the afternoon.

Or something.

But I have no idea how this will all pan out in the real world.

What I need is a 36v to 12v MMPT solar charge controller that actually works, and wasn't sold to me fraudulently by that trader on E-Bay.

Now I don't trust the world any more.

But I'll probably get over it.

But on the up side I now know how much current my little trolling motor draws, and I've also found a brand new way to inject a lot of oxygen into my fish tank very quickly, and perhaps mince fish.

Which is nice.

This is the trolling motor on it's highest speed setting.

Excited water.







120 Things in 20 years thinks it's found the worlds fastest way to empty a large bucket of water all over itself and it's shed, without actually picking it up and tipping it over itself.

Electronics - Solar panel

I bought a stinking great big solar panel at auction online. A real life auction, in a local auction house, but I bid online.

When I went to collect it, the glass was broken into a zillion bits. I counted them. One zillion exactly.

So I offered them $50 for the two that were left and they thought that seemed reasonable.

I only brought one home because the person who had bought the other one needed to have to option to take it, but the one I do have looks like this...

It's big.

It also gloops out 230 watts of whatever watts are.

Which is nice.

If I can find a slice of glass to cover it, it may even prove useful.

I have big plans for it.

I'll use it to power my aquaponics system for one thing, but I have bigger plans for it.

I'm going to use it as a shelter.

If it still works.



120 things in 20 years, where you may well find electronics, and solar panels, but your just as likely to find nothing.

I've been too busy to post stuff, and it's about to get worse.

Thinking - Six in one solar toy sets

After my post on solar flying toys I actually went out and bought some. Or at lest sent away for one.

Actually it's one of those green six in one solar toy sets you see around on the internet :)

Your never too old to play with toys.

It occurred to me I'd never owned a solar toy and probably never would unless I did something about it myself. I spent a few cents on myself for my holiday season invention time. I guess my own subliminal message seeped into my head and got me attempting to contribute to the solar toyosphere.

Actually none of my toys fly, and I don't think there are any that do yet, but time will prove my theory correct in the end.

Now all I have to do is to pull the bath out of the wall and put it out in the sun so I can use my solar powered boat.

I wonder if my fish would like it.

In reality other than being genuinely interested to see what they can do with a tiny panel, and what I imagine must be a very tiny motor and gearbox, I also have a feeling I will need it's parts for an invention or two, if I can keep it from turning into a last minute gift for a visiting kid.




*by the way I have no idea if these things are any good or not. I haven't even seen them other than online, so don't take this as some sort of endorsement.




120 things in 20 years, not just thinking about 6 in 1 solar toy sets, but contributing to the world by encouraging the manufacture of yet more solar stuff.

Solar hot water

It turns out a stack of energy hits every square metre of the earth's surface every day. Especially in the bits where its daytime.

Pictured here, and using the sun for scale, is an impressive looking graph showing exactly how much that could be. One way to combat such a graph is by collecting solar energy.

Hot water represents a fair slice of power consumed by most people's homes, and as such, is a good place to start. The problem with buying a solar hot water system is all the work you have to do to earn all the money you need. If you make it yourself it still takes some work, but you learn some stuff along the way and save a stack of cash.

The ambient temperature of space is a nippy -270°C (there is no wind chill factor) but the average temperature here on earth is a balmy 14°C. Quite pleasant really in comparison.
All you have to do is figure out a way to pick some up, move it to somewhere else, and add it to what's already there. Do that a bit more and suddenly your bath goes from being potentially deadly to rather pleasant.

Basically there are great wads of energy lying around free for the taking. I'm going to have a crack at picking some up.