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Local Power Politics: APS, AZCC and Things to Think About.

June 14, 2018, 4:17 pm
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In my last political (well sorta) post I described how the local power company APS is organized and regulated by our Arizona Corporate Commission (AZCC) <link>. After that post and a few I did on local social media, I got a couple of requests to put this stuff all in one place. Well, I have a place to put it, and I'm getting tired of posting it over and over again, so here is my collection of gripes about our own AZCC and the power company APS. I decided to post this stuff on the blog because it related very directly with my efforts to keep the power bill as low as possible and the pitfalls, stumbling blocks and walls along the way.

I'm linking them all together on the (newly added) subject of 'Power Company' over on the top right of this page. Just scroll down to the 'P' and click on it.

The idea is that I can just put up a blog post, and then use a link to expand on my findings or thoughts easily without having to type them in all over again. Clever right? It also means that I can hit and run on social media. That means I can just slap a link on there and go off to the next place and do the same. There's a lot of social media sites that discuss this kind of thing out there.

No, I'm not a social activist, I'm a customer that is tired of getting raked over by politicians and corporations that are supposed to exist in our best interest.

Therefore, here are three 'Dockets' and one 'Announcement' that are recent and directly impact me and my neighbors in this area. They're real and verifiable. I try to put in links for the various items so people can double check me. Some of the text is my opinion, feel free to comment.

AZCC Docket # E-01345A-18-0111 - In the matter of the application of Arizona Public Service Company for approval of its Rate Rider RCP.

Last month (May, 2018) APS applied to the AZCC for a modification of the "rcp export rider for new on-site solar." This is currently being heard by the commission with no decision yet.

But, what the heck is this?

They invent names and acronyms to make it easier to describe things, but it also complicates reading this stuff to the point where people just give up and wander away. Resource Comparison Proxy (RCP) is a complicated series of observations to gather data, then calculations to show how much APS should be paying solar customers, people with solar that produce an excess of power and return it to APS.

What this is, is if your solar was installed after the cut off date, September 1, 2017, they want to change what they are allowing (as credits) for your excess power. Currently it's shown as $0.12900/kWh, almost 13 cents for each kWh you don't use and give to APS, and they want to lower it to $0.116 a little over a cent less.

They actually claim that it should be zero, but they're not going for that yet.
"... the avoided transmission and distribution capacity cost credit to be applied to the RCP should actually be 0%."
They already charge much more to supply power than they pay for it from the excess solar people provide, and now they want to lower that payment (actually credit). This is a decrease of over 10% to them. Essentially they're asking for a 10% decrease in what they agreed to just last fall in the last rate increase decision.

Yes, it's all above board and public in AZCC Docket #E-01345A-18-0111 and it's supporting documentation, but how many have heard about it? Is the news going nuts on this? Have you received any mail about it?

But wait you say, just last year APS agreed not to file for another rate increase until much later. That's completely true, but they're not asking for a rate increase, they're asking for a modification to a rider on your bill. See how it's done? You pay more, but they didn't do it, it's a rider on your bill. When you call them about it, they tell you it was approved by the AZCC.

Why aren't the solar companies complaining about this? Actually, the solar association has filed a response, they're angry that APS is attempting an end run around other agreements. For whatever good it will do.

Those that have solar already are managing to skate past it right now, but APS will be back before the AZCC soon. Those that are getting new solar will be impacted severely by the new rules, so this is a concern that everyone should be interested in.

E-01345A-18-0003 - In the matter of the application by Arizona Public Service Company to Implement Tax Expense Adjustor Mechanism.

This docket is actually in our (the customer) favor. When President Trump's tax changes came into effect, it lowered APS's tax rate to 21%, and they saved money. Someone realized, then insisted that APS revise their bill to reflect the savings instead of keeping it as a windfall. This was done under dockets #E-01345A-16-0036 and E-01345A-16-0123. The amount is a tiny percentage per kilowatt hour, but amounted to about $10 on my last bill.

The adjustment rate is supposed to be $.004258 per kWh, so the more you use, the more you get deducted from your bill. I question why they are paying it back by the kWh, it was a percentage decrease in taxes, why wasn't it a percentage decrease in our bill? When I looked closely at the docket, it was clear that they decided to play tax games with the requirement and deducted for various other things. They got to keep a heck of a lot of this windfall against their own expenses. One could also make a pretty clear case for discrimination; they get windfall money, then when caught, return it to their biggest customers by returning it based on how big their bill was. Our own APS sticking its hands in our pocket again. (actually, I may use that line in a complaint to the AZCC)

However, this also helps disguise the credit for money APS is saving in taxes as something APS is doing for us. It's not them giving us something, it's them not stealing something else from us. They even called it "TEAM" for Tax Expense Adjustor Mechanism, and shows up on the bill as "Tax Expense Adjustor."

PUBLIC NOTICE OF APS'S REQUEST FOR APPROVAL OF A FOUR
CORNERS SCR ADJUSTMENT (DOCKET NOS. E-01345A-16-0036 AND
16-0123)
"On April 27, 2018, APS filed a request for a Four Corners SCR Adjustment to allow recovery of an annual revenue requirement of $67.5 million. APS estimates that the average residential monthly bill impact would be an increase of approximately two percent. A copy of the request is available from APS  azenergyfuture.com), and at the Arizona Corporation Commission's eDocket website (edocket.azcc.gov), for public inspection in the above-referenced docket numbers"
The item above and the quote was one of those inclusions in the bill that we all toss out while looking to see how much they gouged us this month. What it's referring to is the pollution lowering devices called "Selective Catalytic Reduction" that they are installing at the Four Corners Power Plant. That particular power plant is coal fired and was cited for pollution. It's a long story beyond this author's willingness to write about right now. 

But, quoting directly from the AZCC filing:
 "(SCR Adjustment) to permit recovery of a $67.5 million annual revenue requirement."
You certainly see what is going on, the clue should have been "recovery." They want to pass the 67 million dollar per year cost of this stuff to their customers. Another quote from the same document:

"That would equate to an approximate 2% customer base rate bill impact. Additionally, APS requests that the SCR Adjustment become effective as soon as possible, but no later than January 1, 2019"
Yes, you read it right, they want to add another 'fee' to the bill to cover this and this one is a straight 2% increase in the base rate. Ever wonder why the base rate applies to all customers. This should give you a hint. You can read it yourself at <link>. It's also on the public record at the AZCC site under the unassuming name: "Motion/Request - Miscellaneous," but I suppose that's a little less noticeable than, "Motion to Screw Our Customers into Paying for Our Mistakes." The link to the document there is <link>.

AZCC Docket # E-01345A-18-0002 - In the matter of the formal complaint against Arizona Public Service Company filed by Stacey Champion and other Arizona Public Service Company customers

This docket is a direct complaint from a group of citizens against APS's latest rate increase (and fees of course). The dockets that the rate increase was approved were E-01345A-16-0036 AND E-01345A-16-0123. These two dockets were combined because they related to the same things. Eventually, they excluded existing solar, customers for the most part (more on that below), but most of us don't have solar, so the latest rate increase (and fees) from APS is directly impacting us; this also has significant impact on any new solar installations.

Stacey Champion, the named complainant, and a group of several hundred people gathered from a web campaign filed this, but as everyone suspects, APS is dealing in an underhanded fashion with the public and the AZCC. Want some facts to look up for verification? APS used the upcoming 2018 election as leverage against the Corporation Commission in writing and they did it on the public record. The following is a quote I copied and pasted:
"Unfortunately, APS is concerned that delay will only push this matter closer to the November 2018 election, which risks distorting this process and increasing customer confusion."
Which means: There's an election coming up and you guys may not get our funding if you don't end this now in our favor. Or maybe, if the complaint isn't decided soon, the voters may notice and vote against you. At any rate, it's pretty clearly a threatening statement. You want to see where they said this, go look at it on the state web site at this <link>. I think it's on page three.  Fortunately, Stacey Champion's lawyer noticed what they were doing and put this in the response:
"As for the November 2018 election, it is irrelevant to this proceeding and APS' professed concern that it "risks distorting this process and increasing customer confusion" should not trump Ms. Champion's right to due process."

Basically, Stacey's lawyer said, "We see what you're doing, and it's bullshit." If you want to read this it's at this <link>.This one is on page 4.

I also ran across the following part of a sentence when reading through an APS response to Stacey's complaint. I cut and pasted this right out of the document on the AZCC web site at <link>.
"(iii) an agreement with the solar industry to resolve a multi-year, otherwise intractable dispute regarding distributed generation that included a confidential agreement to avoid undermining the rate settlement through ballot initiatives, legislation, or advocacy at the ACC, "

What this means is that the solar industry in this state got together with APS and agreed that the solar folk wouldn't put up a ballot initiative, sponsor legislation or lobby the Corporate Commission. Since it is confidential, we don't get to see what the Solar companies got in return for GIVING APS FREE REIGN ON THIS RATE INCREASE.

Excuse my language, WHAT THE HECK??

We were all sold down the road by a secret agreement between APS and the Solar Industry ...

Yeah, this really makes me want to talk to a solar company in this state.

Now, if you do actually read this far, think about it a bit. Here is publicly held documentation that APS is using the upcoming election as a tool against the Corporation Commission and they entered into a secret agreement with the solar industry to shut them up. Now act accordingly. I suggest you visit Stacey Champion's site, read the documentation and contribute to the effort. Stacey is taking on APS for us, and they're driving her down with legal fees. If she has to withdraw because she can't afford it, that's the end of the effort to get this back for a rehearing.

https://www.fundedjustice.com/StopTheAPSGreed?ref=ab_6Ezo8KIX4xn6Ezo8KIX4xn

You can also file a complaint directly with the AZCC in support of Stacey's docket. Heres how to complain:

 What you have to do is go to

http://eservice.azcc.gov/Utilities/Complaint

And file a complaint.

You MUST state that you're commenting on the existing docket number E-01345A-18-0002 in the first line so they can see what you're doing. I started mine off with:

"In support of Docket Number: E-01345A-18-0002 It appears that APS did not deal in good faith with its ratepayers, the Corporation Commission or the public in general. "

The "In support" part means you agree with Stacey Campbell that APS is a bunch of thieves, and it also shows up in a listing of the documents filed on this docket. You also have to fill out all the blanks in the form to identify yourself as a customer of APS so you will be taken seriously. At the bottom of the form is a space to type in exactly what you think about this.

We have elected representatives in the state legislature, time to actually use them and see what happens, so here are the two for District 1. I'm listing their web pages so you can get to the mail facility easily.

David Stringer is at:
https://www.azleg.gov/House/House-member/?legislature=53&legislator=1748

and Noel Campbell is at:
https://www.azleg.gov/House/House-member/?legislature=53&legislator=1718

Just click on their email address and let them know what you think about this.

Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to get the actual links in so you can see for yourself what I have seen.

I really hope I made you angry.

Oh, one other thing: the spam will really be flying on this post, so be warned: talking about how great your solar plan is, sales blurbs or obnoxious comments will be deleted without remorse.
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Microwave Trouble: Sometimes a Stupid Question is Just What You Needed

June 27, 2018, 11:01 pm
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Several times now I've mentioned my microwave oven in passing. It's given me a couple of problems over the years: I managed to explode a coffee cup and the liquid got into the turntable motor, and the entire control board went belly up on me. The turntable motor was easy, I just got a new part and replaced it. The control board was harder, that took a call to GE because I wasn't sure which of the four boards was acting up. I couldn't find a schematic on the darn board to isolate it.

The idea I had was to use the best appliances in the kitchen I could and then not have to ever replace them. The fridge has failed twice; the freezer several times, the range once, the dishwasher four or five. Most of the repairs were done by a real GE repairman using real GE parts except the freezer that had a really piece of crap defrost timer in it. So much for the idea of getting top-of-the-line appliances.

But, don't misunderstand, I'm not rich and wasn't rich when I got them. I caught a good sale, the prices were much, much lower then and I had just sold my old house. I was also naive about the actual quality of appliances.

The microwave was working fine with a little fan noise and then the noise got really loud. It still worked, but you couldn't stay in the kitchen with it. Obviously, the bearings in it had failed. Right? Not so, the stupid squirrel cage blower had expanded, rubbed against the fan enclosure and started to get ripped apart. Nice.

Of course, I had to take it apart to find this out. This microwave is a ZSC2001FSS02 and looks like this:


I really like this oven. It's microwave as well as a halogen heated convection oven. It'll do three big baked potatoes in around 15 minutes without waiting for it to heat up. After I got it out of the cabinet and took the lid off to tell what was making all the noise, I looked for the part. No stinking luck; well sort of no luck.

The GE parts web site didn't even list a part number for the blower. It simply wasn't there. Sears listed a part number, but it was shown as "Not Available". Partsdirect showed the number and said the factory didn't supply it anymore. I used the part number and searched for about an hour and couldn't find one. Being a resourceful desert dweller, I went looking for the manufacturer since the name was right on the label, Oh Sung and the part was OBB-2009X1 or maybe m051004.3R. Once again, no luck.

I did find the manufacturer, but I really didn't want to spend a week exchanging emails and then maybe a month getting something from them. So, I went looking for a replacement squirrel cage to put in since the existing motor was working fine. The fan looked like this:


See why it was making noise? Ignore the grease, I didn't bother cleaning it up for the picture. When I pulled the blower assembly apart and looked at the actual squirrel cage, it was worse than I thought:


I found the missing pieces inside the blower cover. I had no luck at all finding a replacement for this. The only squirrel cages I found were for HVAC systems and such and they were waaay too large to do me any good.

OK, fine. I'll get something similar from a different microwave and somehow make it work. I switched over to ebay and started looking. There were a a lot of microwave blowers of different styles and sizes. None of them mentioned how big they were, just the various part numbers from the microwaves they were supposed to fit. It was sort of a order-something-to-see-if-it-works kind of thing. I hate that since it could take a long time and cost a lot of money in mistakes.

But, I did it anyway. I ordered a blower from a GE Advantium Microwave Oven that looked similar to the one I had in the squirrel cage construction:


And, that was a mistake. I took it apart and the squirrel cage was the same diameter, but longer and wouldn't fit inside the old housing. The old housing mount wasn't plastic like this one, it was sheet metal:


So, I just tried to mount the new(er) housing in the same place:


That didn't work out well. See how it protruded above the top of the cabinet? Here look from the side:


At this point I was ready to cut a hole in the microwave cover and just let it stick through.

The fans were longer and wouldn't fit inside the old squirrel enclosure and the new enclosure wouldn't fit inside the oven. The next try involved making room inside the old housing for the fans to stick out through the squirrel cage cover. I had to use the new motor because the shaft was longer to handle the longer squirrel cages. There was enough room and the fans would only stick out about a quarter inch, so why not?

About an hour later I had the modification done and now I could mount the new motor to the old metal brackets and put the thing in place except, the new motor was wired differently. The new motor had six wires and the old one had five. I actually hooked it up though to see what would happen (yes, I was that disgusted by then) and the new motor wouldn't start turning. I could get it going by giving it a push, but it wouldn't start on it's own. The start capacitor was wired differently. These motors all have similar wiring, so I should be able to wire it to match ... somehow.

The plug for the motor was one of those that one could remove the pins and rearrange them, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. Yes, I tried the good old paper clip and small screwdriver trick, but the method evaded me. So, I'm sitting there, on the floor, scratching my head and considering just cutting the wires and using some heat shrink and solder to rearrange them when my girlfriend piped up, "This may be a stupid question, but couldn't you just take the rod out of the new motor and put it in the old one?"

Advice to all men, never, ever tell them that they asked a stupid question. The minute I heard it I said, "No, because it's actually part of the armature and it would destroy the armature to try and get the rod ..." I trailed off because I realized that she didn't have a clue that the shaft was integral to the armature, and she really meant to switch the armature. Crap, why didn't I think of that.



I took the motors both apart; switched the armatures; installed the old housing (with the fan holes modified); the old motor and its correct wiring and newly installed armature with longer ends and it worked like a charm. These motors are mass produced for various companies around the world. The windings in the stator are sometimes different to get two or more speeds, but you can choose to use only one speed if you want. The armatures are all the same and you can move them around as needed. In this case, I needed the longer shaft on the armature combined with the windings from the old stator to match the wiring in the microwave. Really glad she was over watching me flail around.

Never ever tell a woman that she had a stupid idea. Her simple suggestion was exactly the thing I needed to get this to work.

I'm on the watch out for a truly suitable replacement, but don't have the pressure of a dead microwave hanging over me. I may contact the manufacturer for help in sourcing parts to see if I can get any help there. They may even have metal squirrel cages for these, and that would eliminate the problem forever. Failing that, I may go to an appliance store and prowl through their supplies to see what I can turn up. Or a junk yard.

And, what did I learn from this experience?

Mostly, I learned to listen.
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PZEM-016: Another Chinese Power Monitor

July 5, 2018, 6:36 pm
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I really like the PZEM-004 that I picked up just to see what it could do <link>, in fact I built the monitor and control system for my water heater with it <link>. This thing has really taught me a lot about water heaters and how much money my solar water heater actually saves me.

That led me to look at other devices available from China that could actually help out around the house. Well, the same manufacturer makes a different model, the PZEM-016 that does much the same, but even better for my purposes. This one does the measurements for me, but also has an RS485 serial interface so I can watch more than one of them.


OF COURSE I took it apart:


It's built extremely similarly to the 004 model I already wrote about. The big difference, of course, is that this one doesn't have any display. That's OK, I'll take care of that part. But first I have to actually talk to the darn thing. I've already worked with RS485 using an arduino when I put together my pool controller <link>, so it isn't too strange, but it still intimidates me a bit.

I dug around in my boxes of left over pieces and found an adapter to go from TTL serial to RS485 and combined it with an arduino and started working on getting it going.

Naturally, it was a pain in the bottom to talk to the device. I emailed the manufacturer when I first ordered the devices (yes, I got five of them) for as much documentation as they could provide. They sent me a manual that was actually pretty easy to read and understand. In it they said that the device was Modbus compatible, and that really impressed me. If you look up Modbus, it is an industrial protocol for machines. It can control a large number of devices in an industrial setting and should have code that I can leverage to get this working.

Right ! Things never ever work out that easily. I did find protocol libraries that I could use on the arduino, but have you ever looked at Modbus? I thought the documents for ZigBee were obtuse, these are where ZigBee learned how to do it.

Frankly, I chucked the idea of using a Modbus library down the tubes pretty quickly in favor of a much simpler approach. When I looked at the messages that the PZEM 016 actually used, there were only a few of them and the responses were pretty much canned and easy to work with. I just sat down and put together a message to read the data from the device and sent it to see what happened.

No, it didn't work first try. No, it didn't answer on the second or third try either. One has to understand that if you don't get the message exactly right, you'll never get a response from the device. In my case, I was messing up the checksum. Fortunately, in the last couple of years there have been many sample checksum implementations and online calculators implemented. I tried a couple with my data and hard coded the actual message I needed to send, that actually got me a response.

Then I spend a couple of afternoons working the kinks out of getting the response and using the checksum to validate the message. Once I could send and receive a single message reliably, I was ready to start adding code. Naturally, it encountered problems. It seems that short messages would cause checksum problems ... sometimes. So much for the idea that a computer does the same thing each time. I worked at this for quite a while without resolution. Here's a couple of screenshots of the arduino serial interface. The first one is using a message that requires a short response and the second is a longer message. The interesting thing is the accumulators I stuck in the code to count the checksum errors.



The short response has 34 checksum errors out of 100 tries while the second longer response has only one out of 100. Same code and timing in both cases...sigh.

For the rest of my experiments I used messages that required a long response. Eventually, I implemented code to handle reading the values from the device, changing the address of the device, resetting the energy (kWh) accumulator on the device, etc. I actually had it working pretty well.

Then I outfoxed myself and decided to modify the code to handle more than one device on a single pair of wires. This was actually easier than I thought it would be. The idea is that each device on an RS485 line has a different address, and you address the one you want to control or receive values from. In theory I could have several of these being read by a single arduino and monitor a lot of things around the house.

But, that would mean unique addresses and unusual delays and strange things happening. Gritting my teeth to the point of pain, I dug into it.

One of the initial problems I ran into was not knowing what would be coming after I sent a request out on the line. Sure, it should be predictable, but it never works out that way. When one does a serial read, you can get back something that is expected and just follow the bytes until you reach the end. We've all seen this: a protocol has a leading byte to tell you the beginning of the response, then a length to tell you how many bytes are to follow. You simply get the length and then read until the rest of them come in.

Suppose that is the last byte you see though. Or suppose there's a burst of noise on the twisted pair and you get about a thousand more? Obviously you can't rely on a length in the incoming characters until you can verify the integrity of the message by reading the checksum way out there at the end of the message. Let's make this problem even nastier, RS485 lines can ring. That means that you can get strange interference on the line that will mess up any message that is running around on it. You have to allow for settling times and such after messages fly around.

The problems are not insurmountable though, industry uses these protocols and devices every day. If they can make them work, I can get them to work well enough for my place. And, I think I did. Here's the code I came up with to read a message coming in:

int getit(){
  memset(rxbuf, 0, sizeof(rxbuf));
  int i = 0;
  if (digitalRead(debugPin)==LOW)
    Serial.println(F("Data from port:"));
  unsigned long startTime = millis();
  unsigned long lastChar;
  boolean startchecking = false;

  while(millis() - startTime < readTimeout){
    if(pMon.available() > 0){
      rxbuf[i++]=pMon.read();
      if (digitalRead(debugPin) == LOW){
        print8Bits(rxbuf[i-1]);
      }
      delay(1);
      lastChar = millis();
      startchecking = true;
    }
    if (startchecking && millis() - lastChar > 4)
      break;
  }
  if(i == 0){
    noResponse++;
    if (digitalRead(debugPin == LOW))
      Serial.println(F("NONE"));
    return(0);
  }
  if (digitalRead(debugPin) == LOW)
    Serial.println();
  uint16_t calcCrc = makeCrc(rxbuf, i-2);
  uint16_t rxcrc = word(rxbuf[i-2], rxbuf[i-1]);
  
  if (rxcrc != calcCrc){
    Serial.println(F("Checksum error"));
    if (digitalRead(debugPin) == LOW){
      Serial.print(F("Calculated "));
      print8Bits(highByte(calcCrc));
      print8Bits(lowByte(calcCrc));
      Serial.println();
      Serial.print(F("Received   "));
      print8Bits(highByte(rxcrc));
      print8Bits(lowByte(rxcrc));
      Serial.println();
    }
    checkSumErrors++;
    return(0);
  }
  return(i);
}


What I do is set a one second timer around the entire message and when a single character comes in, I set a intercharacter timer of four milliseconds for the next character. This way the most I can wait for a message is a second and then if it just stops mid message, I only waste four milliseconds before I give up and try again from the beginning. This works really well to cut the necessary time to read a message down as well as notice a failure quickly. I was pretty proud of this piece of code until a little later.

When I tried to send messages quickly, there were problems. One response would pile up on top of another from a different device. This required a delay between devices so things could quiesce a bit. Long painful experience has shown me that setting delays in code is just programming around a problem rather than solving it, but sometimes you just have to wait for other devices to stabilize before moving on. This is one of those cases because the devices on the line don't send you a ready message.

One other thing you'll notice in the code above is that I found a new debugging tool, an input pin. I use pin 3 on the arduino as a digital input pin and check to see if it is grounded before putting debugging messages out. If it's running and I see something I don't understand, just ground pin 3 and the debugging messages come out to the screen. I really wish I had thought of this about eight years ago.

The other pin I use for a special purpose is pin 2. If it's grounded I go into a special piece of code that allows me to change the address of a device. All the devices come addressed as one initially and I have to change them to something else to actually use them. So, if I add a device to the line, and boot the arduino, the first thing it does is check for a device at address one, and when it finds one, it tells me to change the address and hangs up in a hard loop.

I plug in a wire to pin 2 and then boot the arduino again. It senses the pin and goes into special code to allow me to readdress the device. This is also a good time to recompile and add another device to the device table. Yes, I took the cheap way out. I add a device in the code by changing a number and entering the default values as well. It just wasn't worth the time to come up with a more elegant solution for something that will happen six or seven times ... ever.

Basically, I'm done with being able to control and read this device, but that is the beginning of a greater project I've been thinking about for a long time. I'm going to put several of these in an enclosure and measure the power usage of my major appliances. The 2 AC air handlers and the 2 AC compressors are big users of power and I want to track their operation. The stinking dryer that has cost me so much money because people keep using it is another one <link>. I messed up though and only ordered five of the devices. I need one more for the kitchen stove. It'll be on order tomorrow probably.

Before the more astute of my readers comment on how an appliance that uses both 110 and 220 like a dryer or kitchen stove can't be measured with a single current transformer because one leg is referenced to neutral, go look at this post from quite a while back where I found a way <link>. Yes, Dorothy, there is a way to do it.

Here's a little sample of two of the devices monitoring my light that has two bulbs in it. I used the exact same setup when I worked on the 004 version.


I have the debugging pin grounded (that is so cool) and I'm reading the light with one bulb turned on. Notice the difference in the 'Energy' value? One of them has been recording usage longer than the other. They both read basically the same thing for the other measurements because they are hooked to the same thing.

Adding another monitor to the stuff is simple, Wire it in, ground pin 2, reboot, change the address to 4, change a value in he code, recompile and away it goes. Since this is one of those devices that will just run for a long time without changes, that should be fine.

Here's a picture of the setup I used to get it going.


The board in the upper left is the RS485 converter and the CTs are off on the right hand side.

Next, mount them in something, wire them up and hook the CTs around the power lines in the mains panel. I will add an XBee to the arduino and send messages back to the house monitor just like I did for the water heater. I fully expect to add at least one solid state relay (SSR) to the project to make sure the dryer is under my complete control. No more running the dryer during peak period for me.

Have fun.
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Local Power Politics: APS, AZCC and Things to Think About...Continued

July 10, 2018, 7:31 pm
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No, this isn't turning into a political blog, although, it would be fun, but this relates directly to my continuing annoyance with my power company Arizona Public Service. I have a few previous posts about how poorly (in my opinion) it's run and how they are using the power of the dollars we pay in rate fees to control local politics and raise rates. In the last post about this <link> I specifically mentioned a particular rate increase that is being contested right now. I'll leave the long description of that item to the reader; simply check out the link I just left you.

What I want to recap here is one particular item that is turning out to be fun. Briefly, an APS customer, Stacey Champion, is petitioning to have the latest rate increase revisited. She contends, and I agree with her, that APS dealt improperly in their presentation of data and impact of the rate increase. A lot of people are behind her in this effort, and two individuals have joined directly in the proceedings to help out and also get some of their own particular opinions aired.

Naturally, this is becoming an interesting problem for the members of our regulatory commission, Arizona Corporation Commission. Basically, the AZCC is the equivalent of a Public Utility Commission in other states. They have commissioners that vote to control rate increases and act in the public's behalf. Many contend that APS owns some of the commissioners, and it's hard to deny when millions of dollars have been spent by APS on political campaigns locally.

So, this particular 'Docket' is a hot button right now since some of the commissioners are up for reelection in November.
Now, to the fun part. One of the commissioners Tom Forese sent a note to the people handling the Docket asking for the inclusion of 'Staff':

Dear Commissioners and Interested Parties,

I would like to request that Staff participate in the matter of Stacey Champion, et al vs. Arizona Public Service. Staff was a party to the rate case, and Staffs [sic] participation will assist me in making my final decision. 
I would like Staff to respond by close of business June 29, 2018.
My first question was who is this 'Staff' person? Is there a Joe Staff that works there or what? Well, it turns out that 'Staff' is the commission's legal staff. Forese is actually trying to inject more lawyers into the mess. These lawyers are the same ones that worked on the previous Docket that is being contested right now.
'Staff' replied with another note:

Because this proceeding has been underway since mid-February 2018, Staff respectfully requests that a procedural conference be scheduled at the earliest possible date to discuss Staffs participation in this case and to consider this proposed procedural schedule to accommodate Staffs involvement 

I only quoted the last paragraph because the rest of it is legalese, and you can see it all by following the link above. Below this is a strawman schedule that is proposed so the lawyers can get all their poop in one sock and not look like a bunch of dweebs.

Notice that the lawyers ask for a conference. In this case it means that a judge presides, and all the folk directly involved have to attend and have their lawyers there. It's really a hearing; you know how lawyers love a hearing. The administrative judge involved, Jane L. Rodda called for a conference (hearing) to be held on July 11th to discuss this and other matters.

OK, this sounds a little weird on the surface. The commissioners have not attended any of the hearings so far, and have had little obvious involvement. This has been between normal folk and APS's plethora of lawyers. Now, one of the commissioners, actually the chairman of the commission, wants to inject lawyers to tell him what is going on. Initially, I wondered, "Why hasn't he been following this already?"

Turns out that I wasn't the only one wondering this. Warren Woodward, one of the normal folk that is also directly involved in this with Stacey Champion filed a letter contesting 'Staff' involvement. This is the really fun part and I'm going to include most of it below:

Warren Woodward, Intervenor in this proceeding, strongly objects to the suggestion put forth by Staff on June 29, 2018, that a procedural conference be scheduled in this case to discuss Staffs participation in this case. 
1) This matter can be handled on paper. There is no need to waste the Parties' time at a conference.  
2) The time to apply for intervention passed on May ll, 2018. Staff missed the boat.  
3) By virtue of signing the APS rate case Settlement Agreement, Staff is biased in favor of the rate hike established in ACC Decision 76295, and Staff cannot be expected 1 to be impartial in this case. To wit, Section 40.6 of the Settlement Agreement:  
  • The Signing Parties shall make reasonable and good faith efforts necessary to obtain a Commission order approving this Agreement. The Signing Parties shall support and defend this Agreement before the Commission. Subject to subsection 40.5, if the Commission adopts an order approving all material terms of the Agreement, the Signing Parties will support and defend the Commission's order before any court or regulatory agency in which it may be at issue. 
4) If commissioner Forese, who suggested Staffs involvement in order to assist his decision making, wants to better understand the issues in this case, then he can read the docket, including all the APS customer complaints, both in this docket and in docket E-01345A-16-0036. There is also nothing stopping commissioner Forese from sitting in at the hearing and paying attention, something he neglected to do during the APS rate case in which these unjust and unreasonable rates (that are the subject of this proceeding and for which Forese voted) were spawn.  
5) In light of all the foregoing, there is really nothing to discuss. Staffs request for a procedural conference, and Staffs intervention in this case, should be denied.

Is this AWESOME or what? Woodward stepped up and actually said what should have been said:

This herd of lawyers has not been paying attention to this because it seemingly wasn't important, therefore they want to extend the schedule of the hearings and actions. Probably past the election so it doesn't interfere with the sitting commissioners campaign for reelection.

That the herd also cannot be neutral, or even in favor of the public's interest because they signed off on the rate increase and promised not only to not object, but also to "support and defend" it. Including them will add lawyers that are required to support APS in this matter.

The Chairman of the Commission himself isn't tracking it and doesn't want to go to the effort of catching up so he wants the lawyers to do it for him.

I'm going to add something to this that wasn't directly mentioned. More lawyers means that the normal folk that are trying to get this reheard will have to spend more money answering the new lawyer's questions. More time will mean more expense and delays so this falls further behind in people's minds. We all know that more lawyers always cost more money, and APS doesn't care at all. They are guaranteed a reasonable profit by the regulating body regardless of how badly they run their business.

One other thing, how could a section like 40.5 quoted by Woodward above ever have been signed? The parties to this 'settlement' were the solar industry, other power companies and such. My Lord, it also included Walmart and Sun City for crying out loud. There's a paragraph in there that says they will defend it?

What?

And it's really there. I found it on page 31 about half way down the page <link>. If you want to see all the documents and interactions look here <link>, but it's really, really boring.

OMG!, do we have the best regulatory body that money can buy or what?

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Thermostats, Location, Location, Location

July 14, 2018, 7:45 pm
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When I was researching supercooling as a way of limiting my power bill I kept getting readings and such that just didn't make sense. One side of my house was comfortable, the other ... not so much. Sure it was the sunny side this time of year, but it has really good windows and good curtains. The only two major problem areas were a couple of windows that faced directly into the after noon sun.

I fixed those years ago with reflective insulation that I put in for the summer and (sometimes) take out for the winter. It's easy to work with and will last forever if I just give them a little attention every once in a while. I wandered around the room and noticed that the interior walls were about 2 degrees warmer than the rest of the house and there was heat getting in through the foundation.

The sun bearing down on the exposed slab foundation would heat up the concrete slab and transmit heat inside the house. That's something that might go unnoticed if I had carpeting, but the tile felt warmer as you approached the wall.

So, basically, it was like any other house on the sunny side. Why was my AC running all the time and having little impact on that room?

A little background: I have a house shaped like an "L" and two AC units. The one on the north is a 3 ton and the one on the south is a 5 ton. Both of them going could cool the house, but when they cycle, it doesn't seem to handle it. I had two thermostats that were located by the AC 'experts' that did my house and were in the top middle of the price range. I replaced them with highly programmable thermostats that were in the high range of prices. These wouldn't do the job of handling peak periods well, so I got a high priced "learning' version. It was crap.

The learning thermostats only learn what the programmer wants them to learn, and it was great at anticipating my needs. It decided I liked the AC on at 07:00 and off at night ... exactly the opposite of what I wanted. They tried to predict what temperature I wanted the house at and must have been born in Nova Scotia because they wanted to keep it at around 65F.

I sent those things back before the 30 day refund period was up. What a waste.

Then, I built my own <link>; I could control them any way I wanted to. Over the years I tried recirculating the air around the house with them, experimented with differing hysteresis curves, used various smoothing algorithms on the temperature readings, etc. Basically, I tried everything I could think of to get the environment the way I wanted it.

Nothing worked very well. I would still wake up with the bedroom running around 85F at night.

But, during my experimenting with supercooling the house (look at the posts on supercooling by using the contents search on the top right of the page) I noticed a whole bunch of things that really shouldn't be happening. First the south AC unit was short cycling. Short cycling is where the AC comes on and then shuts off in seconds or minutes. This is NOT a good thing.

Cycling like this can radically shorten the lifetime of any motor driven device. It causes undue wear on the bearings to be jammed up by the quick start of the motors. It can cause fan blades to slip and that scores the shaft. The air start up can loosen vents and cause rattles. Basically all the things that destroy devices like this. This behavior can also cause a room to be too cold and then too hot within minutes.

The very most expensive AC units start slow and ramp up to speed, they will run slowly to keep the air moving, they even open and close vents based on the need for cooling in a particular area. But, I'm not Bill Gates; these things are way out of my price range.

So, I started looking for the cause of this situation on my south AC. TLDR (too long didn't read) the thermostat was in the wrong place. The thermostat was in a hallway like most of the thermostats in the world close to an overhead air return for the AC. Over half the air for the house went through that return. The temperature would drop rapidly in that location when the AC turned on and cause shut off in a matter of a couple of minutes. Then it would rise rapidly back up because it was only the breeze that cooled it off and repeat the cycle.

Another factor was that I run in and out of the garage a lot. Each time warm air would hit the thermostat and cause the same problem. Add to that the garage is on the other side of the wall and it doesn't have AC. When it heated up, the wall was warmer than the air in the house; cycle started all over again. Obviously, the thermostat had to be moved to get better performance.

Based on this research, I modified the house code to save the activity of the two AC units and looked at them for a day to see how bad it was. It was pretty bad. Here's a chart of my findings on the first day for the south AC unit:


The tall vertical stripes are when the compressor was running, and the jagged line down the middle was the temperature the thermostat was reading. Each shaded long vertical strip is the compressor chewing up power and wearing itself out. Here's a closeup of a couple of them from the middle of the chart:


The stair steps in the temperature is due to the granularity of my recording the data. I only mess with one degree changes, so it comes out like this. So, you can easily tell that the hysteresis is three degrees and it takes very little time to overcome that with the AC unit essentially blowing down the hallway from all the rooms. Similarly, the temperature will shoot back up in a similar fashion because that short a cooling interval doesn't really cool anything except the air the it is blowing around. The gap in the middle is because the cumulative impact of a series of cooling cycles finally does cool things down a little.

When I looked at the North thermostat, it was a different set of environmental factors that added up to a different problem. This thermostat was in a short hallway outside the master bedroom (my room darn it) while the AC unit was venting into that room. There were also a couple of vents that dumped air into the rest of the house to aid there as well. When I looked at it, it looked like this:


Same things on the graph, compressor run period and temperature recorded by the thermostat. Notice the compressor runs a lot even though the temperature isn't changing? Part of that problem is that the thermostat isn't really looking at the AC activity, it's looking at a completely different area. The rest of the problem is that the two vents into the rest of the house are letting almost a great a volume of air get out there as it allows inside MY ROOM.

Fine ! I gotta move the thermostats, but where the heck am I going to put them? Also, it's a real pain to move a thermostat. I don't have a real attic, it's an area that is totally filled with insulation about two feet tall. I really, really don't want to go up there --- ever. I could carve out the wall and move the thermostat and then patch up the wall. That's equally unlikely to happen. Instead I experimented with really long hysteresis values. I was up to 10 degrees at one point. That solution was not satisfactory. I also tried running the fan longer to make sure the air got moved. That didn't work well either; it actually made the problem worse.

Then, I thought about it a bit. I had these temperature sensors <link> all over the house, why couldn't I just use them instead of the temperature sensor inside the thermostat? There wasn't a single reason why not except I would have to change some code in a few places. I took all the code out of the south thermostat related to reading temperature and reorganized it a bit. Now, it would receive the temperature forwarded by the house controller from any of the temperature sensors around the house.  I chose a room where the sensor was on an inside wall away from any breeze from the AC directly. The sensor gets air circulation, it just wasn't directly in the cool air path.

Now, I was ready to test the newly modified south thermostat. The one that was banging the compressor to death with short cycles. Let's see what this accomplished:


Now, that's more like it. Granted, it was a stormy day and not our usual 100+ temperatures, but look, it wasn't short cycling any more. There are long periods of AC activity and the temperature rises slowly instead of a few seconds at a time. This may look like I'm actually using more power, but I'm not. It's actually about the same because the gaps are longer as well. the big thing was that I wasn't tearing the guts out of my AC.

I did the same thing with similar results to the North AC, except I also closed off the vents to the rest of the house. Now my bedroom cools down pretty quickly and stays that way for a while.


Notice that it isn't on all the stinking time blowing air where it isn't needed? The big gap is the 'demand' period where the AC isn't allowed to run 15:00 to 20:00. After the down time, it kicked on and recovered a little after midnight.

The beauty of this is that I can build a couple of temperature sensors specifically for the AC units and put them anywhere I want. If I want priority in the bedroom, put the sensor by the bed. If I want it for the shower, put it just outside; you get the idea. Basically, this is a priority system now that allows me to carry the priority anywhere I want.

<rant>
I hereby copyright this idea !! Anyone is welcome to do anything similar; heck steal my code if you want, but you commercial shark guys out there better get permission to use this. It's real annoying when you find your code, stolen right off the site and only perfunctorily changed in a book that sells for $35 a copy at a book store. I'm looking for new ideas and find my old ones on the shelf...sigh. I have found my code and ideas all over the web and almost every single time it's attributed; that makes me feel good. When someone is selling it, not so much. This stuff is supposed to be free dog gone it.
</rant>

Anyway, the jury is still out on this idea. I need to watch it over time and see if there are problems with the devices talking to each other, getting out of hand unexpectedly, actually working the same way over time. That kind of thing. One thing I did notice though is that a web only version where there is no control station nearby sucks. It's really nice to be able to lower or raise the temperature by pushing a button on the wall instead of starting up a browser and working through pages to get to it. Now, this could be a cheap tablet, and old phone, or something like that if you want to get fancy, but a nearby control is nice. I like buttons.

Also, it's a good thing to have a display that shows everything is working OK. I'm currently using the display on the thermostats, but it could be anything that you can see when wandering aimlessly around the house looking for the car keys. This also helps with the, "It's too hot." comments. You can point to the thermostat and show them that it's only 80 and not hot at all. Folk visiting from the East do this all the time.

Another thing I learned is that AC 'experts' are not to be trusted. These things were professionally installed and came highly recommended. They put one thermostat outside the room it was needed in and the other in a breezy hallway next to the air intake and a garage door. In retrospect, I may be to blame somewhat for not asking enough questions, but these were experts hired for their knowledge and experience. I don't have a suggestion on how to handle this problem except to get two or three experts to present proposals and pick their brains. If you are Bill Gates and can afford to do that kind of thing. I even blogged about the unreliability of 'experts' a couple of times; my experiences are not good with them. Of course, now that I can put the temperature sensor anywhere I want, it doesn't matter as much.

See what happens when you start automating your house? Ideas may come slowly, but actually doing them is entirely possible.

Oh, this is another post that will attract attention from the spammers. If you post advertising in a comment, it will be quietly deleted. Usually the same day. So, don't bother advertising your AC repair company here.
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Have You Ever Thought About Tire Inflation?

December 30, 2018, 10:20 pm
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Well, neither had I. At least not much more than topping of a tire once in a while. However, I got new rear tires on my big tractor and after a while of just sitting, one of the tires was very low. Getting the new tires was an interesting experience. Those things weight a lot and I didn't want to spend hours trying to break the bead and leverage the tire off using long tire irons, so I just called in a mobile tire service and let them do it for me.

They came out in a big truck with a crane installed in the middle of it. They didn't even have to remove the wheels from the tractor; they simply pulled the tires off of it and put the new ones on. I sat in a lawn chair and watched. That's the 21st century way to get tractor tires changed.



Anyway, the brand new tire was flat and I had to air it up. I grabbed my trusty tire inflator and about ten minutes later I was still messing with it. I have a pretty good compressor, but putting air in a tire as big as the ones on my tractor through a hole a little more than an eighth of an inch was going to take some time. Plus, holding it up to the valve stem was getting tiring. You all must have either owned or used one of these over the years:



I had another one to try out that I picked up at Tractor Supply a few months back, so I gave it a try and it didn't work much better.



The little assembly that was supposed to hold the hose on the valve either leaked or popped off each time I tried to use it.  I did eventually get it to fill the tire, but it was an experience that I didn't want to repeat.

Off to Amazon I went and found an inflator that had many good reviews and looked like it could do the job because it was substantially better made than the one I had. There were rave reviews that indicated that it would tell me the tire pressure as I filled the tire, it filled fast, was accurate, all the hype one should have learned to expect and disregard. I ordered it. When it came in, I drove the tractor (with a flat naturally) in front of the garage and tried the new device out.

Although the clip on part that should hold it to the tire worked better, it leaked if moved even a little bit in any direction. Since the valve stem was on the inside of the wheel that meant I had to lean over the tire and hold it in place. All was not lost though, it had a screw on fitting that could actually be put on the valve and would allow me to relax a little bit while filling the tire. But I couldn't figure out how to hook it to the inflator hose.

I used this inflator to fill the tire, but it wasn't a very satisfactory experience since, even though the clip on was better, I still had to make sure it stayed straight on the tire.



I went looking for another one based on about $40 spent so far and several hours direct experience and ordered this one.



It had exactly the same valve assembly as the last one with exactly the same screw on adapter, but this one had a hose that I could use the screw on with. I installed the 'hands free' adapter and hooked it up. No leaks and I didn't have to hold the hose totally straight to use it. The problem with this one was the same as all the others I had to lean over the tire to hold the stupid lever that released the air.

Fishing around my drawers of junk I found a piece of velcro (you can see it above) that I could wrap around the valve to hold it open so the tire would fill unattended. I was totally set up now. I could attach the fitting, fill the tire while checking fluids and such, then put everything away for later. Of course the eventual goal was to get the leak fixed, but I hadn't been able to find where it was.

I did notice a few things I want to share about these simple devices that don't work as well as they should. First, these days it's actually getting harder to find inflators that aren't digital. They all tout how wonderful they are because they are 'easy to read'. That is a simple lie not only will the batteries be dead when you need it, you can only see the numbers when they are oriented correctly. And, who the heck cares about a half pound resolution in a tire's pressure? As soon as you disconnect the device and the air warms up a bit whatever reading you had will change. My bet is that the accuracy is around ten percent or so and a digital reading just isn't necessary. It will also save you time, money and frustration with an old fashioned analog gauge.

None of them read the pressure of the tire, they all read the hose pressure. Think about it, it's a hose transferring air, the only pressure it actually can read is the pressure in the hose. That's neither the compressor pressure nor the tire pressure. This all means that you have to stop the flow of air to actually get a reading. I checked it every couple minutes (yes minutes) to see how it was going. Usually, I over inflated it and had to drop it down to the right pressure by hand, but that didn't take too long.

The high end devices cost from $25 up to over a hundred and they're all basically the exact same device with different names stuck on the outside. Take a look:



Lastly, don't believe the comments and advertising. If you have big tanks or tires to fill, get a screw on adapter and use it. It won't speed things up much, but you won't be holding the hose a certain way to keep it working while having to hold the lever down.

Heck, the first inflator I tried that had been my buddy for years and years would have worked with the adapter and I would have saved roughly fifty bucks and weeks of frustration.

Oh, I finally did find the leak. After washing the tire down six times with soapy water and turning it slowly in the sun and finding nothing, I was under the tractor working on a simple drain valve and happened to think that I hadn't checked the valve on the tire. The valves on the tractor are all on the inside to prevent rocks from ripping them off and they are a bit hard to check. Sure enough, the valve was not tight in the wheel and leaked. A few minutes with some soapy water and a wrench and the problem was fixed.

So, learn from my mistakes.
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Yes, I'm Still Writing About My Power Company

February 27, 2019, 8:04 pm
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I've been battling my power company since 2009 or so. It started off with a bad meter and eventually wound up with my giving testimony at a hearing about their slopping and greedy way of doing business. It also directly led to me working on lower my power bills, and to this blog.

I guess I sort of owe them for that.

However, with the filing mentioned in previous posts, and an election where we the voters booted out one of the commissioners that was sympathetic to APS, Forese, things are happening a little differently. There have been two dockets opened directly against APS and the way they handle themselves.

E-01345A-19-0003 - In the matter of the rate review and examination of the books and records of Arizona Public Service Company and its affiliates, subsidiaries and Pinnacle West Corporation.

E-01345A-19-0005 - In the matter of the Commission's Inquiry/Investigation into the Campaign Expenditures and Political Participation of Arizona Public Service Company and its Affiliates, Subsidiaries and Pinnacle West Capitol Corporation in the Election Periods of 2012, 2014 and 2016.

In the fhe first one, the Arizona Corporation Commisssion ordered its staff members to audit APS and its recent profits after the rate increase. This IS A DIRECT RESULT of citizen action over the last many months.

First protests about the initial filing for the rate increase, then the lawsuit I posted many times about, then the election where Tom Forese was not re-elected (he used to chair the commission), then the two crowning touches: Tom Forese after losing, asked for APS to explain the excessive increases people were seeing, AND Bob Burns was appointed chairman of the board. Bob Burns has opposed this increase and the handling of the APS contributions in the previous election; he even brought a law suit to expose it.

Take a closer look at the second one. Yes, you read it right, they're investigating (or at least trying) the political hanky panky that was reported and suspected in past elections. You know, spend enough money to get your own people elected, then get your way with whatever you want to charge?

Then, since I'm registered to receive updates on these items, I received the following announcement headline:

"Sandra Kennedy (our new Commissioner on the Arizona Corporation Commission) has ordered a subpoena issued to APS to disclose their 'Dark Money' political contributions."

Yes, someone actually did it. Of course there will be a huge court fight at some point, but someone had the courage to actually do it. Bob Burns tried last year, but couldn't get the other commissioners to actually let it happen. This time, I bet it goes out since we fired a major roadblock in the last election.

Since most of y'all aren't on that particular mailing list, here's the significant text of the press release that I received and came out on 2/26/2019:

"Commissioner Sandra Kennedy has finalized and docketed a letter to Matthew Neubert, executive director of the Arizona Corporation Commission, directing him to prepare a subpoena to Arizona Public Service (APS) and its parent company, Pinnacle West Capital Corporation, regarding its spending on political races, lobbying, advertising, and contributions to 501 c 3 and 501 c 4 organizations for the calendar years 2013 through 2018. (Contributions to 501 c 3 and 501 c 4 organizations can be used to mask dark money spending.)

The subpoena effort has been fueled by concerns about millions of dollars of dark money spent in Arizona elections starting in 2014, and APS’ refusal to provide that information. About 30 million dollars were openly spent by APS to defeat Proposition 127 in the 2018 election, but the issue of other political spending by APS in other races is still an unknown. Commissioner Kennedy supports full transparency and looks forward to providing the subpoena results to the public.

Commissioner Kennedy promised in her successful 2018 Corporation Commission campaign to sign a subpoena to finally allow transparency regarding APS’ political spending, and she will be inviting her fellow Commissioners an opportunity to sign the subpoena as well."

The actual letter that was filed is at http://docket.images.azcc.gov/0000196338.pdf and makes for some fine reading.

Additionally the next day (today for me), there was an additional announcement:

"Commissioners Seek Information from APS on Political Spending
Chairman Burns and Commissioner Dunn issue joint request seeking transparency"

As with all things political, the two additional Commissioners drafted their own paperwork. They created another docket, E-01345A-19-0043, and their own letter. This letter has places for all Commissioners signature and a very bold letter. If you're interested (for a political science paper when mid-terms are looming) it's at <link>.  It has a wonderful line in a couple of pages that I actually cheered when I read it:

"YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED"

If anyone ever thought that voting didn't matter, think again. The first docket was filed by Bob Burns, and the second was filed by  Sandra Kennedy. This all happened after Forese was not re-elected. Of course, there were many people like me following this closely and myself and other spoke at various hearings. Money was donated, charges were filed, hearing were held.

And, we're not done yet. This will take more months and more hearings before anything of any substance happens. But, the people have actually started something.

What's coming to the world? There actually are some politicians (well sort of politicians) that keep their campaign promises. 
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I Finally Gave Up On My Hayward Variable Speed Pool Pump.

March 1, 2019, 5:31 pm
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Several times over the years I've mentioned my Hayward Variable Speed Pump. When I got it, it was a dream come true. Here was something that could filter my pool and save me money doing it. I could control the speed and pretty much design my pool filtering around the power company's lowest rate requirements.
But, right off the bat, it failed. Hayward fixed it and all was well with the world. Then, it failed again. Hayward fixed it again. Then, you guessed it, it failed again. This time Hayward told me it was out of warranty and would cost me $550 to get the new 'drive' unit. I bought one, but from a supplier on ebay because I didn't want to pay the required installation fee they wanted to hook up the wires that replacement would require. I'm perfectly fine with hooking up wires.

It failed again a few days ago. At that particular time it was actually snowing here in the Arizona desert. Surprisingly, we had about four inches of snow on the ground that morning. No, it wasn't frozen, I checked and the darn thing failed before the temperature dropped below freezing. Remember, I record the power usage of the house and monitor the status of the pool as well. The way I discovered the pump had failed was noticing a thin layer of ice on the pool. That has never happened because the no freeze controls on the pool keep the water moving.



Looking at it, there was an error message, "Motor Stalled". I actually believed that message and took the pump loose from the plumbing (yes, in the snow) and turned the impeller. The motor was not frozen. It did cog a bit from the magnets, but it turned freely. Next, I pulled the wiring loose and took it to the patio table (out of the snow) and pulled it further apart. There was nothing mechanically wrong. Fine, look on the internet.

There was story after story about this pump. "Drive Error," and "Motor Stalled" were the two that most often occurred. I asked around, and a friend recommended a place that specialized in pool pumps. I called them. and they were very nice to me, consoling me on the problems with that pump, but didn't offer much in the way of suggestions other than replacing the electronics for $650 plus a small labor charge.

Gag!

I asked about just replacing the dog gone thing. For a little over $500 I could get a 2.6 HP two speed pump motor installed on the existing impeller housing. Really? You can do that? Yes. I'll be down tomorrow morning. Here's the pieces sitting on the garage floor waiting for me to do something else to it:



I loaded up the Hayward VSP pieces into the Jeep and took it in. True to their word, they fitted the motor to the impeller housing and replaced all the gaskets and worn parts as well. These folk actually did it while I waited, and I got to talk to several people that came in for various problems and parts. 

I noticed on their outgoing shelf waiting for pickup were three pumps just like mine. All of them waiting for pickup after having some similar problem. Of course the "doctor" analogy applies. I'm at a doctor's office so everyone I see is sick, but it certainly made me feel better because, "Misery loves Company."

Here's what it looks like with the old impeller housing and new motor.



I'm sure someone wants to know what the motor is, so here's a picture of the label on the side of the motor. Thinking about it, I need to put clear packing tape over that so I'll be able to read it in a year or two.






























And, here are the pieces that should go in the trash, but I want to play with that motor some. I suspect I may be able to used a three phase converter from some ebay supplier and turn this into a variable speed motor for my drill press. A three horsepower variable speed drill press !  Sweet.




So, the only piece that is going in the trash (after I see if there's anything inside worth keeping) is the part with the heat sink on it.

I brought the new assembly home and have it sort of installed. I didn't have to change the plumbing at all since it was the same impeller housing. I do have to add a wire for low speed, but (surprise) I want to change some things.

I want to add multicolor wiring for the various line power items. I had a heck of a time chasing down which wires went where and it was a real pain walking back and forth from the power panel each time I wanted to shut off the power to the pump. So, since the controller housing has facilities for breakers, I'll add breakers right where I can get to them and multicolor wiring so I can tell which things hook to what. That should make it much easier to work on next time.

But, since the motor technology is over a hundred years old, all I'll need is bearings, seals and an occasional start capacitor. If the motor wears out entirely, there will be plenty of choices on what I can stick in its place.

Heck, for that matter the Goldline controller I use is not made anymore and I probably can't get parts for it when it fails, so next time it fails, I'll gut it, keeping the power supply, power relays and tossing everything else. That complex, ever failing, mess will be replaced with a simple XBee, Arduino, and the power relays that the controller already has.

Yes, the VSP was a cool piece of technology, and did save me money on power usage. However it simply didn't save me as much as I spent on it to keep it working. Where's the fun in that?

And, yes, that means all the research I did on the protocol and operation of the motor won't ever be used by me. Others have leveraged that work and I know there are some control systems for this motor out there based in part on that work, plus it was fun to work on.

But what about saving energy? I have friends that are energy conscious, and they don't understand my motives. I'm not energy conscious as much as I'm MONEY conscious. The latest rate increase my power company put into place played right into my hands. Without thinking about it, they gave me the periods of greatest need at the lowest rate. I need to run the motor while the sun is at its peak, around noon or so, so the solar heater can have maximum impact. That's also the time for sitting by the pool and cooling off from the intense summer sun. The (idiotic) power company in their infinite greed made the peak sun period part of the "off-peak" period so they could screw over the solar installations since that is also peak solar production hours and they get to credit the solar folk less.

That played right into my miserly little hands. I can run the pump at any speed I want to from 8 PM until 3PM the next day. Sure, that falls right across dinner hours, but I can easily work around that little problem.

And while we're at it, take that Hayward. You charged me a small fortune for the pump, and due to your own bad engineering, had to fix it twice (which must have eaten up the profit). I had to fix it once, but learned my lesson, and used part of your mess and created my own custom pump arrangement.

Soon, I'll be looking for a three phase converter to try on that fancy motor.

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Naturally, Blogger Changed Something

October 25, 2019, 5:29 pm
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Of course blogger changed how the blog appears ! That led to a mess of my background image tileing and messing things up in the appearance. After some messing around I managed to get it appearing somewhat reasonable, but had to change the background picture. I've used the same one for years and years now, but so be it; I can update with the times ... sort of.

I kind of like the look, and will stay with it for while, or until google gets a bug up their butt and changes things again.

Yes, I'm still alive. I haven't been blogging because I got myself involved with local politics and have been up to my ears in that effort for many months. I do get in a technical project once in a while, but haven't had the time to write them up.

I'll put them on the blog at some point, since they may be interesting to some people out there. Here's a quick list off the top of my head of the things I've been into that haven't surfaced here yet.

1. A horrible problem with my XBee network. My end devices would leave the network and not rejoin. That meant that some of the critical ones that controlled the AIR CONDITIONING didn't update the thermostats that control the temperature. Hot house or cold house depending on where it quit working. The thermostats protected me against using power during the Peak period, so the power bill didn't get out of hand, however it was painful to deal with. I have it mostly fixed, there's still one strangeness that I have to work on to get everything back to working reliably though.

2. I still have the parts for monitoring my 220V devices piled up with an enclosure, and haven't done anything else with them. They stare at me mournfully each time I walk through the garage. I'll get to them as soon as I can. To see that project's beginnings look here <link>.

3. Stumbled across a really cool phone from the crank-to-call days. I fully plan to put this thing in service. I may have to update a few parts, but maybe I can hide them inside. There's a lot of these out there, so I'm not going to worry much about the value afterwards, but I do want to keep it as original as possible. Here's some pictures of the phone; notice it has a BRASS earpiece !


It's an Australian model, but the parts are easily found to update it. This phone was updated over the years that it was in service. The crank was disconnected and the handle lost (or taken by the phone guy that did the work) the earpiece and mouthpiece elements were changed and finally the dial was added. It is really fun to play around with. I hope I can get the ringer to work; that would be great.

Might want a switch though.

3. Stupid AcuRite 5n1 weather station channel A died. Now I have to set it up for channel C since I that's the only way it will work. Sigh, don't happen to know what the frequency is for channel C would you? If you want to look at this project, it's all under 'Weather' in the list on the right side top of the page.

4. The battery life of my XBee end device temperature sensors has been a little over 5 months consistently. That's not as much as I calculated, but it's still pretty good. I'm getting tired of buying AA cells though. They're not expensive, but when you have a half dozen devices that run on three of them each, it can get annoying replacing them. I always seem to be out of the darn things.

So, I'm looking at those Li-Ion cells that sell pretty cheaply on Amazon. They seem to last forever, have close to 4 VDC output when full and are really fast to recharge. I have a bunch that I use in flashlights around the house and one installed in a sensor being tested (for months, these things take time). I suspect I'll be switching over to them on all the battery devices; they're just great since you can always have one charged up for replacement and don't have to run to Walmart because the AC crapped out.

And Etc. See, I'm still at it, just don't have the time to gather the graphs, pictures, measurements and such that it takes to make a coherent blog post about these things.

But, like the Terminator, "I'll be back."



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Introduce End Devices to a Network and Introduce Problems

January 5, 2020, 6:29 pm
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As I've touted for years now I have a network of XBees that I (basically) run my house with. I monitor room temperatures in key areas, control my pool, monitor my power, etc; all without a bunch of wires strung around the house. For the first year I ran a network transparent (AT) mode that broadcast to all devices and all of them listened to what was going on....that didn't work well.

I described what the problem turned out to be back then <link> and moved to a more directed network using API mode to control the traffic level and increase the speed of throughput. That all worked really well. Then I created the room temperature monitors. They were created as battery operated devices since I wanted to put them in places where there was no power; XBee routers use too much power for such an application, so they had to be XBee End Devices.

That was the beginning of a long time problem that I simply couldn't find, and has driven me nuts a few times before finally getting the entire mess to work again.

The symptom was that a device would leave or get kicked off the network and then simply refuse to join back in. I'd go for a few days and a sensor would leave and no amount of resets, power cycles, slaps or flights across the room would get it back on the network. Hell, I even programmed another XBee and put it in the same place and it wouldn't work. Then, seemingly at random, it would connect and start working all by itself.

Months of watching the XBee traffic after adding a ton of logging to almost every device in the house led me to nothing at all. Reading every blog and question remotely related on the web told me nothing. I was completely baffled by this problem.

Some of the things I tried were to automatically reset the network to force it to reform using the NR=1 command. This dumps all the routing tables and everything rejoins. This would work, but if it happened to often, the entire network would go down and I had to intercede at each device to get it back up.

Hook up a tablet using an OTG cable hooked to the device that most often failed and monitoring the activity for hours hoping to get a clue what was going on. This was cool because it allowed me to learn how to watch a device using something that wasn't a laptop running the entire Arduino IDE. I could plug into an active device and watch what was being logged without resetting the device. This is a nice thing to have available, but it didn't help find the problem.

I had the device reset itself, issue it's own NR=0 command to clear the local tables, reset the XBee, just about anything I could think of and nothing helped. I could have ignored it if I was only reporting temperatures, but two of the sensors were serving as the temperature sensors for my air conditioning system.

It really sucks when the cooling stops at 110F outside and the house heats up. It sucks about equally when the heater sticks on and the temperature goes up to 90+ inside on a cold day. Power bill didn't like that much either. I didn't want to break down and go back to the old method of measuring temperature, the sensors made the house much more comfortable.

I finally got a hint from a question asked about the XBee end devices not being able to rejoin a network. Seems the XBee routers have a table of 12 entries reserved for end devices that they can parent. That's cool, but I don't have 12 end devices. I still read the device tables on the XBees looking for what the heck was going on though. Then I found it.

I had relatives visit during Christmas and they brought their cell phones. The folk (my kids and grandkids) are ALWAYS on their phone. Either talking, playing games, texts, whatever; their eyes and hands are literally glued to the phone. The increased RF and WIFI traffic saturated my house and the network struggled trying to get packets through the interference that comes with low power RF activities. Devices disconnected and couldn't rejoin, packets got lost in the ocean of packets from all the devices, it was a total mess. I dug in again to see if I could get a clue.

I actually found the problem. What was happening to me is that the XBee end devices have to check in periodically to maintain their connection. If you wait too long, the table is purged to conserve the device table space for end devices. The time allowed is set by parameters on the XBee router and the end device needs to check in often enough not to get purged. I was using a 2 minute timeout on the temperature sensor and the default on the router.

To make things worse, I was using hardware control of the sleep period, and not correctly handling the interaction of the Arduino and the XBee conversation.

A couple of corrections such that I would send the temperature message, ask the XBee to go to sleep, then WAIT until it actually went to sleep before sleeping the Arduino made things much better. I allowed the end device to exhaust the stored messages that the XBee router parent was holding by just waiting until they all came in. The final item was to extend the XBee router timeout to way higher than necessary for a couple of missed transactions (like a full day) took care of the problem of it not being able to rejoin.

I was actually preventing it from rejoining by sleeping the device too quickly; it just couldn't get back in before I told it to shut down.

Why don't other people have this problem? I think they do sometimes, but didn't spend the time it took me to chase it down. I spent months watching and trying things before I stumbled on it mostly by accident looking at the tables because of some other problem someone else had with their network.

My network is humming along with only an occasional missed message. The extended awake time hasn't seemed to be a problem with the battery life either. The XBee trying to rejoin was a heavier load on the battery than the extra time the receiver is on. Transmit takes more power than receive, and I only transmit one message every two minutes, so the tiny overhead of the acknowledge packets isn't noticeable.

It's been seven full days of bliss because all the sensors and control systems are working perfectly. The network even has more capacity available for even more XBees. This is really tempting because my indoor freezer has a failing thermostat. Stupid thermostats on freezers are expensive and I already monitor the temperature inside it. It may be time to take complete control of the freezer. I wouldn't even consider that with the devices acting the way they were.

I know, in the scheme of things this short a period of time doesn't actually prove the problem is gone. But, the instant clearing of problems that had culminated with the increased number of cell phones pretty much convinces me I have it taken care of.

Maybe I can start thinking about something else now.

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Temperature adventures with (RaspPI) ESP32 and MQTT.

February 19, 2020, 9:41 am
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 Guest speaker today. Glenn has a farm and has contributed before. Farm automation is especially useful for keeping the work down somewhat and getting information. Here is Glenn's latest project:
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A while back I began looking at convenient, inexpensive temperature measuring devices. Now the reason behind this is very simple. Going out the back door of our place we have what we call the boot room. We live on a ranch, so needless to say we separate our ‘barn’ clothes from our ‘house’ clothes. The barn clothes hang in the boot room. Well before changing into our barn clothes we would like to know what the exterior temperature is. We don’t have an exterior temperature display near the boot room. Soooo… this is where the ESP32 comes in.

I first started this project as a raspberry pi based project. You see I have a raspberry pi 3 B+ in the horse barn and it measures the temperature of both my workshop and the stall area using DS18B20s. Now just about any of the raspberry pi’s from the 2B on up, or the zero would have worked. The raspberry pi zero W would not have worked in my case here as the device is housed inside a Leviton Structured Wiring panel and there is no wifi within the barn. If you are doing this in a location that has Wifi available then the Pi zero W could certainly fit the bill.

I had adapted code from Dave’s other posts to fulfill the need but that code was originally base on Sqlite and wasn’t feeding to my new MQTT docker container. Time for a change but thanks Dave for the original code!!

This project really contains three parts:
1. Temperature measurement
2. MQTT testing and coding
3. ESP32 implementation.

Temperature measurement.


The DS18B20 is probably the best contribution to the temperature measurement in the history of IoT and home automation. I’m not going to go into depth on this as Dave has several posting on it and they are a wealth of knowledge. These are connected to the raspberry pi as shown in this drawing:
Note: I am only using two Sensors at the moment not the three shown.
Full disclosure here. I am a big fan of Python and Python modules. Have been for a long time. So, when I start a new project I go on a search to see what new modules are out there. I’m an engineer, not a developer. I’m not the guy that writes a lot of code day in and day out.

In this case I came across a module that has really captured my imagination. It is called:
rpi-temperature-mqtt.

It was originally written by a fellow who calls himself HackerCowboy. Here is his Git repository link, https://github.com/hackercowboy/rpi-temperature-mqtt.

I grabbed the code and started playing with it.

First you must install the module onto you device (raspberry pi or ESP32).
pip install rpi-temperature-mqtt

All of the configuration is done in a file you create called config.json. Here is my config.json from the barn:
{
    "mqtt_client_id": "barn",
    "mqtt_host": "10.10.XX.XX",
    "mqtt_port": "1883",
    "wait_update": "60",
    "verbose": "true",
    "sources": [
        {
          "serial": "28-0000055aae0e",
          "topic": "workshop"
        },
         {
           “serial”: “28-0000054de0b5”,
           “topic”: “boxstalls”
          }
      ]
}

As you can see I have two DS18B20s that I am sampling. The code supports multiple devices. The other item of note is that the code provides its own scheduler capability. You set the time period between sampling of the collection of devices with the line:

“wait_update”: “60”,

This says to wait 60 seconds between sampling another set.
It also provides a delay between devices. That line is:

“wait_process”: “10”,

In this case it will wait 10 seconds between samples from the two DS18S20s.
Now to the section labelled “sources”. For each device you will need to add two lines.

“serial”: “your device serial number”,
“topic”: “what you call it in MQTT”

Note that each section must end in a comma after the topic statement. That is except for the last section where the comma is left off.

The other item I use in the config.json file is the verbose option. It lets me see exactly what the module is sending and shows me when the connection is made:

NOTE:

Before you start using rpi-temperature-mqtt you MUST initialize the Device Templates. This is a new change in the later versions of Raspian, etc. If you do not do this rpi-temperature-mqtt WILL NOT WORK. So you must add the following instructions to boot/config.txt

# Add the device tree to initialize w1-gpio.
dtoverlay=w1-gpio

Save it and reboot. If you forget you can manually start it by issuing the command:

sudo dtoverlay w1-gpio

Remember if you don’t do one of these the rpi-thermostat-mqtt code will error and say  it can’t find w1-master…..

MQTTfx:

I use a Ubuntu desktop machine in my lab. As well I have a separate server that runs all my docker containers. So for testing purposes I log into my test device (be they raspiberry pi or ESP320) via SSH and control them.
I found that in order to really see what is going on an MQTT broker monitor is really useful. Enter MQTTfx. This piece of code will run on a variety of platforms and gives you the ability to subscribe to a broker (local or remote) and then publish or subscribe to the topic of interest.

The first thing we need to do is create a connection profile. Select the Broker Status tab. Then from the top Extras tab, edit the connection profile:
  

  
· Enter your new Profile name at the top.
· Enter the ip address of your Broker.
· Enter the port number of your Broker.
· Leave the rest as presented.
· Click Apply, then OK.



You will be returned to the main screen. Now make sure Broker status is selected. From the profile pull down window select your newly created profile and then click on CONNECT:


Once you connect you should see this screen which connects you to the Mosquitto Broker:



Now click on Subscribe.

At this point you need to start the rpi-temperature-mqtt software running on your device by issuing this command:

rpi-temperature-mqtt config.json

Make sure that you do this from the subdirectory that contains config.json.

Now when you switch back to the MQTTfx screen and you select your topic(s) you should see something like this:


Note I’ve selected to view the workshop topic from the pull down. The lower right window displays the last reported value.

Ok, so this post is getting a little long so I’ll end it here. Next we’ll move to the ESP32 and talk about micopython, rpi-temperature-mqtt, and Hazzuh32 (ESP 32) from Adafruit.

Cheers.
Glenn.


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Hard to believe it's been over a YEAR

October 24, 2021, 4:18 pm
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Since my last post. Did anyone notice?

I've been heavily involved in local politics in my area for over three years now and it finally came to an end. My side lost.... 

During this time the home automation field exploded. There are things available now for less than $20 that I had to build from whatever was available. Maybey it's time for me to catch up with the world again. So, following the advice of a friend, I bought a Hubitat. "Why that particular hub." you ask? Well, it doesn't require the internet to work; it isn't dependent on some cloud service; and just might fill the bill for home automation out in the sticks where the internet goes away and runs slow. Besides, I don't like the idea of some cloud service having my house data at their disposal.

And, since a subscription isn't needed, it's cheap.

When it arrived from Amazon, it was in a box about 6" square. This thing was tiny. Roughly 2" by 2" and less than an inch tall, it was smaller than a Raspberry Pi and would fit anywhere I wanted to put it. Cool. In the picure below, it's the little thing with the green light.



I stuck it under the TV so I could see the little light from my recliner. 

Now to follow the directions printed in 2 point type on a folded business card to see if the thing worked. It did on the first try. This is the device that took over where Lowe's left off when they dumped the home automation business and I have a few of those early Zigbee devices around the house working (another reason to pick this hub). So, I paired one of them up with the hub, and that also worked first try.At that point I dug into their documentation, created a 'Dashboard', and stuck a 'Tile' on it and tried to turn the Iris switch on remotely. That worked first try!! 

Oh my goodness, I didn't have to hack into it by searching through a hundred pages of documentation and prowling the web for any hint of how to make it work. It just worked. This was going to be fun. 

I hooked the rest of my Iris devices into it and moved much of my lighting controls over to it immediately. This is where the fun begins ....

I had to learn a little about apps, drivers, odd interfaces and an editor that is both brilliant and clumsy at the same time. A "Rule Machine" that (to me) defies logic and menus that go on, literally, for pages and pages. 

But, the device works, it does the job.

Of course, this made my internet (one of the banes of living semi rural) really look bad. The very best I can get with Century Link DSL in my area is 5MB. Yes city dwellers that are hooked to fiber that easily goes a full GB, there are still people suffering along at that speed. Fortunately, we have (finally) other providers now. I chose one called Teknet that uses radios scattered around the area and powered antennas on the roof as my new provider. A bit more expensive, but I could get 30MB out here and that is a darn sight better than the 5 I've been putting up with for well over a decade and a half.

Thus, a new internet provider, a new device, a house that has been running on outdated, but extremely reliable equipment for a very long time would lead me into new adventures that might be fun.

More, and greater details in the days, weeks to come. 

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My Experiences With the Hubitat

November 2, 2021, 4:50 pm
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 I mentioned last post how I got talked into trying the Hubitat. To be honest, it didn't take too much convincing because the hub works with the old Iris switches and I have several of them. We home automation freaks loved those switches. I hacked into them and made them work without the Lowe's hub and hooked them into my house to measure power and control several things.

Then Lowes dropped support for the devices and closed down their cloud offering leaving everyone that depended on that service in the lurch. See why I don't like to rely on cloud services? We've seen this over and over again for the last two decades. You sucker into a service and then they raise the price, lower the capabilities and finally shut it down. That's happening right now with the ring devices. I have one I got simply as a way to watch my driveway for deliveries. Then I got another for a replacement doorbell. They're fun, but require a subscription and an app. 

Ring just announced that they're dropping the Windows 10 App and going to a web site instead. I wonder what they will drop next because they already raised the price on their subscription earlier this year. I really feel sorry for the huge number of people that are subscribing to these services without knowing what will eventually happen. I went in with my eyes open because I wanted to play with the devices, but I fully expect them to be an eventual waste of money.

Back to the Hubitat. This thing worked for the Iris switches I have on the very first try. It was really easy to set up and get going, but it didn't fulfill my needs for monitoring things and storing data long term. No, I didn't hack into it and write code, I didn't need to. The developers made this thing easy to hack into and extend the basic capabilities. They actually encourage this. Yes, you can add source to it and customize the heck out of it, but that will have to wait until I have more time to play with the various nuances of the device. 

I started off simply with an Iris switch I controlled, added a clock because it was cool and then my power usage from my fridge in the kitchen.

I happened to catch the fridge when it was doing nothing, so the low power level. The two switches at the bottom are very inexpensive Zigbee outlet switches that I picked up just to test this out. Here's that device:


Don't let anyone tell you these can't be any good; both of these worked first try and have been working reliably for a few months now. When I first hooked them up, I called them CS1 and CS2 for "Cheap Switch" 1 and 2. They are available all over the web and serve as Zigbee endpoints. They don't route, so they can't extend a network, but there are other ways to do that.

I'm really impressed by the progress home automation has made in the last couple of years. 

I wasn't done though; there was a heck of a lot more to look into and implement. For people that have followed my meandering through various ways of controlling my house you might remember that I measure, present, record and chart things like total house power usage, temperature of each room and major appliance, etc. I don't just turn on a few lights and brag about it, I actually use this data to control power usage and control costs. All that stuff would have to move to the new hub from the raspberry pi network I've implemented over the years.

Darn, this was going to be a huge hunk of work. 




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My New Excavator

April 5, 2022, 11:59 am
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 Yes, I bit the bullet and bought a Mini Excavator. 


I looked at what was available locally for a couple of months, and what I found just didn't cut it. The hoses had rotted from the sun, There was significant damage to some areas, they were way, way overpriced; at least in my opinion. So, I bit the bullet and expanded my search online to nationwide.

There were a lot of them out there, but buying something this expensive sight unseen was scary. Sure, people do it every day at online auctions and such, but they know what they're doing, ... I don't.

So, I went to ebay and looked at their guarantee for construction equipment. They insure the purchase up to $100,000, and that gave me enough courage to contact a seller. The rest was easy. The excavator arrived in port in Long Beach, CA; was inspected; loaded on a truck, and showed up at my house in just a few days total time. I was lucky in that respect, but I did choose a machine that was available instead of looking for exactly the right thing.

If you want to know the specs, the model number is right on the side and google can pop up a spec sheet in one search. What I like most about it is there ARE NO ELECTRONICS; it's old school hydraulics with valves and such. It can be worked on without a laptop plugged into a data port. Less failures to some component getting wet and less expensive control components.

I can fix it if I need to. (or should I say 'when')

Now the bad stuff: When I got on it, having exactly zero experience on an excavator, I couldn't get it to go. Meaning, how the heck do you run this thing? I fiddled around and found the two forward controls for the tracks and managed to move it down the drive a ways. Then I looked at the control layout decal and managed to work it a bit. I got it from the road to my house in a few minutes and then started to play with it where no one could see me make a fool of myself.

After an hour of trying levers, looking at the instructions (shudder) and messing around I managed to make it do things. Then, I went nuts. Spinning around using zero turn, swiveling it around and around, banging the bucket on the ground. Basically playing with my new toy. 

It is so exciting to pick up a bucket of dirt, swivel around and dump it behind you. That is probably the most exciting thing about an excavator I've tried yet. It can really dig!! I can make a hole in no time, even with the incredibly rocky ground I live on. Just wiggle the bucket back and forth a little and it will bite in. Really large rocks give it trouble, and I have to plan better to roll them out of the hole, but so far, I haven't hit one that I can't move. I know I will at some point (it is a mini machine), but then I'll just go around the rock if necessary. 

And, it has a THUMB. In case you don't know what that is, here's a picture of mine.


This allows me to pick up rocks, grab a bunch of prunings, pick up a limb to chainsaw, etc. It gives me a hand to manipulate things with. This increases the versatility of the machine to a level that we, as homeowners, can really appreciate.

There is one annoying thing about it though. The left hand control is set up counter-intuitively. Left hand left is stick away and left hand right is stick close. Left hand forward is swing right and left hand back is swing left. There are two control standards in the US, ISO and SAE; they differ in the positions of the controls, however both of them have the swivel control on the left hand side to side.  That is driving me nuts. I keep swinging the excavator when I try to move the stick. It just makes sense to my brain that swivel left should be push left, not pull back.

Yes, it can be changed by moving the hydraulic lines. However, the lines are plumbed, not hoses. Take a look:



Those two pipes are the stick controls, and I didn't want to spend a week creating new ones to fit the application. Note that steel plumbing is a good thing, it protects the hydraulics and makes for a really good connection, They are just really hard to move around. I may come back to this after a while and change it, but reprogramming my brain is easier at this point and it keeps the machine on the dirt doing what I need instead of sitting in the garage waiting for parts.

What's also awesome about this machine is how well it is set up. I can get to the controls really easily, the gas gauge is a clear tube instead of a float in the tank that fails, the horn is not where you'll hit it every time you use the machine. It even has a light that I plan on using very, very little. 

For example, the horn used to be on the right hand control where you manipulate the bucket and bang your knee. It's now on the right hand side where the other electrical controls are:



I may grind that mount off at some point, but want to have a can of Komatsu blue paint on hand when I do to keep it pretty.

Wanna see the extremely high tech fuel gauge? I guarantee this will not fail due to a rat eating the wiring or some connection coming loose.


Yes, it's just a clear tube that shows the level of fuel in the tank. No electronics, no silly idiot light, just something that you can easily see that won't fail as soon as you need it.

Now for a blatant recommendation of the seller I used for this transaction, NGO Company. I called them about the excavator I found both on the web and ebay. I talked to a guy named Ray, and he was totally honest. He described the machine, the process of buying it and when he expected it to show up in port. I waited a day, and called him back to start the purchase process. I paid a deposit, then waited until the machine was in his shop. He sent me pictures of it and I paid the rest by wire transfer. 

As soon as the wire showed up as pending for transfer, he called the shipper and they came and loaded it up. I got it the next day. 

Totally seamless transaction; nothing went wrong and the machine started on the first try. How good can it get?

Ray will probably read this blog post and snicker a bit because I literally drove him nuts with questions about the dates, how wire transfers worked, etc. All the stuff a naive purchasers comes up with. I was basically a total dweeb, and he put up with it.

If you're interested in something like this, visit his web site at https://www.ngollc.com/ and tell him Dave sent you. You won't get a discount, large equipment doesn't work that way, but he'll recognize the name.

I'll be posting about my exploits with this machine in the future. It's too much fun not to spend time on it. 





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So, Have I Actually Done Anything With That Expensive Toy?

June 21, 2022, 6:12 pm
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Well, yes, but not as much as I would have liked. The 2022 heat wave hit here in Arizona and it was over 110F every day until today. However, today I had to repair my chainsaw instead of working with the excavator.

Sigh....

But I have managed to do some things around the house. I moved a whole lot of rocks out of the way, Built a little road to get around, dug out some brush, and that kind of thing. I know that I'm preaching to the choir here, but tools are great to have. I think I mentioned that I bought it because I was tired of renting equipment and having a multi-hundred dollar bill when I returned it. You can't get good with it only spending a few hours under pressure, and you never quite get the entire job done.

I wanted my own, and indulged myself and bought the darn thing. I don't regret that decision. 

I may be working on this rock for a while. It is stuck in caliche and won't budge.

If you consider following my path, I have a few recommendations:

1. Don't get too big a machine. My Ford tractor is huge and very powerful, but it doesn't fit anywhere. I have to jockey that thing around a LOT to position it for work. Then, when I have to move it, I have to be careful not to take out a fence or something.

2. Excavators are fun and they can pick up heavy things. However, you have to have a thumb to do it easily. You can drag a bucket across the ground and a rock will just slide along avoiding the bucket like it suddenly became sentient and decided not to cooperate. A thumb solves that problem. Thumbs are also really good for picking up brush and moving it. 

There's cactus and thorny mesquite in that bundle !

3. Avoid all the fancy electronic bells and whistles. Sure little short joysticks are fun and cool looking, but the damn things break leaving you with a machine to fix. The electronics on these machines have to be able to take the heat, cold, rain, mud, etc and cost a lot. 

Simple hydraulics are the best for people like me. I want to use the machine, not order parts for hundreds of dollars and wait forever for them to arrive. Hydraulic parts are simple and available all over the place. 

4. Get an older machine. One from the '80s won't have a mess of equipment to lower emissions. A friend of mine had his brand new tractor in the shop for a month to get the emissions equipment working correctly. Avoid that dilemma if at all possible.

Do you really want a DEF reservoir and smog pump ?

5. Diesel may be expensive right now, but it stores well and doesn't explode. Get a diesel engine on your new tool. They run cooler, last a long time, and are already fuel injected. Great little motors that don't plug up with gum from ethanol additives that dissolve gaskets. Remember above where I mentioned having to fix my chainsaw? Yep, the ethanol dissolved the gaskets in the carburetor.

Ethanol is miscible in water. That means it absorbs water
Water damages carburetors. I stole this picture of a really bad one, 
but this CAN happen to you.

6. Educate yourself about the common problems. This is something that you can't get from youtube. People let their machines set outside in the weather and the hoses rot. Hydraulic hoses are not cheap and most of them are custom-made. These things will drive you nuts on a machine that hasn't been used in a long time. If you check back on this blog you'll find where I rebuilt cylinders on the garage floor. It can be done, but that means you're fixing it instead of using it.

For most people, a 4000-pound machine will do everything they want to do with it. It can lift several hundred pounds and move it around. Trailers are cheaper for them. I picked up a used tandem trailer that will carry it just fine locally without any trouble. 

Unfortunately, they can be a black hole for money. There are attachments that can make everything easier, but they cost big bucks. A grooming bucket that lets the dirt go through while the bigger rocks get stuck is great for clearing rocks, but they cost hundreds. Consider digging a hole and scraping the rocks into it with the claws instead. A quick-connect so you can change the buckets easily is great to have, but have you looked at how much they cost? You can pound a different bucket in place for a lot less money. A smaller or larger bucket is great to have, but unless you find one abandoned in an empty field, it's gonna cost you a bunch. Sure you can build one and that would be fun, but have you looked at the price of quarter-inch steel lately? Welders are getting cheaper, but steel isn't. 

I love my excavator and it has made things possible that simply weren't before, but I must discipline myself constantly to keep the urge for a new item for it under control. 

For me, being able to climb up on it anytime I want to and tear out a cactus is exhilarating. Not having to reserve it at an equipment rental place and picking it up at 7:00 AM from a clerk that hasn't had enough coffee is worth a lot. Let's not talk about getting it back on time. That really sucks.

Of course, my yard is starting to look like a used farm equipment lot !


I think it looks great though !



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A Guy I Know Suggested using Youtube

July 6, 2022, 4:42 pm
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 The title pretty much says it all. I took a camera and recorded using the excavator to do some work on the yard. It took hours and  I encountered the problems we all have with cameras. Soft focus, knocking over the tripod, pointing it the wrong way... You know the drill. 

After hours of recording, I started to respect those Youtube creators even more.

You have to go through the recording, pick the stuff out that makes sense and was actually worth a crap, compose it into something that might be interesting, and then go through the process of putting it online. A whole lot of trouble to convey an idea, but it turned out to be fun.

I see an opportunity here to expand the blog by including other media.

Here's my first effort at this. It's short but represents a heck of work.



What do you think, is it worth the effort? 

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That Youtube Thing, Videos, Action and Stuff Like That

July 22, 2022, 5:46 pm
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 After I put up a couple videos on youtube, I reviewed them. They were BORING ! Watching someone run an excavator is not nearly as much fun as actually running one. The videos took so much time to watch me flail around the bucket, grab the wrong lever, drop a rock, and dump the bucket in the wrong place, even I stopped them and sighed in disgust.

How the heck do other people get those things to be interesting?

I started looking at heavy equipment videos and tried to get a hint, and one thing stood out glaringly SPEED. See, if you speed up the video, it isn't nearly as visible when you grab the wrong lever and go the wrong way. Speed hides the imperfect and the mistake. Most of the time it even makes it look intentional. Also, putting in stills to show close-ups and examples makes it more interesting because it distracts a bit. 

It seems the key to keeping people awake while watching a video is either cleavage or distractions. People can only watch something for a little while without some change up or excitement. At least it seems that way.

That's why the video I put up in the last post had music and was sped way up. It didn't have stills in it, or other tricks I want to try out. 

I just put up another one to try out some more ideas. This one switches subjects, shows mistakes, and has lots of on-screen text. Voices don't work well when you speed it up, so you have to use that in some way to create interest; I tried that as well.

Can you believe it? I took the chance and bought a new piece of equipment, spent some time learning how to use it a little bit, and then started filming it. What a mess to take on. It's fun learning new things, but this many at once is quite the strain.



Take a look when you have the chance, this is all new to me. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eznz2KKoL4&t=120s

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Temperature Controlled Faucets

December 14, 2022, 1:29 pm
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 Ever wish you had one of those expensive temperature-controlled faucets in your shower my wife did. Since there is a lot of truth to the saying, "happy wife, happy life," I shelled out the money for one. It worked reasonably well, but was a constant source of problems over the years. 

This isn't mine, but it's close

I was constantly having to adjust the settings on it. It wouldn't get hot enough, cold enough, have too low water pressure, etc., until finally, years later, I gave up and replaced it. It had gotten to the point where I couldn't adjust it anymore.

Naturally, I took it in the garage and took it apart.



it made me understand why these things cost so much money. Mine was actually four separate faucets in one housing. The top one was strictly volume, and was fed by the three below, and it used a traditional cartridge. That faucet failed first when the cartridge wouldn't seal. It was a hard part to find and is a whole separate story in itself.

There is one faucet to control the volume of hot water; one to control the volume of cold water and the middle one that actually controls the temperature mix. Each of the faucets has the usual o-rings and compression washers, with the middle mixer also having several extra parts to handle the temperature control. Oddly, the o-rings and compression washers never gave me trouble. 

That middle section was a different story though. The piece at the bottom of the picture above:


is actually two screens that let water into a mixing area and wraps around all the pieces above it. That set of screens was heavily plugged with calcium from the water. The plugged-up set of screens was the reason I was constantly having to adjust the two other faucets to increase the volume of either cold or hot water available.

Over time, it led to low volume and erratic operation because the calcium would sometimes flake off and increase the flow, or grow and decrease it. I got pretty good at adjusting it until it plugged up so much that I couldn't adjust it any further. The hot was maxed out and the cold was turned down so low that the shower didn't have enough volume.

The brains of the device is this piece in the middle:


It's a bulb full of some compound that has the right temperature expansion characteristics to move the little button on the bottom to slide the o-ring up and down inside the assembly. That controls the hot vs cold mix feeding through the two screens.

I guess I could have soaked the pieces in vinegar for a couple of WEEKS because regardless of what you read on the web, it take a LOT of time to dissolve the calcium from a faucet. Then searched every hardware store for 20 miles to get the right size o-rings and compression washers to replace the ones in there because just putting it back together would guarantee a leak and more work.

I chose the path of the lazy homeowner and just bought a new Moen shower faucet that I could easily order parts for and not have to worry about European manufacturers' parts lists and supply chain bullshit; not even mentioning the expense of that pursuit.

Besides, I had lost the paperwork over the years and had no idea who the manufacturer was anymore.

Putting the new Moen in was quite the experience though. In case you haven't done that ... yet, you have to tear out the wall on the opposite side to get to the assembly. Then, working from both sides, you have to mount the faucet and re-plumb the water lines to fit it. Nothing ever matches anything else when you're changing manufacturers.

I cheated though. Way back when the house was built, the hot and cold lines were reversed by a mistake the plumber made. That was fixed with some inventive plumbing that didn't even come close to fitting the new faucet. Yes, I could have taken that apart and gathered a collection of fittings to do it over, but since they have really good hoses now for hooking up faucets, I just took the lazy homeowner's way out (again) and bought the hoses and fittings to do it in a way that any self-respecting plumber would panic over.


Now, before everyone goes all ballistic on this, these are stainless reinforced and my water pressure hovers around 40 pounds. These hoses usually last forever unless you disconnect them and don't replace the compression washers inside the ends when putting them back. I have these on the various water appliances around the house and have never, ever had a problem with them that I didn't cause fooling around. These things just work.

The cross-over in the middle through the 2x6 is to reverse the hot and cold due to the plumbing mistake that I mentioned. I plan on putting a metal shield over that so I don't make the mistake of putting a screw through the hoses in the future when I close the wall.

The new faucet worked fine and all is well with the world.

Net, if you are thinking about one of those fancy faucets, think a little longer. If you have well water or excessive calcium deposits on your toilets or sinks, it might be a bad idea. If you don't want to have to go through the hassle of a new faucet and a tight job installing pipes; maybe the one you already have is good enough. If you have one of the big names in plumbing in the US, you can get dress kits for it to change the look when SHE gets tired of it and wants to change the look.

That's a heck of a lot easier than what I went through. Think about it for a few years before actually doing it.










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