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Apple Device: "Charging is not supported with this accessory"
I don't have a single Apple device in my house, no iPad, iPhone, iPod, iAnything. I don't even have any apples. However, the little wall warts I bought <link> have a bad reputation because they...
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Battery Charging - Part 5 (Harbor Freight item 42292)
Yes, I finally assembled and tested the various ideas into a single box for my float charger for lead acid batteries. This project has been going on for over a year now and may be getting close to...
View ArticleAlternatives to Cosm (Pachube), Part 2
(edited heavily on Dec 11, look below to see why)Previously <link> I discussed the possible use of Sen.se as an alternative to Cosm. This is becoming important to me because Cosm seems to be...
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Let's Talk About Septic Tanks
Nice subject....right? Since I live out in the sticks, there are no services here except power and phone. I have my own well, propane tanks, and septic system. Since it's a relatively new septic...
View ArticleReally Nice Gauges
Recently I was shown an extremely nice set of gauges by a fellow on the Arduino forum, graynomad. They were metalic looking and had a great set of parameters to mess with. Well, I couldn't resist,...
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Let's Examine My Power Usage
After a couple of years of monitoring my power closely and installing various devices to check, examine, and control this usage; what have I learned? Let's walk through a typical Friday. I choose...
View ArticleAlternatives to Cosm (Pachube), Part 3
Found another one to try out. The site thingspeak.com has apparently been around a couple of years, but didn't turn up on any of my searches. I stumbled across it today and had to go try it out....
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Speaking of Electrical Appliances
My previous post on my electricity usage got me to thinking about appliances and how they use power. This is a chart of my usage today. The spikes are my electric range. I cooked a pork butt roast...
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Water Heater Power Control
In the last post I talked about how short burst of high power usage can be OK, but long periods of high power usage can kill me. Remember, I'm on demand billing where they average the usage across...
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Outdoor Temperature Part 3
Part 1 is here <link>, part 2 is here <link>I've been asked several times now how I mounted the temperature sensor to the XBee, and I didn't explain very well because I was too lazy to take...
View ArticleEthernet, Running Out of Connections
When I added thingspeak <link>as a repository for my data online, I started to notice that my House Controller <link> was freezing up and rebooting pretty often. This isn't as bad a...
View ArticleUsing the XBee Library Part 3
Part 1 <link>, Part 2 <link>.As part of my porting of my devices to the latest version of the Arduino IDE, I decided to move the devices to using the XBee library. Back in part 1 I...
View ArticleStill Wrapping up the Mega2560 Bootloader
More on the continuing drama of the 2560 bootloader. Most recent post on this is here.I just moved a lot of my code up to IDE 1.0.3 and decided to check and see if they had updated the bootloader in...
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Battery Charging - Part 6
My float charger that is based on ideas I stole from the Harbor City 42292 device has gone through another iteration. I decided to actually have a circuit board made that would hold the components and...
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Water Heater and Solid State Relays
A few times I mentioned the solar water heater I have. It works great and keep me in free hot water most of the time. Yes, it's the desert and during the summer the coldest the water gets is...
View ArticleWater Heater and Solid State Relays Part 2
Part 1 of this is here <link> I wandered out into the garage to admire my new SSR controlled water heater and noticed that the indicator led was on. It was during the period when the water...
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Pool Controller 2 for Goldline P4
No, I didn't take a month off; I've been off on other projects that aren't technical or related to power. Stuff like fixing a chip in my motorcycle paint, equipping toy hauler to tow it, and spring...
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The Minute You Turn Your Back
Last weekend I noticed an odd increase in power that shouldn't have happened. Then, it happened again a couple of days ago. Here's the graph:Notice the two humps in the red graph, one around 12PM and...
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Back to the Swimming Pool Acid Pump
A couple of folk have sent me notes pointing out that I have spent more money and time on the Acid Pump <link> than is justified. They're right. Totally, absolutely right. That doesn't change...
View ArticleHow to use the SteelSeries Gauges with the Xively API
Over the last months I've gotten compliments and questions on how I created the SteelSeries gauges and how I hooked them to the Xively (pachube -> cosm -> Xively) API. First, let me give credit...
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