Tom is dead. long live Tom!

 I've not done a whole lot with Tom in recent history. He's been fairly stable all-told, just requiring the occasional test-and-replace of old batteries as their zombified second-lives wind down. I've been quite relyably getting ~0.5-0.6kWh of out the rig when I need to, and my little meter indicated that I had used 26kWh over 2 or so months ($6.50 worth of juice!). The problem was that apart from recharging mobile devices and power banks, it's quite difficult to actually use the power because the messy, leaky batteries really need to be outside, and running cables to the rig just wasn't going to be worth the cost and fuss. Anything else was going to cost money which is entirely contrary to what Project Tom Waits is all about. I had to find a way to make anything else I did cost-neutral.

During my convalescence I've had some time to go through a lot of the salvage that's been tucked away, including a couple of old UPS units I'd snagged and refurbished. I'd originally wanted to use them as part of an extension of Tom, but they simply weren't an efficient way to do it. I could rip the batteries out and add them to the rig, but they're not designed to be cycled - they're for standby-use, so they'd die fast. Instead, I put the units up for sale. One went last week (if anyone's interested in the other one, you'd be helping me a lot) which yielded enough to fund a couple of fancy-pants 100Ah Gel AGM VRLA units. Aquinas and More each hold twice as much juice as the entire rig I had running previously, but due to the difference in construction and chemistry can't be mixed in without causing damage, so yesterday I grit my teeth and ripped apart the monster of cable and spilled acid I'd spent so many months cobbling together.

This gave me the opportunity to revamp my workspace. Since they'll be more stable, Aquinas and More don't need to be as easily accessible so they can get stowed away out of the weather. The worst of the birds' nest of cabling got ripped apart and bits of it reused, the rest put aside for later. In the longer-term I'm planning on using an old salvaged server rack and to house the setup in my store room, panels will go on the roof and drop in to keep it all neatly tucked away out of sight. In the meantime I'll be testing it out, getting an idea of just how much of my day-to-day living I can move entirely off the grid. The next stages of development will be far more focused on Project Dick Grayson - using smaller, application-specific LiPo batteries that pull their recharge from the central bank.

Meanwhile, many of the parts from Tom will be getting re-used in Son of Tom which will drive some outdoor lights and a charging station out in the gazebo. It's a low-value application, but not a bad way to reuse some of the parts that are now surplus to requirements.