Project: Tom Waits

  I've had a busy week of doing ill-advised things with electrical equipment, bit here's a nice little appetiser. We'd picked up a set of 12V strip LED's from Aldi that look pretty nice run around the inside of the awning and I wanted a nice, neat way to power them. With the upgrades going into Tom II I had a few bits and pieces lying around, not to mention access to an expanding collection of power tools so whil e I was on the roof rearranging panels I set  Kat  to work cleaning up the coffee table out in the Gazebo. In short order it had the finish sanded back (using a "broken" sander I salvaged and repaired one morning whilst procrastinating) and waxed, and some holes cut strategically in the top. I had some old refurbished UPS batteries that have now been rigged up on the shelf out of the way. The little 160W panel I started out with all those months ago moved to its new home over my bedroom. A little bit of splicing and a cheap controller later and Son of...

  A couple of weeks ago Tom II got upgraded from 12v go 24v. While 12v is easier to deal with, not to mention more compatible with components, I needed to move to the higher voltage for efficiency, as well as keeping my wiring size smaller. The problem was that the little blue inverter I use for AC supply would only take a 12v input. Some gear will happily accept a range of voltages. I have some Car Accessory USB adapter's that will take 12-24v. I have some USB circuit boards for Dick that will accept 6-32v, which is pretty cool. Inverters are pretty sensitive, and the transformers are specialised, so they're more specific. I didn't want to have to buy another inverter. They can be got cheap and from what I'm reading these can be OK, but I'm not about to trust them. They *might* be ok, or they *might* blow out my server. In the short term I wanted some breathing room, so I pulled out this old UPS I had in the salvage box. It's designed to hold 2 x 12v batteries ...

  Was about to head out yesterday evening when the power went out in my suburb. We had a laugh, because the internet gear was all running on Tom II so we still had wifi. As we walked out I realised there was a problem tho: the garage door opener is on mains, so unless I wanted to manually open it we were stuck. Woops. Then I realised the answer was right in front of my face. An extension cable later and the opener was plugged into Tom (pictured) and we were away with a smug grin on my face.