Jul 04 2020
In 2012 we put solar panels on the roof at my parents house. Link to the blog post. Now I have my own house it was time to put up my own panels. I chose again for bisol panels, this time 12x “Bisol Premium Bmo 320wp Full Black Mono” with a SMA STP 3.0-3AV-40 inverter. Last time Elcubi did a great job, so I decided to also let them do this install.
Pictures:
The panels installed:
The inverter:
The power the installation produces can be looked at here:
May 27 2020
I have a electric stapler that works with a battery. This battery became bad some time ago, after doing a lot of searching for a replacement battery. I found none. I did not even find a reference to the battery. So time to fix it myself.
The battery Rapid Model B311:
The end of the battery pack is clicked into the bottom and can be taken apart by jamming a screwdriver in the seem:
Then this pack came out of the enclosure:
These are 3x 4/5 Sub-C 1100mA cells. To replace them I found N-1250SCRL cells from Panasonic at Reichelt. These cells have tabs attached that can be used to connect them.
For the positive terminal of the pack the tab welded to the cell can be used. Between the cells I used solder to connect them together.
For the negative terminal the connections in between the cells are in the way, so I had to cut this bar and replace it by a wire.
Connection of the wire to the bottom:
This arrangement just barely fits inside the battery enclosure, when inserting make sure nothing is or can short circuit.
The last step is to reattach the end cap. It does not click in place anymore, so I used glue to attach it again.
And then the big question: Does it work? Yes it works:
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Jan 05 2020
For my living room I needed some speaker connectors in the walls. The power sockets I have are from the brand Niko, so I wanted the speaker connectors in the same look. However I did not like the look of those that are available, and therefore I made my own.
The base is made with a blind panel from Niko (122-76901).
In the center panel I drilled a hole with a step drill, and glued a 4pin speakon connector in the back of the panel:
At the amplifier I used an 8 pin connector. This one I did use screws since the force on the connector will be higher:
Installed:
For the wiring I did a trick to have the speakers always wired correctly when the TV is moved. In the living room I have 3 positions I wanted to be able to place the TV.
Blue = TV; Black = speakers
In each setup I just want to plug the amp into the 8pin speakon and have the signals go to the correct speaker for that setup. This is done with some clever wiring. I gave each 8pin connector a number and each 4pin a letter:
This makes the connections this way:
Connector 1 Pin 1-2 -> Connector C
Connector 1 Pin 3-4 -> Connector D
Connector 1 Pin 5-6- > Connector A
Connector 1 Pin 7-8 -> Connector B
Connector 2 Pin 1-2 -> Connector E
Connector 2 Pin 3-4 -> Connector A & F
Connector 2 Pin 5-6- > Connector D & G
Connector 2 Pin 7-8 -> Connector C & H
Dec 22 2019
Today there was a Radio flea market in Bladel. I did not see much interesting stuff, so I bought very little.
What I bought:
Update:
The fault on the CD player was that the CD did not started to turn. After some searching I found out that this was caused by the player not seeing the CD. The lens looked pretty dirty, after cleaning with a cotton swab and some isopropanol I was left with 2 things. A very dirty cotton swab and a working CD player.
Apr 22 2019
Today there was a Radio flea market in Diest.
What I bought:
Feb 10 2019
Today there was a Radio flea market in Turnhout. What I bought:
Dec 23 2018
Today there was a Radio flea market in Bladel.
What I bought:
Oct 07 2018
My new workshop is in my basement. For the hand washing / board cleaning “corner” this has the disadvantage that it is below the sewage level. In order to drain the water it needs to be pumped up. I had a few pumps from old washing machines laying around and decided to do some experimentation with this.
To make it easier for the pump (and to spare my back) I made a frame underneath the cabinets to raise the whole thing by 20cm. This way the water needs to be lifted less.
Normally there is a siphon after the drain in the sink, this part I have taken out and brought the pipe directly to the pump.
At the pump side the pipe goes down a bit in order to make the check valve work better (Picture further down on the page). Also because of this the sensor is not mounted at the lowest point. This makes it work better since the pump does not clear all the water from the pipes. The water that does stay in the pipe may false trigger otherwise.
However this means that the pump needs to operate longer when the sensor signal go’s off. Therefore I made a timer box. This was made with a Siemens LOGO The time is settable by a rotary switch. This switch is connected with a few inputs of the LOGO.
The pump:
The timer box:
The program in the LOGO!:
To detect the water in the pipe I used a E2K-L26MC1 capacitive sensor from Omron. This sensor can be clamped around the pipe and does not come into contact with the water.
The sensor cheapest supplier for this sensor, I found on AliExpress.com: – Omron Level Sensor E2K-L26MC1
This sensor has an NPN output, while the LOGO is only compatible with PNP output sensors. This I solved by adding a 10K pull-up resistor between out and +24V. After this the input needs to be inverted in the LOGO to work correctly (B17 in the program above).
Picture of the box and sensor installed:
Jun 23 2018
I was curious about the insides of the TC08 thermocouple logger that I bought at the radio flea market in Diest. Therefore I took it apart and made some pictures:
Jun 17 2018
Today there was a Radio flea market in Diest.
What I bought:
Dutch 