Off-Grid Solar Design, Education and Advice

September 6, 2026 4:56 pm

I'm going to have to weigh in with a short-and-ugly review of the Renogy Rover 40A MPPT Charge Controller: I really don't like it. During the day it seems to work for providing a 12W DC load for the ... View More

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Michael Blankenship shared a photo

August 15, 2026 5:32 pm

I've now got the computer querying the FAA's flight data for my zone overhead and displaying the data on-screen with headings. I'm now thinking of installing a controller board for what would typical... View More

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3/5

Michael Blankenship

I’m now prepping the stepper motor rig so that it can programmatically point a Raspberry Pi camera at each airplane. This is leftover from a previous coding gig for a 3D printer.

August 25, 2026

Michael Blankenship

I now have the python code sending the heading and elevation information to the Smoothieboard so that it can adjust the first two stepper motors. If I increase the radius of interest to, say, 250 miles then the steppers will repeatedly point as necessary to the location of the planes in the FAA's li... View More

August 27, 2026

Michael Blankenship

The Smoothieboard above seems like a fair amount of overkill so I’m reviewing my options. This one includes an Arduino Uno R4 Plus board with a 6612 Motor Shield and a NEMA 17 stepper motor. It appears to be working in this configuration borrowing the 12V brick from the test rig above.

September 6, 2026

Michael Blankenship shared a few photos

August 16, 2026 1:41 pm

Today’s project is to recycle a fuel pump from my ATV, a HughsNet satellite dish, a five-gallon water tote that’s missing a lid and a 12V battery I replaced from the other ATV. The barrel is a recentl... View More

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Michael Blankenship

Today, I'm installing a Renogy MPPT charge controller, a spare 12V deep-cycle lead-acid Marine battery and a 250W solar panel to replace the one earlier from the ATV. I had some small 6V solar panels in series but they weren't brining in enough power for the pump 24/7.

August 18, 2026

Michael Blankenship

The honeybees have now found the new water source.

August 18, 2026

Michael Blankenship

Sadly, the fancy MPPT charge controller increased the battery voltage to around 14.5V which was enough to destroy the inline pump. I spent some effort trying to find another pump but I'd have to order one online which I don't prefer. So I brought the pump to the vise, carefully pried it apart, inspe... View More

August 24, 2026

Michael Blankenship

August 18, 2026 1:47 pm

The refrigerator(s) to use in an off-grid solar installation—in my humble opinion—are full-sized refrigerator/freezers. Never attempt to use those tiny Walmart fridges that will hold about eight soda ... View More

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Michael Blankenship

August 13, 2026 3:38 pm

This isn't strictly under the solar heading but I thought I'd share a project I'm currently working on. * I had a wireless OSO Internet connection which involved a dish on a cut-off tree near the sol... View MoreThis isn't strictly under the solar heading but I thought I'd share a project I'm currently working on. * I had a wireless OSO Internet connection which involved a dish on a cut-off tree near the solar shed. The ethernet cable from that was buried inside a PVC pipe and it goes over to the solar shed. I now have fiber, the dish has been removed. * I've been thinking of adding some project—a Raspberry Pi computer perhaps—atop that 4' stump. I just didn't know what to do with it. I didn't want to add a solar panel for the Pi computer since then I'd also need to add a battery so that it could run at night. I also didn't want to push a power cord or wires back through that pipe. It seemed prudent to send power for the Pi over the ethernet cable itself, "PoE" or power-over-ethernet. A recent trip to a military surplus store in Albuquerque netted me some RJ-45 (ethernet) jacks. A couple of days ago I "rolled my own" PoE connections both in the solar shed and out there on the stump. I'm now successfully shipping power to the remote site for the Pi computer. The earlier (gifted) Dell computer "Delaware" decided to die within a few short days of service so it's been retired. The new Raspberry Pi computer is named "Edgar" due to its power setup. That's all happy and is running a 64-bit version of the Linux operating system. I spent a few enjoyable hours doing some 64-bit ARM assembly language coding on the Pi computer. But I've been now scratching my head and wondering what options I might have. 1. Buy a hardware device so that I can do SDR (software-defined radio). 2. Use the Pi to query the FAA's flight data to identify what planes are flying overhead. Technically, with an SDR I can listen over the radio waves for those same air traffic ADSB signals. The SDR would be seriously cool stuff. If the hardware device also transmits then I can also transmit stuff myself. Sadly, the best and lowest-cost option for that hardware is from a small company that's having serious supply problems from Chinese-made chips. You can't really find his product. So for now, I'm using a free web query to ask essentially the FAA to tell me all the overhead flights within a ten-mile radius. It seems to work. Yay. Now I've got to do something interesting with the results of that query.

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Michael Blankenship

https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/pro/

HackRF Pro - Great Scott Gadgets greatscottgadgets.com

August 13, 2026

Michael Blankenship

July 30, 2026 11:52 am

I now have 54 python scripts in the repository, having added new ones for querying the TAPO smartplugs, etc. I'll be setting up a copper ionizer for my friend's solar installation as soon as I fetch ... View More

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