Day: February 25, 2013

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Slowly Understanding the Battery Monitor

I checked the battery monitor about an hour ago and I was still 20AH away from a full charge and only putting in 4A. Now, it’s flashing full!!!

I think I know what is going on.

The solar monitor gives me a reading at a given moment. I might be putting in 7A for a few minutes, but then the clouds come out and I start putting in 4A. I could end up averaging only 1A coming in for that hour despite that 7A reading at the beginning.

I think the battery monitor is giving me delayed information after the fact. That is, every so often, it tallies up what really came into the bank and then adjusts the amp hour total up or down. The computer is certainly sophisticated enough to do this.

Moreover, I woke up at about 24AH down and have been charging for 8 hours. The AH total has barely budged all day, until now, even though I was supposedly putting in about 3A all day. 3×8=24.

I wish there was a Xantrex LinkPro for dummies book. The information that comes with the monitor isn’t very helpful.

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Getting the Mail

After putting in a few hours of work on my book this morning, I headed out to the post office where a new battery for my cell phone was awaiting me.

The cell phone has pretty much been dead for weeks, but it took me a while to concede this fact even though the phone will randomly turn off even when it is plugged into a power source. I found a genuine Verizon battery on Amazon for just under $7 with free shipping from a well rated seller. The new battery’s arrival could not have been timed better because the phone shut off late this morning and refused to turn back on!

To my surprise, my O’Reilly’s gift card had also arrived! Walmart didn’t have any refrigerant for vehicle ACs, so I headed to O’Reilly’s to see if they carried such a thing, which they did. Since I’m not sure that adding refrigerant will actually start my compressor, I bought the cheapest kit they had, which was about $20 and included a hose but no gauge.

Next, I moseyed over to the tools to look for a socket wrench kit. Everything on display was way more expensive than I was willing to pay ($50 to several hundred dollars). I crouched down to see what was on the bottom shelf, knowing from my days in retail that you can find very good deals near the floor, and I emerged with this:

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It’s a 57 piece set with both metric and imperial sockets. Not the best quality, but should serve me well for the little amount I will use it, and was just $20.

I wasn’t even tempted to have lunch in Port Lavaca since I had my lunch all planned out even before I headed out:

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(Lightly seasoned black refried beans, tomato, avocado, a squirt of lime juice over a grilled tortilla.)

It is scary windy out there right now, so I’m staying in, putting as much weight as I can on the passenger side (JOKING), and will wait patiently to see if the can of refrigerant helps my truck at all. As for the socket wrench set, I will be using it to disconnect my truck battery to reset the check engine light. I know why the light went on and the issue was resolved, so there’s no point having it on the dash mocking me. 🙂