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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 4, 2026, 4:48 PM

    pokey PLASTIC. Pokey plastic on posi. Ignore the metal where the pokey metal is on negative, pokey plastic positive

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 5, 2026, 3:31 PM

    You've gotta agree to the TERMS before you can use the ecoflow app and so there's a link to read the terms and it just straight-up 404's

    There's a button with an icon that looks like it's supposed to show graphs and stuff, press it, black screen

    Ya this is going local-only haha

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 5, 2026, 3:35 PM

    It's like this with all the smart-home shit because, like, fundamentally, when you get right down to it, you can be good at making lightbulbs or good at making apps and you can't be both, so the app is a thing you use so that you can get the thing onto home assistant and that's the end of it. I've got two things in my house with an app that works, an Aranet CO2 monitor and an Emporia clamp-on current meter - the lightbulbs and this ecoflow battery and my water heater are all also supposed to have apps but they all either fail halfway or straight-up crash on tryna launch them. So we end up with home assistant, a trap for dads

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 5, 2026, 9:26 PM

    I got a watts readout on my phone and charts and graphs and shit and one nice thing about that is MAN AM I HYPERAWARE OF THE WEATHER NOW

    Like I'm not usually this aware of the weather when I'm not IN the weather y'know, I feel like A Part Of The World and that's kinda nice

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 7, 2026, 3:55 PM

    Still only two pane up, also they're literally just propped up against the house lol, but it's nice and sunny and there's a hundred watts of free power flowing right now and it feels pretty damn good

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 7, 2026, 4:03 PM

    I've had two panels up since Monday but it's been pissing down with rain since then, today's the first sunny day. Excited to see how much it peaks at later on

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 1:48 PM

    2026: 🦝 Every time something scary happens in politics I put up another solar panel

    2027: 🦊 Dude why are you smiling so big, did you not just see the news today
    🦝 I took some of those little panels out of calculators and I put them on my FUCKING TEETH

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 2:56 PM

    I'm like this with everything tbh. Whenever the world gets scary I gotta go nuts-and-bolts and do Repairman Things With My Hands which is why lately I've been most enjoying working on, like, bikes, 20-year-old ereaders, solar panels, all stuff that's either low-power or make-power

    I've talked about this before on here but when I was teaching the new pinball techs how to not be scared of complicated machines I told them the most complex intimidating system you've ever seen is made up out of smaller and simpler systems that are connected together, and those subsystems are made out of yet smaller and simpler subsubsystems, and you don't fix an arcade you fix machines, and you don't fix machines you fix coils and switches and connectors, we work on the things that systems are made of because that's what we can reach with our hands and understand with our heads, and if all the little bits work how we want them to then the big thing has no choice but to work how we want it to

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 3:10 PM

    When you were a kid did you ever go to a science museum with a hand-crank generator and a buncha lightbulbs?

    So how this works is you'd spin the crank and it'd rotate pretty freely y'know, you could feel magnets kinda resisting you a little bit but you'd take your hand off the crank and it'd carry on a bit, it wasn't hard to turn. And then you'd flip the light switch on and turn the crank again but this time you'd be trying to light up a little bulb, and it'd fight you. The same crank would give you hot biceps and a sweaty forehead. Some of these machines had more bulbs in parallel with switches between them and you could build up speed and have your mate flip a switch and you'd FEEL it! Not, like, understand the principles, not be able to rattle off Ohm's law or whatever, you'd really FEEL it, you'd KNOW it in your body

    I think that was a good machine and we really need more of them. We need to feel the burn in our biceps so that we understand viscerally what electricity means, what power actually is, what really happens when we boil a kettle

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 3:49 PM

    I got Numbers for yesterday btw, the first day when I had 2 panels up and it wasn't raining literally all day long, but I'm not posting them yet 'cause there's a clown with an old freezer and a watt meter who I'm waiting to hear from first

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 5:01 PM

    Right he's shown me his now I'll show everyone mine, lemme grab a screenshot real quick

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 5:13 PM

    Alright so remember how I said these were 240 watt panels, well I misspoke, they're actually rated for 230 watts on the label.

    Now the label, fucking LIES. If it says 230 watts on a panel what it means is, you'll get 230 watts under like Ideal Laboratory Conditions, noon on the solstice at the equator on a really clear day kinda thing, you're never gonna get that IRL. Plus, these panels are like 15 years old. So I figured, well, if I can get 150 or 180 out of them then I'm still quids-in for how cheap they were secondhand, and if I have two in series then a bit of shading on one is gonna pull down the other, so 300 watts would be a result. With that in mind, screenshot in the next post

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 5:16 PM

    Oh - also, before I show you this, these panels are leaned jankily and temporarily against the front wall of my house, I haven't built anything to angle them properly or even measured the angle okay so temper your expectations

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 5:19 PM

    393 watts! (edit: oops left an ID uncovered, it's not like a serial number or owt so it's probably nbd but just in case)

    Screenshot from Home Assistant showing a graph in like a bell curve sort of shape, rising from about 20 watts at about 1030 to nearly 400 watts from like 1330 to 1500 and then falling back down to cut off entirely at maybe like 1700
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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 5:22 PM

    So panels that were optimistically rated for 230 watts 15 years ago are still spitting out about 200 watts without much effort at all!

    This is FANTASTIC because even though panels hold up way better than I expected, **rich buggers still replace them** because you can get 400 or 500 watt panels now that take up the same room, meaning that the secondhand market is full of panels that are cheap AND good! It's a raccoon's paradise!

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 5:41 PM

    Another great thing about that screenshot, it wasn't a rainy day yesterday but it was a cloudy one, notice how it doesn't drop all the way to zero throughout the cloudy bit. Like it's still putting out enough to charge a laptop. Right now it's grey and miserable out and my two $45 secondhand panels are still kicking out 20 watts in the rain

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 10, 2026, 8:21 PM

    Alright I've actually plugged stuff into the battery now

    My amp, projector, kodi box, home assistant pi and basically everything in the big shelf downstairs are all sun-powered now

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  • Venya (he/him/dude) 🇺🇦venya@musicians.today
    May 4, 2026, 8:42 PM

    @ifixcoinops

    I have a Delta 2 (much smaller but still chonky) that we use for power outages but (more often) to run my laptop and amateur radio setup in the field (all day plus, if I want). I have been planning to get some solar panels for it to provide another charging solution. It wouldn't run our household or anything but it's a start. Have been following your journey with interest. Thanks!

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  • zimpenfishzimpenfish@social.rjp.is
    May 5, 2026, 7:03 PM
    @ifixcoinops This is why I've started moving everything to Zigbee which doesn't need apps (or you can use apps if you buy their stupid overpriced hubs but NO THANK YOU.)

    On the plus side, the apps don't suck. On the down side, half the devices won't expose their correct data to HA over ZHA and you have to faff around with Zigbee2MQTT and even then some of the devices are BONKERS (hello luminance sensors who only report 0lx or 3000lx.) On the other down side, there can be horrific lag between pressing a button and an automation completing which leads to people pressing the light switch twice and getting annoyed as it blinks on briefly.

    (But apparently you can write automations inside Zigbee2MQTT for ultra-low-latency happenings.)
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  • Mark Kruegermarkkrueg@treehouse.systems
    May 7, 2026, 4:48 PM

    @ifixcoinops Enjoying this thread a lot! I’m on a similar path…and going quite slowly. But eventually my workshop will have many free electrons flowing in. Hearing your journey inspires me to move forward more. Hope you keep us updated.

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 3:16 PM

    @sinvega boiling a kettle is a whole class of schoolchildren grunting against a crank, I know this because I grew up in the North

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  • Sin Vegasinvega@mas.to
    May 8, 2026, 3:18 PM

    @ifixcoinops here in london we are efficient and simply directly burn the child for fuel

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  • AlexisLexYeen@plush.city
    May 8, 2026, 3:17 PM

    @ifixcoinops That is highway fuckin' robbery for what's ultimately inside the cabinet. :blobyeensad:

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 8, 2026, 3:19 PM

    @LexYeen probably about 400 bucks of parts and fifteen grand's worth of certifications and insurance and making sure the kids can't hurt themselves on it etc

    I do feel like I'd do pretty well at building science museum kidproof stuff given my background in machines-that-get-kicked-a-lot

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  • bobbob@feed.hella.cheap
    May 8, 2026, 8:14 PM

    @ifixcoinops they used to be even cheaper, a couple of years ago I got about 50 panels for $20/each (though I had to go pick them up myself)

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  • vxovxo@digipres.club
    May 8, 2026, 5:42 PM

    @ifixcoinops
    Yeah I've seen them where the cells start to look sun bleached from decades of use and they still keep on keeping on.

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  • RealGene ☣️RealGene@hachyderm.io
    May 15, 2026, 5:09 PM

    @ifixcoinops
    I'm sure the materials science wonks will crawl out of the woodwork, but it was always my understanding that the decrease in output as panels aged was primarily due to the perspex/Plexiglas getting scratched and fogging, not the silicon using up P's and N's.

    The covering goes from transparent to diffusing, and I wouldn't be surprised if some headlight polish got you another 5%.

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 15, 2026, 5:10 PM

    @RealGene ah, these ones are glass. I did give them a quick scrub and a squeegee but that's it, maybe I'll try buffing them.

    Weirdly the glass has like a little bit of texture to it? Just a tiny bit? It's not perfectly smooth like a window, and it doesn't feel like it's been abraded that way by hail or whatever, it feels like it was put on there by the factory

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  • big ole spiderboxhumulus@mastodon.social
    May 8, 2026, 4:19 PM

    @ifixcoinops I was catching up with someone I knew from school and they said they got a job working at a museum.

    "Oh, doing what exactly?"

    "You know, making the big cranky sparky lightbulb machine and all the other kid stuff with arcade buttons and buzzers and all that. They let me build a laser bridge."

    So, at least some museums still know that you get these things by hiring a guy who makes them instead of ordering them from a catalog.

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  • smells of bikessmellsofbikes@mastodon.social
    May 8, 2026, 3:48 PM

    @ifixcoinops the local nuclear power plant had a version of this that had pedals and 12 100 watt light bulbs. You could get all the workout you ever wanted!

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  • theothertomtom@epsom.social
    May 8, 2026, 5:11 PM

    @ifixcoinops That's pretty much the vibe of Spintronics (clockwork/chains/gears simulating electrical circuits). It's pretty amazing to adjust the value of a resistor by touching it :)

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  • A Flock of Beaglesburnitdown@beige.party
    May 8, 2026, 5:29 PM

    @ifixcoinops the Canada Science Museum in Ottawa used to have tons of stuff like that. a whole room full of buttons to push, cranks to turn, levers and ropes to pull. it wasn't very well maintained and a lot of it was falling apart after about 20 years. they took out that whole room of stuff and replaced it with a walkway with info boards, stuff you can easily walk past and feel no sense of having a time well spent. there was still some interactive stuff deeper in the museum last time i was there, but it was also poorly maintained so barely working. it's really depressing to think about that decline. that was the whole reason to go there.

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  • Ell 🏳️‍⚧️c9a@cathode.church
    May 8, 2026, 7:50 PM

    @ifixcoinops I have a whole-ass degree in Electrical Engineering and even so I was floored when I accidentally set up one of these with the snap circuits kit when I was nannying a 6yo.

    They've got a lil handcrank unit you can snap in, and if you hook up a light bulb (even a teensy one!) and it gets harder to crank, just like the demos! Very cool, especially to stumble upon by accident!

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  • nflux back in exilenflux@gts.exile.social
    May 16, 2026, 12:48 PM

    @ifixcoinops oh wow this is dope. i had theorised about using this method (even down to switchable parallel lightbulbs) to apply varying load to my motorbike dyno but it was only theory. finding out that not only does this mechanism exist already, but that it works exactly as id hoped is super helpful 😎👌

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  • Fried Chickena_phlaming_phoenix@mastodon.social
    Jun 24, 2026, 12:15 PM

    @ifixcoinops I did this experiment with AI the other day and encourage others to, also. I installed LocalAI on my laptop, installed a coding model, and asked it to perform a relatively simple task (formatting some data into a markdown table with some minor time calculations). It took 10+ minutes of my laptop's 12 cores to get a response (which produced an HTML table, not a markdown one). My battery dropped from about half to about a quarter. My leg hair almost melted. I *felt* the cost of AI.

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  • ersatzmausersatzmaus@mastodon.social
    May 12, 2026, 11:05 AM

    @ifixcoinops That last bit is the lie we tell newbies so they don't realise before it's too late, right?

    "And now that we've fixed the last broken…"

    *KCHONK*

    "… huh. That's weird. Anyway, not a problem, we'll just…"

    *FWOOMPH*

    "… just… pop down to stores and fetch a long weight for me, would you? Cheers."

    *waits for intern to leave earshot and gets the bell, book, candle and stake from the toolbox*

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  • Zack Weinbergzwol@masto.hackers.town
    May 8, 2026, 4:08 PM

    @ifixcoinops i also just got solar panels and a battery hooked up to my house and i'm now mildly obsessed with trying to pin down what's drawing 200W all night long

    it's not the fridge, i can see the bumps in the graph where the fridge turns on and off

    but there's not a lot of other things it can be

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  • Ari "Two Elements" Jacksonarisummerland@beige.party
    May 8, 2026, 7:38 PM

    @ifixcoinops

    I started with an eco-flow and moved to something else bigger later. I blew out my River 2 when I needed to keep my fridge on it bc it kept tripping the gfi (which it should not have been on, but it took ages to get the electrician out to drop a dedicated line).

    I am enjoying this entire narrative, however! I always learn from you. I haven't had the guts to try to figure out if I can actually wire panels or my Jackery 3K into the house. I just keep things cycling and charged for bad weather season.

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  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    May 4, 2026, 7:04 PM

    @ifixcoinops

    Are these connectors after the inverter? Or is it still dealing with low voltage at a whole lotta amps (when fully working)?

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  • Dan Fixes Coin-Opsifixcoinops@retro.social
    May 4, 2026, 7:17 PM

    @cazabon these are everything, from the panels to the gland sticking outta my house to an adaptor to make it xt60i into the solar generator, one of those all-in-one lads

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