Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

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Pedal2Petal
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by Pedal2Petal »

achamney wrote:Sail boat living looks... miserable. Are the open buckets there to catch rain water or something?
Yeah I would say miserable is sort of accurate, especially since I was living on it during the beginning of the rainy season in a temperate rainforest. I even fell in the ocean this one time, fortunately near to shore. The waves were really bad so I couldn't go back to the boat so I had to sit at Starbucks and try to dry off. That was sort of miserable, yes.

I found that if I strung up all my clothes near the propane fireplace and lit a bunch of those 20 cent wax candles in this little nook, I could get the temperature up to 80 degrees in the little nook. Such cozy memories in there :) I don't have many pictures of sail boat life at all but I'll try my best to illustrate my cozy sleeping nook.

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A side benefit of hanging clothes in this way is that they all dried out from the propane stove over night.

If I had electricity on that boat, and maybe a way to dry it out better (wood stove or dehumidifier) it could have been ten times better.

This is the bay where I anchored, by the way. Anchoring is free and marina is expensive but far more convenient. I always prefer the hard way...

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And yes the buckets were for catching rain. A lot more convenient than rowing to shore, and the water was really quite delicious. Rainwater coffee is one of the few luxuries I had.
achamney wrote:On an unrelated note, taking your advice and slowly acquiring 5 gallon buckets from my supermarket. What a great free resource!
Tell me about it! Every bucket I scavenge manages to get used almost right away, I have like 8 in my house and not a single one can be spared. I think that means I better go grab a couple more.

Pedal2Petal
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by Pedal2Petal »

I finished my first batch of dehydrated bananas today.

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I was more excited to calculate my final yield in terms of weight and effective price than I was to eat them. I'm sure many of you can relate;)

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If you're interested in the results of the banana analysis hop on over to my recent blog post on IndiePF

A summary:
  • Bananas dry to 1/6 of their initial size, that takes into account the peel.
    Dried bananas have an effective price of $4.14, assuming you buy them for 69 cents a pound (multiply banana pricex6)
    Electricity costs are not negligible, adding ~30 cents to each batch.
Last edited by Pedal2Petal on Sat Oct 03, 2015 8:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

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jennypenny
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by jennypenny »

I think dehydrated bananas are really tasty if you put a dollop of honey on each slice before dehydrating.

vexed87
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by vexed87 »

hmmm, they look great! I think a dehydrator is going on my wish list! :)

Pedal2Petal
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

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jennypenny wrote:I think dehydrated bananas are really tasty if you put a dollop of honey on each slice before dehydrating.
Good idea! Though they are plenty sweet already with all those condensed natural sugars. I want to try a lemon juice bath next time though, it should prevent them going as brown.
vexed87 wrote:hmmm, they look great! I think a dehydrator is going on my wish list! :)
It's quickly becoming my second favorite method to preserve food - alongside fermentation of course! :)

What I've Been Working on

A little scared to say, I may have encountered a new exciting hobby, battery salvage and rebuilding. The idea is to collect a bunch of "18650" lithium cells, usually salvaged from old laptop batteries. Every cell is tested for voltage, amperage and capacity, and either saved or tossed depending on how much life is left. Good cells can be reused by soldering them into an existing battery pack, replacing some or all of its original cells.

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The reason I'm going through all this trouble is I have a set of ebike batteries that are very very expensive to replace. 500$ each, for a total of 1000$ for the pair.

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This is the bike I bought for my wife to commute with, so once she is off maternity leave it will start to see heavy use, something like 6000 km/year. At that rate, I'll be replacing a battery about every 4 years.

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If my calculations are right, the batteries each contain 7 rows of 4 cells each, for a total of 28 cells per battery. Even paying inflated craigslist reseller prices, that's only 280$ worth of cells. By ripping apart old laptop batteries, I might get that much lower, perhaps into the 100$ range? We'll see.

Here's a wiring diagram for a bigger battery than what I will be building, but my battery will be based on this schematic.

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I have lots of time to collect 28 lithium cells, as the batteries on the ebike are still almost brand new. So if anyone has any leads on lithium cells in Vancouver, do let me know! :) I'm eager to get started on my little power experiments.

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jennypenny
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by jennypenny »

Pedal2Petal wrote:
jennypenny wrote:I think dehydrated bananas are really tasty if you put a dollop of honey on each slice before dehydrating.
Good idea! Though they are plenty sweet already with all those condensed natural sugars. I want to try a lemon juice bath next time though, it should prevent them going as brown.
If you dip them in a honey bath, you don't need to treat them with something else to keep them from browning. Definitely adds calories, but delicious. I use water, cinnamon and honey, but I have a friend who starts by dissolving sugar in hot water and then adding honey to that. Those come out really sweet.

Pedal2Petal
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by Pedal2Petal »

jennypenny wrote: If you dip them in a honey bath, you don't need to treat them with something else to keep them from browning.
Whoa, really? I did not know this. I'll try it then! Would it work on pineapple too? Or do I not need to treat pineapple as it is quite citrus already?

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jennypenny
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by jennypenny »

I haven't tried any citrus so I don't know. I've done strawberries (great), blueberries (good for cooking with but not really eating dried), and raspberries (yuck). We're going to try apple rings, so I'll post how those turn out. I'm also drying diced onions and a soup mix (onions, carrots, peas, herbs) to keep in jars in my spice cabinet. When potatoes go on sale for Thanksgiving, I'm going to try dehydrating potatoes to make my own potato flakes.

George the original one
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by George the original one »

What sort of good:bad cell ratio are finding with your battery salvage?

Pedal2Petal
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by Pedal2Petal »

jennypenny wrote:We're going to try apple rings, so I'll post how those turn out. I'm also drying diced onions and a soup mix (onions, carrots, peas, herbs) to keep in jars in my spice cabinet. When potatoes go on sale for Thanksgiving, I'm going to try dehydrating potatoes to make my own potato flakes.
Some great ideas here which I plan to steal! What do you use those potato flakes for? Quick story - My grandpa once dehydrated enough food for 6 guys on an 8-day canoe trip... and the only thing I remember going moldy was the potatoes. So make sure they're truly dried!
George the original one wrote:What sort of good:bad cell ratio are finding with your battery salvage?
n/a right now because I just decided to start this yesterday and haven't sourced any laptop batteries yet. My working plan right now is to start volunteering at the local "tech thrift store" and see if I can take home their unusable or bad batteries.

But I might be able to partially answer your question anyway. A lot of it depends on the brand of the cell itself. No-name chinese cells are more likely to "short circuit" inside the cell, while name brand cells like Panasonic or Sanyo (which cost twice as much) are likely to hold their charge far longer, and are less likely to go bad. Which of the 2 options a laptop manufacturer chooses to use is up to them. Here's a video where a guy pulls apart I think 90 laptop batteries and sorts them according to how good they are. I think a majority of them were still functional (no shorts), although he's not done the mAh test yet only the voltage test.

EMJ
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by EMJ »

How I dehydrated apple rings - first a quick dip in diluted lemon juice, then a dredge in cinnamon/sugar. Only every 10th apple ring or so needs the cinnamon/sugar, rest just get lemon water. All the apple rings taste like cinnamon, not too sweet.

JL13
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by JL13 »

@Pedal2petal

Can you provide some insight to your lifestyle budget? Specifically related to housing and food in Vancouver. The city seemed very pricey when I was there but you seen to have solved it. I'd love some new ideas.

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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

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J_L13 wrote:@Pedal2petal

Can you provide some insight to your lifestyle budget? Specifically related to housing and food in Vancouver. The city seemed very pricey when I was there but you seen to have solved it. I'd love some new ideas.
Sure I can do my best for you. I'll start off with a chart and graph I just made for the purpose of this thread. It's my expenses for the full month of September. It's probably fairly representative, even though some costs are maybe slightly higher than normal (buying an expensive bike lock and going on a big costco trip.)

For joint purchases like groceries and rent, only my 1/2 is represented here.

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I just realised I have two alcohol categories. Well one of them was a gift alcohol for my uncle's birthday so just relabel one of them to "gift" in your mind.

Housing is the toughest in this city. As I stated earlier, my share of rent is $450/mo. Getting rent this low is not too hard if you are willing to make a compromise or two. The cheapest I ever paid in Vancouver was splitting a room in a 3-BR apartment with my brother for 250$/mo. That was in this section of Burnaby. The rest of the apartment was shared with two other roommates. We also paid 250$/mo per person when my wife and I lived in the RV I posted in this thread.

Food is the second biggest category to cut down on, but probably easier than housing.

If you can eliminate the following expensive habit in this order, you can eat quite cheaply.

1. Eating out
2. Shopping at traditional grocery stores such as Safeway (best places to buy food in Vancouver are Costco, Sunrise Market, Persia Foods, maybe Kin's Farm Market)
3. Alcohol (you can make your own though for cheap, or support a local U-brew for still much cheaper than liquor stores.)
4. Eating meat
5. Eating dairy

I guess I've gotten a little lazy because I still do all five of these things in varying degrees. Steph and Cel (@Zikolas on these forums) also live in Vancouver, and I think they've eliminated all 5 of those expensive habits. They have a blog called IncomingAssets. Here's their July 2015 spending. Note that their chart covers the 2 of them while my chart only covers myself. You'll notice they are more efficient than I am with their living expenses, spending $775* to my $1095*. So I guess I should buy their book and learn some of their tricks ;)

I'm also developing the skills to forage wild foods as part of this strategy. Started with plants, moved onto mushrooms, and hopefully down the line I will be fishing.

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*all of the numbers I'm stating are actually Canadian Dollars, which have been at par in the past, but are now worth significantly less than the USD you are used to thinking in terms of. My $1100 budget is really $850 - around $27/day. My spending has stayed exactly the same in terms of USD over the past 2 years since they were par. Good thing I actually earn my money in USD, eh?

Pedal2Petal
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by Pedal2Petal »

After days of anxious waiting, my box of 20 used laptop batteries arrived.

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Unfortunately my cheapo multimeter has NOT yet arrived; items from China have a tendency to take their sweet time. Or depending on your historical context, items from China blitz at a heroic speed across the pacific on floating cities powered by magical fire.

So instead I built a simple voltmeter using my brother's Arduino. It's just 2 resistors and 4 wires, could hardly be any simpler. HOWEVER! IT takes a lot more circuitry to actually make a digital display to go along with the voltmeter.

I actually have a bit of animosity toward these microchips, like Arduino and it's less useful but more trendy cousin, Raspberry Pi. Look up tutorials online about stuff to do with these chips, and the project ideas are absolutely pointless. A whole lot of flashing LEDs, and automation of stuff that really doesn't benefit from automation. Or shit like a nightlight. You don't need a 30$ computer chip to power a fucking nightlight, people.

I think I know what's happening here though. Most useful applications for a computer chip already exist as products, generally cheaper and better programmed than what you can do yourself with a Pi or Arduino. So aside from niche applications for farmers with an engineering degree, they're a trendy LED blinking toy for adults.

A voltmeter is really useful. Everyone who uses batteries should have one. But I only made one with Arduino myself because my 6$ multimeter is still sitting in some port in Shenzhen.

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Anyway, I used my voltmeter (with enough processing power to outcompute the entire 1950's) to test the voltage on each of my 120 cells. A higher voltage on arrival is a clue that the battery still has its youthful spirit. It's not leaking charge and it's probably been used fairly recently. Lower voltages mean the battery is sick, and any lithium battery starts to accumulate damage once it sits below 3.0 volts for too long. Below 1.0 volt and it's generally on death's doorstep, but even these undead cells can still be carefully revived and serve some role in small projects like lighting and cell phone backup battery applications.

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My results were pretty good, although I've yet to perform any milliamp tests to find the capacity of each cell. Each and every cell will have to be charged fully, then using a specialized program, discharged fully and measured for total discharge milliamps. A fresh battery will probably be rated at 2400 milliamps right out of the factory. I think I'll be lucky to get an average of half that - but we'll see.

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Assuming half of my good-ish cells and all my outstanding cells can be used in my ebike battery, I'll have juuuust about enough to replace the cells in both of them. That's 1000$ in battery costs deferred, for 60$ plus shipping and tax.

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Just so you know, all pictures in this post are stills taken from my DIY multimeter with Arduino video.

aspiringpelican
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

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Pedal2Petal wrote:Thanks to everyone who commented so far, your feedback is what keeps me motivated to keep putting these out - I mean it!

Another role I played today that wasn't nearly as satisfying, was as an "experience" consumer. Drove 15 miles each way, had to pay for parking (paid for 2 hours but only stayed for 1) then paid for admittance into a tropical conservatory. It was a fine experience but spending almost 30$ total on the outing still isn't sitting right with me.
Were there butterflies? I have some family up in Victoria :) It *is* pretty neat to be able to get close to such huge moths...

And nice shaggy parasols! We haven't had decent rain for what seems like years, but I'm still waiting with my fingers crossed...

Have you familiarized yourself with Li-Po fire safety? Those things are *extremely* dangerous if they burn in an enclosed area, and they can't really be extinguished. It's a great deal on batteries, but I'd be hesitant about doing that kind of QA indoors in my home. If you're moving them around the house, etc, simple drops can be more risky than you would imagine.

JL13
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by JL13 »

Pedal2Petal wrote: my 6$ multimeter is still sitting in some port in Shenzhen.
Harbor Freight!

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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by jacob »

Your Arduino voltmeter is just soooo wrong. I like it! :geek:

But, yes, another vote for Harbor Freight.

(Although I thought any self-respecting engineer would carry a Fluke in their back pocket. Gardeners, please ignore, you got the wrong context!)

sky
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by sky »

I used an Arduino as a thermostat to control a chest freezer and turn it into a beer fridge for kegs, using a thermistor and a solid state relay. I set it up to flash the temperature in morse code.

My Rpi is a torrent server hosting a number of linux installation images, running 24/7/365 (except for power outages) for many years. I think it may be close to 10 years old? I got it about a year after they first came out.

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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by Pedal2Petal »

J_L13 wrote:Harbor Freight!
Nope!
sky wrote:I used an Arduino as a thermostat to control a chest freezer and turn it into a beer fridge for kegs, using a thermistor and a solid state relay. I set it up to flash the temperature in morse code.
Brilliant! I think this is a really good use for an Arduino, I had actually wanted to use a chest freezer as a fridge once I own a place so now I know how to get it done.

Maybe the ERE wiki needs an "ERE microcontrollers" section. I know of another cool one - MPGuino
aspiringpelican wrote:Have you familiarized yourself with Li-Po fire safety?
Yeah, and Lithium cells have come a long way. The world produces a billion cell phones a year, and when was the last time one exploded due to a "simple drop?"

But I'll probably process laptop batteries outside from now on. And the answer to extinguishing them is generally to have sand or cat litter on hand...
aspiringpelican wrote:Were there butterflies?
There were, but more than anything there were loads of tropical birds. Very cool actually. I'm glad I went even though I was sour about spending 30$ - dammit that's what my soldering station cost! :/

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aspiringpelican wrote:nice shaggy parasols
They are! And they came back too, I just doubled my haul within the last few days. I ran into another mushroom hunter while picking them too, he says their season extends basically until it freezes, which it sometimes never does all winter in Vancouver. Anyone want some of my oversupply of mushrooms?

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jacob wrote:Your Arduino voltmeter is just soooo wrong. I like it!
It was wrong, literally. It was reading voltage lower by about 16%, so I recalibrated with a bunch of batteries with known voltages. Seems as if the circuit itself was giving me around 18 kΩ of resistance, so I had to bake that into my arduino sketch. It's a lot more accurate now! :) I hope...

I also wired in an LED that shines on the LCD so I can read it in the dark. Shoulda sprung for the backlit LCD I suppose. It's the mad max of voltmeters.

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Last edited by Pedal2Petal on Sat Oct 17, 2015 10:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

sky
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Re: Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

Post by sky »

Chest freezer conversion to refrigerator is much cheaper to buy and run than a normal fridge. I am now using a Johnson Controls A419.

https://youtu.be/ZSRAR0efNSI

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