#Electronics

Due to the untimely demise of my main PC, and it being the time of year where I have to get my car serviced, there will be a short break before my next video comes out.

I bought a pair of cheapo outdoor solar lights from Amazon. One is on my shed round the back of the house, the other is on the shed at the front of the house. Yes, I have a bit of a shed obsession. After a few days the front one stopped working. I took it apart to find out why…

It’s a crappy cloudy day today. There was about enough sunlight to power the house, but not enough to also charge the batteries.

What happens when you set out to build a pocket calculator? Well in this case it turns out you also accidentally invent desktop computers, and spawn a bunch of CPUs that are still being used today.

Follow along as we go through the thoroughly bizarre story of how trying to do complex maths and fit it in our pockets lead directly to the machine you’re using right now to watch this video, which you should totally wach, now. Go on, click it.

The RC2014 is a DIY Z80 based computer that talks to the outside world using serial comms. This means you need a serial interface to another computer in order to control it.

I replace the noisy fans in my hybrid solar inverter with quieter ones.

I use a Raspberry Pi Pico and turn it into a serial terminal for my RC2014.

The inverter I have for my DIY Solar setup is a noisy thing. It has two little 60mm fans that come on to cool it down. And they roar like a wannabe rackmount server.

Our energy prices are ridiculous and even taking into account recent “world events” I find it hard to understand why electricity is so expensive. So I figured I’d try to do something about it by installing my own battery and solar system on my shed. The idea being to power my servers from the sun.

This week I have literally been hacking smart home devices. With a Dremel and a knife…