A lot of parts arrive
I feel all spoiled saying this, but I've had a load of parts arrive from AliExpress. And while I've yet to receive anything from the monetisation of the blogs, I did have a lot of surveys completed in the last few weeks. (Yeah, I know - how does he do it? How does he spend so much time researching articles and writing them, do surveys, keep a household running, and still find time to do surveys?)
Well, actually the surveys that powered this splurge were done almost three months ago and it's taken an average of six weeks for the delivery to get here. But I have the next survey income in my account for the next bits I'll need. It's only $20 or $40 at a time but it's all helping. Except . . .
The aforementioned conceiving, researching, and writing. They do take time, and I haven't printed anything or built anything or done anything in the interim because I've had no time. I have a vegetable garden to mind, compost to look after, meals to cook, washing to do, and a lovely wife to be with occasionally.
So these parts got photographed, put in drawers and storage bins. And now I'm sitting here watching Night Skies with my wife and writing this article, wishing I had more free time.
the whole ki n kaboodle in the car.
As you can see, there's a MOSFET board that I need to fix but I'm sitting here feeling too tired to get up and do it. Tomorrow morning I'll give it a go.
A second care parcel arrived - thanks to a long survey (in multiple parts, each quite long, and worth a cool tenner apiece) - and so I have some soil moisture probes, motor drivers, and more; This time with no parts that needed repairing. So I put a RTC board on my test setup. And then had to have an eye checkup, a pre-admission consult with an anaesthetist, a doctor appointment to have both a COVID booster and a flu shot, and also get wired up for a sleep study.
Since each of those took a little while and then even more time waiting around and driving myself there and back, I've barely had time to admire the realtime clock board let alone download a library for it, and the battery I grabbed in between times for the data logging board(s) turned out to be the wrong one so - another thing I have to find time for.
So one project is the garden controller which might get finished one day. It will have the data logger/RTC and one of the four MOSFET driver boards and several soil moisture probes.
And this afternoon was spent watching a magnificent incoming high tide at a great holiday spot - but done because my wife too has had medical appointments this week and that was one such, took ages and since we were in Inverloch we decided to use the opportunity to have lunch in the car and then stroll out on the jetty. 😸
And I'm sorry this is a short update only, as you can gather from the tone of it, I'm feeling like I'm under the hammer and in need of a few collaborators to help with things. There's gear to design and build, articles other people could write and contribute, - and serious organising to do that I'm not cut out for and nor will I ever find the time to equip myself to do it. If this sounds like something you could give some time to, contact me. (Link in footer.)
And - also - PS - to whit - and to boot: I did resolder the MSOFET to its lead stumps, I could have replaced it completely but I'm a tight-arse.
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