Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Treadmill DC Motor "Chipmunk got Fried" Hack: Investing in Offgrid Eco-Apocalypse Electrical Power

UPDATE: The chipmunk bit into the DC positive line. Not the AC line.

Last night a couple of young males helped me carry a huge treadmill machine (owned by the young lady) up some creaky wooden steep steps in a tiny basement space to a side door and WHOOSH! I was off with a big heavy DC motor in a machine so big I could not even fully close the trunk. So now I gotta take the thing apart - and buy a V belt or serpentine belt. Then get some BMX "pegs" - so I can prop up the back wheel - after I take the tire off it. There are literally over a dozen vids of people doing this on youtube. Oh wait - there is a drive belt in the treadmill. I might be able to use that - but probably not. I might be able to reuse the treadmill parts to build the stand.

Pretty Amazing Photo!! I just found this inside the Treadmill - no wonder it stopped working. Poor chipmunk (white stripes in fur along skull)


I have to then build some stand to hold the BMX pegs and the DC motor.... I guess I'll go to the ReStore building store to see what stuff they have. This was my FIRST Craig's List Free item - it retails for $800 but I guess the electronic digital parts break while the motor has a 10 year warranty - so should be fine. The motor is on ebay for around $100 (90 to 150). I did drive around in circles and I went to the wrong house at first. Oops! Sorry civilization. haha. It was dark - with winding snow-ice roads - and my map I printed out was not readable. I was just too excited to get this free DC motor! Mission accomplished. The drive itself was only $10 of gas.

Wow even my adobe cob tipi hogan is "encouraged" !! Found this in a Govment doc:
 other primitive dwellings
and right in that same section on my land zone:
 the uses encouraged
So watching all those treadmill DC motor bike generator vids - someone said if I got a solar charge controller then I should be able to increase the amperage of the DC Motor while also controlling the voltage - and I would not have to buy a diode, voltimeter, etc. A 20 amp diode is I think $12 at least.


You can see the chipmunk tail! Amazing.

So then "Hazard Fraught" (the joke name for Harbor Freight) had their "liquidation" sale - $180 (after tax) for a 100 watt solar panel that comes with the $80 charge controller plus alligator clips, and various DC wires I can use. It's "plug and play." So I'm taking the Lazy Man's Hack approach. haha.

I can charge up those DC drill lithium batteries by the bicycle DC motor hack -  but I hope I can get 20 volts on the solar panels - 4 panels of 25 watts. I don't know if they're wired parallel or in a series. It was the middle of the night. I gotta stop doing that. First I ordered the $11 solar panel of 3 watts to charge the cell phone - at 2 a.m. haha. Now I ordered this thing. Oh well - at least I'll have a good offgrid power system.

Will I end up buying an AC sine wave inverter as a Solar powered generator-battery? So I can "plug and play" with AC powered technology also? Probably. I can get a 100 watt toy for $150. But if the grid goes down - this would be very handy indeed. So then I might invest in a 500 watt generator-battery for $250.

I'm gonna ask the Eco-Apocalypse dude on youtube about his Harbor Freight charge controller - he should know. I think he said it broke or something. oops. I really don't "use" electricity when I'm hiding in the hermitage - meditating all the time. It's natural power. The response so far:

 Harbor Freight 100W solar system Charge controller Warning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5CCDbZyIpc The panels have around an 18 volt open circuit voltage, your drill batteries need to be charged with their own charger, so you would need an inverter. The panels are wired in parallel. What type of batteries will you use for storage? The most efficient way to charge from solar panels is using a charge controller with a dc-dc converter, so the panels' voltage aren't drawn down to the battery voltage, where they are less efficient. https://www.victronenergy.com makes the best charge controllers and inverters, they also have charge controller/inverter in one unit. Let me know if you have any more questions, my friend.

But I do have to "keep in touch" - and so having some kind of off grid power system is crucial. But with a bicycle DC motor "hack" then I'm not dependent on the weather conditions to charge whatever device I want to use. In this case - specifically I need to drill 1400 holes in the trees on my "unusuable waste land" as it's called - for my tax code of "rural vacant" - Sure it might take me 3 hours of bicycle work. haha.

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