John Weiland

Thanks again for responses.  Finally settled on a Red Tiger ViewClear 70 dashcam that seems to be working pretty well.  Bought a separate 5VDC/3A converter for plugging into 120VAC wall outlet....all working well.  Very pleased with the option to use wireless approach for data storage and transfer, or the internal micro-SD card (comes with 128Gb standard card and I added a 512Gb card to the purchase).  For our needs, it works very well just to remove the SD card and use a USB adapter to dump the desired files from the card onto the home laptop.  Added bonus is the long-cabled extra camera provided for the rear window of the vehicle.  This allows us to have the main camera on the inside of the barn and the 'rear' camera inside of an animal stall where the main camera can't see.  File storage can be adjusted to save in 1 minute, 3 minute or 5 minute increments and camera resolution can be changed to save on storage space.  Very pleased and thinking of adding a few more for other locations on the property.  Thanks!

John F Dean wrote:There are many variables here.   What is right for one person and situation may not be right for another.  

Although I have a 10 year old Nissan Murano, I would stay away from CVTs.  They tend to brea(k) down sooner than conventional transmissions.

Agreed.  Firstly, none of our vehicles were purchased new.  My Toyota RAV4 has been pretty good, even for a salvage car.  My wife's Nissan Xterra gets pretty bad mileage for its size, but has been amazingly reliable and she likes the clearance and true 4X4.  It gets used once or twice per week.  She's also a die-hard manual transmission user, so likes the stick.  The Toyota Tundra 4X4 is the hauler and towing rig and actually gets fair highway mileage with the smaller V8.  Like others, and not to ignore our dear neighbors in Canada to the north, circumstances (rural and cold) would make using an EV 'worrisome'.  Which leads to a question for you John....

I'm aware as well of the issues with the Murano CVT, but also have observed that most hybrids (standard and plug-in) use CVTs.  I've been told by one mechanic that at lease Toyota has been refining the hybrid drivetrain (with CVT) for some time now and is pretty robust.  Also learned that some of the recent Subarus now are using the Toyota drivetrain in their hybrids and am keeping that in mind if one of our current vehicles is ready for trade or scrap.  So do you think CVTs in general suffer from early decline or perhaps the one used in the Murano and perhaps others was just not up to snuff?

Finally, although mileage isn't great I'm also leaning towards Nissan Frontier or Honda Ridgeline (used) if our truck is kaput.  We don't use these larger vehicles much, whick keeps cost and fuel usage down, but they are indispensible when needed.  If wife wants to stick with used Nissan, I would probably look at Pathfinder which holds reliability while having rather high cost depretiation.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:

John Weiland wrote:

In an inverted corollary to this observation, I find that the best way to find a lost item on the property is to go buy a new one....the old one will magically appear just as soon as you've used the new one past the point of being able to return it!  ...  ;-)

Yup!  Me too!  The people at the hardware store, wherever I live know this about me and are kind

Second corollary--for winter climate application:  If you've lost something in the snow, search for it with your snowblower.  Like a metal detector, only more efficient, it will suck up and "notify" you of lost item being present.  No annoying beeps either....it will kill your engine pronto! :-)

John F Dean wrote:....Now I am trying to figure out the reason I didn’t unroll them in place … if there is a reason.

In an inverted corollary to this observation, I find that the best way to find a lost item on the property is to go buy a new one....the old one will magically appear just as soon as you've used the new one past the point of being able to return it!  ...  ;-)

Nikolaj Vinicoff wrote:

a)   (Also my brain) "What a stupid idea... .?"

b)    ....YOU SUDDENLY HAVE A VISION and you can't afford to wait 30 minutes until the rain stops.

c)    ....perhaps it has something to do with finding a balance between analysis and action,

d)  ....it is a personal story of mine which has led to a pretty epic small scale system of a rice, swales planted to multiple fruit and support trees, ground covers, neighboured by a future veggie garden (beds made but not fully planted) and a banana/papaya/coconut circle topped up with palm mulch.

Permit me to wax psychological on a cold, snowy, northern Minnesota Sunday afternoon..... ?   ;-)

In (a) you reveal the presence the "inner critical voice" that many of us share and which so often is assumed to have its origins in our own independent experiences.  But more typically that voice came from another....a parent/caregiver....in efforts to 'shame' you away from certain behaviors.  That now carries forward into your adult life where you will find many opportunities to shame yourself again over efforts to simply try something new.

Not content with fate providing the right situation to prove you correct in that shame, you take the worst time (b) to attempt to plant the rice, nudging your efforts towards failure so that you can actually feel justified in the self-depricating state.

As you begin to realize how the interplay between (a) and (b) can lead to overthinking and subsequent inertia (Analysis Paralysis), you begin to embrace the better, more realistic and fruitful idea that a balance between careful planning and diving in with the shovel (c) is an appropriate and time-tested response to problem solving.  Ultimately, your efforts lead to ....
(d)  the epic garden and forest that you have nurtured and soon will nurture you!

You join countless many on this road to permie realization and self-actualization.....  Glasses raised to all of us on that path! ('clink')

Are plums or other stone fruits found in your area?  May be worth checking for viruses since loquat is a close enough relative to other stone fruits and is known to become infected by plum pox virus, a virus transmitted by aphids and well known in southern Europe..  If you have knowledge of either a university or agricultural assistance office in your area, they may be helpful with a diagnosis of the disease in addition to, or beyond, the damage cause by the aphids alone.

Just a possibility depending on how much PV surface area we are talking about here and I realize this does not solve your problem of accessibility.  I have a single panel for charging an electric utility vehicle for the farmstead.  For the most part that vehicle in winter is charged in the garage using a standard plug-in charger.  But I've aldready determined that a good sunny day will drive pretty decent power through that panel in midwinter for recharging the vehicle.....**IF** it is clear of snow.  Just now not doing that since there is a few inches of crusted snow/ice covering ~40% of the panel.  This would melt off relatively quickly if we had some sun and the temps stayed above 10F for a long enough stretch, but the time of year is working against us.  Nevertheless, if I really needed that panel cleared, I probably would use a tarp draped over the panel and a space heater running underneath the tarp so the heat rose upward across and underneath the panel.  I've found that this usually loosens ice and snow to the point where you can remove it in chunks manually or teasing the pieces off with a long 2X4....the wood being more gentle on the PV surface.  Hoping this may offer some ideas.

Thank you for these responses....  Matt, I will look into the link you offered and will see if that expense is something my wife is comfortable with.  It's for keeping an eye on a fair number of rescue animals and it may be worth it for her.  (She is not incorporated as a non-profit, so there would be no way to buy this as a business expense.)  All the same, a good lead...Thanks!  

Cell phone/Android suggestion:  Well, I have an older iPhone 6s gathering dust.  If this was attached to its power/charging cord, would the app your are describing (or similar) allow for recording?  Does the Android app to which you are referring allow for auto-delete of past material so that it can continually record most recent video?  Not sure what the storage size in that generation iPhone was....32Gb?  I know the battery was dying, so I would need to keep it plugged in.

Dashcam:  Had not thought of that!.....Will look into these tonight.  I suspect I would need a 120V -> 12V power converter to run such a device, yes?  But if it works, that would be easily achieved.  Again, thanks for these great leads!

Resurrecting this thread to ask about very low-tech video surveillance camera(s).  In our case, these would be used inside of farm buildings although weather-tolerant would be a plus.  A wired camera system would be fine, but battery powered also acceptable.  Here's the more crucial details:  We are looking for a set up that can store ~24 hr of video/audio and auto-erase information recorded before that......We do not need to have recordings before that time period.  If it can record in the dark like many trail cameras, that too would be a plus.  Here's the hardest part to find it seems at this point in the technology:  the set-up should NOT require

--cell phone service

--Wireless service

--Bluetooth connection.

Our hope is that recorded information could be stored directly on camera-interfaced flash media or on a USB-connected solid-state drive.  In the event that we wish to review recorded information, we would  just take the storage media into the house for viewing on the home computer.  Please let me know if any readers here are familiar with such a system that I may look into.  Much thanks!

Eric,   Thank you for your references.  As I was poking through them this weekend, I went down additional rabbit holes trying first to see if there is anything in the DIY battery world that would even come close as well as investigating durable polymer cases that would fit the plans.  Just to recap, for the golf cart....short of selling my current one and buying another used one with greater battery compartment size flexibility.....I'm pretty limited to something 7" wide.  This is standard GC2 lead acid battery width and indeed some LiFePO4 manufacturers sell dedicated 36V or 48V single batteries to fit these compartments (single batteries still needing to be connected in parallel to 1, 2, or 3 additional identical batteries for any useful performance).  Although I will have to re-measure to be sure, I suspect one long ~30 inch container box that is 7" wide, if durable enough to withstand the weight,  could accomodate the requisite 16 prismatic cells in linear array and potentially still have room for the BMS.  If need be as well I could exercise the option that you mentioned....building them from scratch out of wood and applying the desired flame retardants for fire protection.  

Another option that I may resign myself to is to stay at 36V with the golf cart and build a separate set of boxes at 48V for our basement where the racked array would be poweirng, through a charger-inverter, a 220V deep well water pump, the propane furnace fan and associated electronics, and potentially some sump pumps....all for emergency back-up use only.  Yet even here it *may* be possible to build the long, linear array of cells for 48v, ..... just not as necessary since the space requirements are not so crucial.  Cells for the 36V build for the golf cart would fit in a shorter box as excpected.  I'm pasting below some containers I located online, although some like the TEMU vendor I've not dealth with and am wary of quality from here even if not based on experience.  Modifications would need to be made to the case(s) for preference and safey, but durability might be okay.  Cells (100 Ah) from either EVE or BYD would fit these with some room to spare.  I could even buy a bit on the long side for the case and cut it down to fit with a reconstruction of the cut end.  Along the way here I'm trying to gain knowledge about what makes one battery/cell type better for the amperage bursts of electric vehicles vs batteries considered adequate for home power systems...any insight here would be most welome.  By doing a DIY of the battery build and assuming good components and 'operator competency' ( here's hoping!), the savings seem pretty substantial and the knowledge gained quite gratifying.  Will try to continue with updates here as progress is made.  Thanks again for the comments and links, Eric!...