Duck Pond Redneckery


With the voltage regulator/rectifier & a battery, I made this polyethylene thing to hold a voltmeter so I can monitor the charging system.

Open up the cover on that thing & there are two USBs & a USB-C outlet. With the cover closed, all you see is the voltmeter.

I can charge my cell phone and/or run a dash cam on the minibike now. 😅

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Anyway, because of the full moon, I was able to test it at full speed (4500 RPM, 44 mph) with and without the lights on.

Idle, lights on, 12.2 volts.
Idle, lights off, 12.7 volts

Top speed, lights on, 12.8 volts
Top speed, lights off, 14.8 volts.

I need to hook up an ammeter or something & see how much juice that headlight bulb is drawing.

It's a regular halogen car headlight.

I guess a rope start lawnmower type engine doesn't generate a whole lot of amps. 🤔

I'll probably replace it with an LED. I need it to be over 13 volts with the lights on.
 
With the voltage regulator/rectifier & a battery, I made this polyethylene thing to hold a voltmeter so I can monitor the charging system.

Open up the cover on that thing & there are two USBs & a USB-C outlet. With the cover closed, all you see is the voltmeter.

I can charge my cell phone and/or run a dash cam on the minibike now. 😅

View attachment 88681

Anyway, because of the full moon, I was able to test it at full speed (4500 RPM, 44 mph) with and without the lights on.

Idle, lights on, 12.2 volts.
Idle, lights off, 12.7 volts

Top speed, lights on, 12.8 volts
Top speed, lights off, 14.8 volts.

I need to hook up an ammeter or something & see how much juice that headlight bulb is drawing.

It's a regular halogen car headlight.

I guess a rope start lawnmower type engine doesn't generate a whole lot of amps. 🤔

I'll probably replace it with an LED. I need it to be over 13 volts with the lights on.
That's fancy. Before you know it you'll be building cars to compete with Tesla.
 
I also forgot range & charging time.

I think they've got the EV range up comparable to a typical gas powered car, but they still take hours to recharge, while you can refuel a gasser in just a few minutes.
Not to mention the price tag

But we’ll all own nothing and be happy :rolleyes-80:
 
I got a voice mail from "Tammy, a nurse practitioner at Riverside" saying she needs to talk to me about my dad. No other info other than the callback number.

My dad wasn't answering his phone.

I told him to list my sister as his emergency contact, because even though she's 900 miles away, she's a nurse.

So I figured they'd have called her first.
Nope. But she called and sat on hold for 40 minutes only to be told they can't tell her anything because she's not listed as his emergency contact. 🙄

So I called & the robot said I was #3 in line.

So I said fuck it & rode the Goldwing to the hospital.

Turns out this Tammy person works in the Geriatric clinic across the parking lot from the main hospital.

I went there and had to wait for Tammy to finish up with a patient...

She just wanted to tell me she needs me to nag him to follow up with lab appointments, schedule & keep appointments with neurology, pulmonology, geezerology, etc because he keeps missing appointments due to the memory issues they're trying to diagnose. 🙄

So no emergency, I blew all that gas out the pipes and discovered the bike has an imbalance at 95 mph, and blew more red lights than I kept track of, for something she could have simply explained in the voice mail. 😡

He's still not answering his phone, but my sister has this Geezer tracking app on her phone that wasn't working because her CC# changed so it wasn't auto-billing.. She updated that & was able to find him. He's at a Mexican restaurant in Peotone, which is 6 miles in the opposite direction of the hospital.

He had an appointment with that Tammy woman this morning, remembered it, took a shower and everything, then as soon as he got on the motorcycle his mind went blank and he rode up to Lockport & wandered around instead of going to the doctor. 😒
 
I got a voice mail from "Tammy, a nurse practitioner at Riverside" saying she needs to talk to me about my dad. No other info other than the callback number.

My dad wasn't answering his phone.

I told him to list my sister as his emergency contact, because even though she's 900 miles away, she's a nurse.

So I figured they'd have called her first.
Nope. But she called and sat on hold for 40 minutes only to be told they can't tell her anything because she's not listed as his emergency contact. 🙄

So I called & the robot said I was #3 in line.

So I said fuck it & rode the Goldwing to the hospital.

Turns out this Tammy person works in the Geriatric clinic across the parking lot from the main hospital.

I went there and had to wait for Tammy to finish up with a patient...

She just wanted to tell me she needs me to nag him to follow up with lab appointments, schedule & keep appointments with neurology, pulmonology, geezerology, etc because he keeps missing appointments due to the memory issues they're trying to diagnose. 🙄

So no emergency, I blew all that gas out the pipes and discovered the bike has an imbalance at 95 mph, and blew more red lights than I kept track of, for something she could have simply explained in the voice mail. 😡

He's still not answering his phone, but my sister has this Geezer tracking app on her phone that wasn't working because her CC# changed so it wasn't auto-billing.. She updated that & was able to find him. He's at a Mexican restaurant in Peotone, which is 6 miles in the opposite direction of the hospital.

He had an appointment with that Tammy woman this morning, remembered it, took a shower and everything, then as soon as he got on the motorcycle his mind went blank and he rode up to Lockport & wandered around instead of going to the doctor. 😒
seriously buddy....i knew someone, a very close relative that got in his car, and drove away, up to New Hampshire, not the home heating oil company, to pay the bill...like 3 miles from the house..........

he had early on set dementia....his daughters took away the car keys, the car, and he was made to stay home......in only a matter of a few weeks?

BAM, nursing home.

just saying....

i wish you and the family great luck with this
 
Last night I set up a puzzle for him to figure out as a brain exercise.

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20231004_214424.jpg

It's a double pole, double throw momentary switch for a dash mount winch control, and a cheap universal car door lock actuator I ordered from China for $4 that only has two wires coming out.

You have to reverse the polarity of the two wires to get it to extend/retract.

I've been doing electrical stuff my whole life but my dad only understands the basics.

In the pictures, I had it working with alligator clip wires.

Then I disconnected them & called him into the shop and told him to figure out how to make it work.

While he was studying the switch, I quickly added an inline fuse holder with a 2 Amp fuse to protect my little 12v power supply. 😉



Anyway he quickly figured out that the top two terminals & the bottom two would need to be jumpered in an X pattern, but it took him a while to figure out the + & - wires from the power supply would go to the middle two.

But he couldn't figure out what to do with the wires from the door lock actuator. He had it almost figured out, then got brain fog & gave up. 😕
 
seriously buddy....i knew someone, a very close relative that got in his car, and drove away, up to New Hampshire, not the home heating oil company, to pay the bill...like 3 miles from the house..........

he had early on set dementia....his daughters took away the car keys, the car, and he was made to stay home......in only a matter of a few weeks?

BAM, nursing home.

just saying....

i wish you and the family great luck with this
My sister set up some kind of app on her phone called Guardian or something, that'll let her track his phone.

She said she can add 5 or 6 people to it.
I don't give a rat's ass if my sister is able to track where I'm at, so I told her to add me too so I can find him. And also find his phone when he loses it.



He's got the "patient portal" things set up for the Sentara health system in Virginia because he's got doctors there. That's Epic's "MyChart" system.

He's got a patient portal of some sort for his doctors in Tennessee, and I got him set up with the MyChart for the Riverside system here.

My sister is a nurse, and she set up the VA & TN ones.

But he set up the Riverside one himself and forgot his password, but it's saved on his phone.

Using his phone, I set up my sister as his primary emergency contact & added "RN" to her last name, and I bumped myself down to secondary, and added my aunt in TN as his third.

But I can't turn off the two-step verification thing without knowing his password. The two step thing will prevent me & my sister from logging in to it with our phones. 😡

So I'm going to have to get on his phone and log it out of the Illinois system's MyChart so I can try to log back in & hit the "forgot password" link & reset it. Then text the new PW to my sister.

She needs access so she can translate his test results into English, and I need access so I can schedule doctors appointments and communicate with his docs, request med refills, etc.

It's GREAT that my sister happens to be the head nurse in a neurology clinic AND just recently got invited to be on some kind of 7 member advisory board at Johns Hopkins for ALS. (She's the only one on the board without a doctorate. 😂) I guess she really knows her shit.

So whatever they find out about my dad, she'll have access to everything & can get free expertise from some of the top neurologists in the country.

But only if I can pry my dad's phone out of his hands long enough to reset his password & give it to my sister.

Right now, he's arguing with stupid people in the comments section on a YouTube video. 🙄
 
That's some scary stuff.
if you speak of my relative, yes, yes it was..he was supposed to go as i said all of 3 miles from the house...

all city streets, easy-peasy

he did not drive the highways....

well, how do you suppose he got from Providence, RI, to (near) Salem, NH...??

all highway, especially thru BOSTON...!!!!!!!

can you imagine how SLOW he must have been driving, that morning, thru rush hour traffic..?????

i have always wondered how many accidents did he cause...????

anyway, poor bastard went to nursing home, died several months later.........

every so often here, we get "SIlver Alerts", on those Amber Alert overhead highway signs........car plate number, persons description, sometimes name....

i have no idea on how many were found..........if at all.
 
Last night I set up a puzzle for him to figure out as a brain exercise.

View attachment 88724

View attachment 88725

It's a double pole, double throw momentary switch for a dash mount winch control, and a cheap universal car door lock actuator I ordered from China for $4 that only has two wires coming out.

You have to reverse the polarity of the two wires to get it to extend/retract.

I've been doing electrical stuff my whole life but my dad only understands the basics.

In the pictures, I had it working with alligator clip wires.

Then I disconnected them & called him into the shop and told him to figure out how to make it work.

While he was studying the switch, I quickly added an inline fuse holder with a 2 Amp fuse to protect my little 12v power supply. 😉



Anyway he quickly figured out that the top two terminals & the bottom two would need to be jumpered in an X pattern, but it took him a while to figure out the + & - wires from the power supply would go to the middle two.

But he couldn't figure out what to do with the wires from the door lock actuator. He had it almost figured out, then got brain fog & gave up. 😕
Looks like you building a bomb or something there
 

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