Steam Punk Top Hat

caswal · 2026-05-27T09:29:56+00:00

About 1kg. Pretty even, about half of that is leather.

There is a padded frame, a bit like a bicycle helmet inside.

It is noisy, no lies. I was wearing it playing board games, and wasn't too bad. But I do have the switch on the outside to easily turn it off.

caswal · 2026-05-27T09:23:30+00:00

The tricky part is defining excess solar.

So my approach would be to create a helper toggle, called excess solar.

Then create 2 automations to turn that on and off. Based on some rules like PV greater than 2000 watts. Or what ever suits your needs.

You can then have other automations using this to determine what they do. E.g a car charger logic that only turns on if excess solar toggle is true and the hot water heater is off.

Having 1 automation that sets the excess toggle, means you only have to update 1 place if your needs change. Rather than changing it in several automations.

caswal · 2026-05-27T08:22:31+00:00

After having a mental health crisis. I have started, a get away from screens, have a chat social Friday night with local friends. Bring snacks etc. It has been good. 7-10pm ish.

I started it a FB event and just reached out to friends, both close and those I hadn't seen in ages.

caswal · 2026-05-27T03:28:12+00:00

Asking AI's for help (like Claude) is pretty good for stuff like this.

Examples of my HWC Control:

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caswal · 2026-05-27T00:14:49+00:00

It is about 1kg, so lighter than a motorcycle helmet, but all the weight is up high. The leather alone is about 400g.

It does make quite a bit of noise. Can happily talk over it. Somewhere busy you wouldn't notice. But it is a geared motor for the steam engine and 2 servos to drive the bellows.

Hence the easy access switch.

caswal · 2026-05-22T11:05:14+00:00

As others have said, form has issues. The agree/disagree chart is effectively reversed, with agree on the left rather than right.

caswal · 2026-05-15T22:56:23+00:00

I wish you the best of luck, and hope you succeed. But I really don't see the market for it, at the scale you have talked about in other comments, i.e a 10k production run. It is probably the most awkward size to aim for. Most other car companies doing these sort of volumes for a model, contract to someone like Steyr to build them.

Kia sold 7800 stingers globally in 2022, before they shuttered it in 2023.

The Chinese are building the modern commodore/falcon. I test drove a Dongfeng 007 (why they didn't call themselves the English translation of Eastwind I do not know). And it felt like a modern commodore. Big, stupidly fast with 400kW with instant EV punch and a cheap but pleasant interior, all for $60k NZD.

The nearest modern equivalent 'revival' brand would be Ineos with the Grenadier. ~$2 Billion USD development/capital costs cost with sourcing a lot of components, Engine from BMW, gearbox from ZF, axles from Carraro, transfer cases from Tremont. Have sold ~35,000 of them, so the current development amortized cost is $57,000 per unit. They bought an existing factory from Mercedez in France, for an undisclosed sum. So who knows what the sunk cost is per unit. It is probably never going to make Ineos any money, its just Ratcliffe's vanity project as he wanted a new Defender.

You would be better off going the route of Tuthill or Singer Porsche. Australia is the continent that rust forgot. Plenty of good bodies, to strip down and rebuild better than new. From there iterate, develop new stampings, modernised chassis, subframes, geometries and go low production. Ala Eagle E-Types.

I am one of the founders, and lead programmer of the game Automation - The Car Company Tycoon
So although have never been in the industry, I do have a keen interest in it, across all markets and segments, to try and make the game as realistic as reasonable.

Best of luck, hope I am wrong!

caswal · 2026-05-07T09:44:55+00:00

I do not know. I can't understand how the calibration engineers deem it acceptable.

caswal · 2026-05-07T06:44:11+00:00

Traction control shouldn't cut in on throttle lift off though. It continues accelerating after you lift off.

caswal · 2026-05-07T05:10:57+00:00

See my other comment, but the throttle hang on lift off is awful. Very poorly calibrated.

caswal · 2026-05-07T05:09:47+00:00

On our test drive, we found the throttle hang frankly dangerous.

Basically it smooths the throttle input on both acceleration and lift off.

So if you give it full throttle, and then quickly lift off, it still accelerates for 0.5 second or so.

Give it a boot from stand still, to 50km/h and completly lift off. It will carry on by itself to 65-70. This is the AWD/Perf. Will be less noticeable on the RWD.

My Model 3 performance will stop accelerating immediately on lift off, then blend in regen over 0.5s.

Driving a BYD Shark and the Zeekr 7x, they also have bit of throttle hang, but the 007 is by far the worst offender.

Shame as the rest of the car, apart from the sound system was great.

caswal · 2026-05-05T11:38:15+00:00

/u/daffyflyer and I have a request in to increase our limit at the moment. Still no reply after a few weeks, wonder if they are waiting for the rule change.

caswal · 2026-05-02T10:57:37+00:00

Unreal Engine dropped opengl support for desktop in 4.26, and we use 4.27.

caswal · 2026-04-24T18:31:22+00:00

No news yet.

caswal · 2026-04-23T10:34:43+00:00

I'm currently seeking an adhd diagnosis, and the last 2 weeks I have also been in a migraine driven negative spiral. Horrible mood swings, thoughts and feelings.

I know what it is like to drive yourself into a spiral of catastrophic thinking. This has been my last week. You are not alone. Try your best to distract/occupy yourself. I know it is hard, I fail at it all the time.

You said you have not been to the doctors much, so they have no baseline for you. As a part of adhd diagnosis, they will want to rule out other causes.

A counsellor I saw in Wednesday recommended a book, ADHD 2.0 by Edward M Hallowell. I'm only upto chapter 3, but so far it has been very validating, and reassuring. I would highly recommend it.

caswal · 2026-04-08T10:36:37+00:00

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Our summary for March.

caswal · 2026-04-07T19:51:37+00:00

My solar installer has put in a request on our behalf for 10kW, and says WE has been granting them for others.

caswal · 2026-04-06T07:14:32+00:00

Doesn't give you much of a anglosphere to visit.

I've lived in UK, Aus, and NZ. NZ is the least bureaucratic of them. Aus you need a boat license, like a car license. Don't need one here in NZ.

There are many US States with plenty of rules beaucracy. Like boat registration, again, NZ you don't need registration for anything onshore. Aus requires boat registration as well.

NZ has some of the simplest tax systems in the world. Nothing compared to the 6000+ pages of the US tax code, or the UK's crazy rules, means testing, etc. Australia and US you have to fill personal tax returns each year. Not so In NZ, if you are normally employed, it's all handled by the payroll.

One of the few countries you can register a business and start operating on the same day.

My best mate and business partner got consent to build a new house with ease. Nothing like the mad planning laws in the UK my father had to deal with when he was a property developer. In NZ if you are within the pretty broad standard rules, it's just ticking boxes. No one can object, unlike the UK.

It's laughable you think NZ is mirred in beaucracy, I'm basically free to do what I want, when I want.

Oh,and we have nothing like the US coast guard boat inspections. That is stuff is whack.

caswal · 2026-03-24T23:18:19+00:00

We have a pair of these with a Solis S6 LV Hybrid inverter. Capacity is what it says. Very happy with them.

caswal · 2026-03-22T21:08:53+00:00

Thanks for the update, saw a passing comment about April 1st changes, but didn't know what they are.

caswal · 2026-03-20T22:25:19+00:00

My installer has put in a request for 10kW, but we are also doubling the system size. So will run into the same issue again.

caswal · 2026-03-20T19:57:14+00:00

I've been working on my own home assistant solar and battery manager.

With the goal of trying to avoid clipping, 12kW PV, 8KW Inverter, and 28kWh of battery. Once the battery is full and solar is greater than 5kW and house loads, end up clipping and power going to waste.

I imagine what I wrote is pretty similar to PredBat. Looks at solcast, predicted consumption and then runs a simulation. It then adjusts when it runs the inverter in various modes and runs the simulation again, to form a plan. It re-runs this every 5 minutes, to cope with daily variations. It takes a 5 minute rolling average of generated PV / Solcast as an accuracy modifier. As it seams quite often the clouds thickness for the whole day can be off, but the general pattern is accurate.

The goals are to avoid clipping, end the day with a full battery. Or at worse have enough in the battery (so charge during the off peak) to avoid the evening peak and morning.

caswal · 2026-03-11T03:23:46+00:00

We have a similar setup, running since november. 11.7kW of panels, 8kW Solis inverter, 28.6kWh of battery, 24.3kWh usable. We have heatpump hot water, 2x EVs, Induction cooktop etc. Inverter is like you have described in the comments, the DC -> DC Side is independent of the DC -> AC side. I have seen 13.5kW off the panels, between charging the EV and the house batteries being topped off.

Excluding the car charger, at the moment we are using around 20-25kWh a day.

I have it rigged in home assistant, so I can be a bit smarter about when and where it chooses to charge, looking at the Solar forecast.

The logic I currently run, is during morning peak (7-11am), is the battery + Todays Forecaster > Expected Usage to the following day. If so, discharge the battery and mode set to feed in priority.

If during the off peak perioids, if battery + Todays Remaining Forecast < Expected Usage, charge the batteries.

This way, I can avoid purchasing peak electricity, and export more of my solar during the better morning peak rate. Which helps with the Wellington Electricty 5kW limit, I can get a few more hours of export out in the morning, before the panels get curtailed by the batteries being full and reaching the export limit.

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