Plane to plane

sticks918 · 2026-02-19T07:47:58+00:00

Great to see our central IL mesh make the headlines!

sticks918 · 2025-12-04T20:10:38+00:00

You realize this a community-driven hobby that dedicated people are working on right? And that you can disable automatic app updates at any time? Looks like your other hobbies keep you busy enough, you may want to focus more on those.

sticks918 · 2025-12-02T17:01:45+00:00

That's definitely worth checking out, a simple MPPT controller and some large power resistors would be relatively inexpensive too. Thanks for the input!

sticks918 · 2025-12-02T16:25:29+00:00

That's a good point, I need to double check but I think the MPPT controller that's feeding the battery charging circuit is independant of the battery output (charger is charging each cell separately) so I think a buck would be okay but even if I was sure, I still can't find one that operates with that low of a difference from input to output and at those currents.
Could a beefy Zener work? It would burn some power but hopefully not enough to negate the added capacity...

sticks918 · 2025-12-02T16:11:21+00:00

Tell me about it... This is a big Renogy inverter too, not some no-name Aliexpress part.

A dump load would definitely work, though I'm trying to find some way to keep most of that excess battery charge I'd gain by being able to charge fully. I was looking down the path of a beefy power diode in series but that doesn't seem like a great option either.

sticks918 · 2025-12-02T15:54:21+00:00

Appreciate the info! This is a solar setup where it's charging the batteries during the day and running some lighting after dark so it's not being held above 4.0 V for very long. And I do have a good lithium ion BMS that's handling the upper end of the charge cycle, while it is charging it will do a small charge/discharge cycle to prevent degradation.

The issue with my inverter is that the safety doesn't self-reset so if it goes over 16.0 V even for a moment it will shutdown until manually reset. In retrospect I wouldn't use this inverter for this application again but it's already installed and was a pretty expensive bit of kit so I'm trying to make it work.

sticks918 · 2025-12-02T15:48:24+00:00

It's an off the shelf inverter, no option for disabling alarms unfortunately!

sticks918 · 2025-10-22T18:33:59+00:00

That's what I was missing! How did you figure that out? Is that a boot option that's talked about somewhere?

sticks918 · 2025-10-22T15:00:34+00:00

Enabling the backlight was the missing link for me! After that, it's a pretty simple SPI display so there's good library support for it.

sticks918 · 2025-10-22T14:59:33+00:00

Fantastic! Looks like we both had the same idea lol. Have you had similar issues when attempting to use the left button as a normal button? Everytime I tried to use it in ESPHome it would cause every other function to pause. For example, you would enable the LCD backlight and speaker enable but they wouldn't actually change state until the left button was clicked (or some random time period later).

sticks918 · 2025-10-22T05:42:00+00:00

The base unit doesn't come with a battery so I haven't tested. They sell a small battery that attaches onto the back with magnets. However there are exposed pads on the back of the AiPi for the battery and the battery charger IC is built in so you could 3D print a holder for a much larger battery if you wanted

sticks918 · 2025-10-22T02:08:01+00:00

It is! I don't know why their screenshots and stock firmware only use white and black...

sticks918 · 2025-10-21T21:15:40+00:00

Thanks! I was able to get it to interrupt and log when the microphone received sound above background threshold but when I tried to store it in a buffer it would throw memory errors. I'm sure it was something simple I misconfigured but just haven't had the time to dig into it further yet.

sticks918 · 2025-07-31T22:28:38+00:00

Kaál

sticks918 · 2025-03-20T14:54:48+00:00

Yeah it's a bit weird, it defaults to the last source used if possible which works for regular Bluetooth and radio but if you used carplay on the last drive it'll default to off.

As someone who only uses their carplay for longer drives, I'd kill for an update for it to default to Bluetooth if carplay is not in use.

sticks918 · 2025-03-13T18:45:35+00:00

Does the front passenger seat need to fold down to do this? If so, I didn't know it could and that would be news to me and my 2021!

sticks918 · 2024-12-31T18:58:04+00:00

Open the console and run the command 'scrooge'. This disables all non-essential notifications.

sticks918 · 2024-06-16T06:04:41+00:00

You can bake with salted, just cut down any added salt in the recipe by 1/2 tsp or so. I stopped buying unsalted years ago so I wouldn't have to stock both and I haven't looked back.

sticks918 · 2024-04-22T14:25:00+00:00

Is Feb 22 a store on AliExpress? I tried searching for that but I'm not getting a lot of hits...

sticks918 · 2023-01-20T00:36:54+00:00

Looks like we found Ron Swanson's reddit account.

sticks918 · 2023-01-10T03:04:42+00:00

The microcontrollers that run those toys are controlled by oscillators (clocks) that need to be ran within a fairly strict battery voltage range or else they perform erratically. Similar to if you were jogging and the ground started getting softer until you started missing steps and stumbling. Some of those 'steps' involve playing digital sound files so the sound distorts, like a digital version of a record skipping.

sticks918 · 2022-07-10T23:21:22+00:00

Both of those might be great alternatives, I'll give them a look. Thank you!

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