Camera and battery update

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So its been a week since I left the Jackery and panels set up at the Beta Site and left Starlink running off it so I can get live camera feeds from up there. How has that worked out, you ask?

TL;DR: awesome.

The first three days of the week were rainy and virtually sunless. As a result, the Jackery hit a low of 51% charge. After that, the sun came out and that brought it up into the mid-70% range, then 80%, and for the last two days its beein in the 93-100% range. So, for that entire length of time, Starlink was consistently running 24/7. Because there was active internet there the whole time, I could check the battery charge as often as I wanted and get real-time metrics. Here’s a few screenshots from the Jackery app:


As you can, at this particular moment in time the Starlink was drawing 17 watts. It’s draw fluctuates anywhere from 10 to 35 watts depending on how much data is going as opposed to just ‘standing by’ with the cameras off. However, what this seems to indicate, and Im an idiot in regard to electricity so perhaps Im being naive, is that for about every one hour of sunlight I’m getting about ten hours of internet.

In addition to the information shown above, it also tracks historical energy input from the panels. Observe:

SO, long story short, this was enough to let me remotely access the two remote wireless cameras I had set up. Each individual camera came with a small solar panel to power it’s internal battery. I replaced the came-with-it panel with something a little larger becase nothing kills like overkill. At one point during the three days of rain the cameras got down to about 60% charge but once the sun started doing its thing theyve been in the high 90%’s ever since.

Because I’m concerned about battery conservation, I havent left these cameras running 24/7. I just check them a couple times a day to see how the weather is up there. Because they are not running 24/7, the individual cameras seem to be doing a good job of staying ‘topped off’.

One issue I’ve had is that as I was placing a second camera, I was limited by the range of the wifi connection from the Starlink. If I’m going to continue this project, I need to move the Starlink to a location that is withing range of both cameras.

Speaking of cameras. It turns out that CostCo sells the same brand of camera but the next higher grade for only $20 more than the ‘entry’ camera from this brand that I picked up. DIfference? Separate zoom lens, remote control floodlight, and a bunch of other nice features. Absolutely worth the $20 difference, hands down. CostCo is selling it at $119, and Amazon has it currently for $139.

Unfortunately, as much fun as I am having with this, it’s going to have to come to an end soon. It appears that the Jackery battery is of the type that does not do well with being recharged when it is below freezing. What this means is that if I want to continue this fun over the winter, I need to put together a battery/charging system that uses batteries that are indifferent to being discharged/charged at temperatures below freezing.

This isn’t a flaw with the Jackery…it’s not marketed as an all-season outdoor product. Its marketed as a camping and blackout sort of gear. In those capacities, it seems to be excellent. For my purposes, its great for use during the summer  months but for winter use I’m going to have to come up with something else. And, yes, the make self-heating lithium batteries but heating via electricity is incredibly inefficient and high draw.

Over the winter the batteries would be sitting in the unheated conex, so any battery solution must be predicated on that kind of environment. More research awaits.

But, in the meantime, I’m really enjoying how this is working out so far. If I lived in a place where freezing temps were not an issue, like the southern states, I’d totally have this setup going all the time.

I’ll be heading up to the Beta Site tomomrrow to install a third webcam over the area where the bears have been munching that dead mule deer. I’m exceited to see if I can get some live-action bear cam.

Movie – The Dog Stars

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I went and saw “The Dog Stars’ last week. I enjoyed the book, and I’m a fan of Ridley Scott so I figured that, as bad as the reviews were, I’d at least get some enjoyment since I’d know the ‘backstory’ from the book.

This wasn’t so much a movie as it was an episode of ‘The Last of Us’ or ‘The Walking Dead’.

I’m going to be throwing spoilers around, so if you’re wanting to avoid that sort of thing, now is the time to bail.

Still here? Okay.

The movie veered from the book in a bunch of ways. Some minor, some not so minor, and there were some additions/modifications that were necessary to translate the book to the screen. Starting at the top:

Jasper the dog, who is now a malinois(?) instead of a beagle, dies when a ‘roach’ (scavenger) stabs him in an attack on the airfield. Also, Jaspers death is a result of Bangley not engaging the intruders immediately because Bangley wanted to teach Hig a lesson about being careless and letting people get into the perimeter.

Bangley is the most fleshed out character here…not because of the script or storywriting, but simply because Brolin does a great job with the little material he has in conveying the merciless defender that is Bangley. The character of Higs, Cima, and Pops are pretty underdeveloped and the actors bring nothing to the roles that any other actor couldn’t have brought. Pops, who is every bit a tough customer as Bangley in the book, is seen more as a old rancher type with a single-action revolver and a lever gun. CIma is played fairly accurately except her own medical issues are never touched upon.

The Grand Junction airport…which in the book is a death trap manned by an elderly couple who lures in fliers, is instead a Hotel California type of setup where an aging stewardess (reasonably portrayed by Allison Janney) has created a cult-like empire within the terminal. I think the original setup of the elderly couple would have been better on the screen, but this iteration provided fuel for a brief action scene.

The need for Cima/Pops to leave their safe haven in the book is due to drought, in the movie its from being overrun by ‘roaches’. Same for Hig/Bangleys needing to depart their airport and to go live with the Families, whose blood illness is barely mentioned.

And, finally, Bangleys ‘last stand’ battle is shown but instead of being found a week later half-dead by HIg, Bangley is hale and hearty, although heavily bandaged, and dancing around in his boxer briefs making coffee when Hig returns.

The absolute biggest thing missing from the movie is what was the crux of the book – Hig dealing with the overwhelming grief and loss of his wife, and then his dog, and his desperate bid to try to find a new life that accidentally leads him to Cima and Pops. The book went into great detail to show Hig’s profound pain and loss, and how all he had left in the world was going fishing and his dog. And with the loss of his dog he had nothing to keep him rooted in this world, leaving him to his one-way trip to discover who made the mysterious radio transmission from Grand Junction.

Missing scenes: the fight at the Coke truck, Bangley’s mortar attack on Higs pursuers, the exposition of Bangleys past (briefly encapsulated in a scene at the end where Bangley talks in the third-person about himself..a Marine who lost his wife and kids), and the initial engagement between Cima/Pops and Hig. Perhaps the budget just wasn’t there.

To be fair, conveying that pain and loss on screen would have been a tall order. But I think a better actor could have done it. I think also that Ridley Scott, whose recent movies have been rather underperfoming, may have been phoning this one in and just not tried to convey that sadness and loneliness. Contrast this to his work in Blade Runner in the piano scene where Deckard, in his apartment , manages to convey his isolation and loneliness in just a few moments. Clearly Scott knows how to convey that sort of emotion…he just didn’t.

I read a review somewhere that said this movie didnt know if it was trying to be a zombie movie, an action movie, a dramatic movie, a romance movie, or a character-driven movie…so it tried to be all of them at once and failed at all of them. That seems to have some weight.

Is it worth seeing? Honestly, unless youve read the book I’d say skip this…without having read the book so you can ‘fill in the blanks’ on your own, this just comes across as a two-part episode of The Walking Dead or The Last of Us.

Jackery and camera power update.

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I had mentioned that the wireless camera I had set up was running on its own internal battery that was recharged using a Goal Zero panel I plugged it into. The weather has been absolute crap since Saturday when I set it up, however there have been sporadic moments of sun. Camera is reporting back that it is at 67% charge.

The Jacekry, which has been running 24/7 since Saturday, is showing 86% charge, although it has been up and down from that over the last couple days as patches of sunlight show up. I’ll  be heading up there Wednesday to do some camera adjustments, but I’m curious to see how long things can go unattended. Worst case, I can run the generator Wednesday to recharge the Jackery but I suspect as the weather improves there will be enough sunlight to keep things going.

Obviously, all bets are off when the snow gets here, although I suspect with a large enough array of panels, setting them at a steep angle to prevent snow buildup will work as long as the loss of sunlight from the steep angle is offset by simply having more panels. We’ll see.

But, for now, about 48 hours into this experiment and its working….so far.

Live from the Beta Site

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One of the things that has been an inconvenience at the Beta Site is the lack of cell signal for my gamecams. I have several cams out there but only one can actually check in with any regularity and even then its spotty. The ideal solution would be cameras that sent signal over the internet, thus negating the need for cell towers and signal. However, that opens up its own can of logistical worms. This weekend is an experiment in wrangling those worms.

First thing we do is pick up a “Ring”-style camera. In this case a Eufy E30, which I temporarily mounted to the corner of the conex.

This camera comes with a small solar panel to keep it charged. Like most gear like this these days, the panel and charging port are USB. I had a larger Goal Zero Nomad 20-watt panel laying around and since it was significantly larger than the small panel the camera came with, I decided to use that to keep the camera topped off. I affixed some weight to the panel so it wouldnt get blown off the top of the container and set it up.

So, the camera part of the equation is done. Now for the internet part. A few trips back I experimented with the Jackery powering my StarLink setup. Under full sun the numbers were promising. It appeared that one hour of recharging under full sun gave about ten hours of internet time. I set up the panels flat on the deck, secured them so they wouldn’t blow away, and plugged them into the Jackery. This required the Jackery to sit outside which is not a great idea for electronics given that things like rain exist. After some thought, I decided that I would put the Jackery on the deck, run the wires from/to the Jackery down and through the spaces between the deck slats, and flip a plastic tub over the whole mess to keep it dry. Ventilation would come from below but rain would not.

The Starlink is, by its design, waterproof and not needing of any particular protection. However, I will wind up putting a semi-permanent pole mounting for it. So…camera has power, Jackery is getting power from panels, Starlink is up and running. Lets check the phone app:

And the real kicker…the camera has a pan-tilt-zoom feature so I can move the camera around remotely to look from different angles.

Now this isn’t 100% as cool as it seems. The camera is running full-time, meaning it is constantly sending live signal upstream to the internet, even if no one is watching it. That uses power. However, I can remotely turn the camera on and off so the camera only streams images when Im actually looking at it. Thats great. But it means the camera and its motion detecting is off if something walks by it. The obvious solution to this is to provide more power and a more capacious battery for the camera itself. This isnt necessarily a problem. It would be a simple matter of creating a battery/panel charging combo similar to whats running Starlink at the moment.

The weather this weekend is rainy and overcast, so I’m curious to see how battery recharging is going to go. In theory, Starlink can run off the Jackery for about four or five days before it runs out of juice. Even with overcast weather there is still a measure of recharging that occurs, so it might be feasible to say that as long as there isnt a continuous five days of no sun, the battery will power things ‘indefinitely’. Gonna find out.

For now, I think its cool as heck to be sitting at work, pick up my phone, activate the camera, rotate it 360-degrees and see whats going on up there. We’ll see if this works out long term or not, but for right now its very cool.

So much fail II

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Okay, not my best moment.

Went up to the Beta Site and did some camera work, which I’ll talk about later, and got ready to leave. Locked up the conex, locking all five padlocks on it. Climberd into the truck and…hey, wheres the car keys? And with that sense of dread that lets you know you really messed up, I realized I had locked the car keys in the conex. Where were the keys for the padlocks that were securing the conex? On the key ring with my car keys.

So here’s the situation – it is 5pm, daylight is starting to head for the hills, it is pouring rain. And Im sitting in a truck that cannot move because the keys are locked up. Now, I do have a spare key hidden on the truck but that is just a key to open the doors…which made sense at the time because usually the keys are locked in the truck, not in a cargo container. And, like most modern vehicles, the truck requires the chipped key that is wildly expensive to duplicate. But, I do have a duplicate…at the house in Missoula.

So, there’s no real option here. I’m going to have to break the padlock that I purchased specifically for its breakproofness. How to do so? Well I have access to a small bag of tools in the back of my truck…theres a heavy steel mallet in there. I use that and a combination of wrenches, heavy screwdrivers, and the like to achieve the spectacular result of…nothing.

Now, having to spend the night out there wouldnt have been a big deal. In addition to just sleeping in the truck, there was a cache a hundred yards away that had sleeping bag, tarp, freezedrieds, sleeping pad, cookstove, etc. Staying out overnight wouldn’t have been an issue, but so what? The next morning Id still be locked out of my car keys.

:::sigh::: Okay, I’m not happy about this, but theres only one real course of action left – shoot the damn lock off. Weapon of choice? My bear AK w/ steel core ammo. As you know, the sights on the AK, like the AR, are offset a bit above the bore. I didn’t want to get too close because I really didnt want shrapnel or bullet fragments flying back into my face. First couple shots missed because of the sight offset. Next couple hit the lock but not enough to bust the shackle…my shots were hitting closer to the bottom of the lock, not near the hasp. Looks like the only way to do this is to risk a little shrapnel and stand right next to the stupid thing, put the muzzle an inch from the lock and pull the trigger.

Which I did.

And the lock came apart like a Mexican space shuttle. I didnt catch any fragments but I sure as heck don’t ever want to be in that situation again. Which is why, on the way back from the Beta Site I swung by Home Depot and picked up a half dozen heavy duty combination locks. I’m replacing the keyed locks with combination locks so I never have this problem again.

And, really, this shouldn’t have been a problem the first time. Wargame the scenario – you show up at your hidden supply cache with whatever you could grab as you fled for your life. Where’s the keys? One less thing to have to worry about if you just carry the combo in your head rather than having to frantically make sure you grabbed the keys, or dig through six inches of snow and ice to find the key you cleverly (you thought) hid up near your stuff. No, for me it makes more sense, especially after this incident, to use a combination lock instead.

So, a hundred dollars worth of keyed-alike locks wasted. I’ll find other uses for them, but this was a lesson I’d have been happy to not have to learn the hard way. And you, my friend, can take what you will from my experience. Maybe I can save you the cost of a set of new padlocks and a dozen rounds of 7.62×39.

Electric Lunchbox – M18 Jobsite Lunch Warmer

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I know very little about power tools but I have a surprising number of Milwaukee tools sitting here. The reason I have so many of the Milwaukee tools is that they make some stuff that dovetails nicely into my needs, and I get a discount at work on them. Because I have so many of their tools, I have a pretty big stack of batteries for them…and, of course, this tends to keep me in the Milwaukee ecosystem because I don’t want to add a new battery into my logistics.

The guy at work who orders Milwaukee tools for us brought this new product to my attention:

Yes, its a self-warming lunchbox. Apparently these things have been around for a while and there’s no shortage of them on Amazon. However, this one runs on the Milwaukee batteries I already have, and it mates with the Packout locking system of the Milwaukee cases/boxes/containers.

Seemed like something that might be worth dropping some coin on. The biggest use I see for this, other than jobsite stuff, is for hunting and ice fishing. No need to haul around a propane stove, or limit yourself to whatever a Jetboil can reconstitute. Take yesterdays pot roast, drop it in, set it and forget it.

I have a propane cookstove up at the Beta Site but, honestly, its just more convenient to break out lunch from something like this…for now.

It arrived the other day and, of course, I had to try it. I have quite the assortment of Milwaukee batts and they recommended the 6.0 battery. I loaded the food container with some leftovers right out of the cold fridge, popped them in the warmer, set the termp for highest of its three settings and let it go for two hours. The way this thing works is that you tell it what time you want to eat and it starts warming the food two hours before that. A countdown timer and progress bar show how close you are to lunchtime. So, if youre a lunch-at-noon kinda guy (as Iam) this things automatically turns on at 10a and starts warming.

At highest setting the food was very thoroughly heated through and hot. More importantly, it didnt generate heat high enough to scorch the contents to the container. When i cracked open the containment vessel the food was hot, not dried out, and otherwise exactly I wanted.

I will be the first to say that this is, for most people, an unnecessary luxury. And a lot of people will say they’d rather save the moeny and just eat some instant oatmeal made with water heated over an Esbit stove. No argument from me. However, for me, this thing is an ideal tool for giving me a hot meal aftert a long day of banging around the Beta Site hauling rocks, climbing hills, and cutting logs.

Looking in the rear view mirror

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Summer is slowly dying. But dying is a long way from being dead. There’s still probably another month, maybe two, before I need to start thinking the Beta Site is ‘closed for the season’. I suspect right around the middle of October it should start dropping concerning amounts of snow. That means that the ‘construction season’ will also be winding down.

How has 2026 gone for the Beta Site? Well, I didn’t get as much done as I want, but I got a bunch of things done, including some of the more expensive things.

  • Got the game cameras deployed
  • Had a professional and legally valid survey done
  • Got the conex put in
  • Established StarLink for connectivity
  • Found an alternate route into the property to facilitate better access in bad weather
  • Met a couple neighbors
  • Got the storage tanks buried
  • Got the secondary entry into the property cleaned up a bit

Expensive? Some of it…between the conex, survey, mini excavator and trailer rentals, and a few other things I’d say I dropped about $20k altogether. And that, my friends, is going to be the cheap part. Plans for 2027 are grand. Tentatively the biggest expenses will be:

  • A well
  • A septic system

These two things will give me the major accoutrements of civilization. I don’t mind living on 12v power, and keeping an eye open for bears…thats the price for living in the middle of nowhere and I accept it. What I will not tolerate (if I don’t have to) is a lack of flush toilets. Now look, I know that in the apocalypse the ability to drop your pants and sit on a nice porcelain throne is, at best, sketchy. And I’ve gone the caveman route when I’ve been out hunting or otherwise far from civilization. And, yeah, its no that big a deal. BUT…if I can have a nice, honest to Crom flush toilet why wouldn’t I? So those two items will be the most expensive things in 2027, I suspect.

And, of course, theres still the matter of the ‘real’ structure. I’m not living in a cargo container. I want a small-but-cozy four-season cabin/structure that has running water, heat, light, a flush toilet, internet, and all the creature comforts. Sure, I can ride out the apocalypse in a tent but if I don’t have to……. Really, something similar to this would be supermegawesome.

Other upcoming big expenses will be locking gates, water infrastructure (mostly piping water to various points on the property), fencing, gabions, sangars, decking, solar/power infrastructure, communications infrastructure, etc.

See the keyword there? Infrastructure. Its not going to be quick, and its not going to be cheap, but it does need to be done. By this time next year I want at least half of these things done. Since winter will be a time of inactivity, that will translate into a time of reduced spending..that’ll give me time to put together a war chest for jump starting things when ‘building season’ resumes, which I am scheduling as June 1 but will in all likelihood be about a month earlier.

Returned

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Back after doing a little traveling. For PerSec reasons I usually don’t mention when I’m traveling until I get back. Where to? Why, America’s first post-apocalyptic city – Detroit. Just a personal trip, but I’m glad to get back to my familiar mountain environs.

Since the conex has been set up, my goals now are to move as much stuff as possible up there before snow starts making things challenging. On the bright side, I did find the alternate route in there that allows nme to bypass the Switchback of Death that dang near lived up to its name last time I tried taking my truck up it in the snow.

Im planning to spend as much of  hunting season up there as possible, assuming the weather cooperates. It’ll be nice to have some essentials up there to make things a bit more pleasant.

So, to that end, I’ll be doing a fast trip up there Wednesday after work and, since it is apparently a three-day weekend this weekend, I’ll be spending as much time as possible this weekend shuttling stuff up there. The trip Wednesday will include downloading pics from the half dozen cameras I now have set up there.

Thats about al lfor now. Have a story about the last trip up there but that’ll have to wait until I get around to spending an hour writing up a post.

In the meantime, no I did not get eaten by a bear. I was just outta town the last few days.