Monthly Archives: May 2021

Battery Monitor Review 12 month update

12 volt, 4X4, battery management system, battery monitor, bluetooth, crimping, tips, wire, terminals, lugs, review

The BLE Battery Monitor was reviewed here.

All three BLE battery monitors have now been working for 12 months, monitoring two AGM batteries and now one Lithium battery. All are still working. The original review stands after 12 months.

Parasitic drain

The BLE battery monitor does have a parasitic drain on the battery which cannot be picked up by the Battery Management System on The Doc’s Invicta 125 Ah lithium battery. So the battery can be slowly drained over time with the BMS still showing a 100% charge. It seems the draw of the BLE and the BMS itself are too small for the BMS to monitor.

BLE App being updated

The BLE App has been updated probably three times over the year. Minimal features upgraded, but good it is to see regular maintenance updates.

Lithium battery issues

The BLE is not designed to be used on Lithium batteries, so it does not properly monitor the charge, as a Lithium battery has a different voltage profile to an AGM. The BMS has a Bluetooth module that communicates to the Invicta’s App, giving The Doc all the details about the battery. The BLE allows The Doc to see what happens over 30 days and graphs that data. UPDATE: BLE has released a Lithium version of the battery monitor.

Conclusion

Money well spent.

More barks

4X4, Australia, Ballina, bark, Landscape, moss & lichen, mosses/lichens, NSW, Plant, Textures, trees

A few visits to the Lismore Rainforest Botanic Gardens has yielded more bark images. Plenty more to come.

The Doc will probably leave Ballina tomorrow and return to Sydney.

Automotive 12 volt guides

12 volt, 4X4, Anderson plug, battery management system, battery monitor, crimping, tips, wire, terminals, lugs, guide, review

The Doc has put his 12 volt guides together on Anderson plugs, crimping and fuses. You can go to this page here, or choose Nissan Patrol on the Menu above and go to Automotive 12 volt and the articles will appear on the right side.

Barks, barks and more barks

Australia, bark, Plant, Textures

As part of the ongoing macro work on barks and foliage, The Doc was describing the various hues in the barks and leaves, he looked for a way to be more objective and found a colour palette generator that identified the ten dominant hues in an image. Some samples can be found below.

The ten most dominate colours in the bark/leaf are listed on the left. The source image was in 8bit colour with an sRGB colour profile embedded.

It is a visual colour palette of the main colours in the bark or leaf, it is not scientifically exact.

Colour names based the hexadecimal RGB colour code: https://www.99colors.net/color-names

The Doc much prefers the names of colours rather than their Hex code (#FFEBCD) or RGB code (255, 235, 205), otherwise known as Blanched Almond. Others names include Caput mortuum, Cerulean blue, Dogwood rose, Otter brown and Dark candy apple red.

Why does the colour palette look slightly different to the image? In the colour palette you see each distinct colour, but the image is a mixture of these colours and more. In essence, it is like looking at an artist’s various paint colours, before the colours are mixed and put on the canvas. The palette is just identifying the ten main colours used by nature, not how nature mixes all the colours.

Pictures not displaying properly

Uncategorised

A website plug-in is malfunctioning, which has messed up the way the website displays images. Until The Doc can figure out how to fix it, the images will not display correctly. EDIT: an updated plug-in fixed the bug.