I have 6 of these radios Baofeng 888s. They come programmed with some 460mhz frequencies that no other radios have. If you want interoperability with other FRS or GMRS radios, you need their programmer box and Chirp software that's free. These are stupid simple radios. They have a channel selector knob. No worries about getting knocked off frequency or the keypad locking. If you just need radios for the neighborhood or the kids, these are the ones. I think I gave $10 a piece for these radios on amazon. You can get a dozen for $112 right now with USB C charging plugs.

https://a.co/d/0STW4Wc

Meshtastic repeater

Parts list:

Heltec T114

4 Pack Outdoor solar fence light (IP65) 12 bucks for 4, basically $3 each! https://amzn.to/43bFpix

Rubber washers (I add these to everything lol)

External antenna

Not much modification was needed. The light itself still works with the original 3-color white modes, which is a fun bonus. For waterproofing I added a couple of spare rubber washers where the antenna exits the case. Beyond that, it’s basically stock housing with the board tucked inside.

When you're a "neighsayer"

No pictures today, but we got two array's corners laid out. There will be a third but we still have to move another shipping container out of the way. We got four corner posts installed today. Once the concrete is hard enough we can run a string line from one end to the other at the top and bottom of the corner posts to help with alignment of the line posts.

I expect things will speed up once we can just dump 4 bags of concrete into the holes and drop a post in the middle of the concrete.

All of the youtube shills are pushing the Ecoflow Delta Pro inverter battery unit this week. I find ecoflow's website very frustrating because it's all glitz marketing and very difficult to find the specs.

Let me boil it down for you... it is a 12kw split phase inverter with 12kwh of batteries that sells for $8000. We don't know the surge ability yet. By comparison, you can buy a 12000xp from signature solar for $2600 and you can find 5kw server rack batteries for about $1000 each... so for 2600+3000, $5600 you can make an equivalent system.

So is the convenience of a neatly packaged unit worth $2400? That's up to you.

Basically, if an appliance has a heating element or a motor with brushes that go sparky spark when you run it, it can run on AC or DC. The only issue is the switches to turn things off. Often the switches are not rated for DC arcing.

It might be a good time to mention something about relays.... when you switch them on, they draw power. But if you switch a relay on in order to interrupt some load, you have budget for the power the relay will use.

There are some specialized contactors made by gigavac and ABB that have what's called an economizer. There's a pretty good sized coil that pulls in the relay and once it's activated there's a second lower power coil that holds the relay. Gigavac contactors pull 2w when holding in a 1000amp relay.

Recently I found there are chinese 100amp transfer switches that rotate a big set of contacts and use zero energy to stay put once they move. . These are perfectly appropriate to remove power from high power appliances when triggered because they don't use any idle power.

Just a little trip down memory lane.... Watch this... and tell me: which saved more lives? Vaccinations or elctricity and food hygiene?

EDIT: I forgot to link to the video. https://youtu.be/a4FrdM6JOsc