Category Archives: Call Me a Geek

The things I do and think about computers.

10 Tips for Managing DC Power in Your RV or Boat

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Here’s what I do to keep my batteries ready to provide power when I need it.

Looking for System Advice?

If you’re looking for advice on how much solar power to install or what kinds of batteries work best, you’re in the wrong place. I’m not prepared to give anyone advice about that stuff, for two reasons:

  1. I don’t know enough to advise anyone.
  2. Whatever I tell you today will be out-of-date in two years. Or less.

There are plenty of resources online to help you set up or improve a system. This post is just going to provide advice on how to make the most out of any system you have.

I’m back in my camper, on the road, for the first time since February or March 2022. I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect to be here. In September 2022, I bought my Ranger Tug, which is basically a camper on the water. I spent the next 17 out of 24 months cruising in the Pacific Northwest and along the Great Loop. That’s when I really began to understand the similarities between RVing and traveling in a pocket yacht. As a matter of fact, most of the things I discuss here were learned during my RVing days and came in very handy on my cruising days.

The reason I didn’t expect to be here was because I tried to sell this camper. I didn’t need it anymore. But then, when I got back from my Great Loop trip and another month and a half cruising in the PNW, I felt that I was burned out from cruising. Instead of taking the boat south to Lake Powell and Lake Havasu for the winter, I stowed it in my garage. And instead of staying home for the winter, I remembered why I always went away. So I loaded up the camper and headed out on Christmas Eve day. I’m writing this now from the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, which has 15 campsite on a lake.

Memories of a Bad Power Situation

Ironically, the last time I stayed here, in December 2021, I had some very serious battery issues. Like this trip, I spent the first night at Three Islands State Park in Idaho. The campground there is partially open in the winter, providing campsites with power for a reasonable rate. (The water is turned off and the bathrooms are locked. I think the RV dump station might be open but I never need it.) It is usually mostly deserted when I arrive there — this time I was the only camper. So I was plugged in on that first night.

The next day, I set up camp at Pahranagat. It was the first time I’d ever been here when almost all the sites were taken. I managed to get the last site, which was on a little spur road shared by another campsite. I arrived right around sunset. When the sun went down, it got cold fast. Very cold. (Like 15°F by morning.) My pups and I climbed into the camper and closed the door and all the blinds — the windows are not well insulated but the blinds help — and turned on the heat. I had it turned just high enough to get the chill out.

Now let me take a moment to explain how my heat works. It’s a propane furnace which uses DC power to run a fan to bring that heat into the camper’s living space. (This is remarkably like my boat, which has a diesel furnace that uses DC power to run a fan and distribute the heat.) So all night long, every time the heat came on, it used battery power. Of course, it also uses battery power to run its thermostat, so even if the fan wasn’t running, it’s using a tiny bit of power.

Well, in the middle of the night, the batteries didn’t have enough power to run the fan. They actually didn’t have enough power to run anything, including the propane-fueled fridge, which also has a DC thermostat. It was the beeping of the fridge that woke me at 3 AM. After turning it off, I then spent the next three hours shivering in bed.

In the morning, I dragged my Honda 2kw generator out of the truck. I couldn’t get it started. That’s when I realized that its internal fuel tank was empty. I’d loaned it to a friend and he’d apparently used all the fuel in it before returning it. The gas can I had with me was empty, too. And my truck takes diesel.

I couldn’t get the camper off the truck because there wasn’t enough power to run the jacks. So I secured what I could, loaded my pups into the truck, and drove about 7 miles to the closest gas station. I filled the gas can, and drove back. I then ran the generator long enough to get everything powered again. When the sun shined on my solar panels, it took over the charging job.

When the sun set, I was showing more than 12v of power, just as I had the previous evening. And that night was basically a repeat of the night before. Something was going on, but I didn’t know what. The batteries were new; I’d replaced them the previous year.

Long story short: I camped for two or three nights at Valley of Fire State Park. We had some stormy weather and it was nice to be plugged in. Then more dry camping out on the Overton arm of Lake Mead. And more power issues.

I had to get the problem resolved. So I drove into the outskirts of Vegas and stopped at a Camping World. They were willing to replace the batteries but they weren’t willing to test them. Either I spend $500 for the new batteries plus labor or I move on. I moved on. Needless to say, I cannot recommend Camping World for any kind of repair or maintenance job.

I finally wound up at an Interstate Battery shop. That’s the brand of the batteries on my rig. They tested the two batteries and quickly discovered that one of them was bad. They exchanged it under warranty and offered to replace it for $150 in labor. I told them I’d replace it myself, and I did. (And if you had any idea of how batteries are crammed into a truck camper battery compartment, you’d be pretty impressed. I know that I am.)

And guess what? Battery problems were resolved. I spent two or three nights camping out in Kingman Wash not far from the Hoover Dam and didn’t have to run the generator at all.

The Tips

Well, my backstory has gone entirely too long — as my backstories usually do. I like putting things in context, but sometimes I get carried away.

Here are my tips, in no particular order. I’m sure that if you’ve given this any thought you’ve come up with at least half of them. And guess what? Just about all of them apply to boats, too.

If You Have Solar Panels…

Got solar? Here are some tips for that.

  • Point your solar panels in the general direction of the sun.
    If you have fixed solar panels, try to park so you point them south (in the winter) or north (in the summer). Mine are mounted on the front part of my camper roof, which angles down a bit. I keep that in mind when parking. If you have portable panels, try to remember to move them periodically throughout the day. This will help maximize the sun you capture. And this should go without saying: try not to park in the shade.
  • When charging a device in a camper with solar power, charge during the day.
    It’s better to use power when power is coming in than when it isn’t.

If You Can Plug In or Run a Generator…

Here are a few tips if you do have an opportunity to plug in to a power port or have a generator you can connect to.

  • Plug in whenever you can.
    This is a no-brainer. If you have access to AC power, plug in. Campground, parking spot next to your garage, storage yard, plug in. If you’re parked in a friend’s driveway, plug in. What’s that? Some of these places don’t have the 30 or 50 amp outlet you need? Well, why the hell don’t you have a 30 or 50 amp to household current adapter? You should have one on board. Don’t think you need more than a 15 or 20 amp household current to keep your batteries charged. Just be aware that you probably won’t be able to run the air conditioner and microwave at the same time.

    Adapter
    You can get an adapter like this at Lowes for $15.

  • Charge mobile devices while you are plugged in or the generator is running. That’s also the best time to do any energy intensive tasks. For example, in my little 2-battery rig, if I’m plugged into power at a campground, I make sure I do all the dishes (which requires the water pump) before I unplug and move on.

If You Have an Inverter…

An inverter is a device that takes DC power from your batteries and converts it to AC power, often to make wall outlets work when you’re not plugged in. My camper does not have an inverter but my boat does. Here are some tips if you have an inverter in your rig.

  • Turn off your inverter when you don’t need it.
    My camper doesn’t have an inverter but my boat does. It keeps all AC outlets — including the one the microwave is plugged into — turned on. Vampire power then sucks away at the battery, after converting DC to AC, which also uses up power. If you don’t need those outlets, turn the inverter off to save power.

  • DC Charger
    A DC charger like this offers several options for charging devices.

    When charging mobile devices in your camper, use DC chargers rather than AC chargers with your inverter.
    Here’s something a lot of folks don’t know: your phone charger that plugs into a wall outlet converts the AC power from the wall to DC power before charging your device. So when you use your inverter to convert your camper battery’s DC power to AC power for an outlet, you’re making two conversions when you charge your phone through the outlet. Each conversion wastes power. Why waste power? Use a DC charger to charge your devices.

Tips for Every Kind of Setup

And finally, here are some common sense tips for making the most of your battery situation.

  • Turn off any devices that use power if you don’t need them.
    Another no brainer. I’m talking about lights, water pump, heat, fan, stereo, TV, etc. When you leave the camper, everything other than the refrigerator should be turned off.
  • Fully charge mobile devices before relying on your camper’s battery power to charge them.
    Okay, so you have a phone and maybe a tablet and maybe a laptop. They all run on battery power, but they all need to be charged periodically, just like your camper batteries. When I travel with my camper (or boat), I use DC power adapters to charge my devices while under way. For example, I was on the road, driving my truck for 8 hours yesterday. During that time, I kept my phone and tablet plugged into DC charging ports in the truck so I didn’t need to plug into the camper’s ports while I was camped. You can take advantage of charging opportunities anywhere you find them.
  • Bring (and charge) battery packs.
    Years ago, I was in a Office Depot and saw 10,000 mAh battery packs with 2 USB-A ports on sale for $10 each. They were clearance items. I couldn’t imagine them being any good, but I bought two of them. I quickly discovered that they were very good and went back to buy the last 5 they had. I’ve been using them for years to keep GoPros running past their internal battery life and to charge my phone, tablet, and Apple watch when I don’t want to use my camper’s battery power. I also have a 20100 mAh battery pack that will charge my laptop while I’m using it. I charge these battery packs when the camper is plugged in or when I’m driving my truck. What does this do for me? It reduces my reliance on my camper’s battery to keep vital devices charged. I am, in effect, storing extra power.
  • When nights are cold, close windows before the cold gets into the camper.
    I’m a fresh air person and like to keep the windows open whenever the weather is nice. When I travel south to Arizona in the winter, that’s pretty much every day. But the desert is cold at night in the winter. I make sure to shut my door and windows before the outside temperature dips below a comfortable temperature. This makes it possible to wait a while before turning on the heat.

Taking Notes … in Scrivener

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I get tired of looking up the same things up over and over again and do something about it — with a software tool that I already have.

My memory for little facts and figures is something I can neither understand or explain. I can tell you the phone number for the house I grew up in (and left in 1977), as well as phone numbers for my grandparents’ homes and even my aunt — all of whom have been dead for more than 20 years now. (Heck, my dad’s parents died in the 1980s!) But, for the life of me, I can’t remember the pixel dimensions of a YouTube video thumbnail, which is a piece of information I need every time I publish a video on YouTube.

Little things like this haunt me. I found myself looking up the same information, over and over. It was a frustrating waste of time, especially when I didn’t have a way to look it up. In case you’re wondering, the Internet isn’t always available when you’re on a boat in a remote area of British Columbia. (And yes, I’d have a Starlink by now if I did’t think Elon Musk was such a shithead. By I digress and I definitely don’t want to discuss the Space Karen here.)

So I started taking notes.

It didn’t go very well. The problem is, I took notes on paper. Notebook paper, usually. But I didn’t always take notes in the same notebook and I’d sometimes misplace notebooks with notes. And I travel a lot and usually forget to take the notebooks with me. So I start new notebooks. And even if I did stick with a notebook for more than a week, the notes weren’t organized in any way. It was just a mess.

And then I thought about my To Do software, which exists on my computer, my phone, and my tablet. I can add an item to my to do list or consult the list or check off a completed item pretty much anywhere I was because I always had at least one of those devices at hand. The app on each device shared the same databases and automatically synced. Clearly, I needed something like that for note-taking.

I know Apple has a Notes app, but I’ve never been able to get it to sync between all my Apple devices. But there was one app I already had on all the devices and it was already sharing one database: Scrivener.

Scrivener is supposed to be a writing app. People on social media who write books (or want to write books) rave about it. They rave so loud and frequently, that I’ve tried using it to write books. I’ve tried at least three times with three different versions of the app. And I’ve failed as many times as I’ve tried.

The trouble is, I’ve been using Microsoft Word since 1989. I have written all kinds of things with it, including entire books and the scripts for video courses about it. I know Word (and Excel, for that matter) better than almost any other software I use. Scrivener does things Scrivener’s way. I do thing Word’s way. I just couldn’t be bothered learning enough about Scrivener’s way to use Scrivener to write books. Why learn to use a new tool when the old tool is working fine?

I could, however, use it to take notes.

My memory issue extends to the work I do as a silversmith. When I make items such as earrings and bracelets for sale, I need to have consistency in the way they are produced. I don’t make one of each earring design. I make dozens. And I don’t make them all the same day. The only way to ensure that I was making them the same way every time I made a batch — given my crappy memory for details — was to create what I called a “Recipe Book” for my jewelry.

Years ago, I created a Scrivener file, which lives in a Dropbox folder. (Dropbox is a cloud computing storage service where I put things I want to be able to access from all of my devices.) The Mac OS and iOS versions of Scrivener all have access to this file. I created folders for the type of item, such as Findings, Earrings, Bracelets. And then subfolders inside each of those folders such as the Sheet Metal, Wire Earrings, and Bead Earrings folders inside the Earrings folder. And then actual pages inside the appropriate folder. Each page listed the “ingredients” — materials, supplies, and tools — and steps for making one specific item.

Jewelry Recipes Example
Here’s one of the pages in my Jewelry Recipes file, which has expanded over the years to include descriptions of the stones I use in my work as well as boilerplate text I use in online shop listings.

This works like a charm, provided that I create page for each item. For example, my Split Bar Dangle earrings page describes the earrings, shows a picture of them, and lists all the materials, supplies, and tools I need to make them. That’s how I know that I need 3 inches of 1/4 inch wide 24 or 26 gauge fine silver bezel wire (among other things) for each pair. I don’t have to guess what I used last time I made them or measure a pair I might still have in inventory. I have the recipe and I can follow it, step by step, with the same ingredients.

What if I created another file that just had miscellaneous notes in it? Organized onto pages and maybe with folders to keep things easy to find?

It seemed like a no-brainer, so that’s what I did.

This is a life-changing (for me) productivity hack. Not only am I using it to note down the dumb things I find myself looking up online (and elsewhere) over and over again, but I’ve also begun using it as a place to keep notes for projects I’m working on.

For example, I’m currently preparing to get my boat on a charter program next season and I need to take care of some upgrades. As I do research and get answers from knowledgeable people on the TugNuts forums and elsewhere, I copy and paste the info into a page in my Notebook. When I need the info, it’s right there.

Notebook page example
Here’s my note page for the upgrades I need to complete on my boat this winter. Everything is right where I need it.

So sure, Scrivener might be “the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more.” (Per Literature and Latte’s marketing material for Scrivener. But it also makes a damn good notebook app, keeping your data anywhere you need it.

Now if only I could stop buying empty notebooks…

My First Encounter with an AI

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Finding a saved then forgotten file in my Dropbox reminds me of my first interaction with an AI system a little over a year ago.

Back in March 2023, I started getting emails from Google inviting me to try their new AI system, Bard. I was curious so after receiving too many (in my opinion) invitations, I gave it a try.

March, 2023

I wanted to see what it would tell me about a topic I knew a little about: Haiku. Here’s my annotated exchange, which I saved in a text file on March 26, 2023:

Me: What can you tell me about haiku?

Bard:
A haiku is a Japanese poetic form consisting of three unrhymed lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively. Haiku often contain imagery and focus on nature or the seasons. The first line of a haiku introduces the subject, the second line develops the subject, and the third line provides a conclusion or resolution.

Haiku are thought to have originated in Japan in the 17th century. The earliest known haiku was written by Matsuo Bashō, a Japanese poet who is considered to be one of the greatest haiku masters. Bashō’s haiku often focused on the beauty of nature and the fleeting nature of life.

Haiku have become increasingly popular in the West in recent years. Many people enjoy the challenge of writing a haiku that is both concise and meaningful. Haiku can also be used as a form of meditation, as they can help us to focus on the present moment and to appreciate the simple things in life.

Here is an example of a haiku:

A single frog
Jumps into the ancient pond—
The sound of water.

This haiku by Bashō is a classic example of the form. It introduces the subject (a frog) in the first line, develops the subject in the second line (by describing the frog’s jump into the pond), and provides a conclusion or resolution in the third line (by describing the sound of the water).

Haiku can be a beautiful and meaningful way to express ourselves. If you are interested in learning more about haiku, there are many resources available online and in libraries.

I liked the definition of haiku that Bard provided, although I wasn’t sure about the phrase “Haiku have become.” Is haiku singular or plural? Bard used the singular form — “a haiku” — in the next paragraph. I don’t know and it isn’t what I focused on.

Instead, I focused in on the syllable count, which I was taught was important in a well-formed haiku. 5-7-5.

Me: Your example does not have five syllables in the first line.

Bard:
I apologize for the error in my previous response. Here is an example of a 5-syllable haiku:

Snow falls in silence.
The world is transformed into
A winter wonderland.

What bard could have pointed out was that it was a translation from Japanese to English, which I assume it was. Instead, it provided a new example with a problem in the last line.

Me.: Your new example does not have five syllables in the third line.

Bard:
You’re right, it doesn’t. I’m still under development, and I’m always learning. Thank you for your patience as I continue to improve.

I let it go.

June, 2024

Today, after finding that file on my computer, I decided to blog about it. After writing and formatting the first half of this post, I went back to Bard, which is now Gemini, and tried the same prompts. Note the differences, which I think are important.

Me: What can you tell me about haiku?

Gemini:
Haiku are a traditional Japanese form of short poetry. Here’s a quick rundown:

  • Structure: Haiku consist of three lines, traditionally with 17 syllables. The first line has 5 syllables, the second line 7 syllables, and the third line 5 syllables again (5-7-5).
  • Origin: They originated in Japan and are rooted in older forms of Japanese poetry.
  • Focus: Haiku typically focus on nature and capturing a fleeting moment or image.
  • Modern haiku: While the 5-7-5 syllable structure is a common guideline, modern haiku in English sometimes stray from this to focus more on capturing the essence of the haiku tradition.

Well, this was a better description that took into consideration many people’s belief that syllable count doesn’t matter. But it (cowardly) did not provide an example. So I asked for one.

Me: Can you give me an example of haiku?

Gemini:
Absolutely! Here’s a famous haiku by Matsuo Basho, a renowned haiku poet:

Old pond / A frog jumps in
The sound of water (5-7-5)

How interesting! It gave me a different translation of the same haiku? And it specifically indicated the syllable count.

Me: Your example does not have five syllables in the first line or seven syllables in the second line.

Gemini:
You’re absolutely right, I apologize for the mistake. Here’s a different haiku example that adheres to the 5-7-5 syllable structure:

Summer sun warms skin,
Cicadas sing their loud song,
Daylight fades too soon. (5-7-5)

I had no problem with this haiku written in the traditional style. In fact, I actually liked it.

Me: Very good. Thank you.

Gemini:
I’m glad I could help! Is there anything else you’d like to know about haiku, or would you like me to try writing one for you?

It apparently didn’t realize that it just did that. [insert eyeroll emoji here]

Me: No, thank you.

Gemini:
You’re welcome!
If you ever have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Is AI Worth It?

Despite this second encounter, I still believe using AI to teach and assist us in writing tasks is a big mistake. Not only is it prone to errors — even today! — but it consumes huge amounts of electrical power in a world already suffering from the effects of power generation on climate and air quality.

I could waste spend the rest of the day coming up with examples that showcase AI’s shortcomings, but so many people already have. I don’t understand why anyone would want to rely on a system that is clearly not ready for prime time and can do more harm than good.

I don’t want to live in a world where “intelligent” systems are telling us to put glue on pizza or eat rocks for their mineral content. Do you?