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Crossed Wires - Solar Powered

Solar Powered

11/21/22 • 53 min

Crossed Wires

As energy costs are at an all-time high, many people are looking for ways to cut costs and become more self-sufficient. When it comes to solar power, there are effectively two ways to do this, a whole-home solar setup that requires a reasonably complex installation, usually by professionals, or a more off-grid approach that isn’t wired into your home’s electrical systems. Rees made a fascinating video based on his DIY project for the latter, that video then went somewhat viral on YouTube.

It was great to chat with Rees about the actual setup involved, things he learned from this project, what going viral really feels like, and some great general discussion about solar and off-grid power.

Have you had any fun with solar power, maybe you’ve got a whole-home system or have been tinkering with an off-grid solution like Rees’, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

Chapter Times

  1. 00:00:04: Introductions
  2. 00:01:45: Going Viral
  3. 00:11:30: DIY Solar Vs Whole Home
  4. 00:13:45: Why This Project?
  5. 00:15:26: Upfront Costs & Payback Time
  6. 00:19:53: Planning Permission?
  7. 00:22:52: How Much Can The Panels Generate?
  8. 00:27:00: Charge Controllers
  9. 00:28:46: Learnings From The Setup
  10. 00:33:02: Off Grid Phone Charging
  11. 00:35:42: Unexpected Cost Savings
  12. 00:38:07: Benefits Of PoE Or Low Voltage
  13. 00:42:52: Cost of Living
  14. 00:49:34: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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As energy costs are at an all-time high, many people are looking for ways to cut costs and become more self-sufficient. When it comes to solar power, there are effectively two ways to do this, a whole-home solar setup that requires a reasonably complex installation, usually by professionals, or a more off-grid approach that isn’t wired into your home’s electrical systems. Rees made a fascinating video based on his DIY project for the latter, that video then went somewhat viral on YouTube.

It was great to chat with Rees about the actual setup involved, things he learned from this project, what going viral really feels like, and some great general discussion about solar and off-grid power.

Have you had any fun with solar power, maybe you’ve got a whole-home system or have been tinkering with an off-grid solution like Rees’, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

Chapter Times

  1. 00:00:04: Introductions
  2. 00:01:45: Going Viral
  3. 00:11:30: DIY Solar Vs Whole Home
  4. 00:13:45: Why This Project?
  5. 00:15:26: Upfront Costs & Payback Time
  6. 00:19:53: Planning Permission?
  7. 00:22:52: How Much Can The Panels Generate?
  8. 00:27:00: Charge Controllers
  9. 00:28:46: Learnings From The Setup
  10. 00:33:02: Off Grid Phone Charging
  11. 00:35:42: Unexpected Cost Savings
  12. 00:38:07: Benefits Of PoE Or Low Voltage
  13. 00:42:52: Cost of Living
  14. 00:49:34: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

Previous Episode

undefined - Mastodon – Into the Fediverse

Mastodon – Into the Fediverse

When I first joined Twitter, I remember the excitement and intrigue over this new platform, using great third-party apps and having intelligent conversations with people. Sadly, those days look like they have already, or are soon going to be, gone and lots of people are looking for a new place for their social interactions.

Enter Mastodon, an open-source social platform powered by ActivityPub and part of the wider Fediverse. My guest this week is James Smith, an open-source developer who also happens to run the Mastodon instance I joined in the last week or so.

We chat about what precisely the Fediverse is, looking back at the early days of the internet for some context, as well as going fairly deep into the what, why, and how of Mastodon. James also shares the story of what happened to his server during the rapid ‘abandon ship’ style departure from the bird site and how one high-profile member meant a quadrupling of server costs!

One thing to be very upfront about, Jae and I have pretty much decided we won’t be active on Twitter. However, because we don’t want to cut off our amazing listeners who are still on the bird powered platform, our Twitter account is staying put, as well as our new home on Mastodon, which because of the nature of the platform means we have more scope in terms of content.

Have you jumped into the Fediverse yet, or is something holding you back? If you have comments, or have some questions about Mastodon and need some help, we’d love hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links Chapter Times
  1. 00:00:04: Introductions
  2. 00:04:01: The Fediverse & ActivityPub
  3. 00:11:50: What Is Mastodon?
  4. 00:14:25: Mastodon Features
  5. 00:19:46: No Ads
  6. 00:21:51: Content Promotion, Rules, Timelines
  7. 00:26:59: Filtering The Fediverse
  8. 00:33:02: Equal Apportunities
  9. 00:37:03: The Deluge Of New Users
  10. 00:45:46: Server Architecture
  11. 00:47:34: Self-Hosting & Federation
  12. 00:51:33: More Than Just Mastodon
  13. 01:01:23: Wrapping Up
Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

Next Episode

undefined - Cloud Backup & Storage

Cloud Backup & Storage

There’s a very common saying within the IT support space, that there are two types of users; those who have lost data and those who are going to. The only way to stop data loss is to make sure you have a robust backup strategy. Because backup is so important, with both Jae and James having personal experience with losing valuable data and now being Backblaze users ourselves, we go on a fanatically deep dive into both backup and cloud storage with our guest Pat Patterson, Backblaze’s Chief Technical Evangelist.

We look at why backup is so important, the difference between syncing your data to a cloud service like iCloud, Dropbox, or OneDrive and actual cloud backups, as well as exploring more about cloud object storage in the form of Backblaze B2. As well as talking actual storage, we also take an important look at how our increasing need for storage can have a real environmental impact and what Backblaze are doing to try to tackle this by means of their partnership with Nautilus.

Do you have data loss horror stories, or want to share your backup strategy with us? we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

As a little bit of an aside, this is our first episode to be released first on our new site and hosted by Castos. We made the move sooner than planned because we found out that our previous host, Substack, had been stripping the MP3 chapters from our episodes – so sincere apologies about that.

For full disclosure, we do have an affiliate link with Backblaze (thanks to Pat for pointing us towards their affiliate program in our post-show chat). This doesn’t give you any discount, but if you are considering getting setup with their cloud backup plans, using our affiliate link may just help us pay the bills around here, and that’s hugely appreciated.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

Chapter Times

  1. 00:00:05: Introductions
  2. 00:10:29: The Importance Of Transparency
  3. 00:19:30: Spinning Rust Vs SSDs
  4. 00:21:20: The Importance Of Backups
  5. 00:24:17: How Backblaze Works
  6. 00:27:09: Local Backups Are Still Good
  7. 00:27:43: Value For Money?
  8. 00:29:56: How Long Deleted Files Are Retained
  9. 00:31:56: Cloud Storage Vs Local Filesystem
  10. 00:37:00: Extended Version History Clarification
  11. 00:38:18: The Real Cost Of Losing Data
  12. 00:40:54: Cloud Object Storage
  13. 00:49:09: Backblaze B2
  14. 01:03:24: Simplicity Vs Proper Backup Strategies
  15. 01:05:06: The Environmental Impact Of Storage
  16. 01:14:26: B2 For Free?
  17. 01:18:34: Implementing B2
  18. 01:22:34: Personal Backup And Linux?
  19. 01:26:00: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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