My 60w panel is now in place, I was able to finish the last bends to make the lower braces yesterday and this should give me a much better power yield today.



I managed to find a cheap "universal" laptop car adapter which puts out the needed 22v as well as has the right size plug for the roomba's charging base. I now have a "green" roomba running on solar power, the scooba soon to follow as soon as i get some more information from iRobot about wether the charging base can handle the 25v another of my adapters puts out.

Thats right. Cut the power to the building if you dare, but my robot minions will still be able to do their dirty work.

My Treo has been running for 2 days now on clean, renewable solar power, the camera for my security system has been running for a couple weeks now on the same and there is still power to spare. Once I get some clearer answers on how well the Roomba and Scooba can handle voltages in the 24-25v range, I'm hoping to have fully renewable cleaning robots as well. The power panel is my next project once the mounts and panel wiring upgrades are complete.

Working on the final mounts for my 60w panel, a skilled metal worker I am not.



The second attempt was much better than the first but I think both will hold, I just need the lower mount and support beams and I'll have a solid mount to place this on my deck railing.

I didnt realize you could set a mailbox name as a folder with my Bluehost email, this makes everything much easier to work with apple mail. Now if only VersaMail could use this setting on my Palm, I'd be all set.

I've been taking Oracle classes this week for work and I think the experience has woken something up in my brain that has been going steadily dormant since school. I've been back in a more computer oriented project mood all week and finally making some progress on file cleanup and server management that has been falling into disrepair. Whatever part of my brain handles book learning also seems to get me much more motivated to tinker. I recommend anyone that has the opportunity to do so take a class every once in awhile, especially if you miss aspects of school, I found I always tinkered more with stuff when I was in classes and I just thought it was because I had so much more free time between classes...clearly there is a mindset aspect to this as well.

Back on track:
SVN for version controlled management of my files
General file cleanup and management plans
Tinkering with OSX on x86

Slow but active:
Solar power project - 60 w panel now wired up for testing, to be mounted as soon as I work out the details of strapping it to my railing.

With luck, soon I'll have my replacement system. Apple is sending me a current model MacBook pro to replace my badly ailing gen 1. My final conclusion with this is as follows:

Always take your system in to an Apple retail store or apple care approved authorized repair center, don't bother with mail in support and if they try to say they are sending the system off site to the apple repair center, don't let them, they WILL screw it up.

Apple phone support and in person Genius Bar support is very friendly and usually helpful wherever they can be. At no point was anyone rude or intentionally trying to avoid helping me, though at times response times were a little slow getting through to the assigned level 2 tech.

Summary of the 5 attempts and some of my theories of what broke down:

Original problems reported: Battery charging issues, faulty L and R fans. High pitched whine in speakers. System would randomly reboot or shut down every few weeks.

#1 Apple mail in repair:
Services claimed on the repair notice were simply not performed. I believe this was due to a part shortage (the fans were in short supply at that time) and perhaps shipping jiggled the fans loose so that they spun up when the machine arrived at the repair center. A technician wanting to make their numbers look good marked the repair as done and sent it back without further testing. Battery was replaced and resolved battery issue.

Fault: Mail in repair technician lied about repairs being completed.

#2 Apple store, In store repair:
Fans actually replaced this time, fan issue resolved. When I was called in, I was told the repair was complete but I discovered that the logic board was not replaced as I was told would be done. Part was on order either way, was told that the whine was probably caused by the fans, and that they would do the logic board replacement when the part came in, if the problem persisted.

Fault: Speaker problem was in fact caused by the logic board, not a big deal since the part was on order anyway.

#3 Apple store, In store repair:
Logic board replaced. High pitched whine issues resolved, system seemed fine after basic tests. New logic board faulty in different way. System now shuts down whenever processor is under high load (video encoding, highly processor intensive tasks, etc) System crashes within 5 minutes of heavy load. Traded annoyance for critical fault.

Fault: Replacement logic board also was defective.

#4
Apple mail in repair:
This was partially my fault. I decided I was tired of driving to the apple store and made the mistake of setting up a mail in repair for this issue. System was mailed in and I gave very clear instructions for reproducing this shut down within 5 minutes of testing. I was assured that since this was a return repair that extra testing would be done. At time of shipping, system was fine apart from the high load shut downs. My hard drive was wiped and replaced (no attempt was made to recover my data) the hard drive cable, optical drive cable and optical drive were all claimed to be replaced. Apple claimed 3rd party part was causing an issue (my additional ram chip) and removed the ram. Not one of these repairs changes the crash issue and I am convinced they did not even attempt to test this. The hard drive replacement delayed my repair for a week since the drives were on backorder. Upon arrival, the system still crashes in 5 minutes under processor load.

Fault:
Repair center mis-diagnosed the problem, ignored the simple test to reproduce the error, delayed the repair for a part that was not faulty, erased customer data and tried to blame non-apple ram for part of the problem. I repeat NEVER allow mail in repairs to touch your machine. It will end in tears.

#5
After a several day delay waiting for the replacement service to get in touch with me, I am now getting set up for my replacement machine. So far the person I am working with has been responsive and helpful.