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Showing posts from 2022

EGO Z6 12 volt accessory power outlet mod

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 Hi all, this will be a relatively short write up just to document my EGO Z6 mower mod to add a 12 volt dc (vdc) accessory outlet to the mower, to power things like a yard sprayer, maybe an LED light bar or work light for an outdoor event, my home made 12v cooler , really anything up to 25 amps @ 12vdc!   The reason you can not do this today without modifying your mower is that the battery system is 56 volt dc, and there are no high current 12v outputs anywhere from the factory.   Hence my hackery....   Just a heads up I have years of electronics experience, trial and error testing, and I get to play with electricity as my day to day career.      Lets go!    First I had to find a suitable DC to DC converter. Surprisingly there are not as many available as I thought there would be, most of them are for kids electric scooters.   But I finally found one on Amazon that covered a wide input voltage and had enough amperage output to be useful, was somewhat water proof, had a large heat sink

Homemade 120 Watt Peltier Thermoelectric Cooler 12vdc Mobile Refrigerator

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 This was an old project I made a few years back, just never put it on my geeky page.   Modified it today, could never find a good reliable high current plug for it and my car.  I had a "high current" heavy duty cigarette adapter plug on the cooler but it melted lol.     Finally decided just to order some of these PowerCon plugs, really nice plugs actually. I started using them on many other projects after testing them with 20A DC for extended times..        Anyway I bought this Yeti knock off cooler from tractor supply.  Really nice cooler by its self, kept ice in it for like 4 days in the summer..    Then while surfing the great net, I found this Peltier Thermoelectric cooler, it was much larger than the low wattage ones found in commercial coolers...   I impulse bought this thing, with the mindset, if the the cooler I have can keep ice from melting after 4 hot days I can probably make a decent iceless cooler with this thermoelectric thing.          So I bought it!  I know

Modified myxfitness Touchscreen to run Ubuntu, Android, GoogleTv Whatever!

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The myxfitness (aka Openfit) bike is an exercise bike similar to a Peloton or similar.  It's a well built exercise bike but with an added, large, touchscreen (usually Android) device attached.   This is what makes these bikes "cool" right now.  You can do workouts, and bike rides with others on video for a bit more motivation.   The bike is already expensive, then they charge an additional monthly fee for the touchscreen service.  One thing they do not tell you is that the android touch screen is LOCKED DOWN with MDM (mobile device management)  the same management your company phone may have on it.   So basically if you cancel their monthly service you are stuck with a brick, you can't even listen to music on it if you wanted to.   This to me is BS, I paid good money for the hardware if I want to stop your monthly service I should still be able to use the device for basic, video, music, something for when I work out! So I went on the hunt, and as suspected, if you are

Old Photos, Home Fire, Lost everything - Saved my data... Barely....

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I was just digging through some of my old photos today, and I wanted to share a story from 2013.   Hint, this story ends with Backblaze. Kind of ironic, backup... my home went aBlaze...    Me and my now wife, had bought and were living in a 3 story condominium, our unit was on the top floor.   You already know I'm a bit of a Geek, so I had quite a bit of tech in this condo, automated lights, security cameras, my own media server with multiple raid arrays, you know the usual geeky stuff.  I don't know about you guys but I like to keep all of my important info in digital format, 2FA stuff, important document scans, and passwords go into encrypted zip files, everything else like all of my DVD's and digital movie copies,  ripped CD's and other purchased mp3 files, all stored on my trusty home server with dual disk redundancy raid!    I was safe and protected from a drive loss...  Most of this data was stored on a drobo drive array.  (yea I like drobo actually, had ZERO issu