Two washes

It was windy during the night but not at all cold. I think it may be a little cooler this evening and tomorrow.

Our walk was more active than usual for some reason and took longer so it was nearly 08:30 by the time we were back. I fed the dogs then started a loaf of bread from the yeast I’d got going the night before. It has been pretty dull all day so the dough seems to have hardly risen despite sitting on the table all day. I suspect it will be just the same tomorrow.

I prepared my breakfast having first unblocked the sink which has been really slow to empty for a while. My newly acquired €2 plunger seems to have earned its keep.

I received a new Raspberry Pi single-board computer yesterday which I’m going to use to replace my present media computer, another RPi but with half the memory and the same processor. The former media RPi is going to be used to monitor my electrical system so I can keep track of production and consumption. I can also configure and check the health of the inverter without having to peer at the small LED display or cycle through the menus using the up/down buttons.

I removed the media Pi and attached it to the inverter box and fired it up. The software has helpful dashboards, monitors what’s going on and gives information about the amount of solar electricity from the panels, state of charge of the batter, loads and much more. The software is from an organisation in South Africa and looks pretty good.

Between putting a couple of loads of washing in the machine for Alma, and doing some other small jobs around M4-M5, my day has been mostly working with this. As the day wore on, I decided to check the replacement Pi was ok to discover it doesn’t boot and has no video. This is quite annoying as it was ordered from UK so took a couple of weeks to arrive. If I have to return it, there will be a long delay until a replacement arrives.

I’ve taken the old Pi and put it back as it’s my media PC for watching video and films. It also allows me to monitor and configure the camping WiFi system which is why it’s always on. The Pi is a very small computer so uses only about 5W.

We were about to go out for our evening walk when it started to rain. It didn’t rain for more than a couple of minutes so we went out for a quick one just in case the weather decided to change its mind.

We came back dry so the dogs are fed and listening to Radio Paradise in the van. The winds has changed from east to west and it seems much cooler. It’s been a pretty dull and uninspiring day.