I recently decided to make the switch to LiFeP04 for the second battery in the cruiser and eventually settled on a Victron Orion-tr Smart 12/12-18 to charge it.

While capacity testing the new battery on the bench I used a mess of random wire I had sitting around. Queue disaster. With my thinking obscured by the fog of a bad headache, I reversed the polarity when reconnecting the setup. The protection on the BMS kicked in, but not before the Victron was damaged.

Numerous posts detail internal protections that are not user-servicable, and Victron specifically list in their warranty that reverse polarity is not something that’s covered. So with nothing to loose I figured I’d crack it open.

After much work with the heat gun, I’d exposed a very well potted PCB with some large components. I started removing the potting looking for any obvious sign of damage. Pretty quickly (but not before removing way more of the potting than needed), I noticed this damaged track.

So the PCB track is the fuse…

Operation was restored by bridging the track with some solder.

Interesting note is there is a VE.Direct port and it is operational - output was showing in PuTTY and the VictronConnect application connected without issue.

Would I buy another Orion-Tr? No. Victron should do more to prevent people like me from destroying their shiny new toys so easily. I better be careful not to connect it in reverse again…

The Samlex SEC-1235M is a well priced and performing switchmode power supply. Two things have been bugging me though - the lack of Anderson Powerpole output and the loud fan.

AD5X wrote a comprehensive review of the power supply[1], in which he addressed the fan issue by including a 100 ohm resistor in the fan circuit. I performed the same modification and now the fan is not audible over the ambient noise. A bit of time with a multitool to cut out an opening for a panel mount Powerpole housing and it’s good to go.

Now I can’t really think of anything wrong with the SEC-1235M.

[1] http://www.ad5x.com/images/Presentations/SEC1235M%20Review.pdf

July 2019 I went up to Silverton, CO for Hundreds in the Hills 9. Trail selection had been done months earlier, and whilst some of the best driving was still closed due to the snow (most notably Black Bear Pass), there was still some great trails to run.

Day two saw me heading up Imogene Pass. Along the way I kept hearing a clicking noise, but after stopping a couple times to check found nothing and continued to the top. After a quick lunch I was still unhappy not having located the source of the noise and did another check. Pretty quickly I found the problem -

After attempting to support the arm with some straps and a very slow drive back down the mountain, assisted by some wonderful Cruiser heads, I made it back to Silverton. Incredibly, another IH8Mud member had a spare pair of upper control arms and after a “name your price” purchase I replaced the failed unit.

Comments from others more educated in fatigue analysis seem to indicate a manufacturing defect.

Had this gone unnoticed and failed completely (i.e. the other end of the arm) at highway speeds it could have been much worse.

Unfortunately, SPC did not stand behind their product, nor display any desire to understand the cause of the failure. Make of that what you will, but I won’t be purchasing from SPC Performance again.

Somehow I managed to kill the Bluetooth module I was using (reverse polarity maybe?) and of course couldn’t find another - I’m surprised there isn’t demand for such a module, maybe a project for another time.

Anyway, took a slightly different approach this time. Used a standard HC-05 type module and mounted it in the head. Wired up to some +5v I found and connected to the input side of the RS-232 driver included in the radio head (connected to the 2.5mm socket).

Works well, only downside that comes to mind is that the Bluetooth module is powered on all of the time as the supply to regulator appears to be unswitched.

Quick afternoon project to hook the TM-D710 up to a Galaxy Tab 2 8.0 I recently mounted in the car. APRSdroid can consume and display waypoints using the Kenwood proprietary format outputted by the radio, all that was needed was to get the data to the tablet.

For this, a small Bluetooth - serial adaptor was mounted in a project box. It’s a variation of the popular “HC-05” module as was labelled “BTM-05”. It includes both a MAX232 and a voltage regulator, so nothing further was required for power and data.

Mounted in the project box with connectors for quick removal if required.

Output from radio displayed in APRSdroid.

While walking through Walmart a few weeks ago I noticed a Black+Decker WiFi enabled slow cooker. My initial thought was what a great idea - being able to remotely start dinner or adjust the cooking parameters is really convenient. The second thing being the security issues these IoT devices present - an always-on device on your home network phoning home through an unknown service with no updates or transparency - not to mention the eventual abandonment of the services/apps supporting it.

In saying that, I’ve been meaning to buy a slow cooker for a while, and when I saw that these were reduced to $30 my curiosity got the better of me.

Of course, the first thing I did was take it apart to find out how they’ve implemented the WiFi functionality. A few minutes later, attached to the front panel between the buttons I found this:

A CEAC-IOT04M. At heart this device is a Qualcomm Atheros QCA4004. The QCA4004 appears to be quite a capable device, and includes a TCP/IP stack, RTOS and various interface options. This was interefaced to the cooker’s micro, some variety of ABOV device, via a UART.

And while I haven’t actually configured the device on to my network and don’t really intend to, the slower cooker works perfectly well “disconnected”…