dave303e

My 2c, which is counter to what I am about to do. Don't listen to people on the internet, go hire a dietician, Diets are the biggest money making scheme going so rather pay a professional and they will enable/educate you to safely and sustainably lose it. Note the word sustainable. Diets are not sustainable, which is why they work amazingly for short periods and then flop. Also why they go in and out of fashion like fads. A dietician showing you proper portion control and better life practices will get you a lot further.

Another thing to really decide is what you actually want to do with your setup. Do you just want something to keep lights on all the time. Do you want to drop your electricity bill. Do you want more... Also my 2c to your questions above - 1 - Have a look at the roof you have available and try configure it best. This will guide your decision. If you can get more smaller panels spready out or fewer larger panels. The size of your invertor will also determine how many kw worth of panels you need/want. 2- Deye and snsync seem good. Our Deye is very user friendly and seems to be working really well so far.

We did ours through Hohm Energy, they do a bit of a run through discussion with you, they look at your electricity usage, roof area available etc. They discuss what you have in the house and then they suggest a setup for you. While you are charged for a consulting fee, the low prices for the equipment means it is really not too bad overall and it is fairly hassle free. They also have vetted installers and like with our setup, everything has a 10 year warranty.

Great in theory, but please tell a farmer that. This is the whole thing around right to repair fight in the states. There they talking about 1000$ just to get a harvester to the nearest dealer for repair which makes it impossible to do every time something minor goes wrong. Same goes for most farming operations, call out to just fix our internet was R1100 in transport. I am not paying that just for a plug to be changed or a light to be changed. It is just not feasible. Then you look at a real world situations around timing and demand for the repair and it gets worse.

Trolley inverters will be an interesting one. Panels are not that heave and they spread the weight out over a larger area. A person walking on a roof has a lot more pressure on the roof than a panel does. I did a whole bunch of checks when I built our shed for the solar. It was very easy to over build it to handle extra weight.

Honestly, in my personal experience. Electrical COC's are not worth the paper they are written on. (same for Gas). It is just a money making scheme with the façade of safety. We had our gas stove installed in JHB, it was a brand new installation that came with COC. Then 3 years later we we selling and needed a gas COC. The next installer came along and wanted to charge 5k to redo the install as it was 'not safe'. I managed to track down the original installer who then for free just sent a new COC via email without even coming to check. Same house electrical COC was a joke as well. Obviously it had a COC when we bought. 3 years later it cost us nearly 24k to get the house to a point where it would pass. All my smart switch installations were fine, but everything that was wrong was stuff that was exactly the same from when we bought. Bathroom heater wiring, pool pump on a plug, pool pump DB, outdoor sockets, geyser wiring, the gate motor wiring. It was 3 guys on site for nearly 2 days to sort. The scary thing is that we had 3 electricians quote for it and they all had the same feedback. Our new solar installation on the farm had a COC done and it passed(it is a very professional looking installation) but it is pointless because the farm wiring itself is a nightmare. It is also the weight behind it is in the wrong place. No COC means you can't transfer the house or get insurance. They are not actively enforcing COC's in order to keep you safe, they just giving insurance a way to make sure there is some quality in what they are insuring and a reason for them not to pay if you didn't do it. If COC's were worth anything then they would be going into townships forcing shacks to be compliant to stop the hundred of deaths caused by illegal connections

I feel your exact pain. Our satellite internet got hit on the 16th and was only fixed 2 days ago. Our mtn and vodacom towers are dead during loadshedding, so we sit with power but zero connection...

So in our old house in JHB we had it all set up quite smartly. I do have a few plug in type smart plugs that are Bneta. Those were a good starting place. We did do the entire houses lighting onto Tuya Smart Switches and then a few of the sockets as well. Alexa was a champ in the office. Tuya does have home assistant integration and henractech.co.za was always good to us. Quick delivery, good prices and easy to work with. My learnings were not to many. The early Tuya switched needed an extra neutral wire. So you had to run another neutral from the switch up through the conduit to the neutral bar. This is a pain in houses and caused many grey hairs, raw knuckles and use of swear words. Then Tuya released the ones that don't need a neutral and it is a 5min install and another 2min to set up. We traveled a lot when we were in jhb so it was a win that lights and radio would come on and off like we were still there. The Tuya switches themselves feel good, they look good as well and of the 11 installed we never had a return or a fault. My plan moving forward is to integrate a few of our outdoor spotlights onto Tuya Switches. I am running the water pump on the Bneta currently(also never missed a beat) but I will wire that into a tuya smart breaker switch like the one we used to run our pool pump at old house on. We will plug alexa back into the loop again as well for convenience. Then I want the temp and humidity sensors in the shed where the solar is. It is also becoming my new gym. I also want to pop one in the baby's room so we can keep track in winter. Smart smoke detector near the fireplace I also am eyeing out a smart rain gauge, because can you live on a farm without knowing the rainfall. Ideally I would love control over the electric fence. There is a gateway connector for nemtek, but I may have to write the integration to the home assistant app... My 2c, get your outdoor lights, pool pump and central lights all on smart switches first. The central and outdoor lights are great. If you get home in the dark you can ask Alexa to turn it all on when you are 5mins away, Enough to scare anyone who may still be there and then you arrive to a lit up house inside and out.

I must say, nearly a month without eskom, it is bliss. I have relaxed a lot in terms of the battery checking, but it is really not a huge shift in lifestyle once you have it all set up well. on this note, if you are slightly geeky with numbers and tech and you enjoy a bit of home automation then check out home assistant. https://www.home-assistant.io/ I had it running for a week end of dec as a test on a laptop. I managed to integrate our deye invertor, a few different brands of smart switch, a weather service and a few other things. It is great to have it all in one central local solution. Can access from phone or computers. I am going to get a rasberry pi come month end and will set it up again there. For us we have a few things like water pumps that need to run daily but only on solar so it is awesome to have it all in one place. So this is a double edge sword. They will end that relief from load shedding. Then eThekwini will be hit with it and not be prepared at all for it. Family from Zim laughed at the South Africans now in Dec. They reckon we are useless at handling it. There it is so bad but it has minimal affect as they are all geared up for it and take it in stride daily. We are not yet all geared up for it and this is why we battle. It is a sad reality for us all that we just need to get geared up and gaan aan. But it is a reality and it is knocking at the door at a lot more places than just 3rd world African countries.

as Gr3mlin said, connection issue. I had similar with my wahoo using a phone, switched to a pc and did a firmware update and all was sorted again. What are you using to run your training? pc or phone/tablet? Zwift, rouvy etc?

Ya it is a lot more complex, but it is a base cost that affects a huge area if it goes up. After Rebate you still paying nearly 50% more than you did the previous year. It is all relative. Yes this is true, but I look at the small scale operation we have here, wholesale milk price went up for the first time in 3 years and we managed to get nearly a 25% increase per litre.

For a race like Amohela in Clarens. There is no tented camp per say so everyone stays in Clarens. You can quite easily take the family along, race in the Morning and then spend the afternoon with family enjoying the town(brewery) or whatever.

The proverbial sh storm is well and truly on the way in other places as well. Most farmers planted Oct/November last year. November was the highest the diesel price has ever been. At 18-25l/hour you looking at R3600-R5000 for an 8 hour day per tractor vs the R2400-3400 it was a year ago. I watched my neighbor run the process from my office, 2 tractors worked for 8-10 hours a day(conservative) for nearly 3 weeks. That cost increase is going to destroy when it hits woolworths shelves. Remember if you not eating the maize, your milk, chicken, beef, laborers etc will all be caught by that. Sure it is all well and good the fuel price has dropped substantially since then so the transport is better now. But a crop planted in November is going to keep costing you for the next year, that ship has sailed.

But the reality is that the high theft risk is potentially not as bad as expected because of miss reporting of numbers. ie they could be losing sales and customers because of bad reporting. Which is my stats argument. Take this article where there is a comparison of fatal crashes to vehicle population. They clearly identify that while the most fatal crashes involve a polo. But it is more dangerous to be in a hiace or quantam based on the fatal crashes compared to vehicle population. where 12% of fatal crashes come from 3% of vehicle population. https://www.timeslive.co.za/motoring/features/2022-01-27-study-reveals-that-vw-polo-drivers-cause-most-fatal-crashes-in-sa/ Take tracker for example - "The majority of these, almost 30%, are taken across the border to neighbouring countries where syndicates are making huge profits" https://www.tracker.co.za/news/news-room/vehicle-crime-in-south-africa Well if the options are staying in country, leaving country and being parted out. 30% is still not a majority in my understanding. Unless there are other things that can happen to a stolen car?

Honestly, news24 and Businesstech are not to be taken seriously when stats are involved. Their reporters can report, but often when there is stats involved they fumble it. Take the below article. Not one mention of vehicle population in the whole article. So the 2 best selling vehicles happen to be the most hijacked vehicles. Who could have predicted that? It is not rocket science to say yes the most cars stolen are Toyotas, but it means nothing if they are also the most popular brand in SA. No where in the article does it refer to the numbers based on hijackings / vehicle population. So your odds of being hijacked in a jaguar might be higher, but because they are just looking at total numbers no one will know. It shows the lack of statistical understanding across the board. https://businesstech.co.za/news/lifestyle/638799/hijacking-is-on-the-rise-in-south-africa-these-are-the-cars-that-criminals-are-after/ Also reading the article it just seems like a bad publicity stunt- great, spend money and time working with the police to earn more profit from their clients. Rather than treating the cause at a higher level and supporting the police/army in securing the borders and ports of entry stopping stolen cars leaving SA. This security upgrade will not stop criminals, it will just force them into hijacking instead of stealing. Honestly I would prefer to come out of a mall to find my car missing because my FOB was jammed rather than have an AK in my face as I get into the car and have to engage in a bit of high speed lead swapping...

If you are shipping and already working in USD you may as well order direct from overseas to be honest. Last time I organized a bike for a Zambian it was cheaper that way. Think it is 25% import duty only. Hope you come right. Also I am guessing Solwezi? Make sure you get to 1 Zambia and the Mulungushi race as well...

to be fair all the staff have been through safety inductions, have had site specific cautions etc. Letting the general public in is just a massive safety risk. You just need 1 idiot getting lost and ending up in a dangerous situation. They also probably want as few people around as possible given the sabotage etc going on. I think it is a sad loss, but an understandable one.

yup, because a 520 chain is standard on all adult sized dirtbikes, across brands/countries etc. We are just lucky the mtb manufacturers haven't come up with their own measuring system because metric and imperial are too standard. Next they will create their own system and then they can then sell us a new tape measure.

* silently closes the python sdk being used to build a pipeline from the data logger to a personal db....

You can get geyser specific smart switches for relatively cheap nowadays. Makes life very easy to manage that sort of thing. When we had electric geyser at our old house often the mrs would just log in and kill the geyser whilst we were driving to holiday/airport. Then she would turn it back on timing it right to be home to warm water if needed. It worked really well.

I think a big thing is also adjusting your routines a lot to accommodate your system. We are tweaking the daily routine a lot and it has a noticeable impact. We have a herd of cattle always drink after eating around 4:30. The float switch would then kick on the water pump for an hour or 2 really late in the day/evening. We know there is plenty in the tanks so we put a timer on so the pump would pump the next morning only so that tanks were full around 10am. It meant the pump ran direct off the solar rather than partially off the battery in the failing light. It meant at 7pm battery was at 98% still. A couple of day night sensors meant spotlights were on the perfect amount of time rather than staff turning them on when they leave at 4 and turning them off at 7 the next morning. Timer on the gate motor so it isn't charging all night, it can get through days without power so it can charge during the day and chill at night. Also back in the routine of taking meat out at lunch to defrost rather than using the microwave late evening not that it is massive. But a lot of things will add up.

had a 'dam we timed it perfect' moment last night...

Honestly - I am all for it. Too many wannabe media specialists spewing lies and bull dust. I know one local 'ambassador's' bike is currently for sale. The cassette and chain are dirty in the pics. It is over priced in general never mind when you consider it was a free/highly discounted bike. The owner did a bunch of blog posts on a topic they know jack about and had never actually done it. Apart from cutting the steerer down and then putting on a massive raise stem. Dropper post with a super wide saddle was a pointless exercise. Just a normal saddle would allow weight to be moved back not navigating a stupid wide saddle. If you going to give dodge advice, at least come do it here on the hub where we can chirp. Happy for brands to put the money into real athletes where they actually have proper work to do. Partnership with trail builders/race directors is different, that is enabling them to do a job.

but did you actually do utct if you haven't posted on social media about it at least twice a day since the race?

if you go by the classifieds- thumb suck a big number hard and hope for the best. One bike is a 2020 model that is for sale for 82% of the 2023 model's price. Even though it has been raced hard for 2 years and not even cleaned properly for the photos