I spoke with a guy in a nearby town who does solar and hydro power. He told me for hydro he uses 3phase generators, feeds them into a rectifier pack and then into an ordinary solar MPPT. He said he's even done systems that have two mppt inputs and so one is solar and the other is used for hydro. What a great use for an unused MPPT input if you happen to have flowing water.

Pay your Farmer... or Pay your pharmacist.

Next time you're eating that soy milk in your latte, eating soybean oil in food, or anything else that that has it. Remember that these weeds dying amongst the soybeans, aren't dying of natural causes. These are "round-up ready" GMO soybeans. They have been genetically modified to tolerate application after application of glyphosate without dying. That goes into all that food you eat. I took this picture on a bike ride right down the road the from where we live. Yet we wonder why cancer rates are through the roof in rural areas and digestive system cancers (especially colon) have dramatically increased over the beast few years even more so for young adults under 40. You are what you and your food eats....

Look for local farmers thats don't use this stuff.

Station positions heard from my house. Note: when users send messages they don’t include a position. Positions are only transmitted every few hours. So just because they aren’t on the map doesn’t mean I can’t message them.

Here's a good explaination of how meshcore messages work. The first message pingpongs off all available repeaters. Each repeater adds its finger print to the message. Once the other guy receives the message, his station reverses the order of the fingerprints and sends an acknowledgment back along that route to let you know the message was received. When your station gets the ACK, now it knows the route also.

So, you want to purify water using household bleach?

Pick the Right Bleach: Grab some plain, unscented household bleach. Make sure it’s the basic kind with 5.25% to 6% sodium hypochlorite and no fancy scents or added cleaners.

Prep the Water: If your water looks more like milkshake than water, you’ll want to strain it through a cloth or let the gunk settle and scoop the clear stuff off the top.

Dosing It Right: For clear water, about 6 drops of bleach per gallon should do the trick. If it’s cloudy, double down with 16 drops per gallon.

Mix and Chill: Stir the bleach into the water and then let it sit for about 30 minutes. This gives it time to kill off any nasty bacteria and viruses hanging out in there.

Check the Smell: After the wait, if it smells like a swimming pool, let it sit uncovered for a bit longer to let some of that chlorine smell evaporate.

Just like that, you've got yourself some safe drinking water. Remember, bleach is great for zapping microbes but won't touch chemicals or metals.

Fabrication Layout Trick

You guys may remember the mobile shelter that I built a couple years ago. I built it on 4x4" sled runners so it could move with the cattle daily. You can see the video here of how I built it. 👇
https://youtu.be/tabPf5kooY4

Well its still working great, but we have a lot more cows now that want to share it than we did originally when I built it. 😆We've had another round of severe heat come through (pretty normal for August) so they are packing in under it and on the shaded side as the day progresses. Its so awesome to see a shelter that I just kind of thought up has survived being pulled from paddock to paddock for several years now and worked well for us.

https://youtu.be/psRS5vUR6as

ATAK released for meshcore. The last hurdle.