I’ll try! I’d have to get a friend to pick up the multimeter and not sure if I have what little crimping strength I used to. I’m not sure if this is a faulty piece of equipment, my work was poor, or I’ve accidentally damaged the panel (unlikely).
I really hope you get power back on soon. But it sounds like you were well prepared and will do fine in a zombie apocalypse
Eh, it’s very unlikely you’ve damaged the panel. Worst that might have happened is a wire pulling from the back, dab of solder will do ya there (actually had to do that on the one we’re using right now, when the move manked the positive) . Mostly it’s the difference between the gauge of cable on the panel and what the connector wants, but a little extra crimpy can fix.
I used the cable that came with (only halving it to insert the regulator in the middle) so idk. Gauge should be ok? It definitely needs recrimpling now but that’s after I moved it and the wires pulled out of the ferrules. (The controller isn’t secured to anything to protect it against motion pulling on them.)
Before that it was working fine, just a really low output even in full sun 🤨
Edit: Oh, does the gauge matter for the regulator? It shouldn’t right?
I do have a cheap soldering kit somewhere if need be.
Oh man… I’ve left the battery sitting for like a year or two without draining it as well. I hope there’s no problem caused by that.
All g, so you need to recrimp the ferrules, then test the current coming out of that. If all good, then you test the current going into the charge controller. (Just on the screw terminals)
Battery would be low but okayish, car batteries get used because they’re so hard to kill. But if you have a mains charger that would be useful to give it a bit of juicing (for my smaller ones i just use this one)
I’ll try! I’d have to get a friend to pick up the multimeter and not sure if I have what little crimping strength I used to. I’m not sure if this is a faulty piece of equipment, my work was poor, or I’ve accidentally damaged the panel (unlikely).
I really hope you get power back on soon. But it sounds like you were well prepared and will do fine in a zombie apocalypse
Eh, it’s very unlikely you’ve damaged the panel. Worst that might have happened is a wire pulling from the back, dab of solder will do ya there (actually had to do that on the one we’re using right now, when the move manked the positive) . Mostly it’s the difference between the gauge of cable on the panel and what the connector wants, but a little extra crimpy can fix.
I used the cable that came with (only halving it to insert the regulator in the middle) so idk. Gauge should be ok? It definitely needs recrimpling now but that’s after I moved it and the wires pulled out of the ferrules. (The controller isn’t secured to anything to protect it against motion pulling on them.)
Before that it was working fine, just a really low output even in full sun 🤨
Edit: Oh, does the gauge matter for the regulator? It shouldn’t right?
I do have a cheap soldering kit somewhere if need be.
Oh man… I’ve left the battery sitting for like a year or two without draining it as well. I hope there’s no problem caused by that.
All g, so you need to recrimp the ferrules, then test the current coming out of that. If all good, then you test the current going into the charge controller. (Just on the screw terminals)
Battery would be low but okayish, car batteries get used because they’re so hard to kill. But if you have a mains charger that would be useful to give it a bit of juicing (for my smaller ones i just use this one)
Thanks! I’d be scared to hook anything up to mains though. Knowing me I’d manage to become human popcorn
Now you’re just being self deprecating!