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Showing posts from August, 2014

my notes on Adafruit's "Firewalker Shoes" tutorial...

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This post is intended to provide clarity to the same problems I ran into while attempting to building the "firewalker" shoes found on the Adafruit tutorial page . I am in no way affiliated with Adafruit and this page is intended for educational purposes only so I am not responsible for anything you do.  On that note, my hat is off to the original designer(s) of this project.  it's pretty darn cool... first, the FW tutorial does tell you to first read the getting started with flora guide.  Make sure you do this.  this will ensure your computer has the drivers as needed.  But the Adafruit tutorial  covers the transfer of files and definitions in a way that (to me) seemed more complicated than needed, so the way I present below is just an alternative method.  both work just fine. Once you have verified your drivers are ok, you should also have your Arduino IDE platform installed already.  So, let's proceed. In the getting started guide, it tells you to download th

Myths about Solar Energy Systems at Home

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So the coming elections are causing a lot of misinformation to fly around like most any election.  So here is my contribution towards a fair representation of the truth. My friend had a solar installation on his rooftop and after asking him a ton of questions, I eventually found myself signing up as well.  since then I've seen what it can do and why the energy companies hate it so much. MYTH #1 - SOLAR CUSTOMERS AREN'T PAYING FOR THEIR SHARE OF THE GRID COMPARED TO NORMAL ENERGY CUSTOMERS. This is the biggest myth that annoys me the most, so I'm addressing it first. Anyone connected to the power grid pays a monthly service fee.  The service fee acts like insurance for everyone when something goes wrong and your power company has to fix it, this service fee basically pays for it.  Some people think they can do their own off-grid solar installation to avoid this service fee and "stick it to the man."  But if they did that, any problems with power equipment s