Just had a great time with my cooler. it was a total life safer. A few things I learned: 1. Building the cooler was not difficult! I was intimidated by it in the past as I thought I was not a handy person, but it really just involved sourcing the parts and mashing them together. It was only one even...

Can you post some details about what kind of panels and charge controller you have?

Buy online from Amazon and ship to Blaine. There are a few options for this. I used one called Ship2Blaine which is free/by donation and run out of someone's house -- 10 min drive from Blaine city center.

... you are in the right place. Questions tend to recur so here is some information for you, based on my own experiences lighting a 30-person camp. Power sources You need to figure out a power source. - Generator: Gives as much power as you need, works with any plug-in AC light, but will have to run...

This kind of light is good for chilling, but doesn't quite reach the level of "bright" that is sometimes nice (e.g. while cooking dinner). If you are in an enclosed space where light will get thrown on the ceiling and walls, it will be brighter. But I suggest getting a high-brightness camping lanter...

Figjam coolers use 1 to 2 Amps at 12V, depending on the power of your fan and pump, so figure out how many hours you want to run them. e.g. 3 hours/day * 2 coolers * 2 amps = 12 Amp-hours per day. Those lights won't work on a 12V battery (3AA's = 4.5V, what they're designed for), so no you cannot ea...

This seems like a reasonable plan. You'll need a 12V power supply. Look at the power ratings on the LED strips and see what the max power is -- maybe 30 W or so -- you would ordinarily then buy a 40W supply and be done. With four strips you need to add up their power requirements, so maybe you need ...

Go simple -- get something with integrated batteries that runs on standard sizes. You can get strings of LEDs that run on AA batteries, and you can get LED-based camping lanterns that likely run on C or D cells (which you could maybe decorate with fabric or tissue paper to change the colour). Look o...

Usually EL wire is hooked up like this: {Battery/driver --> +- wires --> connector} == {connector <-- +- wires <-- EL wire} Where I wrote "+- wires" I mean the paired wires that carry power and ground. The connection from EL wire to +- wires is really finicky -- involves stripping the wire without d...

Re: the math I find it way easier to convert battery capacity to Watt-hours, rather than working in Amp-hours. A 100Ah-12V battery has max 1200 Watt-hours, of which you can count on about half, so 600 Watt-hours. Which is 60 hours of your 10W bulb. Almost enough for the 80 hours you wanted; add a tr...

Yeah, if you get a beefy deep cycle battery get an appropriately beefy charger. I think ours is 40A (12V) and only takes a few hours. This is a detail that people overlook, not realizing that small chargers could take days to refill a big battery. I don't have any experience with golf carts and have...

I run my camp's lights off of deep cycle batteries every night. One modest power inverter should work fine for all of this but the battery will be drained in a few hours, most likely. You have to do some math here to figure it out. A deep cycle marine battery is generally rated at about 100 Amp-hour...

Hi, I'm planning a wearable LED project that needs 12V batteries. Current draw may be in the range of 0.1 to 1.0 Amps, based on specs I'm seeing. (More likely on the lower end, I would guess). Since I want it to last a while I want a high capacity battery pack. I'm seeing this stuff on ebay and othe...

Oh, unless it's an electric golf cart. Do these things have motors in them? Guess that makes a difference

Surely a power inverter would be the simplest, just run the lights off the vehicle engine? You already have a generator, charger, and battery under the hood... The only concern would be if the load is too high for the little golf cart motor, but if you light it with LEDs it won't be more than a few ...

Jesus tapdancing Christ. Decomodification: you're doing it wrong. It's important to note that the camp dues are not the sum total of your contribution to the camp. They are the beginning of your contribution, the funds that allow the camp to decide that it shall exist. It still has to be created. Th...

Lobsterdust Lobsterdust are you still here?? The mashup party on the Death Star was the most fun I have ever had in five years of Burning Mans. (Mostly because I spent the entire set circling the vehicle on my bike while dancing and waving a light sabre around). I said hi and thank you at the end bu...

So, who was stopped for no reason at all? Who was stopped and was not holding? Who was ticketed and not holding? Who was ticketed for a driving offence? Did anyone refuse a search? I know you're enjoying the high horse, but I heard of and saw several stops for obstructed plates which were followed ...

Someone I know was busted. Pulled over for an obstructed plate due to bike rack (heard there was a lot of that this year). Cops initially friendly, just wanted to let you know about your plate, yeah everything's fine, oh you don't want us to search your car, okay just wait here while we get the dogs...

I'd encourage you to go to Nosefish first! It will probably be faster, and they have set opening hours and everything, whereas I'm just a dude who might still be asleep or out on a mission or adventure when you show up. Though I'm happy to help if you do manage to find me.

Lux, I have no idea how many people will find me and wonder if I perhaps might get overwhelmed, being just one guy, so I am happy to know where to send people. Er, explain your address for me? Is Inner Circle the road immediately around Center Camp? 2:30 goes nowhere near there. Is there a mini-cloc...

If you get full RGB lights on this thing next year you are my fucking hero. I am just trying to imagine each of these panels with individual colour controls and it is making my brain explode with awesomeness. Congrats again. P.S. for next year...... sound reactivity. Do it. The world needs this.

Props junglesmacks! Will look for you out there. I have a feeling you may be easy to spot. I love the way the lighting highlights and amplifies your arm and leg movements! Makes you seem superhuman. Also there are some really cool shadow effects going on in the room -- I bet this is bright enough to...

By the way the balloons are not associated with Robot Heart.

I was going to tell you it's easy, you just scan the horizon, climb something tall if you need to, look for the red heart, done... but that was for non-dusty years. This year if visibility is lower it may take some resourcefulness. Just ask people if they've seen it, and if you have a bike, pedal ar...

The RGB reel I use has a 12V controller input and 12V power supply and 5V output to drive the lights. If you use an Arduino which has 5V ouput it recommends a 7V to 12V input. Presumably this is to give the voltage regulator some headroom. I kind of doubt the controller was designed to take 5V in an...

Sounded to me like he connected 12V to the controller (it's the controller that fried, not the lights?) and it looks like this was correct from the website's description. But it's sort of immaterial, you know? Bottom line is the controller is broken and dude has 8 days (er, 7) to get sorted. So... y...

I am a fan! Love the Bootie parties. I may be able to extend an invitation to you, checking on it right now. Hope to see you at one of your parties this year either way!

Controllers generally don't smoke and burn unless they are 'bad'. Definitely abnormal behavior. I would be returning it to the shop for a refund or replacement. I don't think the data protocols on these things are standardized so I doubt there is a controller you can just buy off the shelf as a repl...

An uninterruptable power supply (UPS) is mainly designed to ensure smooth power to racks of computers while the power is on, and has a small amount of backup battery for power failures. The system you need is generator -> charger -> battery during the day, and battery -> DC/AC inverter -> LED lights...