this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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Living in vans, cars, RVs, etc
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We're not homeless, we're houseless! By choice or by circumstance we are living in our vehicles. Don't worry about us -- it can be a very good life.
Anything that affects us as vehicle-dwellers is probably on topic.
external resources
- emergency guide to suddenly living in a vehicle <-- start here if you don't have a choice in the matter
- vanlife FAQ
- introduction to power in the vehicle
- gentle introduction to solar power
- overview of charging by alternator
- guides to hygiene and toilet
fedi resources
rules of engagement
- be civil
- use descriptive thread titles. Pro tip: "Help" or "Question" are not descriptive titles.
- old-timers: assume people are different and have different needs, preferences, budgets, and use cases
- newbies: demonstrate effort and willingness to learn; you'll need it on the road anyhow. Links have been added below to help get you started. When asking question state your "use case" (what you are trying to accomplish); we are terrible guessers.
- tire-kickers: yes, we've heard that "in a van down by the river" joke. It was hi-larious in 1993.
vandwellers vandwelling vanlife urbancarliving
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Is there a good online tool for calculating the cosign of solar Zenith so I can know how much solar my my panels could be making in ideal conditions? I see that you've used it in your blog.
There are an online calculators like this one from NOAA. This fork adds the ability to update the time with a click rather than manually. There are others but I haven't played with them much.
Since I travel constantly I've been on casual lookout for an app that does the calcs for us based on local time / position but I haven't seen any. Several apps show the solar zenith angle and we can take the COS of that manually with a calculator with trig functions. The standard android calculator app will do it.
Yeah, it's an imperfect tool for our purposes but better than nothing. Combining it with data from a solar irradiance meter would be great but right now I can't justify ~$100 to devote to the cause. :-)