New Off Grid Inverter Charger

[Westbranch]

mtdoc, ya it has been very quiet  on the western front these days... fingers crossed...

[onanparts]

mtdoc, ya it has been very quiet  on the western front these days... fingers crossed...

I'm heading up North to Midnite sometime before Christmas for a look see on what's happening so far. Will report what I can when I can. 

As the Inverter turns....

[Westbranch]

OMG it's Death Star V

[niel]

naw, revenge of helmet head.

[russ_drinkwater]

Yup, West a power bill death star at that!

[TomW]

The corners make it more of a Death Star / Borg hybrid?

The Borg make the Death Star look like BB gun compared to an A-10 Warthog!

Just cuz I watch way too much SciFi stuff.

Tom

[onanparts]

As promised....some pics of the B-17 project... Breaker panel and a look inside the bombay section.

[onanparts]

These are a couple of the MPPT CC modules. A 300 VDC module and a 600 VDC module. One complete and the other partially assembled. The hardware is basically done on these. Mario and his cast of thousands are now focused on the firmware/software end. This is the real deal, it's all coming together very nicely! 

[niel]

nice.

2 comments;
1 i believe i see an open mov in the bottom of the 3rd pic. when they pop they can damage things nearby.
2 ribbon cables, although convenient and cheap for a manufacturer, i've had bad luck with. especially the connectors. i feel these will be issues down the road for you.

[onanparts]

nice.

2 comments;
1 i believe i see an open mov in the bottom of the 3rd pic. when they pop they can damage things nearby.
2 ribbon cables, although convenient and cheap for a manufacturer, i've had bad luck with. especially the connectors. i feel these will be issues down the road for you.

Keep in mind "hardware is basically done". These are still pre production MPPT CC modules undergoing extensive testing, tweaking, minor changes etc.

Can't speak for MS on the use of ribbon cables but I've never had any issues with them in computers, Ham radios etc. Some of my transceivers have a ton of them!  Many are mobile units 20-30+ years old.

Although extremely biased... I'm not a MS employee, what you see posted picture wise by me is what anyone will see if they stop in for a visit at MS. 

[niel]

as a matter of fact, it was in ham radio stuff that i had the problems and both were icoms. one was an ic-32at and the ribbon cable broke. there wasn't much cable to open up the radio to work on it and the other half stressed that cable until it broke. i was modifying it when this happened.

the other radio i believe was an a dual bander and i've forgot the model, but it developed a noisy volume control and i had to take the front of it off to reach it to spray the pot. the connections were so flimsy that the 28? wire ribbon was able to move side to side and shorted out the radio no matter how careful i was being. it was a very cheap connection and it's obvious it wasn't intended to be taken apart by the typical end user. later that year they came out with a model with a removeable front face. i loved both radios and ribbons were the death of both of them.

[ClassicCrazy]

as a matter of fact, it was in ham radio stuff that i had the problems and both were icoms. one was an ic-32at and the ribbon cable broke. there wasn't much cable to open up the radio to work on it and the other half stressed that cable until it broke. i was modifying it when this happened.

the other radio i believe was an a dual bander and i've forgot the model, but it developed a noisy volume control and i had to take the front of it off to reach it to spray the pot. the connections were so flimsy that the 28? wire ribbon was able to move side to side and shorted out the radio no matter how careful i was being. it was a very cheap connection and it's obvious it wasn't intended to be taken apart by the typical end user. later that year they came out with a model with a removeable front face. i loved both radios and ribbons were the death of both of them.

I also had an Icom HT that the ribbon cable broke - but there is a difference between one with the ends soldered directly to the circuit board on one end and one with connectors on both ends. I am sure Midnite will engineer them to be durable. They have to with their warranty !

I gave my broken HT to a friend and he was able to repair it and documented that here
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~timc/e/w21at.html

Larry

[niel]

i did attempt to solder new wire in, but was unsuccessful as the 32at had no connectors either. it was the other icom that was a dual band mobile that had the flimsy connectors. i have never seen anything so cheap in my life. it was nearly impossible to line up all of the connections right and the radio blew. i haven't bought an icom since.

[kitestrings]

Robin et all,

Looks interesting.  I confess I haven't followed this post much, but I thought you might be interested to know that the website from Home Power doesn't seem to work:

www.midnitesolar.com/MNB17

~ks

[TomW]

~ks

I poked Ryan with this. Hopefully he can sort it out.

Not wise to have a new Flagship product link from a popular site  folks can't get to.

Appreciate the heads up!

Tom