Live from the Beta Site

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One of the things that has been an inconvenience at the Beta Site is the lack of cell signal for my gamecams. I have several cams out there but only one can actually check in with any regularity and even then its spotty. The ideal solution would be cameras that sent signal over the internet, thus negating the need for cell towers and signal. However, that opens up its own can of logistical worms. This weekend is an experiment in wrangling those worms.

First thing we do is pick up a “Ring”-style camera. In this case a Eufy E30, which I temporarily mounted to the corner of the conex.

This camera comes with a small solar panel to keep it charged. Like most gear like this these days, the panel and charging port are USB. I had a larger Goal Zero Nomad 20-watt panel laying around and since it was significantly larger than the small panel the camera came with, I decided to use that to keep the camera topped off. I affixed some weight to the panel so it wouldnt get blown off the top of the container and set it up.

So, the camera part of the equation is done. Now for the internet part. A few trips back I experimented with the Jackery powering my StarLink setup. Under full sun the numbers were promising. It appeared that one hour of recharging under full sun gave about ten hours of internet time. I set up the panels flat on the deck, secured them so they wouldn’t blow away, and plugged them into the Jackery. This required the Jackery to sit outside which is not a great idea for electronics given that things like rain exist. After some thought, I decided that I would put the Jackery on the deck, run the wires from/to the Jackery down and through the spaces between the deck slats, and flip a plastic tub over the whole mess to keep it dry. Ventilation would come from below but rain would not.

The Starlink is, by its design, waterproof and not needing of any particular protection. However, I will wind up putting a semi-permanent pole mounting for it. So…camera has power, Jackery is getting power from panels, Starlink is up and running. Lets check the phone app:

And the real kicker…the camera has a pan-tilt-zoom feature so I can move the camera around remotely to look from different angles.

Now this isn’t 100% as cool as it seems. The camera is running full-time, meaning it is constantly sending live signal upstream to the internet, even if no one is watching it. That uses power. However, I can remotely turn the camera on and off so the camera only streams images when Im actually looking at it. Thats great. But it means the camera and its motion detecting is off if something walks by it. The obvious solution to this is to provide more power and a more capacious battery for the camera itself. This isnt necessarily a problem. It would be a simple matter of creating a battery/panel charging combo similar to whats running Starlink at the moment.

The weather this weekend is rainy and overcast, so I’m curious to see how battery recharging is going to go. In theory, Starlink can run off the Jackery for about four or five days before it runs out of juice. Even with overcast weather there is still a measure of recharging that occurs, so it might be feasible to say that as long as there isnt a continuous five days of no sun, the battery will power things ‘indefinitely’. Gonna find out.

For now, I think its cool as heck to be sitting at work, pick up my phone, activate the camera, rotate it 360-degrees and see whats going on up there. We’ll see if this works out long term or not, but for right now its very cool.

So much fail II

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Okay, not my best moment.

Went up to the Beta Site and did some camera work, which I’ll talk about later, and got ready to leave. Locked up the conex, locking all five padlocks on it. Climberd into the truck and…hey, wheres the car keys? And with that sense of dread that lets you know you really messed up, I realized I had locked the car keys in the conex. Where were the keys for the padlocks that were securing the conex? On the key ring with my car keys.

So here’s the situation – it is 5pm, daylight is starting to head for the hills, it is pouring rain. And Im sitting in a truck that cannot move because the keys are locked up. Now, I do have a spare key hidden on the truck but that is just a key to open the doors…which made sense at the time because usually the keys are locked in the truck, not in a cargo container. And, like most modern vehicles, the truck requires the chipped key that is wildly expensive to duplicate. But, I do have a duplicate…at the house in Missoula.

So, there’s no real option here. I’m going to have to break the padlock that I purchased specifically for its breakproofness. How to do so? Well I have access to a small bag of tools in the back of my truck…theres a heavy steel mallet in there. I use that and a combination of wrenches, heavy screwdrivers, and the like to achieve the spectacular result of…nothing.

Now, having to spend the night out there wouldnt have been a big deal. In addition to just sleeping in the truck, there was a cache a hundred yards away that had sleeping bag, tarp, freezedrieds, sleeping pad, cookstove, etc. Staying out overnight wouldn’t have been an issue, but so what? The next morning Id still be locked out of my car keys.

:::sigh::: Okay, I’m not happy about this, but theres only one real course of action left – shoot the damn lock off. Weapon of choice? My bear AK w/ steel core ammo. As you know, the sights on the AK, like the AR, are offset a bit above the bore. I didn’t want to get too close because I really didnt want shrapnel or bullet fragments flying back into my face. First couple shots missed because of the sight offset. Next couple hit the lock but not enough to bust the shackle…my shots were hitting closer to the bottom of the lock, not near the hasp. Looks like the only way to do this is to risk a little shrapnel and stand right next to the stupid thing, put the muzzle an inch from the lock and pull the trigger.

Which I did.

And the lock came apart like a Mexican space shuttle. I didnt catch any fragments but I sure as heck don’t ever want to be in that situation again. Which is why, on the way back from the Beta Site I swung by Home Depot and picked up a half dozen heavy duty combination locks. I’m replacing the keyed locks with combination locks so I never have this problem again.

And, really, this shouldn’t have been a problem the first time. Wargame the scenario – you show up at your hidden supply cache with whatever you could grab as you fled for your life. Where’s the keys? One less thing to have to worry about if you just carry the combo in your head rather than having to frantically make sure you grabbed the keys, or dig through six inches of snow and ice to find the key you cleverly (you thought) hid up near your stuff. No, for me it makes more sense, especially after this incident, to use a combination lock instead.

So, a hundred dollars worth of keyed-alike locks wasted. I’ll find other uses for them, but this was a lesson I’d have been happy to not have to learn the hard way. And you, my friend, can take what you will from my experience. Maybe I can save you the cost of a set of new padlocks and a dozen rounds of 7.62×39.

Electric Lunchbox – M18 Jobsite Lunch Warmer

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I know very little about power tools but I have a surprising number of Milwaukee tools sitting here. The reason I have so many of the Milwaukee tools is that they make some stuff that dovetails nicely into my needs, and I get a discount at work on them. Because I have so many of their tools, I have a pretty big stack of batteries for them…and, of course, this tends to keep me in the Milwaukee ecosystem because I don’t want to add a new battery into my logistics.

The guy at work who orders Milwaukee tools for us brought this new product to my attention:

Yes, its a self-warming lunchbox. Apparently these things have been around for a while and there’s no shortage of them on Amazon. However, this one runs on the Milwaukee batteries I already have, and it mates with the Packout locking system of the Milwaukee cases/boxes/containers.

Seemed like something that might be worth dropping some coin on. The biggest use I see for this, other than jobsite stuff, is for hunting and ice fishing. No need to haul around a propane stove, or limit yourself to whatever a Jetboil can reconstitute. Take yesterdays pot roast, drop it in, set it and forget it.

I have a propane cookstove up at the Beta Site but, honestly, its just more convenient to break out lunch from something like this…for now.

It arrived the other day and, of course, I had to try it. I have quite the assortment of Milwaukee batts and they recommended the 6.0 battery. I loaded the food container with some leftovers right out of the cold fridge, popped them in the warmer, set the termp for highest of its three settings and let it go for two hours. The way this thing works is that you tell it what time you want to eat and it starts warming the food two hours before that. A countdown timer and progress bar show how close you are to lunchtime. So, if youre a lunch-at-noon kinda guy (as Iam) this things automatically turns on at 10a and starts warming.

At highest setting the food was very thoroughly heated through and hot. More importantly, it didnt generate heat high enough to scorch the contents to the container. When i cracked open the containment vessel the food was hot, not dried out, and otherwise exactly I wanted.

I will be the first to say that this is, for most people, an unnecessary luxury. And a lot of people will say they’d rather save the moeny and just eat some instant oatmeal made with water heated over an Esbit stove. No argument from me. However, for me, this thing is an ideal tool for giving me a hot meal aftert a long day of banging around the Beta Site hauling rocks, climbing hills, and cutting logs.

Looking in the rear view mirror

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Summer is slowly dying. But dying is a long way from being dead. There’s still probably another month, maybe two, before I need to start thinking the Beta Site is ‘closed for the season’. I suspect right around the middle of October it should start dropping concerning amounts of snow. That means that the ‘construction season’ will also be winding down.

How has 2026 gone for the Beta Site? Well, I didn’t get as much done as I want, but I got a bunch of things done, including some of the more expensive things.

  • Got the game cameras deployed
  • Had a professional and legally valid survey done
  • Got the conex put in
  • Established StarLink for connectivity
  • Found an alternate route into the property to facilitate better access in bad weather
  • Met a couple neighbors
  • Got the storage tanks buried
  • Got the secondary entry into the property cleaned up a bit

Expensive? Some of it…between the conex, survey, mini excavator and trailer rentals, and a few other things I’d say I dropped about $20k altogether. And that, my friends, is going to be the cheap part. Plans for 2027 are grand. Tentatively the biggest expenses will be:

  • A well
  • A septic system

These two things will give me the major accoutrements of civilization. I don’t mind living on 12v power, and keeping an eye open for bears…thats the price for living in the middle of nowhere and I accept it. What I will not tolerate (if I don’t have to) is a lack of flush toilets. Now look, I know that in the apocalypse the ability to drop your pants and sit on a nice porcelain throne is, at best, sketchy. And I’ve gone the caveman route when I’ve been out hunting or otherwise far from civilization. And, yeah, its no that big a deal. BUT…if I can have a nice, honest to Crom flush toilet why wouldn’t I? So those two items will be the most expensive things in 2027, I suspect.

And, of course, theres still the matter of the ‘real’ structure. I’m not living in a cargo container. I want a small-but-cozy four-season cabin/structure that has running water, heat, light, a flush toilet, internet, and all the creature comforts. Sure, I can ride out the apocalypse in a tent but if I don’t have to……. Really, something similar to this would be supermegawesome.

Other upcoming big expenses will be locking gates, water infrastructure (mostly piping water to various points on the property), fencing, gabions, sangars, decking, solar/power infrastructure, communications infrastructure, etc.

See the keyword there? Infrastructure. Its not going to be quick, and its not going to be cheap, but it does need to be done. By this time next year I want at least half of these things done. Since winter will be a time of inactivity, that will translate into a time of reduced spending..that’ll give me time to put together a war chest for jump starting things when ‘building season’ resumes, which I am scheduling as June 1 but will in all likelihood be about a month earlier.

Returned

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Back after doing a little traveling. For PerSec reasons I usually don’t mention when I’m traveling until I get back. Where to? Why, America’s first post-apocalyptic city – Detroit. Just a personal trip, but I’m glad to get back to my familiar mountain environs.

Since the conex has been set up, my goals now are to move as much stuff as possible up there before snow starts making things challenging. On the bright side, I did find the alternate route in there that allows nme to bypass the Switchback of Death that dang near lived up to its name last time I tried taking my truck up it in the snow.

Im planning to spend as much of  hunting season up there as possible, assuming the weather cooperates. It’ll be nice to have some essentials up there to make things a bit more pleasant.

So, to that end, I’ll be doing a fast trip up there Wednesday after work and, since it is apparently a three-day weekend this weekend, I’ll be spending as much time as possible this weekend shuttling stuff up there. The trip Wednesday will include downloading pics from the half dozen cameras I now have set up there.

Thats about al lfor now. Have a story about the last trip up there but that’ll have to wait until I get around to spending an hour writing up a post.

In the meantime, no I did not get eaten by a bear. I was just outta town the last few days.

Jacking around

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Previously, when using the Starlink up at the Beta Site I have either used a small battery backup brick, or I’ve used an adaptor that lets me use my Milwaukee M18 batteries that power my tools. But, both of those did not really have an option for recharging up there. Once the batteries were drained, it was switch to another battery and take the depleted one back to the house to recharge. What to do?

CostCo was selling this for $200 off, bring my price to $599. (No longer on sale at CostCo, but on sale at Amazon for $100 off but comes with 200w panel instead of 100w). I did a bit of research online and saw that this was the cheapest price out there for this particular device. It came with a 100watt panel to recharge, so there was the option of recharging it up at the Beta Site rather than having to return to town to recharge. Ok, I’ll take chance with it.

The system comes with a 100w panel, but I decided to go ahead and pick up the 200w panel as well. Not cheap, but I wanted every advantage possible. The system has two inputs for panels, or you can buy an additional cable (which I did) that allows you to add panels in serial (daisy chaining) if they are panels of the same wattage. So, putting a 200w and 100w on the same cable is a no-no. I plugged the 200w panel into one input jack, and the 100w into the other input jack…no prob.

Like most electronics these days, the Jackery has an app for your phone. I found this to be an immensely interesting feature. Using the app, I linked the system to my house wireless network. Having done this, I could now, from anywhere with internet, see battery usage, charging rate, hours to charge, hours remaining, turn off the charging outputs to any devices I was charging, etc. This opens up some tremendous possibilities, which I’ll cover shortly.

The battery came completely charged, so I needed to discharge the battery so I could start documenting how well the panels worked to recharge it. Unfortunately, all I had around that needed charging were some flashlights and tool batteries. I got the battery down to about 89% before it was time to head to the Beta Site.

Got up to the Beta Site and the weather was mostly clear with a few clouds here and there. The sun went behind the clouds every so often, but most of the time it was direct late morning sunlight. I Laid out both panels and hooked them up.

As I mentioned, the app for the Jackery needs internet to send the info to your phone. So…I brought out the StarLink and fired it up. What was the draw of the StarLink versus the input from the panels? Lets go to the app:

So thats the data Im being shown when the StarLink is running. Now, at that moment Im not really doing anything internet-heavy except some texting. But even when it was a little more intensive, it was in the 24-34w range in terms of usage. Meanwhile, the panels are throwing 242w into the battery. In short, I’m using the battery up slower than the panels are refilling it. So, as long as the sun is shining, I can internet as much as I want and the battery will get more charged rather than less. But man does not live on internet alone. Lets see what happens when I throw a 12v DC Milwaukee battery charger on there and throw on a battery that needs charging and run the internet at the same time.

Note the times. While using the internet and charging the Milwaukee M18 battery, the system still charged itself up to 100~%. Even when the sun went behind a cloud there was enough input to offset the internet usage.

My anticipated usage for this sort of package is very simple: run the internet and recharge the things that need recharging (camera batts, tool batts, flashlightg batts, etc.) And for that usage, this seems to be a good way to go.

Here’s the really interesting part, though…With no recharging, this thing will run the internet for 30-37 hours. We saw that the internet was using 1/10th of the power that was coming into the system, so, as I see it, that means one hour of charging gives you ten hours internet. So, its entirely possible that with this set up I might be able to leave things runnig 24/7…which means internet live feed may be possible. This interest me greatly. That would open the possibility for a remote rover.


Now that would be something cool!

But back to the job at hand… So I’ve had one weekend of playing with the Jackery. I’ve left it up at the Beta Site in the cargo container. When Im back up there in two weeks I’ll see if there was any measurable self-discharge. Even if there was, I’m convince that a half hour with both panels in place will top that tank right off.

SO, my overall impression so far is good. But, a new broom sweeps clean. Be interesting to see how this holds up over the next year or so. As I said, my very minimalist meeds seem to be met by this setup but those needs won’t be minimal forever. But until such time as I need a more comprehensive, expensive, purpose-built, battery-and-panel-heavy setup I think this might carry me through until then. So, overall: recommend.

Bear with me on this….

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So yesterday I set up a game camera over the Dead Thing to see what happens. What happens is I have about 40 pictures of a fat bear eating and sleeping:

And I’m not 100% certain, but I believe a different bear decided to check out the conex:

Bear season opens in three weeks. I’m buying a tag ‘just in case’.

A mystery solved

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I just installed the new game camera Thursday. Between then and this morning this is whats taken place on that one camera:

Bobcat?

Why so busy?????

When I was up there Thursday I noticed a weird smell near the cargo container area. It reminded me of the zoo. My first thought was that one of the container delivery guys had taken a dump in the woods. The more I thought about it, I figured I had rolled through some cow patties on the way up there and thats what I was smelling. Satisfied that was the source, I didnt give it any more brainpower.

Rolled in there early this morning and as I puled up several large birds took to the air. “Somethings not right”, I said. A couple turkey buzzards took off. “Something’s dead”, I said. Got out of the vehicle and caught that smell again. Now I knew what it was. Somewhere around there was a dead…thing. An animal, most likely although I wouldnt be too surprised to find a dead human. Stuff happens.

Donned my 10mm, grabbed the AK and descended into the brush. I followed the smell and it got way stronger. I flipped the safety off the AK just in case, and found this poor bastard:

That upper jaw I’m poking with the AK had all sortsa fresh blood around it…grass was still red with the vibrancy. And more than a few mounds of what was quite obviously bear poop. I think I figured out why the sudden influx of predators. So, now that I know theres a dead animal there that the bears and lions are munching on, what should my course of action be?

Mount a game camera over it, of course! Should be some very interesting pics coming from that!

So one mystery solved. Fall bear season opens in three weeks. I was on the fence about whether to ruin a bruin or let them be. Might buy a tag ‘just in case’.

Enjoy the pics, guys. And, for those curious, container leveling went okay but it was a bit of work. I’ll have a post about that at some point