Two less computers

We have had a bit of a heat wave the past week… The past weekend was both the highest and last of it. Sat and Sun were both around 42C.
Inside jobs were the solution for us.

For a while I have been wanting to rebuild my aircraft tracking laptop, just a major clean up. While I was doing it, it occurred to me that the computer does not need to be in the garage, it could sit in the study (Terrys computer room) and thus also take care of the weather station software as well as airplanes.

As I was just about done, Freddy made the good point that the same computer could also run groov and thus we could put the other garage laptop to sleep when it was not playing music.

Yes, all my eggs are now in one basket. I figure I am pretty safe since I know a guy (just the one) that likes Windows and seems to think its pretty reliable and yet his weather station data is stuck at the 4th of Jan 2015…..

Anyway, the whole point of doing this is to consolidate some computers and thus cut back on the base load power that our house draws in off the grid.

groov home power use all time low

Mission accomplished.
Our house baseload for the longest time has always been around 800 watts.
It was pretty nice to see that yesterday afternoon, we saw a new low of 664 watts. (And for the most part seems to bounce around 700ish).

I am looking at moving some video cameras around and thus being able to shut off one of my old PC’s. That should be good for another 80-100watts.
We will keep looking and seeing what we can shut off or consolidate.

Still working on the solar stuff, but every watt saved, is another we can replace with solar when we get that installed.