Every now and then I surf over to Verizon’s FiOS page to see what their latest speeds and rates are. It turns out that they have upped their speeds yet again, this time to either 50 mbs down / 25 mbs up or to a symmetrical 35mbs up/down. I love high upload speeds so I decided to upgrade from my 20/20 plan. The cool part is that this new plan is actually around $15 a month cheaper than my previous plan that was half the speed. Now I can run my Tor node at the same speed as my old plan and still have bandwidth to burn. Verizon may be doing some questionable things as a corporation by selling off their rural DSL lines, but I must say that I’ve never had a problem with my FiOS connection since after it was installed.
I plan to use the truck primarily as a mobile computer networking center with the additional use of functioning as emergency relief. The idea for the networking setup is to be able to drive just about anywhere and instantly have a computer network setup to play video games with a bunch of people. Using some Linux scripting, a custom router, a portable server, and my cell phone it is even capable of having an internet connection. Eventually John and I plan to have all of the internet acquisition function automatically and add the ability to be a mean War Driving machine.
During the testing of the UPS system I drained the batteries rather low. To recharge the batteries I can either run the Diesel engine of the truck and use the alternator or I can use a smart charger that uses mains power. The battery bank is rated at 345 Amp hours at 24 Volts which takes several hours to charge. The alternator on the truck seems to output an average in the neighborhood of 50 amps at 28 volts while the car charger can only output 15 Amps at 14 volts.
Sorry for the shaky camera work, I didn’t have any of my usual weights or stands with me.
My area is suffering from snow and high winds, so power may not be very reliable at the moment. Although I am using my Deuce and a Half as a backup power system it can take some time to switch things over from regular house wiring to backup power. If the site goes down it is either in the process of having the power source switched or my internet connection has been physically separated.
We got somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 inches this past weekend (the “Snowpocalypse” according to the media) which effectively immobilized all of the vehicles on my street… except for my Deuce. The snow plows don’t usually come down my road until well after the storms so I decided to take maters into my own hands. Using the 18,000lbs of the truck I compacted the snow to a much more manageable 2 inches so that other cars and trucks could drive again.
Throughout the course of the day John and I also helped pull/push/winch a car to safety and helped a lady in another part of the neighborhood get to work. We also had a lot of fun in the process.
