The weather has improved somewhat, but still isn’t back to it’s typical Caribbean sunshine and warmth. I went ashore in the morning for a stretch but otherwise remained aboard and worked on the refrigerator project for the Arduino. The program is now working and I’m testing the combinations to make sure that I’ve got all the wrinkles ironed out in preparation for publishing it on the web using a platform called GitHub. Testing the application has shown that my one compressor is acting strangely and I need to figure out why it is using so much energy again; but that’s another project.
Julian came by in the afternoon with a small circuit board that needed a MOSFET replaced, and what should have been a simple de-soldering, removal and re-insertion ended up taking a very long time. The heat sink prevented the soldering iron from getting the component hot enough to melt the solder so that was cut away, but even then we had a very difficult time getting the solder to melt. I have a Hakko with a digital temperature adjustment but even that couldn’t melt the solder on the board so we resorted to using the “big gun” which is my butane powered soldering iron and that did the job. I think that my Hakko has a dirty tip that wouldn’t transfer heat correctly but nonetheless that board proved to be a major effort, even soldering the new MOSFET on proved difficult but we got it done in the end.
We subsequently had one too many happy hour drinks for me to want to wander towards town or a restaurant, so I had some rice and my home-made chili for dinner.
