It is a mystery

 My newest laser is having issues. First one was that the twisting motion had snapped the ground wire where I had soldered it to extend the wire. The wiring to get the laser through the tube is difficult and the laser has a small chip board that would be rubbing on the tube and would break at the board. That's an issue I had last year. The solder break was an easy fix a few weeks ago, a little more soldering and better taping and good to go. 

I got a text from my dad two days ago that the actual laser part of the scarecrow was gone. He's pretty sure someone took it. I'm also pretty sure someone took it, because it was wired and zip tied to the mount. According to him, only one zip tie was left and I really had tightened them down. He also can't find the laser nearby. Ugh. I have one last spare laser but it will require rewiring things and it will be a pain. Good news is that I don't think the people who took it can really use the laser, since the actual board was in the bin of the laser and my guess is they just cut the wire below the box. They might be able to hook up the positive and negative wires but I suspect it would burn out pretty quick, especially since I had to wire it with a MOSFET switch in order to turn it on and off and my initial wiring burned out a laser since I did it wrong.

As for the people who did it....they have blueberry pickers down there so it could have been them or it could have been randos wandering onto our property. 

I'm now considering making the switch over to a raspberry pi because then I could wire up a camera and motion detector and we wouldn't have this issue again. I'm considering the switch anyway to deal with some of the added complexity we're trying to add to the laser that I don't know if the arduino can handle. I'm still poking at it. 

 I looked over my laser scarecrow and after some fiddling, determined that I had indeed burned out the pan motor. So I did some ordering and I have two more of the whole set on the way. The issue is that there is no documentation about that specific motor in the pan-tilt kit it came in, so I had to order more kits. They are $60 which is chump change according to dad. I also adjusted my programming a little, the pan will only move from 10 to 350 to keep it from hitting the edges of it's mechanics and I also inserted a statement that if it gets dark both servos will return to 0. That way, it won't be stuck halfway, which is what I think caused the issue. I also bought a new buck converter but I need to test it, it didn't seem to be working earlier but that could have been a bad connection. 

One thing I found while I was out ordering a new arduino board (because once the new motor comes through, I'm pretty sure I'll be good to build the next version), is an arduino board with built in wifi! At this point, I've figured out that I don't actually need my arduino uno to be the board because my actual board hookups are very simple, I'm looking at the nano as well as the wifi one. The wifi one I think will be what I build my potential timer into. If the board runs on a timer, it will be set up to run the laser from first dawn until 8am, then shut off from 8am to 1pm, back on until 5pm, then on again at 8, turn off at dark. Those hours are when my parents are open for blueberry picking. But hours change! So they would need some way to reprogram it without having to pull it down and physically wire into it. ~wifi~ But that will be version 2 for next year. Currently on version 0.95. I'd have to run it on an independent battery maybe incase of disconnect from the main battery but who knows yet. 

Other than laser stuff, I cultivated strawberries for a couple of hours and then cleaned the garlic so mom can sell it. About 170 cloves, which isn't too bad. Some were small and had insect marks which was disappointing but whatever, they're $1 each and people will buy it. 



Yesterday I harvested a bunch of stuff while I was out looking at my patch. I've just decided to lean into the doing things instead of just looking. My jalapenos are producing fruit. They are tam jalapenos which are mild for non-spicy people (me). A bunch of green beans for dad. Some zucchini. I also harvested my second bunch of garbanzo beans.  I might get more than I planted! My flax is all ready and I'm hoping to harvest some tomorrow along with spring small grains. Most of my flax ended up being short, which is probably lack of fertility. Running theme this year. I didn't apply anything since I haven't seen the soil samples. I just ran and dug them up from dad's computer and a lack of potash is likely it (potassium). They didn't pay for an organic matter test so who knows what that is. 



My cowpeas have recovered from the lack of nodulation although they haven't actually developed any new ones. They are all rapidly growing and a nice dark green so okay I guess. Still a mystery although lack of nodules is the answer to why my legumes all look like crap. Don't know why there's no nodules. I had a beautiful cover crop of vetch/rye (although I didn't dig any up to see nodules) and I tilled that section in at least two weeks before I planted. The only thing I can think is that the vetch generated too much nitrogen but if that was the case, I wouldn't be seeing these issues so quickly in the legumes. 

This is from the beginning of may and the tiny stuff that looks like saws is the vetch leaves. 



I've got melons and squash running all over into the weeds I need to rototill. Oh yeah. I broke the rototiller twice. Once was a pin sheared in the PTO shaft, easy fix. The other was the bracket for the rototiller blades that came off the rotating bar which will need to be welded back on. I didn't even hit a rock and I didn't complete two full rows. 

I've got a ton of tomatoes and peppers just waiting to turn. The heat and not much rain is delaying things but I'm not too worried. I'll have a billion of everything very shortly I'm sure. 

 I'm not saying I think I'm very close with the laser scarecrow but all I've got left is some potential power hookup changes that I'm consulting the internet about. I'm not sure if the board can power three devices through a dc hookup, and I'm not sure if it can handle a deep cycle marine battery for long periods of time. So I might need to change that around, but I got the transistor/resistor thing sorted out finally. 

on that note, 95% of internet information about transistors is extremely unhelpful

 apparently paying for express delivery means EXPRESS DELIVERY even from China. 

My lasers were shipped Monday and they're being delivered today!!

just

wow

best 35 dollars I've ever spent

 I had a breakthrough for the laser scarecrow project. Everyone involved has been fighting with the problem of spinning the laser and also making it go up and down while not completely murdering the wiring. PVC pipes, gears, stepper motors, all this jazz we've been trying. 

I was laying in bed sunday night and I thought, someone has wanted to spin something and also tilt it. And it turns out that there are a bunch of people out there attaching cameras to drones and taking footage and they have things that are pan and tilt mechanisms so they can remotely control or program cameras to take footage. That pan on the horizontal and tilt. So I solved every issue because the servos run the mechanisms entirely, so no other motors needed, and the wiring runs from the servos through the base and I can attach them right into the motor shield/arduino board instead of having the stepper motor run the pan and all the associated fiddling with that. 

I ordered a 360 pan model for this and it was only 60 dollars. Fingers crossed that it works the way I'm hoping because then I can set up a laser scarecrow for like, maybe $150 or $200? That way I could build a couple really easily and cheap and keep one for my own grain production. 

I'm not sure on the lasers though. The one used for the official project is a green one inch diameter laser that is out of stock. So I don't know if I should buy one around the same size or just do two small ones or what. I've got one itty bitty one right now. The biggest issue is that 99% of lasers ship from China and that's going to take too long for my liking. Adafruit has tiny ones and they ship to me within a day. So maybe I just buy like four and attach all those in slightly different directions. That'll scare the birds.