Sun's magnetic poles shifting

Wondering about the moment when the magnetic field strength of the sun goes to zero (right before the flip) what opportunity this presents?

— Tim Kali Om Ma (@kalltim) September 3, 2013

Memories of Mt. Shasta CA Summer 2013

Ichneumon wasp

Adding a voltage guage to my Roadtrek control panel

When I purchased the components for my solar panel project, it included a small DC voltage gauge ($10.38 with good Amazon reviews) that I wanted to install.  At first, I was not sure where I wanted to place it- in the rear battery box, near the voltage controller, or someplace else.  Then it occurred to me that the best place would be in the camper near the control panel so I could monitor the voltage without having to open the cargo doors.  But to do this I needed to know whether the wires coming into the control panel had the battery voltage information even when the battery disconnect switch was off.  After doing some voltage measurements on the control panel, I discovered that it did and so I was ready to start this new project.

 To begin with, I disconnected the house battery and then soldered on the contact leads of the gauge to the existing control panel.  The positive red lead of the gauge went to the orange wire of the control panel and the negative black lead was connected to the white control panel wire. I used the electrical tape to temporaily hold the leads in place while I soldered. Once the wire were secured and tested  okay using the gauge (re-hooking up the battery) I added some heat shrink tubing to replace the black shrink wrap I had removed.

Now time to make the hole.  I first penciled in the hole cutout using the hatch size dimension given below and verified my accuracy by placing the gauge
up to the markings.  Before I made the cut I wanted to make
sure there was no wires behind my hole so I removed
shower access panel (see below) to check for issues.  Seeing the
outside porch light wires I removed these from the switch
and tucked them into a safe place.

Satisfied that I had measured correctly
and that all wires in the back of the hole were
out of the way, I used a spiracut saw to rough cut the hole
and then used a file to exact the dimensions.  After a little filing
and test fitting the gauge I was ready to hook up the
gauge wires and insert the gauge in the hole.

After lightly tapping in the gauge with a plastic mallet, I
reconnected the outside light switch, put the control panel back in place, closed up the shower access panel and cleaned up my mess.  Overall, a very satisfying project!

One question you may be thinking and that is what is the power consumption of the gauge itself?  Per the specifications online it comes out to 12mA X 24 hours X 12 volts or about 3.46 watts per day.

• Power range : DC 4.2 V - 30 V
• Current consumption : 12mA
• Accuracy : 0.1V
• Led Size : 0.56''