Tag Archives: LOAD SHEDDING

Electronics

WHY WE NEED AN EMERGENCY LED

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#93 why we need an emergency LED tube

While load shedding continues to plague the average south African citizen I noticed that some of the well off citizens were not that phased out with the power going off and water running dry. Upon further investigation I found out that “big surprise” they had proper solar infrastructure and water tanks coupled with the right political connections they don’t need to suffer for decisions made by people who bear no consequence if that decision flops.

There’s nothing new about the facts I mentioned above however it got me thinking about looking for cheaper efficient and longer lasting solutions using technology even if they are not ideal its better to have something rather than nothing… what a shameful thing I had to say taking into consideration its the 21st century and governments are still using their governmental privilege to mess things up without facing a tar a feather spectacle such a shame..

Well unfortunately I can’t control things on a national scale but I can make a review of some affordable LED lights and hopefully that can help someone make a well educated effective decision to mitigate some of the frustrations and pain.

While browsing Takealot I noticed some prices fluctuate quite often but if you keep a price you are willing to pay in mind you can create a sort of mental filter that helps. So for this article I decided to search for LED lights containing these parameters:

  • Affordable
  • Rechargeable
  • Li-po or li-ion
  • LED light
  • 5v to charge
  • Have an enclosure
  • Easy access and battery replacement
  • Decent circuit with charge protection
  • LED’s must not get too hot

I managed to find a product that came as a value pack (the so called emergency LED tube) and passed all my requirements. The product came as a value 3 pack of generic LED lights each light is about 32cm long and very light with magnetic discs.

I got mine at R210.00 for 3 emergency LED tubes that’s R70.00 for 1 so definitely affordable since I can’t get any 18650 battery for under R100.00 anywhere I have searched online in South Africa. I might just purchase these lights and harvest the battery in future just because it’s cheaper than purchasing the li-ion battery by itself.

Transistors

The lights come with 1x unmarked 18650 battery and a charge controller chip with 1 button and a female micro USB port to allow charging via 5v

The button allows the light to function in 3 modes: bright, dim and strobe.

Even though the listing claims these lights are 18w when I tested them at a theoretical max of 4.2v (li-ion battery max) I only got around 10w and the LED strip got hot.

4.2v running at 10.4W though box claims 18w (LEDs super hot burns skin)
Mystery chip

A few cons I noticed are:

  • Solder wires soldered directly on to the 18650 battery
  • Cheap solder
  • Some joints were not soldered sturdily
  • Blue end caps can come off easily sometimes

All in all the lights did work out of the box however I touched up a few joints and glued one end of the blue cap just so it doesn’t come out when hanging the light via the plastic loop.

Once fully charged the light has lasted through 2-4 hours of loadshedding with a few hours of charge time.

Overall the light does its job and is affordable and the battery can be swapped or cascaded for longer lifetimes.

The only major concern I have it the lifespan of the LED chips and the mystery chip but only time will tell.

Blue wire was soldered to B+

Link to listing here.

Experimental, Programming

PRACTICALLY USING THE LOAD-SHEDDING API

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#89 An example app showing a practical use case with the API

Using the Eskom load-shedding API is very straight forward however I have noticed that a lot of people get stuck on the last call where an html document is returned instead of Json data. This can throw a spanner in the works because a developer can’t just get the results as a key value pair… the HTML must be parsed and then put into Json before it can be used effectively.

This parsing process is actually quite easy and jut requires a loop with a bit of regex magic to return the values line by line.

Once the values are returned we can then place them into our own Json object and then do something useful with them like creating a loop which reads the times and compares them to the time on my PC then when the json objects time is 10 minutes away the loop then initiates a shutdown of my fan so that it doesn’t drain my ups battery unnecessarily.

Below I have written a small proof of concept application in C# to help inspire others with their projects.

I make use of the LoadShedding.NET.dll library made by IsaTippens using my endpoint documentation and documentation from PolarizedIons.

However in the end I only focused on 2 API endpoints to simplify the example app.

This makes my example much simpler.

You can take a look at my example code on GitHub

Programming

ESKOM’s LOAD SHEDDING API

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#52 LOADSHEDDING API

Eskom has a load shedding (Rolling blackouts) API we can utilize. I still need to test the accuracy of the results as well as the functionality of the API.

The good news is that unlike Eskom’s electricity supply this API is always on and actually works (with HTTPS as well)

It looks like Eskom’s software team can do a half decent job. I realize that it’s a bit unfair to give them so much grief. The real issue here is corrupt officials in high places stealing from the people as much as they can before their clocks expire.

There is no excuse… the reality is that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can only hope that the future generations are able to see it for what it is and focus on building South Africa instead of destroying and stealing what others are so desperately trying to improve…

One thing is for sure.. at this rate we are truly moving in the direction of retardation (backwards motion) there’s no middle ground or some type of constant speed things are literally degrading. It’s honestly terrifying to witness this as a youngster.

At least we are not a war torn country like many in the middle east so perhaps I can give credence to the South African police and intelligence agency’s no matter how corrupt they have become they have not stooped to the level of warmongers just yet… (I suppose elite gangsters and mobsters would be a better suited description at this time)

Below is an example of the API I have rewritten in markdown format. A simple four step process to get some usable data.

  1. Get Status
  2. Get Municipalities
  3. Get Surburb Data
  4. Get ScheduleM

    Checkout my practical example application on GitHub
    You can also find more info on my GitHub documentation and my tutorial article of the practical example.
LOADSHEDDING_API.html