Technology Troubles

While I’ve been continuing to have adventures, I’ve also run into several independent technology issues, all at the same time. Here’s the current status of all of them.

Dead MacBook Pro

While I’ve replaced my old MacBook Pro with a much newer one, that has not addressed the problems with the old one. I haven’t been stationary near an Apple Store long enough to bring it in and have them diagnose and possibly repair it. That’s something I need to do when I return to civilization, but it’s not a desperate need because I have a new MacBook Pro.

Dead MacBook Pro Power Cable

The USB-C to MagSafe cord that came with my “new” MacBook Pro is defective and doesn’t charge the laptop at all. Fortunately, charging through the USB-C ports works, and I already have chargers that will work that way, so this is also not a desperate need. However, I bought something that doesn’t work, so I should get a replacement cable that does work. I haven’t been able to divert my course near an Apple Store to do this yet.

Flaky Non-Refurbished Phone

My iPhone 13 Pro continues to crash and restart regularly. Sometimes it’ll be fine for days, while other times it’ll do it several times an hour. The worst is when I’m actively navigating, it crashes, completely loses my route, and I don’t have enough cell service to get it back. (Thank goodness for Sygic and its offline maps. As long as I make a separate list of waypoints, I can recreate my route in Sygic, even without cell service, and get where I was going.)

Verizon is willing to exchange it under warranty. However, they only replace phones with refurbished ones, which I have now proven may not actually get fixed or refurbished before they’re resold. Also, the only way I can get one is to have them mail it to me. I can’t receive mail for another month or so until I return to civilization. I’d much prefer to divert my course to a corporate Verizon store and swap it there, but they won’t let me, because that would make too much sense.

Dead Starlink

This just happened yesterday. One minute, it’s working perfectly. The next minute, it’s dead, with the router unable to connect to the dish. I’ve reseated all the connections many times but I can’t bring it back to life. The next step is to try swapping another cable in since the proprietary plugs are known to be a terrible design. I don’t have a spare cable, though arguably I should for situations like this.

I’m going to try cleaning the plugs and rolling out the entire 75-foot cord flat, then try it again. I’m approaching Montana, where cell service is likely to be spotty, at best, off the main highway. I’d hoped to stay off I-90, in part because I can’t drive anywhere near the 80 mph speed limit out here. But I may have to cancel all my exploration and stay on or near 90 just to ensure cell service so I can keep working. Freedom from being tied down like this is why I got Starlink in the first place.

When I get to civilization, I can order a replacement cable. If that fixes it, great. If not, I probably have a bad dish and will need to replace it — one month out of warranty, of course, so I’ll be eating the cost of it. I hope it’s just the cable, which is the far more likely culprit.

No Solar Charging

Yesterday I noticed my charge controller flashing at me from inside the electrical cabinet. Obviously, that’s not right. I disconnected all of the power, then reconnected the battery. It came back to life. I turned the solar input back on and it continued to be fine, though it was dark and not charging at that point.

This morning I checked on it again, and in bright sunlight, the charging voltage was only around 12 volts. It’s supposed to be closer to 21. Because of the low voltage, no charging was happening. I grabbed my voltmeter and checked the voltages throughout the circuit. The panels are working perfectly. The input to the circuit breaker measures around 21 volts as well. The output, however, only measures about 12. Something inside the breaker is sucking away the power I need to charge from my solar panels.

As a temporary workaround, I bypassed the bad breaker, and now solar charging is working perfectly if I can get the charge controller to turn on. Tracing that problem revealed a loose connection in the ring terminal between the charge controller positive wire and the battery. I’m out of the proper hardware to fix it correctly, but I got the wire bolted down pretty good, and will do it the right way once I’m in enough civilization to buy more ring terminals. I need one for my fuse box as well, since that one was also looser than I’d like it to be — itself, another temporary repair from when the charge controller’s load function stopped working correctly.

Broken Diesel Tank

This problem is physical in nature, not electrical. The plastic around the outlet of my diesel tank tore, causing a huge leak. I never trusted the plastic very much anyway, and will now be looking to use a different design. I’m leaning toward adopting a regular diesel fuel jug to be my new tank and using the hardware from the diesel heater kit intended to tap into a vehicle fuel tank. Instead, I’ll tap into a diesel jug that will sit on the floor under the bed, refillable from outside the van. Fortunately, with summer in full swing, heat isn’t something I need to worry about or fix right now, so that’s yet another issue that can wait until I’m back in civilization.

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I’m going to work on my Starlink cable later today, once the sun goes down a bit and my van casts some shade into my camp. It looks like I can at least get some ring terminals at auto parts stores as I pass through Rapid City on the way to Sturgis tomorrow morning. Maybe they’ll have a circuit breaker I can use, though I’m less optimistic about that. I can’t deal with any of the other issues until I’m back in civilization and can receive packages and mail.

I don’t like rushing my travel, but unless I figure out ways to get my electrical stuff and Starlink working again on the road, I may have to cannonball from Rocky Mtn Roll all the way to my friend’s place in Cottage Grove, Oregon. That may be the only way I can get the parts in stores and by mail that I need to fix all these issues, plus have a known good safe place to stay while I work on all this. I’d have to bypass several places I wanted to stop along the way. I suppose I can backtrack out to the Sisters and Bend area afterward, but I was looking forward to a layover there on my way toward the coast. As it is, unless I can breathe life into Starlink, I may already have to miss out on a lot of Montana by staying close to the highway for cell service. In that case, I’d have to come back to Montana again sometime — maybe around next year’s Rocky Mtn Roll? — and give it the fair chance it might not have this time around.

Meanwhile, at the moment my van is feeling like the USS Enterprise in Star Trek V, straight out of Spacedock with a million problems. I should point out that the van, itself, is working absolutely perfectly. I plan to get the oil changed soon, even though the computer tells me it’s only at 43% of its service life because I’ve already gone more than 6,000 miles. As with everything else, that’s something to deal with when I get back to civilization.