November 2, 2017 Night

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Good evening! Mostly cloudy and 62 degrees in Delmar. There is a south breeze at 9 mph. The dew point is 57 degrees. The skies will clear tomorrow around 3 pm.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy, with a low of 60 degrees at 6am. 25 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 57 at 10pm. South wind 9 to 11 mph. In 2016, we had mostly cloudy skies. It got down to 51 degrees. The record low of 20 occurred back in 1980.

Tonight will have an almost Full Moon with 98% illuminated. The moon will set before sunrise at 6:30 am. The Beaver Moon will be tomorrow with mostly cloudy skies. The sun will rise at 7:31 am with the first light at 7:02 am, which is one minute and 16 seconds later than yesterday. Tonight will have 13 hours and 47 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 31 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be scattered showers, mainly between 10am and 5pm. Cloudy, then gradually becoming mostly sunny, with a high of 67 degrees at 1pm. 14 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 57 at 10am. South wind 11 to 15 mph becoming west in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 28 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. The high last year was 59 degrees. The record high of 75 was set in 1990. 0.9 inches of snow fell back in 1951.

Right now, a split verdict on the weekend. Saturday, mostly sunny, with a high near 50. North wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the afternoon. Sunday, rain likely before 8am, then showers likely after 8am. Cloudy, with a high near 60. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. Typical average high for the weekend is 53 degrees.

In four weeks on November 30 the sun will be setting at 4:22 pm (Standard Time), which is one hour, 22 minutes and 59 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2016 on that day, we had rain, heavy fog, fog, patches of fog, mist, cloudy skies and temperatures between 52 and 43 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 42 and 27 degrees. The record high of 67 degrees was set back in 1933.

Looking ahead, Thanksgiving is in 3 weeks.

Ardiuno

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So I am looking forward to getting my Ardiuno Uno starter kit that I ordered. As a young adult, I used to do a lot of electronics stuff but what you could do 20 plus years ago was a lot more primative then what can be done today with inexpensive microprocessors, modern light emitting diodes and much small electronic components. I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time, but now that winter is coming I will have more time …

The internet is full of interesting projects you can put together with the Andriuno, ideas on how you can easily program the microprocessor to produce a wide variety of signals. You can also order a wide variety of inexpensive components online, things that years ago would never have been found at your local Radioshack.

Some of the projects I am considering building over the coming weeks:

1) A countdown clock that I can keep running looking forward to various holidays or events. It would be fun to know how many days, minutes, and seconds to a specific holiday.

2) A color controlled LED strip. Maybe again set up a timer so that before bed I would hit a button and the lights would go red to make it easier to go to sleep, then gentally fade to black. Then at 7 AM, I would have the controller wake me up with a bright blue light that would fade to yellow then white over several minutes. The idea would be to make it easier to get up in the morning.

3) A circuit that would fade off the floor lights in my truck. Maybe have the lights go off like 2 minutes after I left the truck, then come back on as soon as noise was heard from opening the door.

These are some of the projects I envision building. I would need some extra components, like a battery backup clock chip, an RGB LED strip, external power supply, mounting boards and obviously additional Ardiunos Unos but all of those supplies are under $10 on the Internet.

None of these projects look to be too difficult to code or implement as the Ardiuno looks pretty simple to wire and code for per the Internet. Just some simple resistors, transistors, diodes and the alike. Basic math on resistance and load, plugging in wires. Tons of documentation on the Internet, plus I will get some booksout of the library on wiring Ardiunos.

I think this will be quite a bit of fun.