solar power & Toolbox

[Laura C Robinson]

AS for the Toolbox question, 
"I have up Toolbox up and running for some months on both my benchtop and laptop machines for work on my Kuku Thaypan / Awu Alaya dictionary.  Recently, I installed a larger hard disk in my lappie and had to re-install all the software, etc.  I’ve been singularly unsuccessful in getting the newly installed Toolbox to accept and read my Thaypan dictionary file, although I’ve tried several alternatives to tweak it."

try copying and pasting your data file into one of the premade projects that comes with Toolbox.  I actually opened my data file and copied and pasted everything except the header into theirs, leaving the header that was already in their file called <Dictionary.txt>.  In order to keep the settings files, you can simply overwrite the files they have in their premade projcts, being careful to leave everything in their original locations, (ie, don't change around the locations of the files within the premade projects).

AS for the Solar panels, 
I have been using solar panels in the field successfully for several months now.  I bought foldable solar panels, Global Solar P3.  I have 55W, which was US$900, but there are cheaper (less powerful) models that ought to work out just fine.  They weight about 4lbs.  The only catch is that these require an external battery.  I bought a motorcycle battery in country, which is smaller than a car battery and thus more portable.   The solar panels charge the battery with a set of pos/neg clips (which come with the optional accessory kit), and I had the female end of a car cigarette lighter rigged to have pos/neg clips as well (this was not something I found pre-made, but it is easy enough for someone who knows about electricity to rig up).  Then, all my equipment has cigarette lighter adaptors (cell phone, battery charger, computer, etc.). I can plug in anything I want that has a cigarette lighter adaptor (12V). These are widely available adaptors for many devices.   I agree that
 taking a multimeter into the field for trouble-shooting is a good idea.  They are cheap (about US$10), lightweight, and widely available.  

Please let me know if my answers need clarification. 


Laura C. Robinson
PhD Candidate
Department of Linguistics
University of Hawai'i, Manoa

----- Original Message -----
From: Gary Holton <gary.holton at uaf.edu>
Date: Monday, April 3, 2006 4:51 pm
Subject: solar power
To: Resource-Network-Linguistic-Diversity at unimelb.edu.au

> Dear RNLD'ers,
> 
> I am looking for information regarding portable solar power for  
> fieldwork. I need to be able to charge laptop batteries and video  
> camera batteries. Both specific recommendations and general  
> references would be welcomed.
> 
> Thanks,
> Gary Holton
> University of Alaska Fairbanks
> 
> 
> 
>