KitchenVan - A Private Food Truck For Vehicle Convoy

[dokmartin]

Howdy ya'll! I've been unsure of where and how to start a project thread but I've recently ordered a bunch of parts to do a pretty major upgrade on one of my vehicles and figured I'd just start a log here. Why not, it'll make it easier to pretend like I'm working on my youtube channel.

I live in a convoy of vehicles with a partner of mine, and am currently locked down. We had more people travelling around with us but the 'rona has put a lot of projects on hold. So, taking the opportunity to upgrade the systems in our shared kitchen space. I decided to create a dedicated vehicle for kitchen and aux use to serve as a kind of clubhouse for folks in our convoy, and is pretty much a private food truck.

Currently;

1200 watts of solar > Makeskyblue > 36v A123 ESS modules @ 3kwh > Dual Tripplite Smart1500's > APC PDUs
J1772 EV Charge station interface via Blink EV charge station testing unit > 6kw 240/120 step down transformer
12V AGM > 2kw cobra charged from the 36v system via battery tender as backup and core systems rail
Panasonic Arbitrator vehicle security system salvaged from a police car
test run of openhab that's been running 6 months and ready for integration, currently logging minimal details

Upgrades;
Proper control panel with din rails
Proper addition of breakers and fuses, remove automotive fuses entirely if possible
Rework entire battery collection into 24v modules to be wired into 48V packs
Install new BMS and SoC Fuel Gauge
Upgrade to at least 5KV UPS
Install sensor packages for at least a dozen digital and 2 dozen analog signals
Install new network infrastructure
Install PoE buttonpanels and control panels
Water systems upgrades
Hydronic system integration with possible solar thermal tube install

The vehicle itself is a 1984 Value Van that used to be a SCUBA support vehicle for the LA department of power and water. It came stock with floor to ceiling aluminum diamondplate, underbody powdercoat, and less than 50k miles on it.

I like it
I've got a google doc started here; which will become the defacto 'user manual' for the vehicle when I'm done.

Hello!

 

[Silentpower]

Love your work!
Here in the UK, our government outlawed vehicles travelling in a convoy. Any more than 3 vehicles together and they can take and destroy them. No joke. The government takes a dim view of travelling and dancing.... the things we've done for millennia

 

[dokmartin]

I'm to the point where I have to decide on a vehicle communication standard. I'm into setting up a serial, i2c, 1-wire, CAN, or whatever bus and just hanging everything off it; startup style. I've been holding off on deciding on what the BMS is going to be until I decide that, in case i need to make a plan for it's communication. Most of the battery info is moot eventually because the most interesting details will come from a different Fuel Gauge i'm going to implement using the TI BQ.

My experience with this is running 1-wire and having a string of thermostats, and that's alright. I should PROBABLY bite the bullet and go with CAN so i'm future-thinking a bit but it's not like there are cheap CAN solenoids or current sensors so I'd have to throw a micro at each cluster of sensors.. which is also ok since i'm using PoE everywhere.

idk, i'm all ears if anyone has good advice

i found this DIN rail terminal with integrated i2c pullup resistor and was like HMMMMMMMMMM lol

 

[dokmartin]

I'm kicking the tires for the recirculating shower system that's going into the back end of the kitchenvan.

For a while I was considering a captive buffer system, that's where you have a 10 gallon tank of water that just cycles through the shower forever with a buttload of filters on it. This one you swap filters out every few months (spray down mostly), and weekly you dump the buffer tank, backflow with a touch of bleach, and then refill. Obnoxious a little but infinite showers for 10 gallons.

A variant on that is the showerloop style. This one has you start your shower in fresh water that goes strait to the drain, then recycles infinite shower over you for a 'recreational shower mode'. Then, you end the shower in fresh water again. This requires a smaller buffer tank, PROBABLY dumps the shower system between uses, but still lets you take 30 minute showers with about 4-6 gallons of water.

Then theres the fancy ones that don't REALLY exist. These ones have sensors in the drain that decide when water is too dirty to bother recyicling, drains that, and adds fresh water as needed to keep the loop going. Obviously consumption levels on that could be anything, from hardly cycling to cycling hard. I've seen things kicked around indicating a target of 7 cycles per drop of water, who knows but if there is a 1gpm showerhead and 5 gallons circulating that works out to 35 minute shower before 7 cycles hits; which is doable.

So looking for guidelines about what kinda sensors and what kinda feedback you'd use for this uncovered... of course... a patent. And here it is. This one got pretty into the details of what water quality sensors a person might use for a system like that. Conductivity, UV/visible light inspection, turbidity; and a googlin' shows some form of those sensors can be figured out for lowish discount rates.

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/8a/ed/78/ebcd32d5228050/WO2019164436A1.pdf

Tough to go with one or the other vs the unknown. Clearly I can hybrid it up and claim i'm waiting for cyberdrain2.0 to give me useful quality data before i start trying to automatically mix water.

I actually think the DIY folks in this instance are overfiltering. I don't think a drain filter, pump prefilter, washdown 50mm filter, washable 20mm cloth, 5mm washable cloth, 5mm activated charcoal, and UV light filter are all strictly required for any of the 3 options even the 1st. This is literally the recommendation folks that live with the first system are using though, and they theorize they are overfiltering as well. Apparently the middle washable filter sees 0 action and clearly throttles the hell out of water flow.

Not expecting input really but just been thinking about it today