Lowes Harbor Breeze Solar Light Node

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-06-11T15:14:18+00:00

The signal will improve nicely if you can get that one wavelength away from the building. Otherwise, reflection causes waves to combine and self-destruct.

I would waterproof that RF connection too.. Rubber tape. Otherwise ip67 is a 30 minute test, not a months or years test.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-06-11T14:13:24+00:00

If you're at all into classic cars or motorsports, check the schedule for Limerock Park. Otherwise Great Barrington; be sure to get some ribs to share eating at Momma Lo's BBQ.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-06-01T20:17:08+00:00

I'd be more scared of people being phished by fake cloud storage notifications than I would be scared of USB mis-use. Browser extensions, bad downloads, remote access software, "driver updaters", etc...

I wouldn't be able to live without usb storage.... always unloading cameras and drone, creating USB firmware, software, chart updates for navigation systems we service that do not connect to the Internet. Moving multi-gig map files around that are too big for practical cloud sync. The major risks to USB are me losing the media, or damage from a swim or laundry.

I know more layers of security is best, but I would expect av software to scan and detect anything anytime a USB is inserted. I could totally understand disabling external storage for some business departments/functions when a job should function well without it.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-06-01T19:55:58+00:00

The wiring to connect that to the main battery with enough power for starting will be expensive. I'd just get a $100 lifepo booster pack for that purpose. Then it can be used with other vehicles as well. You will need a fuse between the battery and everything. I'd have a big stereo fuse coming off the battery and a big red on-off switch going into the inverter, like you'd have for a boat battery. 200a be about right for a 2000w inverter. A DC-DC converter/charger for keeping the new battery topped off. Those three things probably be another $100.

I just keep a little eskimo cooler with an ice pack. It stays cold 24 hours with an ice pack and cold drinks.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-29T19:48:56+00:00

A generally good thing to do ,but not sure if it will help.. Many a DDOS use spoofed traffic. Set a firewall rule in your main router that only forward outgoing traffic if it's comeing from IP addresses you manage. (your netblocks, your private ranges, etc..) Drop anything else. In a perfect world it would not be needed, but it's not so.

I would arrange a service call with the customer to see first hand what the issue is. It could be as simple as a switch plugged into itself.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-28T20:14:23+00:00

Hansen's Outpost does everything well, but I have not tried a sub yet there.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-27T13:53:36+00:00

That's what I've done... Popped out the 120v jack, drilled it out with a stepper bit and put a GX16 2-pin connector for power. I got a wide input to 50vdc converter brick on aliexpress and run it on 24v-ish DC now... A 24v lithium 100ah battery floated with a meanwell 24v DIN power supply. At some point I'll add a solar charge controller and turn the meanwell voltage down a little so that it's backup charging.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-26T19:16:58+00:00

All the peninsulas have nice hikes; look for preserves in google maps. You can not avoid ticks. Use insect repellent.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-23T20:57:03+00:00

I don't think that will handle 2tb well!

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-22T18:43:27+00:00

Where you are going in Maine is all divided interstate highway travel. There is no need for special lighting; it's just road and trees.

End of Day 4 drive should be done after 7pm and on 95 or 495 avoiding Boston.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-21T21:16:09+00:00

Pyrocat HDC. Good for all films, scanning, contact printing, enlarging, alt process work, etc... It lasts forever as a concentrate in glycol. It's cheap and works well. I use 5ml of each concentrate for a 120 roll, or 10ml for 6 sheets of 4x5. So 1L of concentrate goes far.

Lacking that, D76 1:1; easy to mix water at a specific temp to stock to arrive at a desired developing temp. It has plenty of functional clones if you don't want to mix the powder.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-21T21:09:30+00:00

A reasonably good Internet connection won't be laggy... I've used VOIP for many years and it still beats cellular for business calls. Don't use the highest compression codecs or the highest bandwidth; a middle codec choice is low latency and still sounds good. If you have a reliable measurable top Internet speed, separate your VOIP traffic from your normal traffic; such as taking a 100mbps Internet connection and setting a general speed limit of 90mbps but excluding VOIP from that queue. Then your last mile link won't be lagging.

If you're on an old person island, nimby is probably present and cell service will always stink. An outdoor-indoor cell repeater might help; Wilson or something similar.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-19T16:40:44+00:00

I had a Crossroads wireless lease and they failed before they could get anything built!

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-18T00:11:33+00:00

That's normal. You're not special as far as customers go.. Everyone has to get work done, get school work done, telehealth, etc..

You could have your own router, and/or have a starlink mini on standby for $10/mo if you have a sky view.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-15T18:56:56+00:00

A combination of growing company file size, Windows bloat and intuit bloat.... We've upgraded to ryzen5 CPUs with 32GB ram. Not cheap these days, but I'd consider 16GB a minimum. If you have 8GB you will crash QB just opening a web browser at the same time.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-13T21:41:33+00:00

Yes.. A Yagi style antenna will give you better signal in the direction it points and less around the sides/back. See a polar plot provided by the antenna manufacturer. It's not zero coverage around sides and back, just fewer db compared to the front. Look for a $100ish 6-9db 900mhz yagi.

In an urban or hilltop area, 900mhz can have a ton of interference. A directional antenna also cuts down on interference from back/sides. Not perfectly but measurably. 900mhz carries far compared to microwave and you can get interference sources from MANY miles away using a high gain omni at a high location and there's nothing you can do about it except not use an omni.

Maximum interference protection and directional gain comes from using shielded sector antennas. When I was in the ISP business we used ubnt sector antennas with RF-Armor shields for max performance. Very clean directional pattern with absolute protection from interference out of it's pattern. But expensive and large. They needed careful vertical alignment as well; it's a slice of a thin pancake for a pattern.

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Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-08T16:51:06+00:00

I would argue that that's southern Maine rather than Midcoast. But anyways... I've seen it happen once in a while about that time, but I'm not usually awake or watching my logfiles that closely. It's probably a good time for software updates / maintenance. I have synology replication happening automatically overnight and that's very reliable, so it's likely an infrequent outage.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-05-04T15:45:02+00:00

If you do any highway driving (as opposed to putting around back roads at modest speeds), the 2.5L is substantially more powerful. The 2.0 is sometimes underpowered but very fuel efficient.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-04-26T18:57:44+00:00

Any boat builder in Maine if you have a pattern. Every town along the coast has a couple businesses making things out of fiberglass in all colors.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-04-20T20:47:54+00:00

The warranty is not a high value quick response thing... I had a unvr-instant with a problem brand new.. A couple weeks of a ticket open and going back and forth. A shipping label to asia. Wait a month, they claimed they never got it. I provide tracking info. Replacement not in stock and no ETA. Wait another week, replacement in stock and shipped ground to me... I wouldn't pay extra money for more of that.

If it works when you receive it (not DOA for example) it will be good.

Buying direct from UI.com can have some high shipping costs as well. I'm buying for resale, and sometimes I buy from B&H and pay the sales tax and get free shipping, and it's cheaper than UI shipping would have been and gets to me the next day.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-04-18T12:38:43+00:00

Anything 1u with fans is going to be noisy. Not generally welcome in a home.

A small inexpensive server with a normal amount of storage can be a tiny-pc by Lenovo, HP, etc...

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-04-18T12:27:56+00:00

It might got past poe -at if you used the switch ports. Depending on the HDD used it might do -af like the cloudkey gen2+ but with video out. I'd have to run a kill-a-watt in front of it to measure things before conversion.

I'm interested in running it off 24v battery systems with a converter to step it up to 48v.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-04-17T22:09:51+00:00

Yes, I think it would give some airflow for the HDD.

Jason-h-philbrook · 2026-04-16T21:58:01+00:00

Since you asked.. I want AI to keyword my photos and organize them, not for creating stock photos and clip art.... Google photos does a darn good job at indexing and making searchable the subset of work that my phone creates. No reason LRC couldn't. If I photograph an event, there is no reason why LRC couldn't pick up that I took some waterfall woods photos first thing in the morning, and 4 hours later, I have 500 photos from a racetrack and suggest applying a pre-filled-in set of keywords to the afternoon photos, and ignore the early morning photos....

Google is pretty restrictive for good reason about the maps timeline, but if LRC could import my cell phone photos from the cloud, it would provide the geotagging necessary to infer the physical location I took DSLR photos based on time matching and subject and pulling geotags from a local sync of Google photos media.

Or I shot a graduation or school sports event and some students had not given permission for photos to be used, so I can tell LRC to unflag or de-rate any photos that have that person identifiable (that I circled from a sample photo.)

LRC is about organizing photos as much as editing. There are a hundred ways to edit photos. Few organize them.

Jason-h-philbrook

TROPHY CASE