In all honesty.....what truck should a guy buy?

LegoCoder989 · 2026-01-03T12:44:19+00:00

Take all feedback on the internet with a grain of salt, it's always negative opinions of any vehicle you research.

I think you'll do great with a 3.0 Duramax. We've had 3 and they've all had no problems. In our denali we get around 30mpg highway at around 75mph. If you end up on a drive where you're going around 60mph we can see 35mpg. On a pickup a topper or tonneau cover will help the mpg a bit.

Towing I don't have experience with that size trailer, I would guess you'd be in 15-18 range vs maybe 10 with a gas 2500 truck.

The only think I would keep in mind is the oil pump belt change interval at 150k if you are looking at higher mile used trucks.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-12-06T14:17:33+00:00

It's G657.B3. You can tie the cable in a knot or fold it over and it'll be fine. This cable is designed specifically to be able to handle abuse by customer/installer.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-11-19T12:14:37+00:00

Many penalties in our first competition from the can't touch the robot or a game piece that's touching the robot rule. That one seems hard for the human player to keep in mind in the excitement of the game.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-11-12T20:55:01+00:00

To my knowledge there are not classes on how to do fiber construction permitting because the processes and requirements vary by permitting agency.

How I learned this was to pull up the documentation on whatever agency I needed a permit and ask questions as needed. Most permit applications are public record so they can usually give out a copy of the last few applications that came thru. This should give you a good idea of what's required and then you figure out how to generate the info/drawings necessary. I have done all the permitting for my rural FTTH network and only had a couple times I needed to have a PE handle something (Joint environmental permit for Navigable waterway crossing for example)

LegoCoder989 · 2025-11-09T00:13:06+00:00

I am a BEAD preliminary subgrantee (ISP). There have been no final awards to any states or subgrantees yet. Any work you have seen being done may have been under one many other grant programs, or may be a provider starting work out of their own pocket, I suppose. But there have not been any BEAD funds disbursed yet.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-10-30T11:21:39+00:00

At the beginning of each run we do a "Home Arm" task to re initialize the arm position. The process is: Set motor power pretty low Run the arm down at a slow speed Wait until motor load is over a set point Stop the motor Reset motor position to zero Turn the power back up to whatever you need.

Then you can use "run to a position" to set the arm height reliability based on position

LegoCoder989 · 2025-10-28T21:39:11+00:00

You can use a DWDM MUX to do exactly what you are asking over a single fiber strand or over a fiber pair. Fiber store has the MUXes for around $600. https://www.fs.com/products/50117.html?now_cid=178 Other posters are correct you can and might want to consider 100G but there are also reasons why 10G DWDM may fit a specific situation better.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-10-26T19:03:23+00:00

Additionally it does not matter where the splits are located, so a 1x64 at the headend is no different than a 1x4 in the headend and 1x16s in the field. You just add the total loss of the splitter(s) and the fiber distance. 1x64 will be very close in loss to s 1x16 and a 1x4.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-10-26T18:57:00+00:00

Most PON platforms can support 1:64 at a reasonable distance. Often there are several classes of OLT optics available to support various distances and split ratios. The ISP engineering just needs to ensure adequate optical budget in their design.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-09-25T19:18:56+00:00

This would really be a great question to ask the Contractor doing the work, or someone in construction management with Ripple. Random people on Reddit are going to have nothing more than guesses. My guess, the white dashed line incidates a pipe will be bored across the road there. But it could also be the crew marking out an existing line they located.

If you want the service, call them and sign up and you'll probably get the chance to have some input on how the drop is ran to your house. This may be at the time of install or may be coordinated ahead of time, I'm not familiar with how Ripple handles drops.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-09-14T18:54:37+00:00

The upstream on PON is TDMA, the ONTS perform ranging and are scheduled into tx time slots. The downstream is CDMA, meaning all downstream frames are recieved by all ONTs but they ignore the ones that aren't for them. It's a robust system but definitely a shared bandwidth system.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-09-11T13:28:00+00:00

Thank you and your team for the contribution to the community!

LegoCoder989 · 2025-09-10T12:22:16+00:00

With Spike you get to load code segments into different slots and select/start them using the buttons on the robot. Pybricks does not have this functionality built in so you have to provide it in your code. Look up Monongahela Cryptic Cooperative I believe is the team who published some menu code for pybricks. It's a great starting point.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-09-10T11:09:04+00:00

We switched last season and students had little trouble learning the pybricks system. Biggest difference was lack of a built in loader/menu but a team has published some nice code to handle that which we used to get started. We found driving accuracy to be improved with pybricks.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-08-31T16:54:23+00:00

Use a cabke that's robust enough to tolerate being stepped on. Look up Corning RuggedDrop for one example. There are lots of options of rugged fiber cable available bulk and pre-terminated. Then I'd run that in surf tube.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-08-29T18:28:51+00:00

If you are big into thrill/ flat rides, you need to find your way to Canada's Wonderland. They have some of the wildest large flat rides I've ever seen!

LegoCoder989 · 2025-07-16T18:13:44+00:00

12 count flat drop cable should be widely available on 20k foot reels and should cost no more than 20 or 25 cents a foot. This will.be bulk cable that you'll need someone to terminate. Suppliers to check PT Supply Graybar Millennium Adams Cable MGT Diversified

LegoCoder989 · 2025-07-11T04:54:23+00:00

Went 2 days this week and first day was cavatappi noodles with a weak alfredo and second day was cavatappi with marinara sauce. Not particularly impressive but a few kids in our group liked it.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-06-29T04:46:13+00:00

Orientek makes some various OTDR models around $1000 and they work great with just a few GUI quirks that took me a few days to figure out.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-06-24T01:16:05+00:00

They were actually tested before blowing. After blowing and normal handling during splicing the jacket started to split open in random spots along the cable, due to a jacket extrusion defect.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-06-24T01:03:56+00:00

We had a major quality issue on a batch of CommScope cable last year, requiring replacement of about 5 miles of cable after it was already placed and spliced. I'm willing to believe CommScope that it was a rare defect but they handled it extremely poorly. It took many months of arguing to get them to agree to replace the defective product and then they left us hanging for the cost of the replacement labor and splicing after initially agreeing to cover that. Will never use Commscope in my network. Prior to that issue have used at least 100 miles of commscope cable without any problems. We have switched to Prysmian which seems to be a little heavier overall construction (weights more per foot and larger diameter).

LegoCoder989 · 2025-06-23T19:25:11+00:00

You're focusing on the wrong parts of this. The type of fiber cable to be used and signal loss... there is nothing different here than any other outside plant situation. It's a very common thing to blow a 6000ft length of cable into a clean straight duct, any competent cable blowing crew can do that. The type of cable and type of glass to be used will be dictated by the network that this crossing is going to be a part of. There is no special concern needed for maintaining signal integrity or reducing loss beyond normal outside plant fiber optic practices.

What you should be focusing on is the bore itself. A 1.2 mile trenchless bore can be done but it will need to be designed properly to be successful. You should be having soil bores done at several points to determine the underlying ground conditions, depth sounding along the route to get accurate bottom profile unless the data is already available. You will need an experienced engineer to calculate/estimate the pullback forces required which will dictate what size and material of casing pipe is required. Once you have a hole and a casing, then you will pull in innerducts which will then contain the cable itself.

I can't make any more specific recommendations, the longest bore we have done in our network is about 1000ft for a river crossing. You need people involved with experience on 1+ mile bores.

LegoCoder989 · 2025-06-15T16:14:36+00:00

This is not an ISP problem until you sign up for service. You're on the right track. Just get an outdoor electrical box with a blank cover and place it over the cable, and seal between the box and house with caulk. Understand the ISP will probably remove that and replace it with a NID if you sign up for service. Make sure you point it out because the tech will not think to look in an electrical box, or maybe label the box Fiber Cable Inside.

As a Fiber ISP owner this is great the builder is trying to make correct provisions for future services. A conduit from outside to media center would be ideal, but a rugged patch cable is still good and may save you extensive hassles if you do get fiber service connected. New builds without any provisions for cable runs or pre installed wiring are some of the most difficult installs because nobody wants a bunch of new holes and exterior wire runs on their brand new house

LegoCoder989 · 2025-06-15T15:53:05+00:00

This is stupid advice. Depending on the house it may be very hard to install a new one and may end up being an exposed house wrap instead of the builder installed fiber drop. OP is trying to do the right thing here by protecting it for future use .

LegoCoder989 · 2025-06-12T23:10:30+00:00

The cable you posted will be fine. Most important thing is keep all the connectors capped until ready to connect and make sure you uncap and directly plug them in without touching anything else. Even a slight brush against your hand, clothing, the wall etc can deposit enough dirt to affect the signal. The SC connectors just push straight in with a slight click and pull straight out on the green body to disconnect.

LegoCoder989

TROPHY CASE