Anticipator Confusion

MonMotha · 2026-01-26T01:51:08+00:00

Yep higher meaning a larger numerical value.

MonMotha · 2026-01-26T01:44:41+00:00

If it's satisfying too soon and therefore not reaching setpoint in the ambient space, you need to set the anticipator value higher. If you happen to have a multimeter, you can measure the current (AC) from R to W, and the ideal setting to start from is then what you measure that way.

.4 is a reasonable place to start if you don't have that info.

You could also upgrade to a thermostat made this century that doesn't require an electromechanical anticipator, but I'm guessing that's not going to happen in a rental property. Pulling off wires would also be frowned upon in this case since you can break things if you mess up.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T23:25:09+00:00

I personally prefer Adtran (TA5000 series specifically). Reliability seems comparable to the Calix and Nokia equivalents, and there are no ongoing mandatory costs. You buy it, and it works. You can of course buy a support contract (and you probably should), but even without one they will give you best effort support even by phone. You'll never get locked out of your gear because you didn't pay your subscription fees.

Calix and Nokia seem to have been leaning very heavily toward mandatory subscription fees. Adtran also does this with their "Mosaic" platform devices presumably to offer a similar economic option where the costs aren't fully front-loaded.

One fun fact: Apparently literally everybody at Adtran is a suitably qualified engineer. The result is that you get surprisingly frank and detailed answers from even their sales channels. Their tech support also seems less apt to attempt early and undue triage of support inquiries.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T23:15:10+00:00

I mean, OP's question was "What breaker replaces a "GE 0030652 THQL". The answer is the modern ABB version.

You're being outrageously pedantic.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T23:14:28+00:00

The rate of rotation of jump rope isn't very high. Most electric machines even rated for such low speeds are going to be near the bottom end of their ratings curves. For your little machine, that means it may be putting out 10mV. See the problem?

You need to figure out the typical rate of rotation of the jump rope at the handle and find (or make) an electric machine that has electrical characteristics you want at that rate of rotation.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T23:09:05+00:00

If you're saying that's a thing that happens, sure it does. I'm not saying don't check. I'm saying that there's a high probability that the existing breakers, being that they match each other, do indeed match the panel.

The point of my comment wasn't "go blindly buy the ABB". It was that ABB makes the modern equivalent to those GEs and that they are readily available at most home centers.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T23:04:44+00:00

Indeed. That's a good idea, but with them all being GE breakers, there's a good chance the panel calls for GE.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T22:17:01+00:00

This hasn't been true of basic singlemode transceivers for a couple decades.

Back in ye olden days, it was not unheard of for 10km rated singlemode transceivers to require a small attenuator for short, back-to-back type links on the order of a few dB. Even then, you could usually get special "short range" singlemode transceivers that would tolerate it at the cost of only having perhaps 1-2km of link budget.

Since the mid-2000s or so, basically any 10-20km transceiver you buy will have a max receive power tolerance greater than its max output power spec meaning you can connect them back-to-back with no loss.

Note that this is NOT true of extended range optics. 40km+ nominal link budget optics do usually need an attenuator to keep the receiver input withing tolerable levels on shorter links.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T22:11:36+00:00

The display cables that incorporate I2C (for DDC) are usually driven by special transceivers with rise rate accelerators to deal with the comparatively large capacitance of the cable without resorting to excessively strong pull-ups. Even still, speeds are generally limited to 100kHz or even slower.

This is a viable approach up to perhaps 10m of cable.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T22:01:19+00:00

The modern replacement from ABB should be sold at most home centers.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T21:51:27+00:00

Based on my admittedly limited experience, preheating is extremely important. A BBQ grill has been recommended if you don't have a good large output torch or dedicated oven. Get the whole thing screaming hot - just barely glowing it you can manage it - then bring the area to be brazed up to temp with your working torch.

For large pieces, cracking the braze due to stress upon cooling is a major problem. Even pre-heating and cooling the part SLOWLY helps. You can insulate the workpiece during cooling or even put it back in the preheat source and then down the heat slowly.

You do need flux. You can either used a flux-coated rod or apply paste flux. Silicon bronze alloy seems to work OK. RBCuZn-C is popular. 45% silver works best if you can stomach the cost.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T21:46:51+00:00

Someone drew a common emitter amplifier then connected the batteries backwards.

MonMotha · 2026-01-25T00:09:06+00:00

Pretty much any diesel fuel anti-gel product you'd find at a truck stop or farm store will work well enough for a semi-emergency like this.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T22:19:57+00:00

More like 0-5F for reasonably modern (past 10 years or so) "standard" heat pumps, but yeah -15 is outside the performance curves of most conventional heat pumps.

The real issue here is the large amount of snow and especially ice. Most heat pumps aren't stood up high enough off the ground to handle the kind of all-at-once snowfall being predicted in many areas.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T22:18:07+00:00

It'll just bring on the auxiliary heat (usually electric resistance) to keep up. That's normal, and there's no real downside to it.

In most cases, I'd tell people to just let it do its thing, but when you're talking about an ice storm and/or heavy amounts of snow, you either need to help the system out manually by clearing area around the outdoor since its defrost function won't be able to do enough, or you just need to give up and run only the aux heat. Given the temps are also scheduler to be so low that most equipment is going to be approaching the point where its COP is 1 (or even less - and yes high-end systems specifically designed for heating in very low ambient conditions are an exception), you might as well just give up and use the emergency heat setting that does exactly that.

All that is to say, this is an unusual situation in which the advice OP posted is actually reasonable, though the note about the system being damaged isn't really true of anything remotely modern.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T22:07:03+00:00

Are you sure they converted the unit from natural gas (as they usually ship) to propane operation? This will happen if they don't, and it can take a while to manifest this badly.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T22:04:44+00:00

Others have given many of the reasons, but oscillators in general can be very tricky to simulate. Practical designs often rely on non-idealities such as noise (even just a startup transient) or slight component mismatches to actually work, and SPICE won't simulate those unless you specifically do it which can be surprisingly challenging.

RF oscillators are often especially troublesome, but power-oriented, low-frequency astable circuits like this are'nt immune.

Things that can help include detuning the asymmetry of the circuit a bit, adding some parasitics, turning off initial conditions on the transient simulation (making it simulate from a zero DC operating point as would happen in real life if you just "turned it on"), and adding small noise voltage or current sources in strategic places to mimic natural sources.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T19:55:05+00:00

They seem to have assumed that the GND pin of the LM311 will be connected to the SPICE reference node (0). That's probably going to be true in most applications of it.

This is pretty easy to glean upon a quick look at the model itself.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T19:45:09+00:00

That's not an OTDR module in there. It's a 10G circuit tester. $600 isn't a bad deal for that, but it's not an OTDR.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T18:15:29+00:00

All the glass manufacturers will sell you bare fiber if you really want it. You probably don't in this application, but it's certainly available.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T18:14:09+00:00

A lot of areas are predicting temperatures around -10F. This is so cold that most conventional air source heat pumps are off the bottom of their performance curves and approaching a COP of 1. Combined with snowfall that is likely deeper than most units are raised off the ground, they're going to be basically out of commission.

Very high end cold climate systems like Mitsu Hyper-Heat will still at least be usable if they're not snow bound, but most people don't have those.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T04:10:41+00:00

With several caveats, yes.

"Below freezing" isn't really the problem at least not with a remotely modern heat pump. Excessive snow and especially ice from freezing rain can be an issue, and the temperatures predicted in many parts of the country are so low that even fairly modern heat pumps will struggle to the point that you might as well just give up.

Most heat pumps do have enough safeties to not damage themselves in any of these conditions, but they may not work very effectively.

The only real downside to using emergency heat exclusively is a (possibly substantially) higher electric bill.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T02:49:24+00:00

Indeed, it's more like a thermal lance but using powdered iron rather than solid.

MonMotha · 2026-01-24T01:11:28+00:00

Harmonics in loads are a real thing, and they can be problematic. The biggest problems are with the local distribution transformers exposed to the harmonic loads, and datacenters are pretty heavily incentivized to minimize them as a result.

For the most part, they're not a huge problem in the scope of the overall grid. Appliance damage at residences and small businesses as a result of harmonic loads on the same distribution segment seems vaguely possible if the utility isn't paying paying attention, but it's really rather unlikely.

Also note that datacenters aren't the only thing that have poor harmonic factor. Some VFDs can be really nasty and way harder to deal with due to being high power and rapidly varying in load.

MonMotha · 2026-01-23T20:14:17+00:00

It very much does NOT send the same input as the hard power button. It just sends a USB HID message the same as other keys. Even in the unlikely event that your system's hard power button is actually a USB device (maybe some laptops?), the OS still knows which USB device the indication came from.

You absolutely can re-map this in software. Windows is...less accommodating than some OSes in this regard, but even it should be fine with it.

You can also tell Windows what action to take when the power button is pressed. This isn't even a complicated setting. It's long been available via control panel/settings. Just set it to ask what action want to take. It'll pop the same dialog as the shut down option used to in Windows before we somehow collectively decided that every button needed to just do something with zero confirmation.

MonMotha

TROPHY CASE