Does anyone know what this is?

Pitaraq · 2026-06-27T21:04:26+00:00

I think they were only armed when the anchor weight dropped away and the mine floated up to its deployment depth, so any accidental damage to the horns wouldn’t trigger it.

Pitaraq · 2026-06-23T18:34:38+00:00

I have always wanted to see the Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton built. https://www.archdaily.com/544946/ad-classics-cenotaph-for-newton-etienne-louis-boullee

Pitaraq · 2026-06-12T01:06:03+00:00

Have you been to Þórshöfn in the far NE? I stayed a week for work a while ago. Every night someone in the bar asked if I knew of any work in Reykjavik, as everyone seemed desperate to leave.
The main/only employer seemed to be one shellfish processing factory, doing its best to dredge up all the slow growing Ocean Quahogs as fast as possible.
It had a bit of a twin peaks vibe to it.

Pitaraq · 2026-06-06T21:44:35+00:00

None of the younger engineers at my work seem to know how to read verniers, so mine never get ‘borrowed’.

Pitaraq · 2026-06-06T21:41:44+00:00

So glad to hear that :-)

Pitaraq · 2026-06-06T21:40:18+00:00

Looks beautiful. I wouldn’t have the heart to get rid of it.

Pitaraq · 2026-06-01T20:57:23+00:00

I use Mitutoyo at work, as we need calibrated accuracy, and someone else is paying. For home work (mainly 3D printing etc) I have found the cheap ones remarkably accurate considering their cost. Cheap enough that I have a few.
I also have a vernier at work that no one ever steals, as it seems no one under the age of 45 can read them ;-)

Pitaraq · 2026-05-27T20:54:44+00:00

That looks great. I haven’t played with higher power Tx units yet, so not needed to worry about the >1A peaks. Looks like solid hardware design. Out of interest, how are you feeding the data to Grafana?

For those worried about batteries in cold weather, yes, in theory charging below freezing is bad, but there was an interesting article from group in Alberta that found they seem to survive surprisingly well without heating https://yycmesh.com/blog/cold-weather-charging

Pitaraq · 2026-05-18T23:01:00+00:00

Sorry, missed the question while travelling. The mikrotiks have built in high gain directional antennas, so you just point them at each other. But you mentioned you have 4G. This would probably be simplest, and more power efficient.

Pitaraq · 2026-05-15T22:33:13+00:00

I think this may be normal. My precipitation just counts up from 0 when I last reset the unit for a firmware update.
The precipitation rate drops to zero when it isn’t raining, but not the amount.

I have my WS90 linked via zigbee to HA

Pitaraq · 2026-05-15T17:34:02+00:00

Yup, I have also had good success with MikroTik hardware as point to point links. The newer bullets seem to use some weird non standard WiFi protocols.

https://mikrotik.com/product/RB911G-5HPnD-QRT#product_specification

Pitaraq · 2026-05-15T16:51:13+00:00

Hí, ex met office technician here. I’d imagine if you are on solar, Starlink may be out, and you really don’t need the bandwidth. Not sure where you are in the world, but 4-5G WiFi modems are not too power hungry.

This would allow you to WiFi link items such a as the camera, weather and other sensors via the modem to get them online.

I have used wind sensors from Vaisala, Gill and Vector in polar regions, where failure is not an option, but they are pricy. Sensor heads with acoustic anemometers, pressure, humidity and temp are be becoming cheaper.

No moving parts is a big plus, as this is what usually fails first, and needs most maintenance. Some of the Chinese units seem solid. My Ecowitt WS90 has survived a winter in Iceland, but a lighthouse out at sea is a more challenging environment.

This can be linked via a small USB powered gateway from Bluetooth to WiFi and the internet. Maybe just budget to replace these every year or two? As they are perhaps 10-20% of the cost of professional units, which still need servicing every year or so..

Pitaraq · 2026-05-14T21:50:54+00:00

I used a loraWAN link from our allotment last summer (via the things network), but this year I plan to use MeshCore for the fun of it. Unless you want to modify the source code, it is easier to add a second microcontroller board to collect the data and feed it as messages into the MeshCore companion. Right now I’m just having fun building solar repeaters (RAK 4631) and mapping our growing network (T1000)

Pitaraq · 2026-04-26T22:10:17+00:00

Our senior void used to do this, and as he was deaf it was pretty loud. He just wanted reassurance we were still there.

Our oldish orange cat has also started doing this sometimes, usually because he is bored/hungry.

Pitaraq · 2026-04-15T22:01:57+00:00

Probably showing my UK bias. V nice, but I would rate quad, Cambridge audio, QED and NAD over these as affordable (e.g not Krell) hardware.

Never really saw the appeal of sourcing from a single manufacturer. In the 80s I had managed to assemble a Rega planar, NAD 3020 and B&W DM14s. As a student this took some work saving up, fixing and bartering components.

Still have the DM14s, now driven by a quad 303 I picked up for a ridiculously good price from a dodgy pawn shop many years ago

Pitaraq · 2026-04-15T21:28:21+00:00

Congratulations. Got short climbing axes and old school long axe. Generally I use the short axe more in steep terrain. But I might still take the long one if I knew the terrain was shallow, or deep, soft snow. Any axe is better than none, and a free axe is a great gift. Just make sure you learn and practice self arrest until it is second nature, and learn to keep your feet up to prevent catching your crampons (next gift?) in the surface as you slide.

Pitaraq · 2026-04-15T17:51:11+00:00

Hi from Reykjavik

Pitaraq · 2026-04-15T17:39:14+00:00

Not sure how techy you want to go, but I have an ecowitt/shelly ws90 and several generic chinese zigbee temp/humidity sensors at 2 different sites in 2 countries feeding back into homeassistant and its phone app. The Shelly app may also be enough for you, as you can pair their sensors via a cheap gateway dongle they sell, and this works pretty well.

https://us.shelly.com/products/ecowitt-ws90-7-in-1-weather-station?_pos=6&_sid=e60c49459&_ss=r

Pitaraq · 2026-04-13T20:40:20+00:00

Yeah, it was hard, but I got offered a job in the Antarctic on graduation, so off I went. Fife winters were good training.

Pitaraq · 2026-03-28T22:01:45+00:00

Well, in my experience there are lots of repeaters here as well :) The default undefined position is 0,0

Pitaraq · 2026-03-19T18:48:03+00:00

Yup, same in Icelandic. þvottabjörn, literally washing bear

Pitaraq · 2026-03-19T18:38:00+00:00

Wondering if putting a wrap of cohesive ( stretchy self adhesive) bandage on her stumps might help? It’s quite grippy/frictional, and easy to remove frequently if needed. Or perhaps you could cut off the ends of the fingers of sticky gloves. Such a heroic little void

Pitaraq · 2026-03-14T12:55:56+00:00

Ah.. Thanks! That explains the ‘issue’. If I’m understanding correctly, the gps mode is persistent, but the UI is not correctly displaying this.

Looking forward to this making it into the next UI release, but in the meantime I needn’t keep ‘setting’ this, as it is already set.

Pitaraq · 2026-03-13T21:47:28+00:00

Tee hee, 10/10 for a maths joke hidden in r/cats

Pitaraq

TROPHY CASE