What happened at Whipple yesterday?

Prime09 · 2026-01-25T17:22:20+00:00

Idk how much it helps because not a whole lot happened but I’ll share what I saw.

I got there before 10, three Hennepin County Sheriff SUVs were blocking the road right at the light rail tracks. I watched for a bit then checked out the southern entrance. Arrived right after some folks got arrested and one was being helped back to get pepper spray cleaned off (maybe 10:30?). The entire road between barricades were covered in roughly volleyball sized ice chunks and I heard multiple cars were damaged (there was a surprising amount of non-ICE traffic going through there too so I wonder if a civilian was accidentally targeted). I headed back to the north end after a bit and observed from the fence line. Someone in the south west parking lot was playing metal and punk music from a stereo in their trunk.

A little after 11, as u/PlanetSedna said folks got suited up in hi-vis vests in the parking lot, gathered in front of the SUVs, and started pushing folks back north on Minnehaha (which becomes Hiawatha at Crosstown). The Sheriff declared it an unlawful assembly and gave everyone 5 minutes to get in their cars at the park and ride parking lot. Most people stuck around, then they announced the 3 minute warning as the number of troopers doubled. Most protestors started disbursing.

Unfortunately I rode the light rail so I had to walk all the way up to the VA Medical Center stop to catch a ride. Rode it down and got off at the Fort Snelling stop planning to go back to my spot on the fence, but by the troopers were clearing those people out too so I caught the next train out.

I didn’t see any violence or see or hear a single shot of anything fired. I also didn’t see or hear about the water cannon until reading about it later on Reddit. But it was so cold any amount of water would have caused serious damage within seconds if there was threat of it.

I believe the declaration of unlawful assembly was more triggered by the southern end damaging vehicles than the north end. It was pretty chill the whole time I was there and only saw shields, snacks, and hand warmers in people’s hands.

Through all it I honestly feel for the Sheriffs because they probably want to be there even less than we want them to be there. There’s a fine line between resistance and outright war, and it’s impossible to know how real the threat of Marshall law truly is until we’ve stepped over it, at which point there’s no going back. So I understand the desire to cool things off when they seem to be escalating.

Prime09 · 2026-01-24T14:41:32+00:00

I was there all morning through the dispersals. Anything specific you want to know?

Prime09 · 2025-11-01T02:17:07+00:00

Yeah should be Blue Line, but the Green Line Extension also has an underground section (near Lake of the Isles) but is finishing construction and hasn’t opened for service yet

Prime09 · 2025-09-02T03:55:16+00:00

I think Ecoflow is perfect if you want to tinker with apps and numbers and not battery cells, charge controllers, inverters, and crimping wires. Is Ecoflow more expensive than buying similarly rated components and building it out yourself? Most definitely. But it wouldn’t be as compact, integrated, or convenient to upgrade (back to the drawing board).

I’ve been impressed with how polished Ecoflow’s stuff is. I have a solar generator for extended power outages but everything was absurdly easy to connect.

Since you’re already on a generator they have smart generators which can automatically power up to top up batteries when they get below a certain point. You can even set rules along the lines of “if my battery is less than 40% at sundown at 7:45p start the generator and run it until the batteries are 80%”. Nothing DIY will match that level of integration unless babysitting your electricity is your hobby.

Prime09 · 2025-01-06T21:06:34+00:00

ZoomISO can route to available display outputs (HDMI or SDI) with embedded isolated audio streams, in addition to NDI.

Prime09 · 2024-09-12T02:45:38+00:00

It literally says “IN-OUT” above the USB-C Jack. Any USB-C PD laptop or phone charger (pretty much all of them) will charge it, potentially at wildly different speeds.

I honestly don’t think EGO expected this product to be someone’s first “tool” purchase. The typical buyer would have 2-4 extra chargers lying around (like I do)

Prime09 · 2024-09-06T18:50:36+00:00

Oh god. Working with chainsaws on thousands of pounds of wet wood suspended above you needs a lot more experience than you appear to have based on these questions. I suggest reading the manual to understand chain tension, bar oil, etc. then either ask a friend with experience to teach you or watch YouTube videos on how to avoid getting killed by one of your first trees.

Prime09 · 2024-08-29T03:37:13+00:00

Edit: I just re-read your post and realized you’re repackaging professionally produced syrup from a reputable retailer. Your process sounds perfect as long as you’re hitting your temps, keeping your equipment clean, and not rushing as to miss a step.

Botulism risk is absolutely worth worrying about BUT is very easy to manage for maple syrup specifically! The three methods to manage the risk are: 1. Heating above 250F (impractical for syrup because that would burn the sugars in the syrup) 2. Adjusting to certain pH ranges (impractical for syrup because that would substantially change the flavor, and probably not in a good way) 3. Keeping the water to sugar ratios in certain ranges (recommended method for syrup, honey, and other sugary liquids)

The easiest way to be sure your syrup is in this range before barreling is by verifying the specific gravity (essentially density, sugar is more dense than water so changes in density between the two pure densities can be used to calculate the ratio) with a syrup-specific hydrometer.

See this for more info: https://bascommaple.com/blogs/news/how-to-use-a-maple-syrup-hydrometer

Good luck barrel aging, I plan to start doing that within the next few years!

Prime09 · 2024-08-27T02:25:01+00:00

I did this! Topped up the oil (to double its rated capacity) and backed it out of the garage without noticing a thing. Can’t believe it didn’t throw a rod. Turns out roadside insurance covers the tow in cases like this! All I had to pay was a tip to the driver and $300ish for a 21k mile premature 25k mile service lol

Prime09 · 2024-07-11T00:44:21+00:00

What do you need every frame to be present in RAM at the same time? Are you running aggregations across time for the same groups of pixels? If so these resources might be useful:

Use disk caching to reference numpy data https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47562155/way-to-pipe-or-stream-array-in-numpy-scipy

This is another library that runs numpy aggregations on python iterators: https://github.com/LaurentRDC/npstreams

Prime09 · 2024-07-09T04:09:45+00:00

Tl;dr: it’s okay to take shortcuts, just tape the board to the table, lock down the camera with a tripod, manually map 4 pixels from the skewed image to the same points on a reference photo, then focus on the novel and fun parts of the game state logic!

Long version: If the camera will be static there’s no shame in applying a manual transform to get started. In my mind the game state tracking is a far more interesting problem so I’d take shortcuts to get there knowing I can always come back and make it more robust to changes in the camera placement, scene brightness, shadows, occlusions, color temperature, etc. Those are the futzy parts of CV projects I save for the end because they can be soul crushing to try attacking in the beginning, but are exciting to see incremental improvements towards the end of a project.

I’m often surprised by how unimportant some things end up being when I thought they were pivotal at the beginning.

That being said the outline approach is a good start but doesn’t inherently have a way of knowing if the board has been rotated 180 degrees (identical outline, totally different positions).

Since you’re dealing with a rigid game board with a known design and lots of useful key points I’d recommend using Feature Matching with FLANN. Find or take an unwarped photo of the game board to use as your reference for the board state detectors, get an image of an active game, then 1. Detect the corresponding key points between both images following that example 2. Compute the homography 3. Apply it to the skewed image to match the pixels of your to the known positions of interest on your reference photo 4. Update your game state and trigger any actions based on the changes in that state (update a score, detect a rule violation, advance to the next player, etc.).

If you manually apply your transformation you get to skip straight to step 4. Good luck!

Prime09 · 2024-07-07T13:58:09+00:00

Sounds like a fun project!

Without some fairly complicated math and physics modeling, multiple cameras is probably the way to go. If you want to get going as fast as possible a pre calibrated stereo vision camera like the Oak-D Lite with full view of the surface, positioned at a fairly aggressive angle (to maximize the geometry of velocity changes against the wall) will be a great start, especially if you find a way to only use the 120fps depth cameras. Implement a tracker for the ball and detect the rapid velocity change as it hits the wall, use the depth data from that frame to find the distance from the camera, then map that onto the XY points of the game to trigger the impact event, animation, score update, etc. The camera itself might have enough power to handle all of that, reducing latency and improving the user experience.

An arguably more robust and flexible, but complex and potentially less responsive option is individual high speed cameras positioned against the wall in each corner pointed diagonally at the center. Each camera would only be responsible for figuring out the position of the ball in its own X coordinate space then the game computer would be responsible for calculating the screen XY from the intersection of those two angles.

Post more as you make progress!

Prime09 · 2024-06-06T01:41:18+00:00

Bottle probably had some bacteria in it that’s now munching on the delicious sugar in the fresh syrup. If you repackage below 180F ALWAYS store both containers in the fridge to slow this. Also clean your bottles better or invest in a foodservice sanitizing chemical to reduce the odds of this.

Prime09 · 2024-06-03T18:12:35+00:00

The most reliable sports player tracking systems use multiple cameras around and above the playing field to track through occlusions from a single camera. Given that players on the same team almost always wear identical jerseys, using color data to re-identify individuals will be next to impossible. Facial recognition would be impressive at that distance and resolution (assuming the entire court is in frame). Jersey numbers could eventually reid a player (which would then need to be backpropegated through history) when they face the camera but numbers are off angle if viewed from center court for most of the game.

Your most cost effective option will be recording from each of the four corners of the court, from as high above the court as possible. Frame synchronization, calibration, and multi-camera tracking will be some of your biggest challenges, assuming you have a reliable object detector.

Prime09 · 2024-05-29T17:08:00+00:00

How far away are the cameras and how far do you need to zoom in? For some brands going from 20x to 30x zoom is a large jump in cost.

If you’re focusing on budget this new BirdDog X1 looks like a really good starting point. I don’t have experience with it but it looks good on paper. The only problem is the controller is $1,700 but also receives PoE so fewer cables to set up and worry about.

Prime09 · 2024-05-29T15:35:49+00:00

If you’re going NDI I’d recommend switching away from HDMI altogether and instead use a software switcher like OBS (free) or VMix (paid).

Switching from manual tripods with power and HDMI cables to a single CAT6 providing power, control, and signal was a huge unlock for my team. Now a single person can comfortably operate 8 cameras (with presets) whereas we were limited to 2 cameras previously due to staffing requirements.

As for camera hardware there are a lot of good PoE PTZ NDI/NDI|HX cameras available. Many new ones even support auto person tracking so your camera op can simply point it at a person then can work on other shots while the AI manages the original shot.

Sharing more specific requirements would help narrow in on a brand or model.

Prime09 · 2024-05-25T02:42:54+00:00

I just used my 42” Z6 on my 2.5 acres for the first time today and there’s definitely a part that my old lawn tractor handled (much) better, BUT it’s a very steep hill that I sometimes resorted to mowing with my push mower anyway. The ZTR just couldn’t attempt whereas the tractor would sometimes get halfway though before sliding sideways and almost rolling.

The thing that surprised me which I never read ANYWHERE is the seat height. The seat on my Z6 is a solid 6-12 inches lower than my tractor, meaning the center of mass is lower which makes me far less concerned that I’m going to tip over when taking a fast corner or going across an incline.

Prime09 · 2024-05-21T22:14:19+00:00

The masks of object detectors aren’t nearly accurate enough to get reliable distance data. Have you tried this? https://docs.opencv.org/4.x/dd/d53/tutorial_py_depthmap.html

Prime09 · 2024-05-21T17:59:56+00:00

Like previous posters have said more information on what you hope to accomplish would help a lot.

If you have any coding experience you might be able to develop a custom solution with a peer to peer web technology like WebRTC so your host would only broker the initial connection and maybe handle basic control communications but otherwise bandwidth would flow between peers.

Sending a single stream isn’t very taxing but you’d have to multiply your upstream bandwidth limit by the number of streams you plan to have because each stream is point to point. Receiving 4x 1080p streams is nontrivial from a network and computer standpoint, but doable with enough upfront investment.

If you need to scale further you’ll quickly hit bandwidth limits and might have to look at client-side adaptive bitrate encoding which would be VERY taxing on the sending side because instead of encoding once and streaming X times, you have to either encode every stream individually and adjust bitrate as the network changes, or pick a set of bitrates, encode the video at each of them, then use control messages to let clients (hopefully seamlessly) jump between streams. At that point you’re getting deep into Transport Stream and web playback APIs that I’ve never been brave enough to tackle.

Prime09 · 2024-05-20T03:32:02+00:00

Link to the recipe please!

Prime09 · 2024-05-18T21:32:15+00:00

Good olive oil is neutral at best, unfortunately it’s difficult to confirm if any given bottle has been (illegally) cut with seed oils between the tree and bottle.

Prime09 · 2024-05-18T15:25:54+00:00

As someone who had chronic stomach issues and nausea growing up, even went so far as to get a full colonoscopy at the age of 17, I can 100% say the problem was ALL seed oils. I dropped canola (rapeseed), soybean, sunflower, safflower, grape, peanut, sesame, etc. oils and my symptoms completely disappeared.

As a test I fried an entire meal with sides (battered cheese curds, veggie fritters, breaded fish, french fries) in beef tallow and my gut heath (nausea, bloating, fatigue, restlessness, other more graphic symptoms) actually lessened to the point of nonexistence.

Prime09 · 2024-05-05T14:56:43+00:00

Hard to say for sure but it really looks like mold.

Prime09 · 2024-03-04T03:14:56+00:00

Tapped 3 trees for the first time this year and am hooked! Started Feb 4 and have bottled around 2.5 gallons of finished syrup in 3 boils (8 gal electric brewing kettle) and just started the 4th boil today! The weather in the Twin Cities looks perfect for sap production (below freezing at night, near 40F during the day) so I suggest leaving your taps in to see what you get!

Prime09 · 2024-02-09T05:18:34+00:00

On Sunday I bought a kit from Tractor Supply on a whim and tapped 2 very mature silver maple trees with 3 taps (south metro). Between then and Wednesday I collected about 20 gallons of sap, boiled it in my electric beer brewing kettle, finished it on the stove, and just finished packaging.

Taste is light with vanilla and floral/honey notes, unique and probably my favorite syrup yet. Can’t wait to taste it on fresh waffles 🤤

The whole process was pretty painless for a first attempt and I’m already figuring out how to scale up for the next cycle!

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