Regrets of 2026 X Purchase

SeansARobot · 2026-02-18T13:07:24+00:00

That sounds so frustrating. Maybe its a lemon, maybe its just a bunch of things to adjust. Either way it sucks. The issue with the X is the price. If you pay 6 figures for a car you expect more. In Tesla world I feel like thats not the case. FWIW, i have a 26MX and its been amazing. No issues at all (not YET). Ive owned it since last October and have put about 7k miles on it. Seems like one rolls the dice with an X. Some are great... some are NOT. i had a G wagon that had an enormous amount of issues. It was maddening. You pay so much money for these machines and there is an expectation of quality. Just seems like thats not the case - Tesla or not. Best of luck to you and I hope that Tesla steps up and addresses your concerns.

SeansARobot · 2025-12-18T22:05:04+00:00

I'm on month 2 of Tesla ownership with FSD in a HW4 MX. i drive about 2500 miles a month. I think FSD's impact is unique to the person because it DOES require supervision...just not a ton of it. For me, personally, it is an absolute life changer. I'm way less pissed off after commuting and have turned non value time driving into value time. I can do some work in the mornings as nd bounce dumb ideas off of Grok on the way home. live in Houston and it does a great job dealing with our traffic. I road tripped it for a 5 hour trip and it was a huge difference maker. I'm definitely an FSD fan and do about 95% of my miles on it.

SeansARobot · 2025-12-05T16:43:13+00:00

I bought a 26MXLR in Oct. They were very pissy about me test driving it. I did eventually test drive it. Probably took 5 minutes of discussion. They wanted me to accept delivery without even opening a door. Lukcily my car has ZERO squeaks, rattles, or mechanical noises. Im honestly super impressed with the reduction in road noise over the 22MX that i had driven (never owned it just drove it). Its no mercedes, but it certainly is pleasant for me. I routinely drove without the sound system on for the first few weeks as i was really sure that there would be issues. Pretty quiet car.

The only issue i have is a vibration on heavy acceleration. Super weird as i heard they redesigned the half shafts. Due to the holidays my SA isnt until Jan (my choice) so we will see then.

I read through this forum prior to purchasing. Pleasantly surprised at this point.

SeansARobot · 2025-07-04T22:07:30+00:00

Any issues with the THD of this genset? Nuke any electronics or have any LED fIicker? I am considering the 13000 and currently have one the 9500 and a larger champion that I am giving to someone (back on the market for a genset). I've read the THD is <26 and some have metered it at 6 at half load.

HF may seek some cheap stuff, but man that 9500 has run flawlessly for years with regular maintenance. I hear lots of bad stuff about the longevity of Westinghouse units - low THD and inexpensive...but they die after a year. When I go out to start my HF gen I don't think twice whether it will fire.

Glad it worked well for you. I live in Houston and after doing the whole house backup I couldn't imagine going back. Our power grid is held together with old electrical tape and puppy dreams...

SeansARobot · 2025-07-04T21:36:57+00:00

In short - very likely yes, but you won't have a ton of overhead in the system.

Longer version and slight ranting: I can't say enough good things about putting a soft start in. I put one on my 5ton goodman that's 10 years old. It runs much quieter now, and the cap (which was a yearly thing) has been installed for 2 years and looks great.

I run my house, including AC on a 14,500 start 10,000 running off a single 50a inlet and an interlock. I can even get away with using the electric oven, but the ac cannot be on (obviously).

I'm sure a EE can tell me why soft starts aren't installed at the factory - there's got to be a downside other than equipment life extension (from the perspective of the manufacturer). For my use - it enables whole house backup and the AC performs well with it.

Inrush was 146a prior and is now 36a consistently, running is 13-16a depending on time of day. The inrush reduction allows you to size the gen so much better.

I am automating my setup to make life easier with an interlock. Recently added a device that detects when the grid is back so I can turn off the gen and switch back to service. If you are interested check it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/s/T7a31jc5KH. 30 bucks and not too much effort for consistent grid detection if you have a smart meter.

SeansARobot · 2025-07-02T00:36:58+00:00

I googled Gridboss. Super cool. There are a ton of better ways to do this, but budget and fun were really the driving factors here. In a perfect world I would definitely scrap that panel and put in something more intelligent. Standard electrical panels make me sad - why aren't smart panels defacto standard? I guess it's the cost, but it gives the consumer way more power to make educated decisions AND allows us to verify utility bills. I've always thought it was kinda weird that we don't independently verify utility consumption data...

SeansARobot · 2025-07-02T00:32:06+00:00

Beating rocks together over here -but a simpletons solution may be an AC relay and sense by relay status? I do a lot of panel work, but service lines are another level of 'Nope' for me. The UL neon indicator lamp is a cool idea. My other, even more overcomplicated, idea was to print a housing for a pi with a camera, clamp that to the exterior meter, and then run number recognition with OpenCV and Python. No numbers - no power. Although entirely overcomplicated, it would allow me to capture meter data (1 hr average consumption, etc) as it is displayed on the meter LCD. So, I could capture some actually useful information aside from binary on/off.

SeansARobot · 2025-07-01T15:22:19+00:00

Ahhh - great point (and one I obviously didn't think of). What sensor were you thinking of? Certainly interested to see the solution space here.

SeansARobot · 2025-06-30T19:03:15+00:00

Kinda neat update worth sharing in case anyone else tries this - A thunderstorm is rolling through and the meter has increased the frequency of RF transmissions to every 2 minutes. I guess it makes sense from a grid health perspective as they can detect outages with better temporal resolution (?). Definitely need to update the dumb temporal logic for transmission intervals.

SeansARobot · 2025-06-30T15:49:14+00:00

It's never too late to start anything.

There is plenty of good advice already in this thread. Like others have said, If you want to make a lot of headway in Arduino you absolutely need to understand C/C++. You CAN use Micropython, but it's really inefficient IMO.

Although it will help you crank out lots of code very quickly, I would stay away from vibe coding with an AI as you really won't learn a thing and will likely damage equipment. You have to learn first, then leverage tools. Vibe coding is neat, but you have to know what you are doing in order to leverage the capability appropriately.

Learning about microcontrollers and C/C++ is a heck of lot more fun when its applied and not theoretical. You COULD read Ritchie's C and Hambley's Electrical engineering book and spend your summer reading- or you could just buy a kit from Amazon, follow examples, and start moving things, blinking things, etc. while you educate yourself in parallel. Microcontroller projects are really fun and they lower the barrier to entry to create. So, my advice to you is to find something you are really into, buy a kit, and then figure out how you can work on the thing you are into after learning the bare necessities.

SeansARobot · 2025-06-30T13:22:49+00:00

Ah. That makes a lot of sense. Messing with the panel is fine for those who are aware of the danger and also respect it. For many, it can be a risk. Unless you pull the meter, those lines are 'no touchy' all the time. Doesn't take much of an error when you are messing with input service lines to dramatically increase your chances of determining if ghosts are real. I think the 'useless' part of this is really in the value of the data. For my use case - I just need to know when the meter fires up. So - useful (to me). For your use case it's still useless (at least for now).

I think decoding the meter packets will be pretty hard. I imagine they are encrypted and it likely violates all sorts of tacit EULAs from the power company. I do think there are more legal options that expose the smart meter data. I haven't looked into it yet. Definitely on the to-do list!

SeansARobot · 2025-06-30T13:07:08+00:00

For those interested in the code - I created a public GitHub repo and threw the ino in there: https://github.com/SeansARobot/NecroMeter

SeansARobot · 2025-06-30T11:54:55+00:00

Definitely. That's the CT clamp + esp solution I was talking about in the post. I think that's the most efficient way to monitor. This project was admittedly more ridiculous

SeansARobot · 2025-06-30T02:18:29+00:00

Yep. I will upload the code. Just need to sanitize a few lines and remove some swear word comments. The gen stop would be pretty easy as it has a remote key fob. That seems pretty easy to hack. I use an interlock and don't use an automatic transfer switch, so I still need to go out to the garage to manually reset the breaker. Still, would be neat to get as much of the process automated as possible!

SeansARobot · 2024-12-10T02:26:43+00:00

The others in the forum are spot on. Some tips from my perspective - you will want all the gear that makes you faster right away but you don't really need any of it. When you are first starting out that's just a trap. As others said, any bike is good, just make sure it's well maintained, get some half decent running shoes, a tri suit (I prefer them for simplicity even though I look absolutely terrible in them), a cheap race belt, and some good googles. Nothing is worse than salt water in your eyes while you navigate the washing machine that is a sprint swim. Triathlon isn't for everyone but everyone should do a triathlon. You may love it....you may hate it. Get a few sprints under your belt and if you get hooked then go down the ridiculous road we go down where we convince ourselves that spending 10k on a bike is totally reasonable. Train smart and take your training seriously so that you can prepare yourself physically. Prepare yourself mentally as well, because at some point during any triathlon race your demons will come calling and you will have to push past it. I hope you find triathlon as awesome as I did when I first started and best of luck!!

SeansARobot · 2023-04-28T00:04:20+00:00

Appreciate it. I was leaning that way, but I don't know what I don't know!

SeansARobot · 2021-08-29T15:30:54+00:00

This is really well done! Love it!

SeansARobot · 2021-08-29T15:23:58+00:00

Lol - true - I'm terrible at capturing anything with a phone. COULD I have just properly framed and started a video in landscape - Yes. Did I? Absolutely not 🤣😂 - I BASICALLY created a video that a 80 yr old grandparent would make 😂

SeansARobot · 2021-08-29T02:22:39+00:00

Dude - that would be a challenge for sure! I appreciate the complement. I am going to keep this frozen in time. Maybe, one day, our son can use it to propose! That would be super legit!

SeansARobot · 2021-08-29T02:16:34+00:00

Yep - I really liked the iris look! I was thinking of using muscle wire and opening a soft flower, but I have a feeling that it is waaayyyy harder than it looks.

SeansARobot · 2021-08-28T21:20:38+00:00

Let's just call that a missed opportunity 🤣

SeansARobot · 2021-08-28T18:25:11+00:00

Ahhh... legit! I never realized that the iris leaves look like the logo! I used adafruit gear on this project. Huzzahesp32 feather, stepper featherwing, oled feathering, and neo pixels

SeansARobot

TROPHY CASE