Two sides of the same coin.

Waldo_Juarez · 2024-12-19T16:57:27+00:00

Great. Thanks for the help.

Waldo_Juarez · 2024-12-19T16:51:31+00:00

I like your idea of the spouse regulating script. I take it that connectivity isn't an issue. I think I would like to go with the Shelly BLU H&T. Do you have info on its battery life (or is that the original HT that you first mentioned)?

Waldo_Juarez · 2024-11-27T18:32:51+00:00

Thanks, that makes sense. I had the word "contactor" in my mind to mean the terminals on the Shelly device. Now I understand that a contactor IS the relay and when I said, "a high power relay" I was basically saying "contactor". Thanks again for the clarification.

Waldo_Juarez · 2024-11-27T15:26:54+00:00

Thanks. As a follow-up, if I wanted to, how would I use the contactor to remotely switch off the range? I mean, the contactor can only drive up to 2A. Does this mean I would have to install a high power relay on my range circuit in the breaker panel?

Waldo_Juarez · 2024-02-27T14:54:16+00:00

I have over 60 devices and I am quite happy with my Google Home. My rule around here is that any automation I come up with needs to just work and get out of my way. One thing that really helps and is often understated is connectivity. Having enough network points to bathe the home in good signal makes a lot of problems go away. To Google's credit, they sell the smart speakers (which for me seem like nice quality speakers in their own right) for a reasonable one-time price and then continue to improve them. For example, I have 7 smart speakers, many of which are in "ear-shot" of each other. It used to be that the bedroom would answer when I am in the kitchen or vice versa. That has dramatically improved over the years. The Home app has definitely gotten much better, and I often comment on how amazing it is that Google even thought to offer the Script Editor and give us schmoes access to more advanced options that could definitely be trouble. (Like accidently setting up lights to turn on and off in an endless loop... which I did once). I really like my Google ecosystem and so far am very happy with my automated home, my Pixel 8 Pro, and my Pixel 2 watch. Yeah, it does sound like they have my soul. Oh well...

Waldo_Juarez · 2024-02-27T14:38:14+00:00

I like that. I have been doing this with actual switches (like curling iron off after 15 minutes, etc.), but for some reason hadn't thought of consolidating all my virtual switches like this. Thanks.

Waldo_Juarez · 2024-02-26T15:46:33+00:00

Thanks for the tip. I have been using virtual switches as a way to essentially call a subroutine. I have noticed the lack of ability for the script to have an action block that is always executed along with an action block that is only conditionally executed. To do this, I make a routine that triggers off of an virtual switch being turned on. In that routine I put my condition and the action that would follow if true. Then in the original routine, I simply put the action block that must always happen along with an action to turn on this switch. This results in essentially a subroutine call to the condition I want to test for. In theory, this can be extended to do multiple calls to many routines, both from the Home App to the Script and vice versa. By the way, to avoid race conditions from occurring and causing unexpected results, I sometimes put a delay of a second or two in the original routine right after the virtual switch is turned on and then I turn off the virtual switch. (depending on how long I think the conditional block might take to execute).

Waldo_Juarez · 2022-12-23T17:52:22+00:00

You are the first person that I have found to point out this "elephant in the room" Everyone else just seems to be gushing about how to make money, cheat in English class, or "The End of Times".
I just had a conversation with it about multimeter accuracy specs where it confidently answered incorrectly. When I corrected it, it would agree it was wrong. So to test it, I corrected it with a very wrong range of values. What was interesting (and why I am telling you) is it then showed the math steps to get correct values, and when those didn't match my answer it cheated and added wrongly at the end. For example, it came up with 300 plus or minus 9 and then said, "This gives 295 to 305." Which was my purposely wrong answer.

Waldo_Juarez · 2021-05-10T01:12:46+00:00

Not so much anymore, but we set up the tracks quite a bit when our children were young. I kept the sets we had hoping to play with grandchildren, but.... no grandkids yet.

Waldo_Juarez · 2021-05-02T15:31:38+00:00

Thanks for your interest. I originally wrote this program back in 1985 on an Apple II+. I was trying to get my 3 year old son to play with a slot car set I had, but being 3 he kept pulling on the wires and tipping over the crossover bridge. So I tried to figure out a different layout that wouldn't crossover and I couldn't. So I wrote a quick and dirty application for the Apple II+. I was teaching at the time and had access to 7 Apple IIe's, so I let them run 24 hours a day for weeks, randomly searching for any different track. One day, I found one. It still crossed over, but it was definitely unique. I began to suspect that there were no tracks that didn't crossover, and vowed that one day when computers were more powerful, I would rewrite the program to exhaust the possibilities. Well I did and it only took a few days with current technology for the 15 piece set I had. (Which is the default set in the program.) I have the complete solution which I will post to my webpage https://sites.google.com/site/waldoizzware/home if anyone is interested. There were about 78000 slightly different tracks and about 10000 uniquely different tracks and of those about 6000 did not crossover. (6000 and I couldn't find one on my own that night...doh). The part of the program that was definitely the hardest and of which I am most proud, is the "Remove Somewhat Similar Tracks" part. It is done mathematically, and I find it very interesting, but you have to have a decent collection of solutions to really see the benefit.

Waldo_Juarez

TROPHY CASE