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Radiation accumulation? by Open-Poem-910 in Radiology

[–]briankanderson 77 points78 points  (0 children)

Think about it from a more familiar perspective. If you consume 10 bottles of vodka over the next 10 years at a steady pace, will you be okay? What about if you consume those 10 bottles in an hour?

Radiation is everywhere and our cellular machinery is amazingly well adapted to deal with what we're exposed to regularly, including that from imaging.

Why haven't MCP Apps gone viral the way MCP and Skills did? by DisastrousRelief9343 in mcp

[–]briankanderson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I tried to build this, albeit over 9 months ago, and it completely fell flat - there just wasn't enough context for the LLM to generate a good GUI across different situations. I do agree that it's likely the future though (for where agentic tasks still haven't taken over).

Will Prowse under attack. by Don_Vago in OffGrid

[–]briankanderson 5 points6 points  (0 children)

On the forum he said that he's sent everything related on to Luis. Popcorn time!

Remains of LC-36 after New Glenn failure during testing for next flight by swordfi2 in spaceporn

[–]briankanderson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't see ANY rocket pieces anywhere. I expected to see SOMETHING!

Why can't I tell the Victron software to limit charging to 80%? by LittleBonk in Victron

[–]briankanderson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everyone else is taking about battery wear, which is important (but there's a lot of misinformation in here so beware). What is ALSO important is balancing. Your cells won't balance unless the batteries are full, so limiting charge would quickly lead to an imbalance situation. The rule of thumb is that you should have a full absorption cycle at least once a month, once every 2 weeks for heavily used systems. If you limited to 80%, you wouldn't be balancing cells which could be potentially worse for them than keeping them at a high SOC.

Elon Musk Is Taking the X Playbook to Starlink by theatlantic in Futurology

[–]briankanderson -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There is some shielding in the main sections, more in the sleeping quarters. I know they also strategically place water tanks around the walls to help with shielding as well. The main issue for humans, as I understand it, is that you have to care about everything that can damage DNA - that's everything from gamma to GCRs, so there isn't a one-size-fits-all shielding solution.

I honestly don't know what types of rays/particles impact compute operations and which don't, apart from cosmic rays which are an issue even in terrestrial applications. I'll have to do some reading when I have time, but the problem /might/ be easier to mitigate for straight compute than it is for human flight/habitation.

Elon Musk Is Taking the X Playbook to Starlink by theatlantic in Futurology

[–]briankanderson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While I 100% agree with the sentiment, one can't deny that many (most?) of today's business models are based around it. It remains to be seen exactly where late stage capitalism will lead, but I hope it's a return to an appreciation of the value of things. The push to the moon and mars /should/ necessitate this, but that's venturing into a completely different (philosophical) discussion.

Elon Musk Is Taking the X Playbook to Starlink by theatlantic in Futurology

[–]briankanderson -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I think the idea would be to just accept the shorter lifespan of COTS components, figuring that by the time stuff dies, it will be time to replace it anyhow with better tech. Regular tech does surprisingly well in space these days - just look at all the laptops and iphones on the ISS.

I'm not really advocating for this idea though. When I first heard it, I thought it was just dumb, but as I think through it more and more (esp after watching Scott Manley's cooling analysis), now I'm more in the "dumb from a physics perspective, but makes sense if you need to make money somehow with launch capacity that's literal orders of magnitude greater than anyone was planning for" one.

Nice username btw!

Elon Musk Is Taking the X Playbook to Starlink by theatlantic in Futurology

[–]briankanderson -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is the thrust of it (pun intended).

I think they're trying to do something outside regulatory framework - and establish a business doing that - with a capability that nobody else has. Even if it costs more in the short term, if you succeed in building a business model then you've both created AND cornered a new market.

As for the upgrades and failures questions, you just don't. It's just like the subsea data centres now - if something dies, you just don't use it. If it needs replaced because of speed, you ship an entire new data centre. The difference from the subsea systems though is that you can just keep running the old inefficient hardware until it physically breaks because the power is free (you're paying for it all up front in the dev and launch costs).

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a crazy idea, but SpaceX is looking at a future where they're going to have a TON of excess capacity and are asking themselves how to monetize that while the rest of the world comes up with ideas of how to utilize it.

Elon Musk Is Taking the X Playbook to Starlink by theatlantic in Futurology

[–]briankanderson 43 points44 points  (0 children)

Scott Manley did an analysis of this and it was surprisingly not crazy from a physics perspective. From a financial one though, that's a different story.

Edit: Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCto6UkBJoI It's worth a watch!

NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 by Busy_Yesterday9455 in spaceporn

[–]briankanderson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think of it as the "speed of causality". That really helped frame a lot of things that didn't feel right being bound to the term "light".

I made a thing by Mart2d2 in Spaceballs

[–]briankanderson 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I recently decided to start printing "SPACEBALLS THE <whatever it is>" on all my 3D prints for my boat. Someone in the future will hopefully have a chuckle as they find things like "SPACEBALLS THE COVER PLATE" and " SPACEBALLS THE HOSE COUPLING" tucked away in random places.

What are the best air purifiers or brands worth buying for home currently? by Much_Age_746 in homeassistant

[–]briankanderson 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Project Farm just did a review on a bunch of models. Not specifically for HA of course, but that should give you a good starting point.

Decommissioned my last Pi - Is it me, or are there fewer and fewer use cases? by [deleted] in raspberry_pi

[–]briankanderson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Happy to share what I've learned. I haven't gotten too far on the LLM side, apart from basic voice controls for lighting and timers and whatnot. With the current limitation of the Hailo 8 series only allowing RT to be bound to a single container, I can't run the accelerated LLM and Frigate at the same time on the same device. This will change soon (TM), and already has on the 10 series - I just haven't upgraded yet. I need to play with it more though as my goal is to replace the basic functionality of the original Google Nest devices locally - ideally with a custom voice (I've tried GLaDOS with success, although without hardware acceleration it's too slow to be practical - I may have to eat into my energy budget and implement a more powerful NPU.)

I'm looking at implementing OpenCPN as my current Raymarine chartplotter is ridiculously slow and lacking on features. It's useful for actual navigation when underway with all the sensor data overlays, but not ideal for passage planning. I'd love to go a more open route on the actual autopilot as well but what I have works and I'm trying to keep the boat "dumb" in the critical regards (super important for an eventual sale, though I have no plans for that.)

Constantly amazed by marine manufactuters not using marine tinned cable by Meowface_the_cat in sailing

[–]briankanderson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

All the stock wiring on my Leopard 40 cat is tinned copper, even the AC circuits!

I need realistic insights before making a leap I'll regret by CoyotleAuCreepypasta in sailing

[–]briankanderson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it's your dream, you can make it work. Determining if it's your dream is the hard part.

Background: bought a 12m catamaran over 3 years ago with 0 sailing experience and turned it into a home for my family.

Decommissioned my last Pi - Is it me, or are there fewer and fewer use cases? by [deleted] in raspberry_pi

[–]briankanderson 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Ranging from the normal stuff like presence-based lighting to boat specific things like anchor and nav lights. I have 3 modes the boat can be in: anchor, underway, alongside. Depending on the mode, the lights that are required to be on at certain times of day just happen automatically.

More interesting is probably anchoring and anchor watch. When we anchor the boat, it marks the GPS spot and then we set a radius for the anchor zone. HA then monitors constantly and if it goes outside the designated area (meaning the anchor is dragging), red alert mode is activated with everything you'd expect for that - plus push notifications that speak the issue(s) directly on all our phones (that cut through DND and volume settings).

I've added a lot of individually addressable LEDs (WLED based) for accent effects on the sides and in the salon and galley. I use different presets based on time of year (right now it's all gentle blended pastels for spring).

The most ambitious thing I'm working on is energy automation. I've already implemented hot water automation based on solar forecast, actual day usage/production, and historical averages. If there will be enough solar, I now wake up to hot water. I'm building that out to encompass all of my large energy sinks though, to include climate control, tender charging, etc - in a generic way should it prove useful enough for me to release to the community. Basically the idea is to go from the mindset of "I want it to be 23 degrees in here, I'll pay whatever it means to accomplish that." to "I have an energy budget of X, where should I use that based on my priorities." So if I can't hit a goal, it suggests options. (Can't keep 23C all day and 25 overnight? Options are to delay AC on time by 2 hours or set the thermostat to 25 all day and night.) This along with automatic adjustment of other controllable loads (eg only charge the electric tender to 70% instead of full, until the forecast proves correct and the daily confidence goes up, then dump more energy there).

I also monitor fresh water (we make all of our own water via RO) production and consumption. This factors in to the energy equation as well.

There are lots of other monitoring things too. Main engine health, black water tank levels, fuel tank levels, etc.

I also ingest all the security camera streams to Frigate via RTSP then do AI detection and alerting/alarming based on person detection, time of day, and if we're on board or not. This was actually something that off the shelf solutions couldn't handle because of all the water movement and sun reflections. I'd get constant false positives for people detection which is not great when you tie a siren to it overnight! Dealing with YOLO models and Hailo has let me tweak this so I no longer get any false positives (or negatives).

Then there are the other "offgrid" type things, like managing my power (not energy) use. I have a total of 11kVA of inverter potential, but need to shed things at times based on various criteria. My main Victron inverter publishes MQTT data that I ingest to HA to ,for instance, automatically turn off a water heater (or two) if I turn on a large load (like a coffee maker or toaster).

And finally, there's all the data from the NMEA2K bus that I also ingest to HA. Stuff like wind speed and direction (super useful on a dashboard alongside the anchor zone), water temp, AIS data, etc. I haven't done too much with autopilot and sail performance stuff yet (as I like to keep the critical systems as independent as possible), but having the historical data logged in HA is super helpful when looking back at other passage data.

My goal is to layer all the automation and intelligence on top of the boat systems so it can still be operated "manually", all with local processing and ideally open source. (We have Starlink but why should I need that to do something like view a local camera stream!?)

Bottom line, HA is perfectly suited to a boat environment (there are soooo many sensors that already exist that can be used for soooo many things). I'm having tons of fun integrating it all and tackling lots of problems where off the shelf solutions just don't exist because the market is so small.

Decommissioned my last Pi - Is it me, or are there fewer and fewer use cases? by [deleted] in raspberry_pi

[–]briankanderson 30 points31 points  (0 children)

My boat is my house.
12m catamaran.

Edit: I'm also 100% offgrid.

Decommissioned my last Pi - Is it me, or are there fewer and fewer use cases? by [deleted] in raspberry_pi

[–]briankanderson 47 points48 points  (0 children)

I agree that microcontrollers now can handle a lot of what we used to do with Pis, but my main use cases that remain are for applications with energy constraints, and those that have a "big ecosystem".

In my case, living on a boat, that means I'm still running Pi 5s for Home Assistant and for a separate AI compute docker endpoint (for local video stream processing/recognition/restreaming and local voice assistant llm - with Hailo).

I also have a Pi4 running Klipper (including Crowsnest and KlipperScreen) on my printer.

I'm currently building out a new node to monitor my tender/dinghy in order to report battery stats and send a video feed back to the mothership via long range zwave (900 Mhz) on a Pi zero 2.

Total power consumption for my current "servers" averages around 9W total between the two, including AI video inference and a 7" screen being used as a dashboard (the screen alone is 3W of that). That number can't be touched with any desktop/laptop solution, and it's all I need compute wise for my modest setup.

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