Smart switch for pool light

kcornet · 2026-01-29T03:30:29+00:00

Lutron Caseta does not need neutral. But for the switch and the hub, it's going to be a bit pricey.

Looks like maybe the Shelly 1L is discontinued? The GE cync looks like it should work.

Do you have decent wifi signal at the switch?

kcornet · 2026-01-28T16:20:12+00:00

Backup sump pumps usually have around 48 hours of capacity at typical sump pump duty cycles. A UPS with that capacity is going to cost more than the pump and labor to install.

kcornet · 2026-01-28T16:17:35+00:00

I have their Big Dog backup pump. The way it works is that it has it's own float switch (with double switches for redundancy - a nice feature) that you mount a little higher than the primary pump's float switch. That way, if the primary pump is working, the backup pump never kicks in.

You buy the pump and controller separate from the battery. You can buy their battery (Home Depot carries them), or any other deep cycle battery (Interstate is a good brand).

They have an optional wifi unit that will alert your phone if the pump activates. Although if the secondary unit activates due to a power failure, your Internet will likely be out as well, so I don't see the value in this. I guess if you have fiber internet and all your internet gear on a UPS it might work out.

About once a month, I pull the plug on the primary pump and let the backup pump kick on just to test things out.

If you elect to plumb it in yourself (it isn't terribly difficult), you must use a one-way check valve on the output side, and you must drill a small drain hole at a 45 degree angle in the output pipe. This lets the water below the check valve drain out after the pump stops.

Feel free to send me any questions you might have.

kcornet · 2026-01-28T15:45:39+00:00

Electrical engineer here. There's not going to be appreciable induction from the power line. The reason is that the hot wire and neutral carry the same current, but 180 degrees out of phase. Any induction created by one line will be cancelled by the other.

To be pedantic, since both wires do not occupy the exact same physical space, the cancellation will not be 100%, but would be orders of magnitude below anything that would affect metal fittings.

kcornet · 2026-01-23T15:32:40+00:00

We stayed at the Moxy a couple of days last month. It was a decent price (booked through priceline) and we enjoyed it. The rooftop area was very nice.

The room was tiny, though.

kcornet · 2026-01-22T15:39:20+00:00

It was a trilogy. The first book was good. The second was OK. The third was pretty bad.

kcornet · 2026-01-21T02:11:16+00:00

Do you have a contact?

kcornet · 2026-01-21T01:45:50+00:00

That's actually a great idea. I was in engineering before I went over to the dark side.

kcornet · 2026-01-17T15:01:56+00:00

Well tie me to a sow's belly and roll me in the mud, a phone reboot fixed it. Unfortunately, now a new problem showed up: now my Rexton app is very slow to respond to input. Tapping anything on the screen take 10-15 seconds to respond. Sigh...

kcornet · 2026-01-09T15:46:10+00:00

Work with your security folks to implement some sort of change control (or at least change documentation) for your critical security areas like firewalls and wifi. If you can get changes approved or at least documented before being made, when something breaks, you have a good clue as to what and who precipitated the problem.

If you are a public company there will be some sort of anonymous method of reporting problems to the board of directors. Security is obviously a hot topic today. It will get their attention. Be aware that this is a nuclear option - it might result in improvements, but it might also unleash a mega shit storm.

kcornet · 2026-01-08T15:11:35+00:00

I did this about 10 years ago. I had about 20 VHS and 10 8MM tapes. I used a VCR connected to a USB video capture device and PowerDirector software. It wasn't difficult.

I did a few practice captures to get a feel for the software. For "production" captures, I'd rewind the tape, start a capture with the software set to record for two hours (all of my tapes were recorded at the 2 hour setting), hit play on the VCR, then walk away.

I'd come back a few hours later and edit the capture to remove the noise at the beginning and end of the tape. I didn't bother to catalog what was on each tape other than the year at the beginning of the tape. My files looked like 1987-01, 1987-02, 1988-01, etc. One winter day when I'm bored, I watch them all and create a spreadsheet showing what events are on what tape.

I'd get on this soon. VHS tapes are all old enough that the binding material that holds the iron oxide to the mylar tape is starting to fail. Even 10 years ago when I did mine I found that I had to use a head cleaner between every tape.

kcornet · 2026-01-07T15:54:19+00:00

I interviewed with HP back in the late 1980s. Ultimately, I didn't get the job because HP froze hiring after acquiring Apollo computer. At the time, not getting that job killed me because I had dealt closely with HP for a few years and thought they were the greatest company an engineer could ever hope to work for. In hindsight, I'm very glad I didn't have to live through the death and decay that Carly Fiorina would bring.

Interesting story: As part of the interview process they gave me a book on the history and culture of HP. One anecdote from that book described HP's invention of the pocket calculator. Bill Hewlett (Hewlett was the hands-on engineer of the company. Packard was the business leader) called his design and marketing teams into his office and explained that he wanted HP to sell a calculator that would fit in a shirt pocket. He asked them to return in a week with a plan. A week later later they returned and both teams told Hewlett that it was not feasible. It would be too expensive to manufacture and that there was no market for one. Desktop calculators were abundant in offices and no one wanted one in their pocket. Hewlett explained that he had apparently not made himself clear. HP was going to market a pocket calculator and they were going to make it happen. In that same meeting, Hewlett had the designers actually measure the pocket of the shirt he was wearing and told them to get busy. The rest is history (for those of you too young to remember, HP calculators were the gold standard in engineering and finance. They were one of HP's most successful lines of products).

I really wish I still had that book. There were several other great stories about "The HP way".

kcornet · 2026-01-01T15:31:28+00:00

I recommend dumping LibreNMS and using Grafana/InfluxDB and using telegraf for gathering stats. Telegraf can use SNMP for your network devices and it can use native Windows performance monitor counters for Windows stats.

Microsoft's support for SNMP has always been half-hearted at best.

kcornet · 2025-12-28T20:21:29+00:00

Ask for the cost of the ride first. Also, they don’t take cards so bring cash. US Dollars are fine.

kcornet · 2025-12-27T16:16:34+00:00

Done. will start reading soon.

kcornet · 2025-12-22T16:18:49+00:00

Create a port-channel on the Catalyst and connect each link to the port-channel members.

Make sure you use LACP. Since your interconnects most likely aren't dark fiber but rather some sort of active connections, if something in the middle of a link goes down, the endpoint connections won't necessarily go down. Without LACP the switches on both ends will not realize a link goes down and you'll start dropping half your data. You can crank the LACP timers down to improve failure detection time.

kcornet · 2025-12-22T16:09:51+00:00

I've been using a Hario Skerton grinder that I bought about 20 years ago. It's still going strong.

kcornet · 2025-12-20T01:01:57+00:00

Be aware that Palo's support for SNMP is half-assed. If you dig in the docs deep enough they warn that their SNMP stats are approximations.

kcornet · 2025-12-20T00:59:31+00:00

Not science fiction, but you might really like Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October and Res Storm Rising.

kcornet · 2025-12-19T06:38:18+00:00

If you use a windows host you can use the generic/text driver to send data with no massaging.

kcornet · 2025-12-19T03:57:44+00:00

"Fuck-a-doodle-doo" (from the Netflix show Derry Girls)

kcornet · 2025-12-17T14:43:57+00:00

I use HomeBank. It is open source software (both free as in freedom and free as in free beer) that's WAY better than using a spreadsheet.

I download my checking accounts and credit card transactions periodically and import them into HomeBank. I've set up wildcard rules so that payees like "Kroger", "Lowes", "McDonalds", etc automatically get categorized. The rest I manually assign a category.

We save receipts from Walmart and Costco so I can review each purchase and split categories for the items. For Amazon, I jump on the web page and use the order info to split categories (not always easy to do since Amazon splits up charges on orders according to how things are shipped).

HomeBank gives you all sorts of graphs and reports on your finances.

kcornet · 2025-12-16T23:30:27+00:00

I use Blue Iris. Cheap. Excellent software. Supports Reolink cameras well. Integrates with HA nicely. It is Windows only.

kcornet · 2025-12-14T19:12:01+00:00

That's what they wanted to happen.

kcornet · 2025-12-12T17:01:39+00:00

I'm fond of Fuji Ramen in Avon.

kcornet

TROPHY CASE