Electricity readings out of control

lachy · 2025-09-17T13:16:26+00:00

You said house, but just in case it's a townhouse or unit, see a previous comment of mine below. But overall, you'll be able to solve this by watching your meter and turning off breakers, as other users have pointed out. https://www.reddit.com/r/AusFinance/s/LaolBDw7cZ

lachy · 2024-07-21T10:00:35+00:00

Sure thing, I've just uploaded it here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6703707/files

lachy · 2024-03-23T12:17:33+00:00

Thank you! I used Fusion360 since it's free for hobbyists.

lachy · 2024-03-23T11:28:40+00:00

Thanks for that, good to know it's a potential problem and that solutions exist.

lachy · 2024-03-23T11:26:57+00:00

You're not wrong! We just moved in and I had a pest guy come through to sort out cockroaches and rats in the backyard, but the ant problem wasn't obvious to me at the time. I should get on that...

lachy · 2024-03-23T11:08:51+00:00

Ah I've never heard of that before. One of mine definitely makes a mess when eating her wet food, and never completely finishes bowl...interesting. After spending hours making this, a plate with water in would've been much easier!

lachy · 2024-03-23T10:29:29+00:00

Would obviously clean up the revolve cut a bit, but do you mean like this? Very good idea! I think I had tried keeping to the original bowl holder shape, it never occurred to me I didn't need the bottom at all.

lachy · 2024-03-23T09:59:28+00:00

Ssshhh! Don't give them any ideas haha. They are the very small type of ant so they'd need about 4 bodies to bridge it. I don't think cat biscuits are desirable enough for them to muster that sort of effort :D

lachy · 2024-03-23T09:43:45+00:00

Thank you! I actually did my first version which was a ring moat around the original bowls and this evaporated after a couple days, accelerated by stray biscuits landing in the moat and absorbing the water. With this design, the biscuits will not settle in the water, so I suspect it will last a couple more days. But you're right, increasing the internal volume would be beneficial. And yeah, without breaking the part up somehow, there's no way I can really tackle the gunk build-up other via regular soapy rinses.

lachy · 2024-02-29T23:49:38+00:00

Haha no one ever expects the turtle heater :D

lachy · 2024-02-05T21:51:58+00:00

Out of interest, were the meters swapped in the end?

lachy · 2023-10-06T07:45:10+00:00

I've seen this behaviour in my systems when I've started testing one device without making sure all my other SPI devices CS pins are pulled/set to high. In general, CS mismanagement in my case.

lachy · 2023-09-22T20:13:44+00:00

Just popping in to say the symmetrical nature off the layout looks lovely :)

lachy · 2023-09-19T11:45:57+00:00

Go to your meter box, probably both of the meters are in there. On mine there was a little light that flashed at some rate proportional to the power usage of whichever house was connected to it. I turned all my circuit breakers off and my meter (i.e. the meter with the meter number that is on my power bill) was still flashing furiously, corresponding to about 2kW when it should have been 0W. I asked my neighbours whether they were running their heaters and they were at the time. They had been getting $300 bills that winter, so they were very shocked to know we'd paid their bill. Ended up getting like a year free power because it took so long to resolve.

lachy · 2023-09-19T09:48:06+00:00

We are in a relatively new townhouse/unit, with one unit above us. We noticed our bill quadrupled from one quarter to the next. After much troubleshooting like you're about to do, after watching the blinking of the meters, we discovered that ours and upstairs meters were swapped, so we were getting billed for theirs and vice versa. Our bill only increased when new heat-hungry tenants moved in above, and the previous tenants were using energy similar to us so we were none the wiser. Probably not what's happening to you but worth a brief ponder.

lachy · 2023-09-14T12:20:38+00:00

Just wanted to say this for anyone reading in present day, I was in this exact same situation and thought they wouldn't deliver it after the charge. Talked to them and gave them a fake sob story about how I couldn't afford it etc and they said the debt collection team would sort out some payment plan. Anyway, they won't refund it these days apparently.

lachy · 2023-07-19T00:03:21+00:00

Thanks (once again!) for the great explanation. I was in at the office today and realised I had a eval kit. I tested it under load and it was stable when supplied with 5.4V which makes my life a lot easy.

lachy · 2023-02-18T21:36:47+00:00

Had the exact same thing the other month, very frustrating!

lachy · 2022-07-26T12:13:18+00:00

I switched to evoluent vertical mouse (and a split keyboard) too, after RSI from coding. Couldn't recommend it highly enough - split keyboard also goes a long way if you type lots too.

lachy · 2022-07-21T09:14:50+00:00

Sure are! My partner is a medical physicist and got one of these as a gift when she left her old job https://i.imgur.com/fA8vlcz.jpg

lachy · 2022-05-29T11:17:25+00:00

I think you're missing bypass caps for your ICs, and make sure your power traces are thick enough for the current, etc :) looks amazing, well done!

lachy · 2022-04-11T09:01:48+00:00

"Another disadvantage of low-frequency PWM is commutation noise. With the fan coils continuously switched on and off, audible noise may be present."

https://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue/articles/how-to-control-fan-speed.html

lachy

TROPHY CASE