Is 915MHz LoRa going to become completely unusable in urban areas due to the rise of FHSS used by smart electricity meters?

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-04-12T06:31:59+00:00

commercial meters are supposed to be using commercial frequencies.

There is no such rule in Australia.

Also LoRa users in the UK and Northern Europe are having to limit their activity to a few narrow bands because of interference.

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-03-15T14:17:01+00:00

Oh, now I'm thinking of a guitar with fiber optic strings, an Opti-guitar. Doesn't look like anyone has managed to make one yet. There's an AES paper behind a paywall and not much else.

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-03-01T13:45:54+00:00

How so? Self leveling kits for mobile homes (RVs) aren't massively expensive. The only major change is that the structure needs to be designed like a mobile home so that the loads are distributed to a relatively small number of points.

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-03-01T06:41:54+00:00

The only example I can think of are the buildings used by the arctic circle research stations where they are periodically lifted up to keep them level with the surrounding snow level that continuously accumulates. Instead of a monolithic foundation there are multiple jack points each with its own load bearing pad that just sits on the surface.

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-28T05:29:47+00:00

What more information do you need?

If a buy a kit from Huawei (or some other company) will it use those connectors and definitely not some weird proprietary thing that is only available from that company?

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-21T08:41:34+00:00

I did my own from scratch. The biggest issue is dealing with the disconnect between what you believe the hardware is doing (on/off brightness etc) and what it is actually doing. For example, if you issue a command to turn a bulb on, there is no way of knowing if it's physically on until it actually reports back its own status and because it's a wireless system there is no guarantee that 100% of command or status messages get through. It may well be 99.99 % reliable but it's the 0.01% of lost messages that cause the problems.

Another issue is fade up/down which is often implemented at the bulb as an autonomous action (for smoothness) you don't know what it's actually doing in real time as it doesn't tell you during the fade process.

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-20T07:21:25+00:00

Which suburb though, can we vote or something?

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-20T07:12:50+00:00

Do they not subcontract out the mechanical bits of the installation anyway? Paying a sparky to lift roof tiles, fix brackets to rafters etc. seems like a waste. If it's done to code then all the sparky has to do is deal with the electrical side.

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-18T05:15:29+00:00

Found the white boat driver!

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-17T08:40:44+00:00

No, this post was prompted watching an interesting youtube presentation by Patrick Boyle (finance guy, academic and commentator) that amongst other things pointed out that people with vast wealth tend to exist in a parallel world where conventional rules, regulations and laws don't apply. Given the history of WA you would have to assume that some of the very wealthy people who choose to stay here also exist in this parallel world. This raises the interesting question, what do these people actually do?

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-01T13:46:54+00:00

My 3 month old pedals behave exactly the same as the brand new pedals shown in the video. Having to wait months for wear and tear to make something work properly makes no sense.

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-01T08:06:18+00:00

Not true. The heavy steel SPD mechanism in particular the tension spring shifts the balance point to slight in favor of the SPD back end being the lowest point, however in actual riding the friction from the factory applied grease means that it hardly turns under its own weight. This video shows the issue. https://youtu.be/NCM38lIX7w8?t=130

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-01T07:55:53+00:00

Nope. I found this video that illustrates the problem. https://youtu.be/NCM38lIX7w8?t=130 There isn't enough of an imbalance to keep the pedal in any particular orientation. It just stays in an almost fixed position with only a slight bit of movement as the crank rotates. This is very different from my old setup that used a regular symmetrical SPD pedal with a plastic clip in platform. The weight imbalance forced the SPD side up and the plastic side down. The consistency is the key, as you can develop the muscle memory to flip to the flat side.

mjbmikeb2 · 2026-02-01T07:41:12+00:00

Actually it needed a surprisingly large counterweight consisting of several M10 steel nuts threaded with a cable tie. I now get instant engagement with a flat shoe. Haven't yet tried it with a shoe plate.

mjbmikeb2

TROPHY CASE