‘Tis the season of leaf shredding and yard cleanup, with a generous helping of home chores and maintenance on the side, so I’ll be posting intermittently for a while.
Category: Home Ec
Things around the home & hearth
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Craftsman Garage Door Opener: Rogue Remote
Just before midnight, the garage door opened, but, being early-to-bed folks, it wasn’t either of us. I pulled my fingernails out of the ceiling, padded out to the garage, verified there was nobody (not even a critter more substantial than a spider) inside, closed the door with the hardwired control button on the wall, and went back to bed. An hour later, the door opened again, then tried to take a bite out of me when I walked under it.
I pulled the opener’s plug, yanked its emergency release latch, lowered the door, and returned to bed; it was not a restful night.
The key to the diagnosis came from the little yellow LED on the back of the opener, just above the purple
LEARNbutton:
Craftsman Garage Opener – indicator LED In addition to indicating various programming states, it also lights when the opener’s radio receives a transmission from one of the remote controls. The LED was flickering continuously, showing that something was hosing the receiver with RF.
We have three remotes: one in the car, one on my bike, and one in the back room overlooking the garage. None of them worked reliably, suggesting the RF interference was clobbering their transmissions.
Disabling the remotes by removing their batteries (which were all good) also stopped the interference. Reinstalling the batteries one-by-one identified the rogue opener:
Craftsman Garage Opener – remote innards The slip of paper let me isolate the battery terminal and stick a milliammeter in the circuit, which showed the remote was drawing about 1.5 mA continuously. I thought one of the pushbutton switches had gone flaky, but swapping an unused one for the main door switch had no effect.
I lost track of which remote it was, but it lived in the car or the back room for all its life, so it hasn’t suffered extreme environmental stress. I have no idea why it would fail late one night, although I admit to not monitoring the LED on a regular basis. For whatever it’s worth, in the weeks leading up to the failure, activating the opener sometimes required two pokes at the remote, but nothing bad enough to prompt any further investigation.
A new cheap knockoff remote arrived in few days and it’s all good.
Protip: different openers, even from the same company, use different RF frequencies. For Craftsman openers, the color of the
LEARNbutton is the key to the frequency; purple = 139.53753 MHz. -
Eyeglass Case Padding
Zenni ships their glasses in a snap-close case with a fuzzy insert on the bottom, but after you unpack the cleaning cloth and suchlike, the glasses rattle against the hard plastic top.
Make trial fit prototype from thin cardboard and trace it onto a sheet of craft foam:
Eyeglass case foam padding – outline The pen, much favored by quiltists, has a white ceramic lead that washes out of dark fabrics. You can find a corresponding dark-lead pen, but I can use an ordinary pencil.
Use different colors for different glasses:
Eyeglass case foam padding – installed Then walk ninja-style again.
Protip: slip an address label atop the foam so a nice person can reunite you with your glasses, should they slip out of your pocket in the unlikely event you sit down anywhere other than in your house.
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Eyeglass Nose Pad Adjustment
A new set of glasses arrived from Zenni with one of the nose pads totally misaligned:
Zenni glasses nosepad – as received Definitely a QC escape.
Start by removing the tiny screw and the nose pad:
Zenni glasses nosepad – socket Apply a metal bending pliers (with the concave jaw around bottom of the socket), twist until it lines up properly, then reinstall the pad:
Zenni glasses nosepad – aligned No big deal if you happen to have the pliers. Bonus: apply Parafilm to prevent scratching the lenses, OK?
For what it’s worth, the latest set of four spectacles with high-index (not polycarbonate) progressive lenses in metal frames cost a bit over $200 delivered. The last time around, two specs cost a bit more than half that.
I’m satisfied with Zenni and EyeBuyDirect (although Luxottica borged EBD and they now push spendy “brand name” frames), but you must be ready / willing / able to apply final tweakage to whatever arrives.
On the other paw, I’ve been repairing Mary’s collection of full-frontal retail glasses for quite a while, because she’s frustrated with making multiple trips to have The Nice Man repeatedly apply final tweakage.
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Cleaning Up After The Spider
We found an industrious spider below one of the living room windows, tucked behind the furniture:
Spider above debris field Considering the number of husks and the defunct fly, the spider has been eating like a king for quite a while.
It’s now in the flower garden by the patio, which may not be quite as good a location but definitely increases net happiness.
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Brita Water Filter Innards
Having replaced our disintegrating Brita pitcher a few years ago, I finally got around to opening a used filter to see what’s inside. Start by cutting off the flexible rim (intended as a seal against the pitcher) to reveal the joint, then pry the lid off:
Brita pitcher filter – opening Stand it upright before getting the lid off, because the filter contains a zillion charcoal granules and two zillion ion-exchange resin beads:
Brita pitcher filter – granules The inside of the lid has mesh screens to keep the innards in place while distributing the raw water:
Brita pitcher filter – lid Similarly, mesh on the bottom drains let the filtered water out:
Brita pitcher filter – emptied No surprises, but now we all know what’s in there.
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Beckman DM73: Package Armor
For reasons not relevant here, I sent the Beckman DM73 to a good home in Europe. Having some experience with the brutality applied to innocent packages by various package-delivery organizations, I filled a Priority Mail Flat Rate Small Box with a solid block of corrugated cardboard:
DM73 – cardboard armor One inner layer has a cutout for the manual:
DM73 – Operator Manual package The meter and its leads tuck into form-fitting cutouts:
Beckman DM73 – cardboard packing I bandsawed the cutouts from a block with enough layers for some space on the top and bottom:
DM73 – bandsawing cardboard package After mulling that layout overnight, I made a similar block with the saw cuts on diagonally opposite corners, so pressure on the center of the edges won’t collapse the unsupported sides. A slightly larger meter cutout allowed a wrap of closed-cell foam sheet that likely doesn’t make any difference at all.
With everything in place, the box had just enough space for a pair of plastic sheets to better distribute any top & bottom impacts.
I won’t know how the armor performed for a few weeks, but it’s definitely the best packaging idea I’ve had so far.
Update: After nearly two weeks, the package arrived undamaged and the meter was in fine shape. Whew!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 