The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Tag: Rants

And kvetching, too

Techie Temptations

I walked up to a sign-in kiosk with an interesting difference:

Kiosk app update

If they ask a question on a public-facing device, they must expect a response. Right?

This interesting assembly sprouted from an upstairs wall:

Wash hose valve

The brass fitting seems intended for a braided hose leading to a nozzle, but there was no corresponding floor drain in the room. I’m sure the shutoff valve in the bottom elbow was turned off.

Back in the motel, I attempted to plug in my charger:

USB sockets vs AC plug

The currently trendy black-on-black design scheme doesn’t work well in the low-light environment of a motel room. The white plastic tabs in those USB sockets were the only visible parts of that whole assembly.

As the saying goes, “Without temptation, there can be no virtue.”

Sometimes I am sooo tempted …

2023-04-20
SJCAM M50 Trail Camera: Dead Remote

The remote control included with the SJCAM M50 trail camera did absolutely nothing. Not only did it not turn on the camera’s WiFi, the two indicator LEDs between the buttons didn’t blink:

SJCAM M50 remote – front view

With not much to lose, I removed those four screws and popped the back cover:

SJCAM M50 remote – interior

Yup, the OEM no-name CR2032 lithium cell was dead flat discharged. A new one perked it right up, with blinky LEDs and all.

Now I can check the camera for interesting pix without hauling it into the house:

The Early Raccoon

Plenty of critters making the rounds out there …

2023-04-11
Canon LiDE 120 Scanner vs. Sane vs. Networking: FAIL
The Canon LiDE 120 scanner on Mary’s desk gets considerable use by both of us, until a recent update of something killed network access to it. The usual searches revealed comments suggesting the sane scanner program has deliberately disabled network access to USB scanners which use the net back end, apparently to prevent loops when one instance shares a networked USB scanner already shared by another instance.

I have no clue how all that works, nor why the change has apparently taken half a dozen years to reach our scanner.

The workaround required downgrading sane on the “server” PC (the one with the Canon scanner) to the most recent version that doesn’t enforce the prohibition:
```
sudo pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/sane-1.1.1-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
```
And preventing further upgrades with a stanza in /etc/pacman.conf:
```
IgnorePkg = sane
```
The pamac GUI interface now shows sane as eligible for an upgrade, then reports that it won’t do the deed. That’s survivable.

At some point, not updating the sane package will cause other problems. Perhaps by then we’ll have moved the hulking Epson ET-3830 printer/scanner upstairs and can recycle the Canon scanner.
2023-03-31
Stonework Pillar: Brace for Impact

Sometimes fake stones fall off on their own accord, but this is impact damage:

Fake Stone Pillar – Impact Damage

Judging from the displaced stones near the top of the picture, that pillar got hit rather firmly by something heavy.

One wonders what the front of the pickup (it’s gotta be a hulking pickup) looked like and how much that repair cost.

I’d bet substantial money on the culprit driving away without offering to pick up the pillar repair bill.

2023-03-27
LED Shoplight Conversion: First Failure

Having started replacing the fluorescent shop lights with LED tubes back in 2016, this was only a matter of time:

Shop Light – failing LEDs

The next morning the dead section lit up again, albeit with a dim ring at its right end. I think one LED in that string failed open and darkened the whole string, then failed short under the voltage stress, and is now quietly simmering in there with slightly higher than usual current.

The lights over the workbench weren’t in the first wave of conversions, so they may be only four years old.

For sure, they have yet to approach their 50000 hour lifetime …

2023-03-24
Gas Price Signage: FAIL

The big price displays at the Mobil station on the corner have always behaved oddly, but these replacements began failing within a week of their installation:

Mobil price sign – north face

That doesn’t look too bad, until you notice the number of dead LEDs in both red displays.

The south face is in worse shape:

Mobil price sign – south face

The green LEDs seem to be failing less rapidly than the reds, but I don’t hold out much hope for them.

The previous display had seven-segment digits made of smooth bars, rather than discrete LEDs. This one appeared after the segments failed at what must have been more than full brightness; the red LEDs were distracting by day and blinding by night.

Maybe they got the LEDs from the same folks selling traffic signals to NYS DOT? The signals around here continue to fail the same way, so I suppose DOT doesn’t replace them until ~~somebody~~ enough people complain.

2023-03-10
Grand Prize User Interface FAIL

Found in an apartment building lobby:

Apartment lobby call box

The LCD gibberish comes from an interaction with the camera shutter. It scrolls a lengthy set of instructions, but the peeling labels demonstrate ain’t nobody got time for that.

You were supposed to figure out how to use this thing with no instructions other than the scrolling display. In particular, the multi-multi-function keypad has no labels.

I suspect most folks just haul out their phones and call the tenant.

2023-02-28