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Thats rad, man if you could pitch it a little higher so that the open sky was 2/3rds the frame. The constellations would be sweet.
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Cool exchange between the aurora and the clouds.
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For those who watched the latest Links With Friends, I’ve looked into the solar flares and effects on technology. You don’t need to turn your devices off during solar activity, you just might want to unplug it from the grid. Solar flares like the Carrington Event will affect VERY long transmission lines that can be problematic for the grid, but individual devices shouldn’t have an issue. Our solar array has a 700 foot long cable in it and that’s even too short for any effect. We’ve had several “severe” solar events and there have been no issues.
This is different from an EMP where you might want to put some devices in a faraday cage and HOPE that they last. Turning them on or off won’t have any effect though. Any circuits will get fried if they’re not protected in a faraday cage and they may still not be protected.
On a different note, Guard Squirrel had an unwanted solicitor show up yesterday but I ran him off.
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As winter approaches I have the utmost respect for my neighbors scratching out their existence in a tough world. It reminds me how fortunate we are.
And to the human squirrels out there trying to make it in an increasingly dangerous forest, I’m pulling for you.
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“Spoke of theft through inflation, said money ain’t what it seem…”
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Good robot. Bad on me for leaving a bag of aluminum cans on the deck though. No big deal, it scooted it out of the way and finished its work. This is the first pass, not bad. Second pass and there were no chunks of snow left on the deck.
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Pretty cool to see the snowplow in action. Do you have photos of the second run? Can you optimize the track further, it seems to have a problem with the corners were it turns and then goes forward and back a little much, instead of going many long straight lines across the deck.
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This photo is after the second run. You can see on the corner there is snow because I don’t have it go under there so that snow falling off the roof doesn’t hit it.
I can probably optimize a lot. One thing is to take the grill off the front and it will blow much better instead of pushing the snow.
The extra maneuvering of the thing seems to be a persistent complaint among users but I’m okay with it. After I get more comfortable with its performance I’ll have it get a little closer to the edges.
I put some 2x6s along the bottom of the railing just to keep it from hitting the metal cables. I’m going to replace those with a wood box tube with multiple holes in it to not only act as a buffer, but to give my ermine friend easy cover all around the deck. He showed up the other day and was not pleased about how empty the deck is (for the blower) because he doesn’t like being in the open. He looked at me off the deck for a bit and then went back into the forest.
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Your videos would be a lot more exciting if instead of a snow plow/blower, you whipped out a flame thrower…
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That would be too much excitement for me! We spend a lot of time worrying about fire to be introducing it, but it would make for a cool video.
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you need to run that video at 2x speed and a Yakity Sax audio track
The results look good! I was aware that it would not be able to free the deck of all snow but this looks usable. Like when you put on boots with some profile you won’t slip.
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Winter’s majesty has arrived. We made 65 KWh of power thanks to a mostly clear day. Will be interesting to see how long the solar panel shadows grow as we near the solstice…
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Hidden sensors and cameras on the ground and sensors in the sky make it easy to keep an eye on the moose and bears.
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Today’s Links With Friends, Ryan said he’s not sure how to beat scam phone calls. Check out the RoboKiller app. Not only is it funny to listen to your phone taking these clowns on a ride, it gets them to take you off their lists. I actually go to the app disappointed that I don’t get any more scam calls to laugh at.
The app uses a DB of known scammers and “answers” the phone with a random voice designed to waste their time. I don’t even get bothered by them, I just go to the app to listen and laugh from what has been collected. Sadly, the spam calls I get now are separated by months at a time, it used to be a dozen a day.
Here is the last one I got (I cut out the reference to my name).
