Monday
I am up sipping coffee and trying to get organized.
Melania has always been there for her husband, and do it with class I might add.
There are now six temp sensors in the attic to figure out the flow of the air.
What I really need to build is an anemometer that I can measure the air flowing past it, even better would be to know which direction the air is flowing. A typical fan motor has too much drag to measure a gentle flow of air.
Added the third Illuminator, I am trying to not have one source IR.
(There are five of them if you count the one on the bumper.)
I moved the West illuminator into the trees to provide more coverage.
Worked on the weeds/vines on my fence again today. I left the bush in the middle until the weed killer has a chance to prevent it from growing back.
Replaced the hard drive in the Reolink DVR, but it’s not compatible with the firmware as far as the S.M.A.R.T. feature. I kept the old hard drive and will seek to find a compatible replacement in the coming days. With four cameras that need the DVR I have to keep it around for a little while.
This is what happens when the attic fans fail to run. (136 Degrees)
The three fans made a significant change to the attic temperature.
This is what the normal temperatures look like.
Checked all the illuminators before heading to bed.
Tuesday
I am up and on my HF radio, the band propagation is better today than yesterday. Coffee is really tasty this morning. The temperature is only going to get up to 93 today. We went over the grocery list and headed to Wally World around 9AM.
I tried using three tubs again today, need to work on it.
Longhorn for lunch today, it was perfect. I had parmesan chicken and she had shrimp with a lunch strawberry salad. Someone paid for our drinks today!
We took an hour nap after we got home, and I started working on improving my attic monitoring. The heart of sensing the temperatures are these inexpensive digital temp sensors.
These are DHT22 temp sensors (Actually an AM2302 sensor with a pullup resistor.), they have a real problem with mass slowing down their response time. Inside the white AM2302 enclosure is a small circuit board with the sensor on the underside. I decided to try and attach foil (large surface area & Low Mass) to the enclosure to improve the response time. (So far, So good) I can fold the foil to improve the conductivity. I also don’t have a clue about the size of the foil.
Time to move the car into place for the evening.
Here’s the light that allows me to see into the intersection at night.
It does a good job with only 2W of light.
Wednesday
I decided to abandon the NODEMCU in the attic, it’s too remote to administer.
I am up with my cup of coffee, and I did manage to check-in with my HF guys this morning. Talked to my Uncle, he’s still recovering from seriously injuring his arm.
Bright sunny day today, probably need to mow the back yard.
It stormed before we went to church so there was no opportunity to mow the lawn. We went to house church at 5:30PM and didn’t get home until after 9PM. Van dropped off food for us, but we didn’t see the message she sent last night at 8PM. We often miss messages to her phone. She might be screening them and then forget them. (It happens a lot that we’re back tracking something and she had the answer on her phone.)
Thursday
I got up around 8:15AM and made my way to the radio about 8:30. I did manage to check-in on the waterway net this morning. She didn’t know the way to the hair stylist, so I showed her on Google Maps. (It’s right next to the emissions station we’ve used for 40 years.) She needed me to straighten the car in the driveway, so I did that before she left. She returned very quickly and said that the hair stylist wasn’t there? I grabbed a pair of pants, and we drive to the stylist together. As soon as I made the left onto Hillcrest, she acknowledged she went the wrong way. When I dropped her off, she said that she forgot her phone at home. I had to make two more trips, one to drop off her phone and the last one to pick her up. Sheesh, that was an hour and three round trips to the stylist.
Her hair does look nice though.
Meat inventory is also an issue this morning. We ate canned Salmon yesterday because she didn’t have enough BBQ sauce to make the chicken legs that expired yesterday. We didn’t discuss the chicken and she just made the salmon melts. Today I find out that the chicken expired yesterday; and she has to run to the store to buy the BBQ sauce. The key to all this is writing a schedule for tomorrow in the Daytimer. The schedule triggers performing an inventory of condiments for the meal with enough time to navigate alternatives if needed.
We went to Longhorn for lunch to settle our emotions. It was expensive, but I really needed to lower the temperature of our conversations. I couldn’t sleep flat having a full belly, so I slept in the Chase. I didn’t get much done for the next three hours. I had soup for supper and put the light on the Focus for tonight. I looked at the recordings and did find when they delivered the food last night. (The eggs were room temperature after being out all night.) I put them in the fridge until we decide what to do with them.
Friday
Back in the attic today. I am abandoning putting a NODEMCU in the attic, any maintenance requires access to the attic. The current plan is to put the temp sensors on long wires and run the wires into the home where there is easy access to the NODEMCU. I currently have two long wires with three temp sensors on each wire. One wire originates in the air handler closet and the other wire originates in my cave.
Last night I had another shooter, but it was really hard to tell where the arm was.
Yard does look pretty lit up huh?
Well, it’s 11:30 AM and I am bushed! I didn’t sleep well and then the shooting happened at 1AM. It took me another two hours to reformat the video to be uploaded to their website. I took a nap around 4AM until about 7AM and then had some coffee while we got ready for her to go to the gym. I took a shower and then read the news looking for what Biden was going to do. It appears that he’s dug in and believes that he’s the only one that can defeat Trump. I set the driveway camera to take a picture of every car that drives by the house today. (Some 900 of them ended up on the camera, there are a couple that just seem to drive by all day long?)
Looks very similar to the car that shot at the house this morning, and it looks like it has a sunroof? I saw this car up close later in the day, it’s a Toyota Camry. (The trim was still hanging out the back of the trunk and the windows were DARK!)
When she got home I realized that the time was getting crowded. It was almost 12 Noon and we’ve not started lunch. Worse than that, she has an orthodontic appointment at 1:15? When I asked her what the plan was, she said the pork tenderloin. That’s usually a baked dinner with potatoes and vegetables and she has less than an hour before she leaves! The only thing I can come up with was to go to Longhorn after he dental appointment. Also, I probably need to abandon my radio nets in the morning and get involved in her Daytimer documentation. We’ve talked extensively about filling out her schedule the night before so things like this doesn’t happen.
She headed for the Orthodontist appointment while I took another nap. We went to Longhorn for lunch after she got back.
In the evening when it was cooler I got the ladder out and walked the roof checking for holes. (I heard the bullet hit something this morning!) Back down for another nap around 4PM, I just didn’t sleep at all last night. Had I understood how much the audio was needed, I would have bought different cameras! (I wanted the best nighttime camera I could find.)
I moved the East VAN camera onto the shelves in the porch. I didn’t realize how important it was to have Audio & Video to reinforce when the shooting happened.
The Reolink DVR cannot be read from a Microsoft computer, it has to be an Android tablet running their software. That’s problematic because none of the wireless was really meant for high-speed data. There is a router in the middle of the house and one in my Cave that can be configured for a little better performance.
Saturday
It’s been a crazy day today. I was hoping to get organized and that didn’t happen. She came to me while I was eating my two eggs and breakfast sausages to move the car so she could go to the store. She returned pretty quickly and said that she didn’t need anything at the store after she looked at the recipe after she got there. I took a nap while she put the tenderloin in the crock pot since I am still not sleeping very well. When I woke up, I realized that it was 12:30 already. She mentioned in passing that she didn’t have anything for lunch. That kind of irritated me we hadn’t discussed that the tenderloin would not be done until 4PM. I looked in the Daytimer and Saturday’s page was blank. (Which means to me that she hadn’t thought through cooking this crock pot dinner and how long it takes.)
We ended up going out to Longhorn for the third time this week. I complained to the bar tender that the taste of the coke was off. She came back with it tasted ok to her. Drinking a coke that’s too diluted doesn’t taste very well with a good burbon.
She offered us drinks to take home, this is NOT very scientific because I am sure the ice diluted the coke a little bit with the half hour ride home. (BUT) We did compare them on our next visit to Longhorn.
When I compared them, the bottled coke on the right was darker.
Sunday
Had my coffee while I listened to the HAM radio and filled out a Longhorn survey for yesterday. I just am not happy with the taste of their fountain coke at the Web Gin store.
I listened to last week’s service to get ready for the service today. Service went well, we’re back home for a nap. Cory is not here yet, so we’re up making dinner. Checked both copies of today’s service and they were correctly uploaded.
I did an update to Home Assistant (Home Automation) and it broke the routine that turns off the attic fans.
The two smaller ones ran well past midnight because of it.
Had to make a run to Public Storage to get a set of headphones for Cory. It took me a minute to find them, but we were at church by 10:30. Service went well, it was a continuation from last week which I thought was kick butt.
We got home around 12 and steamed some veggies with the pork tenderloin we cooked on Saturday. Cory didn’t arrive until well after 3PM which wasted most of the day. We worked on our Sunday routine until about 9 when we just got too exhausted to continue.