Related video: QILIPSU Outdoor Enclosure with a Computer Inside… Because.

Visit the Data Grave coffins: outdoor.s.co.tt

Hi, I’m Scott and today we’re going to talk about a couple of computers I buried in my backyard to create a data graveyard.

They’re Raspberry Pies, which are great for this purpose as they’re compact and consume very little power, meaning they can be supplied by power over ethernet and won’t cause rampant heat dissipation issues.

But they’re also pretty good for their intended purpose: Backups.

If you’ve seen a couple of my other videos, you know I tend to go on rants about backing up data. For me, and many of you, most of the content I generate is digital. Losing all my data would be tantamount to someone’s house burning down in the pre-digital age. All my stuff is in there.

And in fact, house fire, floods, natural disasters, burglaries, war, seizure and all sorts of other catastrophes can lead to the destruction of your data. Which is why I always advocate for off-site backups, so your digital possessions aren’t tied to your physical ones.

So in that way I was considering alternatives to traditional off-site backups, and I came up with the idea of the Data Grave.

It’s kinda tongue-and-cheek / kinda serious. Do I think burying your data in your yard is the wave of the future for data security? No, of course not. But I do think it’s almost a viable secondary or tertiary backup strategy.

You might consider it your only offsite backup solution if you don’t want to store your data with third-party companies like Google, Apple, Backblaze, and so forth, and if you don’t have a secure alternate location in which to situate a server that’s 100% under your control.

With a deep enough burial, your underground data is likely to survive a nuclear apocalypse… even if you probably won’t.

I should say, this video is a proof-of-concept. The way in which I prepared and entombed the two computers in their coffins isn’t necessarily optimal. I’m just testing it out at this point, and I plan on revisiting the project in a year to see how it’s going.

Actually, since you might be watching this video quite a while after I uploaded it, you can keep an eye on how it’s going in real time. Over a year ago, I mounted a full computer in an outdoor enclosure to see how it would hold up (link in the video description), and for this project I changed out the computer but left the enclosure and the website up. Go to outdoor.s.co.tt, and that site is served by the computer mounted to the side of my house. At the bottom of the page are links to each coffin. The web pages are exceedingly simple, but they’re hosted on web servers in each coffin. If the web pages come up, then the underground computers are alive.

Technically, the concept is pretty simple: Use a Raspberry Pi (or other low-powered single-board computer) as a backup-slash-storage server. Put a massive SD card in it, and maybe even attach some USB drives. Those drives could (and should) even be put into a software RAID array. Then bury the whole thing in your back yard.. or wherever.

So, if you’re interested here’s how it all came together.

I started with a couple of Raspberry Pi 3 B plusses. They’ve got 4-core ARM Cortex SoC’s running at 1.4Ghz, 1GB RAM, four USB 2.0 ports, and an ethernet port that’s going to become extremely relevant. They’re neither fast nor powerful as computers go, but are more than sufficient for use as a home backup server.

Their low power consumption and ethernet port are extremely important because they can be combined with a power-over-ethernet hat (made by LoveRPi in this instance), meaning they each need only one cable connecting them to the outside world, which will provide both power and data.

It’s called a “hat” because it sits atop the Pi, interfacing with a few select pins for power and ethernet, while not obscuring the CPU or other pin headers. Well, a hat usually obscures your whole head, but in this case it’s a double entendre and HAT stands for “hardware attached [on] top”.

With the hats attached, I imaged a pair of micro SD cards with the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian variant. Aside from the hostnames, both installations are pretty much identical from start to finish, but one card has a capacity of 256GB and the other only 32. When using them for backups, I’d probably keep the SD cards small and used USB drives in RAID for the actual data storage.

I chose to install the full GUI, which is a LXDE desktop environment running the Openbox window manager. The GUI is completely unnecessary for a backup server, but I figured in this case it would be good for load testing, as well as being more photogenic when appearing in a video.

I also tested out the PoE hats using a TP-Link TPE-S44 ethernet switch with four standard and four PoE ports. It has a maximum capacity of 15.4 Watts per port, which is more than enough for the Pi. It consumes about 2 Watts at idle, while the maximum consumption depends upon workload and devices that are attached. But in any case, it’s much less than the maximum of this relatively inexpensive switch.

To help keep connectors from corroding, my plan was to coat them all in dielectric grease. This includes the SD cards and slots. Here I used a 3M silicone product which is intended for automobiles, but should be more than suitable in a Raspberry Pi… probably.

Being as these Pies would run in a truly headless configuration, I configured their VNC servers and tested them with only an ethernet cable attached to verify overall functionality. And not for the last time, either, as you’ll see.

When mounting a computer outside in the elements, let alone underground, the main issue is water. I suppose if you live in the desert then maybe it’s less of an issue, but it still does rain on occasion. Given enough time, water will get into pretty much anything, even a decent quality supposedly “water tight” case. But an allegedly impervious container is as good a place as any to start, for mechanical protection at least.

So I decided to use a couple of small Pelican cases. Both are relatively inexpensive, and both are large enough to fit a Pi with USB drives attached.

But the cases aren’t going to be the only differences between these two.. coffins. In the yellow one, the Pi will sit in there with only an ethernet cable attached. In the grey one, there will be dongles to allow for debugging in the future, should the networking fail at a hardware or software level. I used very short USB and HDMI extensions so a display and input devices could be connected. In retrospect, extending the mini USB power input port may have been wise, as a failure of the network port or PoE hat could render the device powerless. Though, I wonder if you can backfeed 5 volts into the Pi via the USB-A host ports? Perhaps one day I’ll have to find out.

The ethernet port was also extended, but with a theoretically water-tight connector that has an RJ-45 jack on the inside.

Of course, those extender dongles aren’t necessary, unless the actual ports on the Pi are somehow inaccessible. And indeed that’s what will happen, because the next step is to pot the Pies in with epoxy.

But first I prepared a couple of USB flash drives by removing their cases. The idea being that any void spaces sealed in the epoxy (like the insides of the plastic shells) will contain air that will inevitably have some moisture content. I keep the humidity low in my basement, but at a sufficiently low temperature some water might condense. Plus this will let the flash chips bond directly to the epoxy, helping to wick heat away.

I used two different types of potting compound. The yellow coffin will use a clear compound to allow us to see the Pi as it sits in stasis, LEDs blinking away. More importantly it might help with fault analysis without the need to remove the solidified epoxy, when the device inevitably fails. (Though hopefully later rather than sooner.)

The grey coffin will receive a black, extremely opaque formulation. But that formulation has the benefit of being thermally conductive, which should (and as we’ll find out, indeed does) keep the Pi running cooler. The downside is that it’s going to be quite the forensic archeology project to reveal any physical faults. But I couldn’t find a compound that was both clear and thermally conductive. (Not saying it doesn’t exist, just that this is what I ended up buying.)

I don’t know how necessary this was (and it probably wasn’t), but I filled all of the unused connectors with more dielectric grease prior to potting. Realistically, if water infiltrates the potting compound then it’ll effect all parts of the PCB, not just the connectors.

The connectors that were used also got greased up, but those I justify by the thought that water might wick through the cables into the connectors specifically. Hopefully the grease will help to ameliorate that problem.

To save some space and reduce the amount of potting compound needed, I filled some unused volume in the grey coffin with open cell foam. Because the foam would absorb the epoxy, I covered it in electrical tape (the best kind of tape) before pouring.

If you ask me now which of the two concoctions was better to work with, I’d say the clear compound without a doubt. I’m not sure if it was due to the thermally conductive mix or some other difference, but the black epoxy was ridiculously viscous to the point that it was difficult to stir and ultimately pour. It also smelled horrible.

But time will tell if it’s the better choice, as it may hold up better in its earthen environs.

In any case, it wasn’t untenable, and I successfully mixed up my first small batch. The directions said to let it stand for 15 minutes after mixing to de-air. I’d actually purchased a cheap vacuum pump and vessel to remove bubbles in a faster and more thorough manner, but due to personal reasons (the pump being loud as shit and my wife being asleep) I decided to de-air it au natural.

With that first batch, I coated the bottom of the grey case with a few millimeters of the stuff. Then with the remnants, I thoroughly coated the back of the Pi. I think this is a necessary step to ensure that the PCB gets full coverage and adhesion on the underside, as just plonking it into a pool of the stuff might leave bubbles against its underside.

I then pressed it down a bit and brought it up slightly, so that the board wasn’t in contact with the bottom of the case. I had considered using stand-offs to keep an adequate layer of potting material between the inside of the case and the bottom of the PCB, but that would have created an interruption in pottedness at those points so I opted to finesse the board a few millimeters above the bottom of the case and leave it at that.

The potting compound was so thick and tarry that I don’t believe the Pi was able to sink into it.

Then I created a batch using the remaining compound, which was quite a lot. That harkened back to the part of the instructions that said the 2 hour working life specified was based upon a batch size of 100 grams, and that the working time would diminish in inverse proportion to the batch size. I measured it at about 475 grams (minus the cup) and — worried about de-airing it for too long — I poured it pretty soon after. I figured it could de-air in the coffin, and the bubbles would rise away from the PCB anyhow.

Then it was the turn of the yellow coffin, and I probably needlessly injected dielectric grease into all of its unused connectors. The potting compound probably would have flowed in and filled them completely regardless, but I felt that it was the best move in case moist-ish air did get trapped within them.

The yellow coffin – let’s call it the “yoffin”.. wait, no, that’s awful – also wouldn’t have any of the fancy dongle trappings of the grey coffin (Goffin?). It would just be a straight run of CAT 6 through a hole in the case and then into the Pi.

I measured the cable and made the hole as tight a fit as possible, but of course that’s not gonna stop water from infiltrating around it. But the hole will be below the level of the potting compound, and besides, I stripped back far more of the cable sheath than necessary. This way the individual conductors will become encapsulated, providing a break for any water wicking inside or around the cable.

The Pi also got one final boot-up before potting, just as did the one in the Goffin. Everything checked out, so it was time to pot.

The clear fluid, being less viscous, de-aired quite effectively just sitting on the table. It was a mix of about 375 milliliters total, which was the entire contents of the two containers poured simultaneously.

I poured it over the back of the PCB first to ensure coverage, and then flipped it over and continued pouring to get it completely covered. That 375 mL was more than enough to fill the Pelican 1040 case. Incidentally, the hard plastic exterior of the case is made entirely of clear plastic. The yellow insert is a flexible rubber-like material which to me didn’t seem desirable as it would thermally insulate the potting compound from the earth, to which the epoxy probably wouldn’t adhere all that well. But the lip of the yellow insert makes up the seal for the box, so without it water would just be able to flow right in. In retrospect I would have carefully cut off that lip, used it as a seal, and disposed of the rest of it. That would have also allowed us to view the underside of the PCB during failure analysis.

It was also a little tricky getting the CAT 6 conductors bent into a good way to keep the board neatly positioned. But in the end, the Pi was fully submerged, and the cable sheath was far away from it.

It was then time to cure the epoxy, and initially I was just going to let it sit out at room temperature which could have taken a maximum of 96 hours. My hope was that the relatively large pours would have resulted in faster curing, but after about 24 hours both mixes were still soft.

The instructions mentioned heat curing, but at relatively low temperatures. The lowest my oven would go was 250 degrees Fahrenheit, but I got impatient and decided to use the oven door to regulate the temperature. A few comically overblown multimeters with really horrible thermocouples were deployed to measure the temperature of the coffins at various positions. (The idea being that the multimeters could graph the temperature, but that was both not helpful and the displays too small to monitor while standing near the camera.)

After roughly half an hour each at anywhere between 100 and 175 degrees Fahrenheit, the potting compound seemed to have solidified – on the surface, anyway.

If you saw my previous video on the Qilipsu outdoor enclosure, you’ll know what this box is. It spent a little over 15 months attached to the outside of my house, braving a freezing New York winter and a couple of hot and occasionally stormy summers to test the enclosure.

Inside is an old Celeron mini-ITX motherboard which was incredibly shitty and slow, but which hosted a web server that announced to the world whether or not the system was up and running. Happily it never went down due to any kind of failure of the computer nor the enclosure, but I figured it was time to resurrect the project in a new and improved form.

The case received a new single board computer in an industrial style chassis – the branding on it is “V-N-O-P-N” (VN Open?) – which has a newer Celeron J4125 quad-core CPU, 8GB RAM, a 128GB mSATA SSD, as well as onboard WLAN and four ethernet ports.

That was paired with a TRENDnet TPE-S44 8-port ethernet switch, 4 of which are PoE-cabable.

The switch uses a 48V power supply that match the PoE voltage, whereas the computer uses a standard 12V PSU. I would have preferred one supply split on the DC side to both devices, but I instead mounted both of them in the enclosure.

The components were all attached to the backing plate of the case using industrial strength Velcro – which has a really sturdy adhesive backing and strong hook and loop connections – but the real holding is being done by zip ties.

The holes in the Qilipsu backing plate are only large enough to pass very small and weak ties, so I marked and drilled some of them out for these larger colorful ones.

The purpose of this wall-mounted computer would now be to act as a router to connect the Coffins to the outside world. Ethernet would be passed to the outside using the same connector boots as I installed in the grey coffin.

Those connectors have ethernet jacks concealed within, and cleverly the cinch nut is large enough to fit an RJ-45 connector, and the bushing is split to go over a cable. It means you can pre-terminate cables before connecting them, which is really the main advantage of using a connector like this rather than running the cable through the side of the case and then terminating it, like I did with the yellow coffin.

To distribute power to the two PSUs, rather than put a power strip or multi-tap NEMA socket in the box, I used a Y-splitter cable that I had lying around, in addition to an IEC C-14 to NEMA 5-15 adapter cable so that I didn’t have to replace the existing inlet power cord.

The mini-computer booted up just fine, and I set about configuring it as a web server and router.

If you’re watching this years from now, I may have taken this project offline. But you can go to outdoor.s.co.tt to see if this system is still up and running.

Before burying the coffins, I tested out the whole Data Grave setup on the bench one last time. I mean, if it didn’t work it was a little late to fix any hardware issues with the potted pies, but aside from a minor DHCP issue the whole thing came together without a hitch.

(The Pies use DHCP to obtain their IP addresses, making it easy if I need to connect them to a different net for debugging. The router has static DHCPD entries based upon MAC addresses to ensure that the coffins’ IPs remain consistent between reboots.)

The entombment had far less fanfare than a normal burial.

For this test setup, I located the hole right next to my house. If one were to do this for real as a serious backup solution, I’d dig the hole farther away from anything flammable or destructible.

Obviously there’s grass here that I didn’t want to ruin, so I flayed the top soil as you’d do when cutting sod. Only without a real sod cutter, so it was a bit more awkward than it could have been, but the result wasn’t bad.

Oh yeah, and when you’re digging a hole in this sort of circumstance (to bury electronics in?) it’s a good idea to put a tarp down to throw the fill onto. Makes cleanup much easier, and doesn’t ruin the grass.

I only dug down about two feet, which is above the frost line here in New York – the depth to which the ground is likely to freeze in winter. That means the coffins will probably be encased in icy soil for some of the winter, and they and their cables will be subject to strain as the ground heaves and settles. So it’s probably wiser to look up the frost line depth for your area (if the ground even freezes where you are) and bury deeper than that. Here, that’s anywhere from 30 to 50 inches, depending upon which website I’d want to believe.

In my defense, my back is shit and I hit the much harder sandy subsoil, so I gave up at two feet. But hopefully the subsoil should drain reasonably well and if it doesn’t we’ll all find out together when I pull waterlogged Raspberry Pies out of the ground that I put there for no reason.

When you’re burying your computers, it’s probably a good idea to put a layer of stone underneath them to facilitate drainage. The stone should be surrounded by landscape fabric to prevent earth from infiltrating and filling in the spaces between the stones. Here I used landscape fabric, but it probably wasn’t super necessary. I figured it would at least provide some protection to the coffins.

There was one last step to preparing the grey coffin. Because the yellow one had its ethernet cable subsumed by the epoxy, I had to cut a very long tail for it of about 50 ft which was way too long for safety. To make more efficient use of the somewhat expensive outdoor/direct burial CAT6, for the grey guy I ran the tail from the spool directly into it so that I could measure it out accurately by laying the cable.

The cable and grommet got plenty of silicone grease, as did the unused connectors inside the case.

Then I sealed them shut using a couple of plastic and one metal zip tie each. This was to prevent the latches from popping open either during the burial process, or from the stress of the freeze/thaw cycles.

With the Qilipsu re-attached to the wall and powered up, all that remained was the funeral.

I put a loop of extra cable from each coffin underneath them, to keep strain off of the inlets to the boxes during burial and freeze/thaw.

One last test was in order before shoveling the soil in, so it’s back to the router to terminate and connect the other ends of the ethernet cables. I decided to give the weatherproof jacks a proper test by not putting any dielectric grease on those connectors. Of course, they’re at the bottom of the box so water won’t rampantly flow upwards. But you always have to keep capillary action in mind, where water can indeed work its way into an enclosure against gravity.

Anyhow, the coffins both powered up fine, and so the entombment began as daylight faded.

Uh, apologies for the absolutely crap framing here where I cut off the edge of the hole, but you get the idea.

I tamped down the first layer of dirt by stomping on it to ensure that the coffins were firmly in place. In retrospect I should have stomped another layer because the ground has settled a bit in that spot. But if you’re doing this, then you should leave some loose dirt on top before replacing the piece of sod, but you can definitely compact more than I did.

Speaking of which, the sod was a little unwieldy in that piece as I’d taken a ton of soil with it. So I cut it in half before replacing it. Absolutely no harm done if that happens to you.

Last but not least, I watered the area. This wasn’t to test the water tightness of the coffins or anything, but it’s always advisable when laying sod. Regular watering will obviously keep the grass alive, but also promote root growth into the soil beneath, bonding it all back together.

And such is the story of the Data Grave.

I’ve been pretty busy lately, so I’m writing this script almost 2 weeks afterwards. In the interim there have been a couple of good rainfalls, and temperatures have been creeping down towards freezing. So far both underground Raspberry Pies are fully functional, and responding to requests.

When you go to outdoor.s.co.tt, you’ll see a link to each coffin at the bottom. The web pages are really nothing special to look at, but they are served from their subterranean location.

Being as this is a proof of concept, the story isn’t over. In about a year – or when both Pies fail – I’ll dig the data coffins up to see how they fared. So if you’re watching this video in 2024 or later, check my channel for the conclusion.

At some point sooner than that, I’m going to be posting a video about another coffin that’ll be serviceable rather than potted. So if you’re watching this after the second quarter of 2023, check out that video, too.

I remove the insides of a dead-ish TrippLite ISOBAR power strip and it’s probably good to fall asleep to.

I repair the scrollwheel on a Razer Deathadder Left-Handed mouse after dropping a hard drive on it. Check the chapters to skip right to the solution.

This is after doing a hardware button swap on that same mouse: https://youtu.be/n00ioWfDE9k

I assemble a small 240V 30A distribution box for some future purposes.

The Problem

I purchased four TrippLite Isobar Ultra 4-Outlet Surge Protectors from eBay for about $50.

They were all well-used, but purported to function. Unfortunately, two of them did not. They wouldn’t conduct any power to the receptacles, and displayed a fault LED.

Hence the Video

Fortunately the problems were identical for both, and very easy to fix. There are a pair of very robust and heavy inductors on the PCB that routes power inside the Isobar. They’re not mechanically fastened to the board, except by two relatively small solder joints.

Either in their previous life of hard use or during shipping, they must have experienced some bashing around which caused inductors in both units to become un-moored.

A bit of solder patched them right up.

If you’re looking to repair any of these yourself, this very lengthy video shows you what’s inside and how I went about my repairs.

Board Photos

It was my intent in the video to trace out the circuitry, both on the main PCB and the LED board, but time got away from me. But as promised at the end of the video, here are some high-res stills:

(Click for max size.. but beware that the largest one is 8.6MB and may be slow to render on some mobile devices.)

This is the main PCB. Apologies if some of the components are obscured by wires.

I find it much easier to follow PCB traces when they’re in mirror-image so the through-holes line up with the components.

 

 

I’ve been working on two things lately (well, more than two, but whatever): Live streaming and testing AAA batteries.

The former is going somewhat OK, but I’m still trying to get the hang of it. The latter is coming together nicely.

This video is me assembling a rig to test 15 different brands/types of AAA batteries:

Duracell Optimum, Anker, Allmax, EBL, Fuji, Duracell Procell, Rayovac Industrial, Duracell Quantum, Rayovac Fusion, Rayovac, Eveready Gold, Energizer Max, Energizer Industrial, Maxell, and Amazon Basics.

The idea being that I’ll shoot that test rig with a time lapse camera, observing how the voltages of the batteries decrease over time. There are light bulbs both to provide a visualization and as a load to deplete the cells. More to come on that project.

I got this because it looked like a cool little project, and a neat (if tiny) gift for the missus. So that’s about the extent of my motivations. If you’re trying to put one of these together, I’m hoping that this video might answer a couple of your questions. It’s not really meant to be an educational video, though; More a demonstration of what’s involved in assembly for anyone considering a purchase. Speaking of which, if you want one you can pick one up for about 5 bucks over at banggood.com.

And in case you were wondering, this is not a paid advertisement. I actually paid them for this thing, so it’s pretty much the opposite. (If this kit were complete crap I would tell you.)

2D Version

3D Version

For viewing with Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, Rift, etc.

A couple of people have rightly told me that you can just set a 3D video to 2D viewing mode, and therefore don’t need to upload 2 versions of the same video.

There are a couple of problems with simply uploading one 3D video, however:

• Because the two sides of the video are compressed horizontally, viewing it in 2D stretches one of the “eyes” to full screen. That means it’s much lower quality with half the horizontal resolution versus a regular 2D version.
• As far as I can see, YouTube defaults to anaglyph (red/blue) mode when browsing 3D videos on a regular monitor. That’s a potential turn-off for any viewer that doesn’t know about the switch to view it in 2D instead.

If I’m off base here, please let me know. I’m still learning this whole 3D creation process.

It turns out that I have more battery chargers than sense, so I built this monstrosity.

I got a Volt/Amp/Watt/Wh Meter from Banggood and wanted to put it to some use. So I decided to stick it in the back of a receptacle box, making some kind of metered extension cord.

This video shows the process of doing that, but is also a test of the Blackmagic Video Assist 4K vs. the Atomos Shogun for a review I’m working on. It’s a literal side-by-side comparison of the two. Though there’s no difference in quality (there shouldn’t be — they were both recording in ProRes HQ via SDI), I recorded about an hour of footage and neither one showed dropped frames or sync issues during that time. So far so good.

More to come on that later..

My old style programmable thermostat died last weekend, and so I rushed over to Home Depot to get a replacement. I wanted a smart thermostat mainly for its wifi connectivity, but also wanted to try out the truly “smart” aspect of it: Optimizing heating and cooling cycles to suit my needs.

They did an excellent job with the user interface, making setup really easy. And their app, though slow to connect at times, is overall well-designed and easy to use. So far I like the ecobee3, but my main concern is with reliability/longevity, and that of course remains to be seen.

I’m a leftie, but all my life I’ve used right-handed mice in my left hand. I needed to replace my old Microsoft Optical Mouse, and found the DeathAdder Left-Handed Edition. It’s the perfect size and shape for me, but they did the weird thing of switching the left- and right-click buttons.

It’s easy enough in most any operating system to swap the buttons in settings. However — at least with Windows — the buttons are only changed locally. So when connecting to other hosts via Remote Desktop the buttons revert to their hardware configuration. That’s a no-go for me, but I liked the mouse so much that I decided to mod the hardware instead.

Fortunately, it’s very easy to reconfigure the buttons in the DeathAdder. The buttons are on a separate circuit board from the sensor and control circuitry. The boards are connected by a ribbon cable, and it’s just a matter of swapping two conductors on that cable.

Razer Support

I don’t make use of companies’ customer support too often, because I prefer to solve most problems myself. Plus, I’m more often than not completely disappointed by support interactions.

Razer’s support committed one of the cardinal sins as far as I’m concerned: They didn’t actually read my original email, and replied with a cookie-cutter solution (which didn’t solve anything).

Another pet peeve of mine is that they wouldn’t address the issue on Twitter, and instead directed me to their web-based support form on their site. I’m grateful that they responded quickly on Twitter, but the useless support response took over 24 hours.

.@RazerSupport Re the left hand DeathAdder; It's great, but are reversed buttons typical? Sadly changing in sw doesn't translate over RDP :/

— Scott Dot (@SCOTTdotdot) September 1, 2016

Basically what happened was that in my support submission I explained my issue with the buttons and their not working in RDP despite changing the buttons’ purpose via Control Panel, and more importantly asked the very specific question: “Is there a way to change the buttons in hardware?”. (There’s a button on the bottom of the mouse to change profiles, so I was hoping that it had an undocumented or poorly-documented ability to do that.)

The response that support gave was step-by-step instructions on switching the buttons around in the Windows settings. And that’s it.

I wrote back to them, briefly expressing my irritation that they didn’t actually read my original question, and asking again if the buttons could be switched in hardware.

The answer was no.

And that’s why this video exists.

I recently got a good deal on a 120V 3000VA APC SURTA3000XL, a 120 pound beast of a double conversion online UPS which boasts over 30 mins of runtime at half load (and that’s still over 1000 Watts)! It didn’t come with batteries, so this video shows the process of “refurbishing” a couple of old modules with new batteries, and testing out the UPS.

The reason I was hunting down reasonably priced DCO UPS wasn’t because I’m especially concerned about poor-quality power from my wall, but because I needed a UPS that would play nice with generator power.

I’d love to be able to afford a couple of ~7500 Watt inverter style generators (one primary and one backup) to run the whole house during a power failure, but the best I can do is a pair of contractor style gensets. They’re noisy and output a mess of voltages and frequencies, but they work. Well, they didn’t work with line interactive UPSes, but they’ll work fine with something like this APC.

This video is and introduction of my motion control slider project, showing the basics of what it can do and how it’s used.

Time Lapse Assembly Video

I figured that I’d record the entire assembly process of the MC slider from start to finish. This video shows about 24 hours of real time in 15 minutes, and in it I discuss some of the problems I faced and design choices I made.

Feedback

If you’ve got any comments or random abuse to hurl, please post it here on the ol’ blog.

Seriously, I’d appreciate any and all suggestions and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. As promised in the videos, various downloads and a parts list are below.

Licensing

The YouTube videos are Creative Commons – Attribution licensed. You’re pretty much free to do whatever you want with the downloads below, however I ask that you provide proper attribution if you use them in your own project, and that you let me know about it. (Not because I’m some kind of jerk, but just because I’m really curious to see what you come up with!)

Downloads

Parts List

Most of these parts are from Amazon. I’m a sucker for 2-day shipping, and they have [almost] everything I need. The prices below are what I paid; Amazon’s prices can fluctuate widely and rapidly, and I didn’t necessarily look for the best deals on this stuff. You can probably put this together for less money, and if you price these parts out elsewhere, please let me know in the comments!

I also used some CAT 5e cable, six resistors, some miscellaneous nuts and bolts, and of course parts from my Makeblock Kit.

The Makeblock Kit

I bought the Ultimate Robot Kit back in September 2013. It was $288.99 at the time, and I’m kinda proud that I was order #311. (I ordered from them again in February 2015 and they’re up to number 23,705!)

The kit is expensive, yes, but the parts are of good quality and are extremely useful for projects like this one.

For the reason of the cost, I’m not going to say that you necessarily should use Makeblock parts. It’s just what I used. It’s hard to say what the beams, timing pulleys, motor bracket and etc. cost me for this project, but it’s probably about $50 if you were to pick them up individually.

Tools and Supplies

I had to buy a couple of extra tools and other miscellaneous for this project. You might have these already, and there are other ways to skin a cat. I posted this list in case you were curious as to what you saw me using and talking about in the time lapse video.

Video Transcript

This is the original shooting script for the Intro video. I figured I’d just throw it in here rather than re-typing all that same information.

Hi, I’m Scott and I made this video to show how I put together a… uh, where are you going?

{Camera moves back}

In this video I’m going to show you a motion control slider that I put together… This one right here, actually.

It’s based on one of the cheapest sliders available, and it has a stepper motor hanging off of it that’s connected to an Arduino. And that’s in this rather large controller along with the user interface components.

Besides just moving the sled back and forth manually, the controller can record and play back a series of movements and speed changes so it can do its thing without having someone to operate it.

So why a motion control slider? Mostly, I made it for fun. But the original impetus came from my HPRC/Pelican review. Towards the end of that video I had a sequence which showed gear being unloaded from the Pelican.

Check it out in full size. The transitions aren’t very smooth, and there’s tons of artifacts in that last one.

That’s because I don’t have the steadiest hands in the world. I did four or five camera passes, at four or five different speeds. It was one of the last shots of the video, and I got lazy: Rather than reshooting I just threw a warp stabilizer effect on it. That smoothed out the apparent speeds, but introduced all the artifacts.

So instead of using my own shitty hands, I figured I should just build a machine to do the same job.

Here’s a reshoot with the HPRC case being unloaded, using the motion control slider. Much smoother.

Besides shots like that, motion control is just the ticket for stop-motion animation, shooting in different settings for later composition, or just to act as camera operator when you’re a one-man show like me.

Here’s a slow motion shot of me dropping some RAM on the table. It was recorded at 60 frames per second, but you’re seeing it at 24 FPS.

Listen. This was my first real Arduino project, and I’m far from a mechanical or electrical engineer. I’m going to be telling you how I did this, but it’s not necessarily the right way to do it. If you go to s.co.tt/mc-slider you can download my plans, source code, and a materials list and make your own improvements. If you do, please let me know!

First, here’s a look at the slider itself. It’s pretty simple — those aluminum bars, the timing gears and the motor — all the mechanical stuff — are from a Makeblock kit. The switches came from Amazon, and it’s wired up using plain old CAT5.

My first mistake (and I made a few) was not planning where to mount the interface box, which is why it’s just sorta hanging there. But anyway, the box has a microstep driver attached to it, and all that’s inside are some wiring splices. It interfaces with the controller using an old-fashioned DB-25 male-to-male cable.

The controller is an oversized ABS plastic housing with power and slider connections, power switch, a potentiometer to control speed, a 4-row 20-column dot matrix LCD, and six buttons to control movement, recording and playback.

If you’re interested in details of the design and assembly, I made a narrated companion video which shows the entire process from start to finish. It’s time-lapse so you don’t have to be completely bored out of your mind as I screw around trying to figure out how to put everything together for hours on end.

Anyway, here’s how it works: The camera attaches to the carriage — or sled — whatever it’s called — as usual.

As soon as it’s turned on, the controller goes into calibration mode. At each end of the track are micro switches that are closed when the sled hits them. First it finds one end, then it travels to the other end and back again. The number of motor steps in each direction is counted, and if they differ by more than one percent the controller throws an error. This is to ensure that the whole thing is mechanically sound and that the sled isn’t binding up.

Once it’s calibrated, the sled should never hit either end switch. If it does, the motor will stop immediately.

At this point the stop button is lit and the display says “stopped”. Pressing reverse will of course start the slider moving in the “reverse” direction. When designing it, I first labeled everything “left” and “right”, but I realized that would be confusing if you were standing on the wrong side of the slider. Forward and reverse aren’t much better, I guess, and if I had to do it again I’d label everything right/left but implement a switch that programmatically changes left and right.

So as you just saw, the slider stops automatically when it gets close to the end. Of course you can stop it manually or change direction mid-motion.

The slider pot does pretty much what you’d expect. When it’s set all the way to the right it’s at maximum speed — all the way to the left and it’s at zero. It can be adjusted while the slider’s moving or before hand.

One difference is that if you adjust the speed when the slider is stopped it will update the display with the speed in inches per second. That allows you to match new moves with previous moves. Unfortunately calls to the LCD library are a bit heavy, and they create a noticeable jitter in the movement of the stepper motor. If I could do it all again I’d’ve used either a Raspberry Pi or two Arduinos: One to drive the interface and one to drive the motor.

The “lock” button next to the potentiometer will lock the speed setting so that it remains constant if the pot gets jostled.

I added the “bounce” feature in case I wanted to have the camera sweep the same subject repeatedly. In fact, it’s the way I reshot the case unpacking sequence. It’s also kinda cool. As you can probably guess from the name, it moves the camera between the two ends over and over again.

I guess the coolest parts of this project are the “record” and “play” buttons. When record is pressed and lit up, any change to the camera’s movement will be saved in memory along with a time stamp. Basically it records when forward, stop, or reverse are pressed, and records any changes in the value coming from the speed potentiometer. Since it’s based on time to millisecond precision, you can have camera moves match tightly to a planned sequence.

The record button toggles recording on and off, but hitting play will also stop recording and go directly to playback mode.

Once you have a sequence of movements recorded, pressing play first moves the slider to the same position it was in when the recording started. It then begins the set of movements.

Playback can be interrupted at any time by pressing the stop button.

The decal on the case may not be the best looking in the world, but it beats my original idea of just using a label maker. I designed it in Photoshop and printed it from my inkjet onto a full-page translucent Avery label. If you go this route, I’d recommend getting a white vinyl label — I thought it would be cool to have the grey of the case show through like where it says “s.co.tt” — perfect color match and all — but really it made the rest of the printed sections appear that much duller.

Another couple of things I would’ve done differently in hindsight:

I’d have put the power input on the interface box rather than the controller. After all, the slider is going to stay in place during a shot, but I might want to move the controller around when setting up.

I would’ve also used a lighter, more flexible cable than this 25-conductor behemoth.

I was kinda in a hurry to get this project started, and the project box for the controller was the closest one I could find to the size I needed, but obviously it’s bulkier than it needs to be. If you’re building one, hold out for a better box.

I also screwed up the size of the interface box: Originally I bought a stepper motor driver that would fit in there, but it was completely the wrong type. That’s why the microstep driver is piggybacked on to the outside. The connections from the motor and the micro switches to the interface box could also benefit from removable connectors: RJ-11s or RJ-45s would work great. Not using them was just sheer laziness on my part.

I couldn’t find a reasonably priced timing belt that was long enough and that shipped from the US. So I just stapled a couple together. It’s not as bad as it sounds — the staples have actually been holding up pretty well.

The stepper motor can be pretty loud, depending upon the speed. I had it wrapped in foam when I was shooting the opening of this video, but that’s not a good solution if you’re using it a lot — the motor will overheat pretty quickly.

And again, I should have implemented this with two Arduinos or a Pi. In order to have the motor actuate smoothly, I had to set the microstep driver to 3200 pulses per rotation, which is 16 times the motor’s spec of 200 steps per rotation. Asking the Arduino to process user IO as well as accelerate, move, and decelerate without jitter is a challenge. I had to make some compromises, like only updating the LCD when it’s stopped, and reducing the resolution of the speed control and button poll intervals.

Despite all that stuff I’d do differently, I still think this project came out pretty well. There are things I’m happy with, like the layout of the controls, the simplicity of the external cabling, and of course it’s overall functionality; It does what I wanted it to do from the start without too many compromises.

If you want to make your own version of my Motion Control Slider, you can find everything at s.co.tt/mc-slider like circuit diagrams for the controller and interface box, a parts list, the controller decal template, and the full assembly video.

Thanks for watching, I hope this gave you some good ideas to create your own motion control camera slider.

Back in August I reviewed the Netgear 6100D from Sprint and followed up with a post detailing some advanced configuration options.

The Video

I also installed a flat panel 4G antenna from 4G Antenna Shop. I made a video detailing the unboxing and installation (which I just got around to editing together):

It’s my first video of this sort, so if you have any feedback please let me know in the YouTube comments or by email!

4G Antenna Shop

I didn’t get into it in the video, but overall I’d recommend 4G Antenna Shop. The cable and antenna I got were both of very high quality and definitely worth the price.

Their customer service was great; I had a couple of questions about my order, and one of their guys (Robert) got back to me within 15 minutes and was extremely helpful. They shipped really quickly, too.

I did have two minor issues, both of which I talk about in the video:

During checkout they give you the option of selecting your device so that they can provide the correct adapters to go from the cable (if you order it through them) to the device. At the time I’d ordered, they had an option for “Netgear Sprint Spark LTE”, which I thought was the Netgear 6100D. There was no separate option for the 6100D, but it turned out that they were referencing a different product, and so I received the wrong adapters. (They’ve since added the 6100D as an option.)

I chalked this up to being mostly my fault, as I didn’t know that there was another Netgear LTE device out there for Sprint Spark.

My other issue was with the packing job. Again, it’s a minor complaint because nothing was damaged, but the box arrived pretty beaten up with holes in the top from the antenna mount having poked through. There was no packing material to keep the box rigid, and the antenna and cable were just sorta rattling around inside.

Bear with Me…

Oh, and sorry if I rambled on a bit in the video. If you couldn’t tell from a lot of my other posts on here, I have an aversion to brevity. :)

I’m hoping to get some more how-to and instructional videos out there in 2015, so please subscribe to my YouTube channel!

(Hey, I’m allowed to shill for myself, right?)

In the first phase, I ran a new dedicated circuit from the subpanel in my garage to the opposite wall to connect a 120V charging station.  In this phase, I removed the existing receptacle, rewired for 240V, installed the Voltec Level 2 charging station, and wired the kWh meter inline.

It’s not my intent to write a full set of instructions for installation here.  The purpose of this post is to illustrate some of the installation steps with real-world pictures, which are somewhat hard to come by online (the pictures are rather small, but you can click on any of them for a larger version).

As with all electrical installations, follow all manufacturer directions, specifications, and applicable local/national codes when installing your equipment.

The first step was ordering the Voltec Charge Station from SPX.  Information can be found here:

https://www.homecharging.spx.com/volt/Display.aspx?id=7&menu=14

The charging station is listed at $499 on the site.  For some reason, my invoice showed the price as $490 (obviously not a problem).  Shipping was free, and with tax my total was $532.26.

Ordering from SPX was easy;  Their sales rep was very helpful, and because I’d previously applied for their “free” charging station they already had my info on file.  I had placed my order in the afternoon on 5/31, and had delivery the morning of 6/6, putting it under a quite respectable 4 business days (hooray for UPS).

The contents of the Voltec Charge Station package: Instructions, warranty information, and the charging station itself.

The charging station comes fully assembled, and the instructions are very straight-forward.  One caveat with the warranty:  If you do a self-installation, the warranty period is one year, versus three years when you have the unit professionally installed.  In my opinion, self-install is still the way to go, because a professional installation can easily cost more than buying a second charger should the first one fail.

To start the installation, you will need a Torx driver.  I had bought a set a few months ago (which I needed just to replace the air filter in Amanda’s old Saab — a rant for another day), which attach to a standard 3/8″ drive head.  That makes taking out the six screws a breeze:

Opening the back with a Torx driver. It's just a coincidence that my Ridgid driver matches the charge station, I swear.

I put the unit face down on cardboard to avoid scratching it.  Next step is separating the two halves, minding the ribbon cable that connects them.

The cover removed from the charging station

The connector on the ribbon cable simply pulls out of its mate on the circuit board.  Don’t worry about how the pins line up — it’s keyed to only reattach one way.

The circuity in the charging station is surprisingly simple.   The Volt has the bulk of the charging logic on-board.  If I’m not mistaken, the charging station just has some thermal and ground-fault protection, and logic to analyze the building wiring so that it knows it’s safe to pass the power on to the car.

A close-up of the charging station's PCB and wiring connections.

I couldn’t resist taking apart the charging station first, but had to get back to the business of prepping the wiring for 240 Volts.

This started with removing the 120V receptacle.  I was careful to cut the hole for the receptacle where I thought the wiring connector for the Voltec would land, and also so that the charging station would cover it completely.  (That turned out pretty well, which was partially dumb luck on my part).

The existing receptacle unit and box came out easily.

I disconnected the receptacle unit and left as much wire as possible in tact.  I also stripped the sheath off the armored cable by a bit more — you’ll see later that I just barely had enough wiring left inside the unit to make up the connections.

Next step was changing the temporary 120V connections in the breaker panel over to 240V.

The Voltec circuit is attached to the breaker in the upper-left.

This was probably the least complicated step of the installation and involved moving the red wire in the upper-left from its very temporary connection at the neutral buss over to the second pole of the breaker.

The next step was wiring the meter.  I thought the meter was a must-have, because it will allow me to get very accurate numbers as far as KWh/mile, and therefore $/mile.  There are a lot of numbers floating around online, but this will let me make calculations based upon my Volt (well, Amanda’s Volt), with my electric rates.

Installing a meter is neither expensive nor difficult.  I got the head on eBay (used/reconditioned) for $36 all-in, and the socket from Home Depot for $25.  And it’s just a few extra electrical connections:

Meter wiring with #6 pigtails.

Connecting the meter socket’s terminals were not as straightforward as I’d hoped, but not all that complicated once you realize what’s going on in that picture.

The label on the pan specifies that the terminal lugs for the line/load (“hot”) connections can accept a minimum of #8 AWG wiring, with a maximum of #2/0.  Since the circuit is only 20A and therefore wired with #12 AWG, a problem arises.

Label showing details of the meter pan. As with all pictures in this post, click to enlarge.

Fortunately the solution was simple:  I pigtailed some #6 wire onto the #12, then made the connections.  I used #6 both because I had it laying around, and because I had wire nuts that permitted the connection of #12 and #6 wire.

The “neutral” terminals (which I’m using to bond the box to ground as there is no neutral conductor in this installation) can accept my #12 wire.

With those connections made, the meter head plugged in, and the cover in place, I fired it up for a test (I capped the wires hanging out of the wall first).

Zero kWh!

That lead to some good feedback for the eBay seller.  Of course, I have no idea of the degree of accuracy of this meter.  I’m willing to assume that it’s accurate enough for my purposes.

Now back to the Voltec Charge Station.  That’s probably why you’re reading this post to begin with, but this part of the installation can’t be easier.  You just need two screws to attach this thing to the wall (I’d recommend hitting a stud if you have a framed garage — the unit is light, but the charging cable is quite heavy and I wouldn’t trust drywall anchors to hold it).  Then it’s 3 screw terminals for the wiring and you’re done!  Well, almost done.  As you’ll see, attaching the cover can be a problem if you’re not prepared.

Charging station mounted and wired.

I used ceramic-coated 3″ deck screws and a couple of washers for mounting.  They’re a little beefier than drywall screws (plus I had them laying around).  I don’t think a thick lag screw is really necessary for the weight of the unit/cable.

Three electrical connections is all it takes:

Close-up of the wiring connections.

I didn’t trim the leads for the supply wires at all.  The length just happened to work out very well, which saved me some extra time re-running the cable up to the meter.  (It’s hard to tell in the picture, but there’s about a half-inch clearance between the PCB and the supply wires, and they’re laid in there quite comfortably).

The final step is applying the cover, and turning on the power.  Applying the cover was one of those things that annoys me about engineers.  The screws attach from the back, and are flared out at maybe 30 degrees from the wall.

It was really just dumb luck that I had this drive head sitting around in my garage.

This makes reattaching the cover a minor pain in the neck.  If you don’t have a little Torx driver (or driver head), go out and get one before starting this project.  I forgot what size I needed, but get a set of them.  Torx screws seem to always pop up when you least expect/want them to.

Why the engineers that designed this thing couldn’t use hex-head screws is beyond me.  Pretty much everyone has Allen keys around from old Ikea projects or whatnot, and they’re ideal for this sort of tight space.

It wasn’t all bad, though.  I was able to get the screws seated just by hand tightening.

And here’s the result:

The finished installation!

The installation as described above took just a little over an hour.  Of course, I did the bulk of the prep work in Phase I, and that project took more than a few hours.

If you have any questions or want any additional details, please post in the comments below.

Postscript

I wanted to comment on the build quality of the Voltec Charge Station.  I was neither impressed nor disappointed with the unit itself.

As I wrote earlier, the charging station is not heavy at all.  I can’t say that it feels flimsy, but the edges around the cover are rather thin plastic, and it’s almost hard to believe that it’s a weather-tight enclosure suitable for outdoor use.  Let’s just say that it definitely has the feel of a residential appliance.

The charge cord is quite heavy. The ship weight of the charging station is 18 lbs., and the cord could easily account for 12 lbs. of that weight.  I only bring that up because I’ve seen lighter cords attached to heavier-built units that eventually worked their way loose from their mounting points.

But wait, the charge cord also isn’t heavy enough! The conductors in the charge cord that carry the full charge current, approximately 15A, are 14 gauge.   While I’m sure that’s technically sufficient to satisfy any safety requirements, the cord still becomes quite warm while the Volt is connected and charging.  12 gauge wire would have been a better choice (IMHO), but of course would have made the cord heavier still.

Finally, I don’t like the fact that the cord is coiled.  I vaguely remember from childhood something called a “corded phone” (well, we called it a “phone”).   The sound clarity was great, but do you remember what eventually happened to all of those curly cords?  Have you ever had to untangle one?  Sure you have.  And it sucks.

Despite all of these complaints, the Voltec Charge Station is your best bet for the money.  I don’t see a need for a heavier-duty unit in my garage, and though $500 isn’t cheap, I could buy 4 of these things for what a low-end commercial grade charging station might cost.   The heat emitted by the cable is a concern, but it’s due to the #14 wire and not a defective unit.  I will be keeping a close eye on it, however.

The coiled cord?  Replacing that might be a project for another day.  Maybe in a year when the warranty is up anyhow, I’ll see if I can find a suitable replacement with #12 conductors.

Of course, the whole point point behind a PHEV is the actual plugging in.  The Volt comes with a 120V charger that plugs into your average 15A receptacle, and can fully charge the car in about 10 hours.

Chevrolet’s charging station partner, SPX, sells a variety of Level 2 charging stations compatible with the Volt (and most plug-in electric vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf).  The Level 2 charging stations use 240V, and can charge the Volt in about 4 hours.  We’re going to be getting the least expensive charger, the Voltec, for installation in our garage.  That’s going to be “Phase II” of this project.

Phase I consists of getting wiring in place that will eventually be used by the Level 2 charger, temporarily configured for Level 1 (120V) charging using a standard receptacle.

I’m fortunate to have an electrical sub-panel in my garage, so wiring the new charging station is going to be relatively easy.  The twist is that I put an electric meter in-line so that I can monitor Sparky’s energy usage.

Here’s a pictorial overview of the project:

My sub-panel was almost full, and I had to move a breaker down to the bottom-right to make room for a double pole breaker.  The feeder is protected by a 50A breaker on the main panel — the 100A main breaker pictured is just used as a disconnect.

I ran some EMT from the panel up into the garage attic.  The charging station is going to be positioned on the opposite wall, and I wanted to run the wiring hidden on that side of the garage.

In the garage attic, the EMT terminates at a junction box so I can transition to MC for an easier run across the attic and down the garage wall.  I needed about a 5″ offset because the finished wall in the garage is proud of the wall pictured (which is actually the side of my house).

THWN waiting to be connected to the MC wiring.  All wires are #12.

The main reason I didn’t use EMT in the attic is because there are a lot of turns in tight places.  This cable is fed from the upper-right of this picture after it passes overhead between the roof rafters.  It’s fed through the top plate of the wall below in the lower-left.  The next picture shows where it terminates.

Cable from the attic, along with a jumper that will go between the meter and the charging station.

Here’s the meter pan and the box for a temporary 120V receptacle.  (More on that to come).  The wires are coming out of the bottom of the box because I left some extra slack in the wall for the eventual mounting of the Level 2 charging station (which doesn’t require a box).

VERY IMPORTANT: In the next few pictures there are things shown that you should not imitate.  They show temporary wiring that will only be serviced by me, and it will be gone within the week.

New circuit wired to a new double-pole breaker.  Note that I have used a red wire as a neutral.  That is an incorrect practice according to the NEC, and general logic.  In about a week, this circuit will be converted to 240V by moving the red wire to the other pole of the breaker in the upper-left.

This is the junction box in the garage attic.  I’ve re-labeled the white conductor in the MC red, which is incorrect when it’s used as a grounded conductor (neutral).  It is acceptable practice for the future use as a 240V circuit.

The meter I purchased requires a 240V circuit, so for now the meter socket connections are bypassed, and there is plenty of extra slack left on the wires.  Again, what’s pictured is not the correct practice for wiring a 120V circuit, as the white neutral wire has been re-labeled red, indicating it is “hot”.  Also, without the meter in place this box can’t be adequately covered, which is also incorrect.  The neutral terminals have here been used both to connect the two grounding wires, and to bond the box to the grounding wire from the panel.  I believe this is acceptable practice, and though the terminals look large, the plate on the meter pan does permit a minimum of #14 wire under those terminals.

The receptacle unit is wired and ready to go into the box.  Note that this is not a “back stab” connection.  The wires are attached by compression terminals.  It’s also a duplex receptacle, which should not be used on a dedicated circuit, but again, this is temporary.

The meter socket and Level 1 charger.  I forgot the exact meaning of the lights on the charger, but I do know that the top two lights would indicate a wiring fault if they were anything but both green.  So it appears I have success!  One last note on safety:  The meter socket looks incredibly dangerous in this picture, as the contacts are, shall we say, overly accessible.  I just want to point out again that those contacts are not connected to the circuit.  This box is still unsafe because it’s improperly covered without the meter in place, but there are no exposed live conductors.  Again, this is very temporary.

Here’s Sparky, enjoying her first meal in the garage.

Stay tuned for Phase II of the project, when all will be made right with the electrical wiring, and our new 240V Level 2 charging station will be installed!

Update (2011-06-07): The new Voltec Charge Station is installed!  Check out the new post:

Installing Our New 240V/Level 2 Voltec Charge Station (Phase II)

“An automatic garage door opener makes you feel like you’re working in a futuristic wonderworld”.  – Frank Ormand, Pretzel Magnate

With the purchase of Amanda’s new Volt, I had to get the garage ready for a permanent resident.  She had kept her old Saab in the driveway, so I pretty much had the run of the place until now.  Protection from the elements aside, the garage is just a logical place to stick an electric car whilst it’s charging.

And my father raised me on automatic garage door openers, so I figured installing one would be the right thing to do.

Here’s a before picture of the garage:

Nothing to laugh at, I suppose.  But the stupid door would just sit there unless you went up to it and moved it around manually.  Clearly an unacceptable situation.

But wait.  Did you see the problem in that picture?  I sure didn’t.  Not even after looking at the situation real closely, like in this picture:

As anyone would, I went to my local Home Depot, and purchased their top-of-the-line Chamberlain Whisper-Drive Whateverthehell for $250.  Like an ass, it was after I got home that I started to check clearances around the door.

Do you see that 2×4 running horizontally above the door?  In the picture, you can see that it’s shaved down on one corner.  The joist across from it is likewise shaved down, only on the corner facing the door, so you can’t see it.

Why were they shaved down?  Because that’s the only way the motherfreaking door will actually clear them.  The top of the door travels up in between those joists as it rises, by about 3 inches.

Meaning I couldn’t mount the damn guide track for the opener underneath those beams.

Fortunately after some head scratching — “Should I lower the track and get a low-clearance kit?  Get rid of the overhead storage completely?  Return the opener and let Amanda open her own damn door?” — I came up with a solution:

Use a Sawzall (yes, I have an actual Milwaukee) to cut the ever-living crap out of those joists. It took some temporary bracing and a bit of cursing, but I managed to get a nice channel cut out for the opener, without losing my all-important storage area.

The middle of it is hung from the ceiling, which you can see a bit better here:

The structure is hung by 1×4 maple (yes, I decided to go fancy) which is bolted to 90deg angle brackets, which are then lagged into the ceiling joists.  It’s pretty damn solid, fortunately.

Here’s one more picture from the door’s end of things, just for fun:

Between figuring out a plan, removing (and later re-wiring) the lights, restructuring the overhead storage, installing and configuring the opener, getting power to the opener, and about 4 trips to Home Depot, what should have been a simple project ballooned into a 9-day adventure of anger and confusion.  (OK, so 2 weekends and some evenings in between, and I was calm for most of it).

Fortunately the whole thing works just fine, and I managed to avoid any major blunders along the way (except assuming that this would be a simple project from the get-go, of course).

Oh, and the garage door is probably 50 years old and will fall apart under the stress of constant use, so I’ll probably be replacing that soon.  (Hooray?)

Sorry if you were expecting a how-to, but I hope this gave you some ideas if you’re stuck in a similar situation.  (Plus, I just didn’t think to take pictures during the project).

I’ve been wanting to upgrade the electrical since I moved in about 7 months ago, and I figured I’d do it in EMT. It’s rather stupid because the wall I’m installing most of the conduit on is adjacent to the house — however it’s framed separately, and there is a ~2″ gap between the back of the framing and the side of the house. It would make a perfect wiring chase for NM-B, making the job a hell of a lot cheaper and easier. But I wanted EMT because, well, for fun. It looks cool too. This is the first project I’ve ever piped and I made a few mistakes (like not putting offsets at the boxes), but I learned a lot.

This is by far not my first electrical project, and it’s probably not for the faint of heart.

Background

The garage had 2 20A circuits running to it, one for lighting and 1 recept. group, and the other for just receptacles. Lighting consisted of a single 100W bare bulb in the garage, and another in the garage attic. The receptacles are all about 12-18″ off the floor, and were always getting blocked by crap I’d store against the walls. A couple are damaged; probably the previous h/o had been doing a project of his own and knocked into them.

The circuits were basically fine for me for the time being — my highest draw tools are a 15A contractor table saw and a 12A shop vac. So long as I ran their cords to opposite sides of the garage, I’d be fine. (Of course, I couldn’t run my compressor at the same time).

The lighting was my main problem. I’d get plenty of natural light during the day, but at night I’d need to set up portable lights, which is inconvenient at best and they’re never in the right place at the right time.
I happened to rip a 4-bulb T8 fluorescent fixture out of my kitchen recently (I installed recessed cans in its place), which is plenty bright. So my plan was to put that in the garage, plus a couple of other light fixtures, and also add some more receptacles.

Pics follow.  If anyone has suggestions, comments, criticisms, etc., please let me know!

Front of the garage. Good lumber storage above, but it makes lighting difficult.

Back of the garage. Good natural lighting and ventilation. I have a couple of window fans I use for cooling and venting out paint fumes.

My fantastic task lighting. Ceiling is 10ft. high.

First Home Depot run. Didn’t forget much. Figured I’d post this in case anyone wanted to know what brands I’m using.

New main light fixture. Sorry for the weird angle, but it’s the only way I could get the full conduit run in there.

Lights in the front. I realized far too late that the one in the background gets hit by the door, so now I can’t get it open.  I’ll have to move it back to the next 2×4. Fortunately I did those lights with MC and not EMT, so it should be an easy move.

The jbox just after the panel on the bottom will have a dedicated MWBC split onto 2 receptacles on the same yoke. Next jbox just has wiring connections, no devices. You can see some AC coming out of it; they feed 2 new single-bulb fluorescent fixtures. The EMT coming out the bottom of that box goes to a receptacle unit with a dedicated circuit, to be used for chargers, a radio, and other things.

The conduit that goes up into the ceiling in the previous pic comes out here, in the garage attic. It looks a bit weird, but the offset goes back towards the wall (~3″) and also to the left. It is plumb where it heads up towards the jbox, even though it looks angled in this pic. The NM-B coming out of the jbox goes to 2 luminaires on the front of the garage — they are controlled by the timer in the next pic. Some NM-B that currently runs to a switch next to the door in the back of the garage will enter this jbox from the left.

Timer for the outdoor lights. The GFCI supplies the timer/lights — personal preference, but I like my outdoor lighting on GFI. I had to put offsets in the EMT coming from the panel because the knockouts close to the wall are all blocked by the neut. buss bar!

Receptacles closest to the front of the garage — at the end of the conduit run that goes off the right of the panel. I needed to get some usable power coming off the new panel so I can have lights when I disconnect and re-wire the existing circuits.

Close-up of the panel. Not much done yet — the circuit hooked up is the one from the above pic.

Details

50A breaker at the main panel (in the basement, about 6 feet below and 6 feet to the left of the sub).

6/3 feeder. (Yes, I bought 125 ft. of 6/3. I just could not bring myself to spend $2.36/ft. when I could get 125 ft. for $136).  I figure I’ll use it eventually, or at least sell it.

100A disconnect at the sub.

Why only 50A, and not 100A+? Simply because I don’t need more than 50A. And if I ever do, I can pull a new line from the main panel to the garage. It’s a very easy pull. The only reason I’m doing a sub is b/c I don’t have space in the main panel for all those breakers.  (And yes, I like LOTS of circuits).

I’ll connect the existing receptacles near the floor to the sub today or tomorrow.

All wiring in conduit is 12 AWG THHN/THWN. The NM-B in the attic is 14/2 and will be on a 15A breaker. Existing receptacles were wired with 12-2 NM-B. I tagged the wiring for each circuit with its own color of electrical tape. Wiring is tagged in every box, even if it doesn’t terminate in that box.

EGC is #12, except where it hits a future 240V/30A receptacle; there it’s #10 from the panel. I didn’t want to use the EMT to bond everything together. I don’t have a good reason for that…

UPDATE 2009-06-10

I didn’t do anything last night, but did some new work on Monday. I also did three stupid things:

1) I mounted a light switch upside down.

2) I shorted the neut. to ground in a box and almost didn’t notice.. You’ll see — it’s not quite as stupid as it sounds (well, maybe it is).

3) I bought the wrong switch. Or they mfr. them in an illogical fashion.

The good news is I moved the light that was blocking the garage door. They all work, and it’s a heck of a lot brighter in there!

Upside-down switch. I was in a hurry to get the new lights on.  This switch was existing and has 14/3 NM-B to the box from the attic. Luckily the 14/3 in the attic was just sorta strung on a nail with tons of slack. I was able to easily get it to the new metal box in the attic, and I properly secured the cable to the rafters.

I installed this switch just to the right of the box w/the GFI recep. and the timer. It’s to control the attic lights, and is slaved off of the main light switch.

This switch has a pilot light. When I saw the switch I thought “the light must go on and off with the switch”. Not so! It just stays on constantly.

You can see where the insulation is chafed on the white wire, and a little bit on the red wire, too. When I put the switch in the wire rubbed against the EMT coupling, hard. I didn’t notice, but the neut. screw was also touching the coupling when the unit was fully seated, and the hot screw was maybe a millimeter from shorting.  I’ll be replacing it with a plain single pole switch, which is much thinner in the back.

Oh, one more thing: All the other boxes are bonded to each other with wire. This box is only bonded by the EMT. It’s a switch, so I’m not terribly concerned; I’ll probably leave it that way.

Close-up of 2 boxes, for no reason.

Lighting connections, ready for a box cover. (You can kinda see the tail of one of them, but there are anti-short bushings in the ends of the MC. The box is bonded to that green pigtail, too).

That’s it for now.  More to come later..

The server rack (well, shelving unit) isn’t pretty, but it gets the job done.  I’m not exactly the computer version of Scrooge McDuck over here, so I stick with desktops.  The UPS on the right is a real old beater — I’ve replaced the batteries 3 times so far.  It’s a nice double-conversion full sine wave model, so I keep it around.

My workstation setup.  My primary machine needs upgrading badly:  A Dell GX280, P4 3.0Ghz, 3GB RAM.  It works for now.  All the monitors are hooked up to something or other, but I didn’t have them on when the pic was taken.  Yeah, it’s a mess.  That will never change.

I’ll put up some more illustrative pictures eventually, but the idea is that the cord on the left provides power to a couple of receptacles in my media cabinet upstairs.  My HTPC, cable boxes, and some other electronics are connected to that receptacle.

The cord on the right (I guess you can tell from the labeling) goes to a receptacle on the wall behind my TV.

The idea is that I’m going to put a UPS (or two) inline with those two connections so that they’re out of the way but still protect my media equipment.

I’ve only recently begun doing my own maintainance and repairs on my Jeep XJ 2000. I’ve hit a few snags and problems along the way, and this page details a solution for the most frustrating I’ve encountered so far. I went to replace both my front rotors, and they were both well beyond stuck to the hub.

I’d been hammering, pushing, pulling, and spraying the old rotors on one fine Saturday for over 3 hours (4 hours if you count the time I took to go to the auto parts store and stop for a beer). Finally it was close to getting dark when one of my neighbors came along and advised that I should rent a rotor puller from a rental place nearby. The place was closed by then, so I told him I’d just kludge something up from what I’d had on hand. He laughed at me and went away.

Below is what I came up with, and it worked like a charm. I’m sure I’m not the first one to do this, but I was pretty pleased with the results, and so I share it with you.

Safety

Needless to say, I claim no responsibility for what happens if you attempt to use the information on this page. This could be dangerous, it could break your tools and/or your car, so emulate it at your own risk.

That having been said, I did this exact procedure for both my front rotors, and absolutely nothing went wrong. It worked great both times, and except for a couple of bent screws on my C-clamps, nothing was damaged. (They were cheap clamps anyway).

This will quite probably damage your rotor. I was completely replacing mine, so I didn’t care. If you are going to have the rotor turned, you might not want to do this, or at least put padding on the clamping surfaces and in front of the hub where the rotor will land when it pops off.

Also, many thanks to all the helpful people on jeepforum.com. I’ve hardly looked at my Haynes manual since I found that site.

What You Need

• 4 C-Clamps
• 1 Bottle jack (came stock w/my Jeep)
• 10 Ft (appx.) strong rope
• 1 Stuck rotor

A hammer and some Liquid Wrench type thing will probably help as well.

The Steps

Step 1 – Spray some penetrating lube/rust remover so it soaks in between the rotor and hub and let it sit for a while.

Step 2 – Attach the first two c-clamps to the area where there is no backer plate (where the caliper sits). Make sure they are gripping the rotor ONLY.

Step 3 – Attach the second two c-clamps such that each one is directly opposite one of the ones you’ve just put on. C-clamps should be spaced as evenly as possible, and tightened well. You may have to jam the second two clamps between the backer plate and the rotor. I didn’t have much trouble at this step, and the backer plate wasn’t damaged by bending it out of the way.

Step 4 – Zip tie the bottle jack to the top two clamps such that the head of the jack rests on the hub.

Step 5 – Close-up of the above. Note there’s a hole in the base of the jack that the zip ties are running thru.

Step 6 – Tie off the end of the rope to one clamp and run it over the base of the jack to the opposite clamp and tie off there. I did 2 turns of rope between each pair of c-clamps for added strength. Repeat for the other pair of clamps so that it looks like this. Make sure the rope is snug so that it holds the jack in place.Also, make sure the jack is as perpendicular as possible to the rotor so that it doesn’t pop off sideways!

Step 7 – With the rope snug, cut the zip ties. You don’t want them snapping off under tension. If the rope isn’t snug enough to hold the jack in place, crank it out a little bit.

Step 8 – Begin cranking out the jack until the ropes are very taut. Keep an eye out for rope fraying, clamp or jack slippage, or knots coming undone. Stand to the side of the jack/rotor, never stand in front of it! It can pop off with great force, and you don’t want it landing on your foot!

Step 9 – As you increase the tension a bit at a time, keep giving the hub/rotor shots of Liquid Wrench (or similar). Give the rotor a few taps from behind, it may pop off with ease. Don’t whack the rotor/jack/etc hard. You don’t want the jack coming loose and flying off under tension!

Step 10 – POP! The rotor flys off. Picture shows exactly where it landed. This one required a LOT of tension; in fact, the jack wouldn’t extend any more.

Step 11 – Closeup of the assembly. The jack and the clamps are undamaged. Again, this may damage your rotor severely, so either don’t do this, or put padding all around if you plan on having the rotor turned and reused.

Step 12 – The Result.