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@Ethiopia:
The browser based tools require you to upload (drag-drop) the model you want to use, so sure, you actually upload it to their server. The Browser UI is just a client that interacts with the server on their end to perform various actions on the model, then the server updates your browser UI. They don't just 'see' what you're working on, they actually 'have' it.The 'Mad Librarian' looks like a Postgre database client. A really good idea, if it works as intended. These days, odds are good there was some 'vibe coding' involved somewhere along the line, so probably 'Claude' or it's ilk had a hand in this, which is cool, if it works...
Whoa, -24C - that's crazy! Like I said, I didn't know anything about cold-climate heat pumps before this thread. Out here, we insulate against the 'heat'. Like, it was about 90F today, but that's because we had cloud cover, we won't see 80F again until Oct.
Good luck with the search for a small one, looks like there's a lot of them out there. It also looks like a lot of these websites are 'shilling' for one brand or another too, so have to see if you can get a consensus from several sites to nail it down.
Most of the stuff I've seen goes down to around 12k BTU, but that's about it in the sites I've looked at.
@Ethiopia:
Not to 'beat a dead horse', but...With gas heating, sizing is easy because you just figure the heat you need to offset the building losses at an average outdoor temp then let the thermostat cycle the heater longer or shorter to maintain a set indoor temp. Gas heating has a 'constant' BTU output.
Heat pumps are a different animal because, unlike gas, heat pumps put out fewer BTUs as the temperature drops. That means you have to figure-in that BTU drop to come up with an appropriate size that will maintain an indoor temp as the outside temperature falls.
If you want to go heat pump, get something like a Cooper-Hunter system:
But first, do a manual-J to see how many BTUs the building needs to offset heat loss:
https://everycalculators.com/manual-j-calculation-spreadsheet.html
Once you know the BTUs you need, just go over to Home Depot:
https://www.homedepot.com/b/COOPER%C2%A0-%C2%A0HUNTER/N-5yc1vZrmq
Keep in mind that the manual-J figured the heat you need from a 'constant' BTU heater, you might want to adjust the size of heat pump 'up' from those BTU figures to account for the fact that even 'cold-climate' heat pumps like Cooper-Hunter will lose up to half their BTU output as the temperature drops.
Disclaimer: the last time I looked at heat pumps was around 2009, I didn't know about 'cold-climate' heat pumps back then, I don't think there was any!
@Josie:
Sucks that your stuff got boosted like that. We've all had our turn getting robbed. I lost a Dodge Ram pickup about four years ago, right out of my driveway while everybody was asleep.They did find the truck about three days later, totally trashed. They also found the guy that did it, but the courts were so backed up that they couldn't give him a 'speedy trial', so his lawyer got him cut loose on those grounds.
Anyway, yeah, I still have a mig and a stick setup and bottles w/torches. I'd like to get a tig setup someday down the road.
Meanwhile, stick with the soldering practice. Mess it up all you can just to see what 'not' to do, some smart guy back in the annals of time said "We learn more from our failures than we do from our successes", I'm inclined to agree.
@Josie:
OK, I have lens implants in both eyes (bionic vision), but still use magnification to solder. I have a setup with five lenses of varying strength that gets me by with even surface mount stuff (if it isn't too microscopic). My grandson, who has 20-20 vision uses the same magnifiers when he solders, most people I know use magnifiers when working on electronics.And like in welding, where you have to get comfortable before you strike an arc, whether stick, mig or tig, so soldering is the same thing, you have to be comfortable to be in control of what you're doing, so your focus is on your work, not distracted by awkward posture or discomfort from anything your sitting on the wrong way.
The next thing is to know why solder flows. Solder will 'follow the heat'. It will 'bond' to a metal surface that is clean and is heated to about the same temp as the soldering iron you are using, else it will just 'ball up' and not stick to where you want it to.
Even when it 'looks' clean, the surface and wires your soldering together will have a layer of oxidation on them that can frustrate your attempts to solder them together, that's what 'flux' is for, it removes the oxidation layer that keeps you from bonding and lets the metal accept the solder and bond with it.
Practice is always a requirement until what you're doing becomes 'muscle memory', 'automatic', so you don't even think about your technique because it's ingrained in you from doing it over and over.
Most of the problems I've seen people have is from not fluxing the metal (even though solder has a rosin core) and not staying long enough to heat up a joint. Play around with it, try different things until you don't have to think about it.
@Ethiopia:
Heat pumps are great, depending on the climate you use them in (I have one). Just keep in mind they use the refrigeration cycle, so they only extract heat down to about 35-40 deg, then have to switch to auxiliary heat strips. They also freeze when the climate is humid/rainy/snowy because the outside evaporator coil is at about 20 degrees lower than the outside ambient temp (like you're cooling the outdoor air).Where I'm at, they work great. But here, the humidity is typically about 10-15%, dry except during storms and doesn't normally get much below 32 deg, even in winter and then, just at night.
@Ethiopia
That's a hell of a story, sounds like he's going to do just fine if you guys are just hitting 70 and his mom is still up and running at 90-ish, makes me think maybe I've got another ten years or so.Yeah, you should definitely build the house, you can rope it and set up the wiring to IEEE specs so it doesn't burn down with that questionable park power (keep in mind, 240 in a park, means two 120V circuits on one plug, not 'real' 240V as in residential wiring).
Had to go through that with my kids when they had a 5th wheel, after their 'other' fiver and the do-it yourself truck camper, jeeze...those RVs kept me in the shop more than I was at work.
I did Autocad work for MEs, you guys should draw it up, probably in solidworks nowadays, then do some sims on the proposed structure to see it it'll hold together under stress, just for fun.
@Ethiopia:
Seriously? I grew up in Venice, about a mile from the beach. What a trip.303? Yes it is. My dad gave it to me when I was 12, had it ever since, had to ditch the original stock unfortunately, it was too bubba'ed up to use. Replaced the firing pin, re-blued the whole thing, got it back in shape.
I was a crypto (electronics) tech in a previous life.
@Ethiopia:
Yes indeed, the trees. Out here, we went through the same thing up in Paradise, took out the whole town. That's the reason all the power companies are so paranoid of anything that might cause a fire, even here in the desert where trees are few and far between.We've had a couple of burns, even here, over the years. Though mostly in the adjacent mountains, it does cause wildlife to migrate down here, even had a few bears rummaging around out here a few years back. Had one right outside the house, prompted me to get a new led light for the picatinny rail on the Enfield.
Transients and spikes aren't too bad, SCE did a major overhaul shortly after the Paradise episode (that was PG&E's liability), our major issue where I live is SCE's itchy trigger finger to shut down the grid when any weather event poses even a hint of possible liability.
Tooling isn't much: soldering iron, 60-40 solder, rosin-flux, either braid or a solder-sucker (or just heat it and pull it), appropriate mini wire cutters.
A pin-vise and some bits is handy to avoid having to struggle with partially closed solder pads that you *don't* want to overheat, but not strictly necessary.
The only thing you need that costs is a $40 ESR meter to identify bad caps. If you decide as I did that while it's out, just re-cap the whole board, you don't strictly need the ESR meter, except to confirm that the board did actually have a bad cap that was the failure point (otherwise you're just guessing).
Look on ebay or amazon for electrolytic capacitor kits, pay attention to the voltage and uf ranges. A larger working voltage is ok, just not a smaller one. You might have to get some values independently, make sure the kit you get has the lion's share of what you need (they all publish what's in the kit).
The kits are a lot better buy and faster delivery than picking individual components from places like Digi-Key or Mouser.
Pay attention to polarity and solder bridges, don't overheat, which might lift a pad or a trace. Amalgamate the factory solder with your 60-40 to give it a lower melt-point. keep the iron clean and tinned (a sally block works wonders). Plug the board back in and test it before putting the case back together, in case you have to go back in again.
You can bring that monitor back, which is a lot less expensive than throwing cash at another one (although that's exactly what I did, but I didn't have a backup handy).
@Josie:
On the phone thing, I ran across this just a minute ago:@ethiopia: I'm in the same boat. This is a rural area that experiences power outages at the drop of a hat - not because the power is bad, but because SCE is scared to death of any potential liability due to weather so shuts it down if even a little wind comes up.
I had used 1500 VA APC UPSs (4) until I discovered that a typical UPS doesn't actually buffer the line via battery power as you would expect. What it actually does is offer line filtering, similar to a power strip, until the power fails, then it delivers battery power to an inverter that provides you with AC current.
Which kind of makes sense, otherwise the continual duty cycle of battery-to-inverter charging would severely limit the battery life, which isn't that great to begin with (and batteries ain't cheap).
And yes, we have two Honda 2kw gens and a Harbor Freight 3500 watt gen for the inevitable power failures, all inverter-gens. But that doesn't do us much good for online access when the power is out since the AP we use is also down when the power is out, so we just tether at that point. Out here, all internet is OTA or Starlink. No fiber, no cable, just coyotes, rattlesnakes and aliens (the ET kind).
For most, it's not worth it to try and restore monitors, but if your a tad 'techy', you can troubleshoot and repair them.
Last year we had a lengthy power outage that took out my Viewsonic 27". I went ahead and bought another one, but figured I could revive my old one. I suspected the power supply, so looked for another PS board online, with no luck.
Since I guessed the PS capacitors were probably taken out by the power spike when power was restored, I could use an ESR meter to ID any bad caps, but I actually just re-capped the whole board because capacitors have a 'shelf-life' after which the electrolyte won't handle any stressors, like spikes and this was an old monitor with a lot of hours on it.
The hardest part of the repair was getting the case apart, it cost about 10 bucks to fix it.
@Ma Arn: If the drive is mechanically dead, drive recovery outfits are what you're looking at. Search turned up results like this: https://www.300dollardatarecovery.com/hard-drive-data-recovery/. Can't speak to 'scams', so as always: 'caveat emptor'.
If the drive still spins, I've used TestDisk in the past to recover data off PC and MAC drives. Plenty of other more 'user friendly' ones out there too, but your mileage may vary with those. https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download
You can keep an eye on your drives with things like: https://hddmonitor.github.io/, which is what I use.
