I can’t help you with that but it brought to mind a funny story. I was at a customer’s house doing some work and she was on a conference call so unable to be attentive. Her robot vac started working the bedrooms and bathroom where her catbox was and that glorious kitty had kicked out a sizable nugget that the robot grabbed and smeared all the way down the carpeted hallway and back.
Unrelated to your concerns, I would suggest a screen or plumbing vent cap to keep rodents from dropping in through the vent. Most don’t realize that this is a thing that happens.
Loose-fill insulation is not great in vertical applications. If you can afford it get spray foam. Otherwise you’re probably best off with basic fiberglass batts.
The cheap-as-dirt meross does, it has an open/closed sensor.
Most openers have a dumb switch interface. A simple close-to-change circuit - I’ve never had one that wasn’t that way. If MyQ is so complicated (serial interface!?) then it needs to go anyway.
lol, just get a dumb opener and a shelly relay or use a meross unit. Super cheap and flawless local control that is cloud-connected if you want it.
My understanding of this (just worked through it with my wife) is that you will not take a tax hit on the disbursement when you take it but you will get hit with capitol gains taxes on it’s growth from inception of your contributions.
When you take it out, it has already been taxed but it will still count as income for your tax planning purposes in the year you receive it - hopefully you’re in a lower tax bracket when this occurs. It is not a taxable income (though it counts as an income and increases your tax bracket accordingly) but it’s growth since contribution will cost you at your current tax bracket as you take it.
Not a financial wizard here, ask a professional.
I wrote it to automate my workflow - I’m in sales. I enter site details at the customer location and my app crunches the numbers to pre-fill all relevant documents (contract, financing, etc) in PDF form. I also use it as a presentation device to explain service and product details/specs using pictures, videos and PDF documents.
No more paper, no more fiddling around with calculator and rate-cards. I do a little data entry and basically my job is done.
Oops, I’m sorry - I should have mentioned that it’s not on the App Store. It is chock full of company proprietary documents, photos and sales formulae. I wrote it just for myself.
The one I wrote myself to automate tasks at work. It has saved me hundreds of hours of tedium and makes my job so much easier. It only cost me a few weeks of learning (I am not a developer, just a tinkerer) to get it done. It lives happily on my phone and iPad and I use it every day.
I have quite a few Shelly devices, mostly relays. I Like them very much but they are not ideal if your target is HomeKit. There are work-arounds out there but they do not specifically support Apple ecosystem.
The HR department at your company is the company’s advocate they are not your advocate.
If you haven’t already go get Reamde by Neil Stephenson. Slightly similar but less campy vibe - also enjoyed.
Streaming videos on my phone using speaker for audio while at the restaurant eating lunch. I figured for sure, everyone would want to get in on that awesome stand-up comedy action or zany talk show that I enjoy with my meal. It turns out that (gasp!) some people even think it’s rude…LOL.
Double Feature: Ender’s Game (2013) and Starship Troopers (1997) - then we serve them a sumptuous shellfish tower to discuss their surrender over dinner.
You are wise to be concerned but I think you will not design an “enclosure” that will prevent further damage if it is inside a wood frame house. There is a house near me that burned down because of a single power brick for a tool in the garage.
Your better approach would be to make it so that power delivery is monitored and regulated automatically. That or manually just unplug after charging.
Thermal runaway happens on over-discharge or overcharge of the battery pack. Each pack has smart circuits to regulate this but they are designed at scale with a squinty eye at overall product cost…cheapest circuit available gets used even by well-known manufacturers.
Place power draw monitoring on the delivery circuit and when the draw lowers to maintenance level (batteries have recharged) have the power delivery automatically cut off. This can all be automated with freely available smart home products. You can even get some temperature sensors to monitor for overheat conditions during charging.
I’m going to be an outlier in my comment here but, for myself (an elderly dude who has done what you just did) I, personally, prefer to hire it done. You paid 2-3 hundred on parts and tools, put in 10+ hours of work and still have not got it working. I have come to appreciate the skill and ability of trades…they do that for a living - let them.
I’m really good at my chosen trade and I laugh at those that think they can just do my job because the watched a YouTube video about it. I fix their problems every day and charge them no more than someone who didn’t fuck it up first because I can appreciate the effort but I don’t charge them less because they did part of the work incorrectly.
TWA as a very young kid - I kept trying to pronounce it as a word and my dad was giggling and my mom and sister kept shushing me…I did not know why at the time.
I am not in the tech field but I love coding and learning new languages. I have for the last 25 years. When my actual (blue collar) profession starts feeling drab or boring my mind naturally starts drifting to find some problem to solve or some way of automating things just to keep me happy and engaged.
Batch scripts on MS/DOS, my first (floppy disk installed) Slackware box. REXX in OS/2. I worked through the animal books and played with Java, Perl, C - actually building tools that work and accomplish things.
Diving in to a new language or project is like discovering a new author you didn’t know about and the hours of joy it will bring me are fantastic and fulfilling. I guess you could say my hobby is learning.
I wrote a great iOS app to help me with things in my job and I use it all the time which saves me literally hours, making my work happier and more profitable. Best hobby ever and totally cheap too!
I couldn’t find one that made me happy and finally decided to forget physical arming and disarming - I use companion app location (home/away) and automations to arm and disarm. All exterior doors have presence sensors near them and when armed home if presence is detected near a door it can be opened and the alarm is disarmed. I haven’t had an accidental trigger so far.