Snowpocalypse Pittsburgh 2010

Pittsburgh Weather, Snowpocalypse 2010 | Posted by skitzo
Feb 07 2010

So I’m back to post that I’m finally in warmth.

Unfortunately we had to abandon the Pittsburgh Norton Estate. The power situation had become critical and it was time to find warmth. Unfortunately our forced air furnace will not operate without power, so the house had dropped to approximately 40 degrees.

We Left at approximately 6:30pm to try and take haven at a friends house.  After encountering numerous obstacles around 7:45-8:00pm, we finally made it to a friends house about 5 miles away.   With dogs in tow.  We only had to park three blocks away.  I carried about 25 pounds of essential stuff along the way.  But alas we had to bring the whole family(dogs included).

Right before we left The Pennsylvania American Water Company has issued a stop on all water consumption, so we we’re forced to turn our water off. We are praying that nothing goes wrong with the pipes, but it’s a problem we’ll just have to deal with.

For The moment we have found haven at the Hiersche Estate in Beechview, PA .


View Larger Map

Click on the above to see the Google Street view of the house in normal conditions.

Snowpocaylse Pittsburgh

Snowpocaylse Pittsburgh Hiersche Estate

Luckily the Hirsche’s aka Halstead and Evan have power, internet, and HEAT.  Thank you so much to our gracious hosts.

As a matter of point; everyone I spoke with has said its the worst snow storm they’ve ever seen in the P-burgh area.   However, I’ve heard differing stories from other areas in the city.    Farther east-north in oakland.  I’ve heard there was less than 18 inches of snow.  However I can say that there was easily over two feet of snow in my driveway on the west-south side of the city.

Overall, I’m exhausted.  I spent about 8-10 hours shoveling snow to get out of the driveway.  And that was really only about a third of the job.  I definitely must thank my neighbor John for snow blowing a good portion of my driveway.  I will have to do something very nice for John very soon.

Thanks for tuning in to the Snowpocalypse 2010 report from Skitzo at lostNtranslation.com.

Snowpocalypse

Electronics Fun | Posted by skitzo
Feb 06 2010

The storm appears to have subsided for now. Here at the norton outpost in Pittsburgh we are still w/o power. I’m only posting now that I’ve Hacked myself a phone charger out of 4aa. Batteries and an extra usb port I had laying around. Its pretty stone age around here at the moment. But had to post my simple Hack success.

1st Step to controlling 120v with the Arduino

Electronics Fun | Posted by skitzo
Feb 04 2010

My journey to controlling 120v brought me to sparkfun.com I purchased several Relay Control PCB’s.  They offer a convenient parts list to help you find all the right bits and pieces to fill out the PCB.

Relay PCB from Sparkfun

Relay PCB from Sparkfun

Obviously I couldn’t wait to take pictures when putting together the PCB’s, but it was pretty easy overall.  And if your not up to the task of putting these together I’m not sure that you should be trying to put together the beast in the following posts.

Overall putting together the pieces was pretty easy. If you’ve ever soldered a freeduino or any kind of basic PCB you’ll be fine. If you’re not sure I would highly recommend checking out a local Hack (insert locale here) event. Locally I visit Hack Pittsburgh. They helped me build the freeduino I use later on in this post to control the relays. Basically this PCB helps us use the 5v power we can get from PIN HIGH on the arduino to control 120v of power like a regular outlet. This appilcation has it’s limitations, so be warned this is only for testing purposes. Not for full scale operation. And certainly do not leave this type of device plugged in without monitoring.

Relay PCB from Sparkfun.com

Relay PCB from Sparkfun.com

Come back soon to see the next step.

Mobile wp

Electronics Fun | Posted by skitzo
Feb 03 2010

Adding a new mobile post with the new android wp prog. It appears to be a decent tool. If u Have an android phone check it out!

Testing Mobile Posts

wordpress | Posted by skitzo
Jan 29 2010

So I recently purchased a sprint Hero.  I have to say overall my experience has been ok.   I tried to do a mobile post with little success.  I’ll have to review the plugins I tried in a future post.   Come back soon to check it out

Welcome To lostNtranslation

Electronics Fun | Posted by admin
Jan 21 2010

Hi and welcome to lostNtranslation.com

My name is Paul Norton aka skitzo2000, and I hope to soon publish my work with the arduino platform as well as some fun electronis projects I have planned.   Come back soon to see my work using the arduino to control 120v power!