Posted by avidly 6 hours ago
Without modifying anything intrusive to the mechanism, a cheap way of monitoring to make sure it's still running OK would be to install a low cost PoE IP camera mounted in such a way that it's aimed at the gear mechanism, then feed its video into something like Frigate. As cheap as $75 for a camera, some cat5e cable and staples to take the cable to where you need it, and an old desktop PC (plug it into anything that gives it a DHCP lease and default route outbound, make it a VPN client). You could also possibly use the camera to monitor the blinking status LED without doing anything intrusive to the existing electronics.
Also looks like it was hand assembled, by the component mounting. Wires soldered straight to board isn't great, but not a huge issue if stationary and undisturbed.
Had a number of experiences where their identity scanners (for some destinations they scan you at the start of security and just before the gate to ensure you get on the right aircraft) failed to be operational resulting in delays that ultimately may have forced me to miss my flight and stay in the UK. On the other hand, arriving from Ireland to the UK results in no checks because of the common travel area — you get waved through a special gate which is reserved for passengers from Ireland. LOL
Shortly after 9/11 I was flying out of Hawaii back to the mainland and I watched the screen when they swabbed my bag. It reported as positive for every single type of explosive (to the best of my knowledge, I was not carrying anything even remotely explosive). The tech looked at the results, said "that can't possibly be right" and waved me on.
For extra fun times, baby wipes / wet wipes get flagged as explosives in the US when they use the sniffer devices.
We didn't put it at #1 though! That is a confirmation that we made a good pick.
With the popularity of this post the "SCP" reference made me think Hacker News had some kind of antimemetics department.
Then I saw it was the Second Chance Pool and was sort of disappointed.
badoosh
....I'll see myself out
We moved in to the house in 2003 and that battery died this year, so I would imagine that it is already or will very soon die. That said, if it's a backup battery and the electricity supply is stable then it may not make any difference.
https://www.rapidonline.com/yuasa-yuvolt-yucel-y1-2-6-valve-...
https://static.rapidonline.com/pdf/18-5207_v2.pdf
Design spec is up to 5 years. The one in the photo looks like it may have a date written in Sharpie on the side. I don't think it's 25 years old though. The "090323" on top could be DDMMYY indicating a battery from 2023.
If someone knew to replace the battery just three years ago, I would expect they also would have enough knowledge to set the clock itself. Or at least explain what was going on. Maybe this person isn't connected with the building anymore. But I would expect the new owners would be able to contact the old owners for help on this instead of sending a generalized call for help.
I could just hear the clockmaker James Martin calling me a butcher in his disapproving manner
Fred Dibnah was a treasure. If you enjoyed 5 minutes of Big Ben, here's an hour of his day job in heavy industrial steeplejacking - "The Ups and Downs of Chimneys" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK2wF_-yoEg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl_UA36ouzM&list=PL2vJ5Cg-wl...
long-long-short-short-short is 7 in morse code. They don't say what time they tried this or if it ever changed, though, so that's just a hypothesis.
Couldn't it be just binary
long-long-short-short-short
11000
Which is - to everyones surprise - 24 as in hours.
Perhaps the long-press commits the hour, which is why it rang once initially.
I didn't build the chime box but it looks like the sort of thing I used to do back then.
Of course the above all depends on the exact situation in your area. Some of them are just a social club, and some are not. Some of them have religious affiliations that you may not like. Some of them are good in abstract but you hate the particular people in them.