Studio711.com – Ben Martens

OpenSprinkler With Power BI

I’ve been happily using OpenSprinkler to control my irrigation system this year. One of its many features is logging how long each zone is on, but I haven’t done much with those logs yet. Last weekend, I decided to dig in to the data.

The first thing I did was write a little app that runs every morning, checks the latest logs, and uploads the new data to a SQL database in Azure.

Then I stood out by the water meter and figured out how much water each zone used. That included the startup usage (since water drains out of some heads when the zone is off) and the usage per minute. That let me calculate how much water I’ve been using over the past few months.

I fired up Power Query for Excel and brought in all the data so I could get some nice Power View charts and graphs going. (Note that I could also have used the new Power BI Designer instead of Excel, Power Query and Power View.) I saved that workbook to OneDrive and imported it into PowerBI.com. I set up PowerBI.com to automatically refresh the workbook every morning and show me the charts on a dashboard.

It might sound complicated but it only took me about an hour of work and that included standing out by my water meter for 15 minutes. Now I can fire up the PowerBI.com website every day and analyze my water usage. Since this isn’t based on an actual water flow meter, it won’t help me find leaks, but it does help me get an idea of how much money I’m spending to keep my yard green. I’m also working on some new features that will keep track of the high and low temperatures each day along with the precipitation.

You can get a long way in Power BI before you need to pay for anything so go give it a shot if this sparks some ideas in your head.

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benmartens June 23, 2015 Gadgets, Geek, Home Improvement

Wireless Charging

DT-903_orange-white-greenFor the past 2.5 years, Tyla and I have had cell phones that support wireless charging. Last summer, I bought some cheapo wireless chargers and they just didn’t work reliably. I kind of gave up on the idea until they scattered some official Nokia charging pads around my building at work. I used them for a while and it worked every time. So I tossed the old ones that we didn’t use anymore and bought the nicer ones from Nokia (DT-903) which happened to be in our company store.

They work perfectly! Drop the phone on and boom, you’re charging. Plus, the charger connects to your phone with Bluetooth LE and will flash the light if you have a low battery, text message, email, etc. The flashing is configurable and you can set nighttime hours when the light is off completely. That’s a must-have feature since we have these in the bedroom.

Nokia also makes the DT-900 which is less expensive and I don’t think it has as many features, but we might pick one of those up for down in the main living area.

It’s definitely a luxury purchase, but Qi charging is a standard across lots of Windows Phone and Android devices. (Sorry, no iOS unless you put a special case on your phone.)

benmartens June 22, 2015 Gadgets

Basketball Hoop

newbasketballhoopWhen we bought this house, there was a broken basketball hoop on the property back in the cul-de-sac. It seemed like a great location to play, but the hoop was unusable. When we tore up the yard, we took out the hoop and threw it away.

Once it was gone, I noticed that more people were driving through the yard there as they turned around in the cul-de-sac. I decided to put a new poll back in roughly the same place.

I bought a Lifetime 71525 hoop from Amazon (yay for free shipping with Prime) and it sat in my garage for about five months before I finally got around to installing it. That should have been a pretty straightforward process, but as soon as I started digging, I discovered that my brand new irrigation lines ran right through where I wanted the pole to go. That meant I had to dig the hole even bigger and make a detour in the pipe. After that, the concrete went pretty easy but it was tricky to keep the pole perfectly vertical while the cement set up. Assembly of the hoop was more complicated than I expected, but I finally got it worked out after a little modification to the lifting mechanism.

The hoop has been up for a couple weeks now and it works well. Elijah loves to have it lowered down to 7.5 feet so I can lift him up to dunk the ball. The cul-de-sac makes a nice playing surface except that the road slopes down to the curb a bit so shots that go through the hoop usually fall down to that part of the road and bounce back into the yard.

Hopefully this hoop provides us with years of fun! Or at the very least, it will hopefully cut down a little on people driving through the yard in that spot.

benmartens June 19, 2015 Home Improvement

Don’s Fence

Last summer at this time I was in the middle of our huge yard remodel and that included building a fence. Don and Logan put in a lot of hours on the fence at my house. This summer, we’re all working together again but this time it’s at Don’s house.

So far we’ve gotten most of the old fence removed, most of the new posts in concrete, and some of the fence up. This past weekend we made a ton of progress because Don rented an auger and a cement mixer. We knocked out 10 posts before 3pm. Not too shabby for our ragtag group.

Somehow Don seems to end most of the work days with a bleeding cut on his arm, I hurt my back on Saturday running the auger and Logan broke his thumb by shooting a nail through it. You might not want to come help with this project. Our safety record isn’t very good!

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benmartens June 18, 2015 Home Improvement

Cutting Plywood

circularsawtrackI usually work alone in the garage so cutting big sheets of plywood or MDF can be a hassle. Running it across the table saw just isn’t an option until I’m dealing with smaller pieces. In the past, I’ve picked out a straight 2×4, clamped it to the plywood, and then used that as a guide for the circular saw. That works pretty well but it can take a long time to get the guide set up in just the right spot.

I finally got around to making a jig to help with this. It’s not complicated and I definitely didn’t invent the idea, but here’s how you make it:
1) Cut off a 3″ by 8 foot slice of your sheet of plywood. Make sure that you’re keeping a factory edge and you mark it. That’s your straight edge.
2) Measure the distance between your circular saw edge and the blade. Add 3″ for your cutoff and then another ~3″ for clamp room. Cut off another slice that wide. That will be the base of your jig.
3) Glue the 3″ strip on top of your base strip. Make sure the factory edge is pointing at the wider side of the base strip. It should be about 2″ from one edge. Add nails to hold it in place while the glue dries.
4) Now make a cut with your circular saw to trim off the extra wood.

You now have a zero-clearance jig to help you rip plywood. If you’re making a cut on the plywood, add a pencial mark on each end of the sheet where you want to cut. Then clamp your jig down so that it is right up against your pencil marks. Run your circular saw, holding it tightly up against the top fence and you’ll get nice straight cut in the right spot.

My typed-out description isn’t great, but there are lots of videos showing how it all works. I recommend Jay Bates’s blog post and video. He gets to it about halfway through the post/video.

The 8 foot length is a bit long when you’re doing 4′ cuts but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll end up making a second shorter one.

benmartens June 17, 2015 Woodworking

Greenwater Lakes

After the success of our Barclay Lake hike, we decided to try it again. We met Mandy and Ike at their house, got both car seats into one car and piled in for a 1 hour 45 minute drive down to the trailhead for Greenwater Lakes. It’s off of Hwy 410 on Forest Road 70. The drive was a little long for the boys both coming and going, but it’s nice to get a little farther away from the popular, crowded trails.

The hike had a little more vertical than the Barclay Lake hike but it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately the lakes at the end weren’t as great as we were expecting. They both looked really low which is unusual for this time of year but probably expected given the low snowpack. We had a normal amount of precipitation during the winter, but it wasn’t in the form of snow so it wasn’t released slowly down the mountain during the spring melt.

We ended up going all the way past the bigger, second lake and found a nice spot along the river that feeds into the lakes. The boys had fun throwing rocks into the water while we enjoyed a picnic and rested up for the trip back.

I don’t think we’ll do this one again, or at least if we do, we’ll wait until we know the lakes are fuller. There were some reasonably good camping sites available in that area too.

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benmartens June 16, 2015 Outdoors

Happy Birthday Elijah!

Our little man turns two today! He changes week to week, so looking back over an entire year is quite a trip. The biggest change we’ve seen lately is his ability to combine more and more words together into fragments or even full sentences. It’s so fun to understand a little more about what is going on in his thoughts. We love you Elijah!

benmartens June 15, 2015 Family

Barclay Lake

We’ve had an incredible spring in terms of weather. Normally we are in the midst of “June gloom” where it might not be super wet, but it’s 100% cloudy for weeks on end. Instead, we’re in a stretch of warm weather and clear blue skies. We don’t usually get this until July. I’ll take it!

When you get nice weather in the Pacific Northwest, you better take advantage of it, and that’s just what we did. We loaded up the car and headed to Barclay Lake for a hike with Nancy, Megan, Mandy and Ike. Our previous attempts at hiking haven’t been super successful because Elijah ends up getting tired of riding in the backpack and wants to walk. Walking turns into a game of endless distractions that doesn’t result in us moving down the trail.

This hike went a lot better, and it might be because Ike and Elijah could both see the other one riding in a backpack. The hike was not too difficult, but it ended at a very nice lake. Elijah and Ike spent their time throwing rocks and mud into the lake while the rest of us had a picnic.

Ike and Elijah both fell asleep in the backpacks on the way back to the car and the hike was a success! The only downfall was that I had underestimated the traffic that would be coming back through the pass on Memorial Day. It added about 90 minutes to our 90 minute drive. Ouch.

Two thumbs up for Barclay Lake though. There were a lot of very nice potential camping spots around the lake and I could see it being a good spot for a first overnight trip with Elijah when he’s older and able to carry his own pack.

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benmartens June 12, 2015 Outdoors

The Martian

Last summer, I wrote up my thoughts on The Martian by Andy Weir. It’s an awesome science fiction book based almost completely in the realm of actual science. (The author admits to one intentional deviation in the first few pages to make a better story.) You could quickly summarize the book as “MacGyver on Mars.”

The buzz around this book is ramping up again because trailers for the movie are starting to come out. It’s directed by Ridley Scott and stars Matt Damon. I really enjoyed the book and have high hopes for the movie.

If you’re at all interested in engineering, space, or science fiction, this is one to keep on your radar. I don’t know whether it’s better to read the book or watch the movie first, but personally I’d say you should read the book first because it’s your only option right now! Here are a couple links to get a taste of what you’re in for. Don’t worry about spoiling the book by watching these. He gets stranded on Mars. Surprise! That’s the whole point of the book and you learn that in the first couple pages.

XKCD has a comic this week about the movie too.

benmartens June 11, 2015 Commentary

Berlin Wall

The Microsoft campus has lots of art in all of the buildings. There’s so much of it, that it’s easy to walk right by without paying much attention. But if you walk into the main conference center, take a minute to stop and look at that huge, graffiti-covered cement wall. It’s an original piece of the Berlin Wall! The piece was a gift to Bill Gates and he has it on display in the conference center.

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benmartens June 10, 2015 Commentary