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  • > The "Status" LED flashes some kind of code - long long, short short short. I assumed the number of flashes would correspond to the time but apparently not. We didn't have time to figure this out before we had to leave.

    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.

    by SaberTail
  • If you enjoyed this, here's Fred Dibnah exploring Big Ben and discussing some of the engineering details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi1cqR1bJC4

    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

    by buildsjets
  • I love this. Any advice how to get involved in my local community in a similar way? I'd be so into doing some community project during my free time.
    by jdnordy
  • The battery on that circuit looks very much like a backup battery we have connected to our house alarm.

    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.

    by IsopropylMalbec
  • Wild seeing local stuff on HN. My dad used to work in that police station, probably the first (and only) HN story I’ll send him.
    by ad133
  • This is what I want the internet to be. Great read.
    by dwayne_dibley
  • How fun! Once, after climbing around in a dusty old church attic like this, I had to head straight to the airport for a flight. Barely made it on because something in the dust kept flagging as dangerous. They were using a test strip on my backpack and clothing and analyzing it in some kind of machine. Stressful as I was already pressed for time! Finally got a clean test and they let me through.
    by grahamburger
  • My first thought was it'll be a lot easier to maintain if they put some sandpaper-like grip tread on those wooden ladder/stair steps. It comes in self-adhesive rolls, you peel and stick. Huge safety improvement for very little cost.

    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.

    One other random thought: The battery in that photo looks like exactly the same size commonly used in emergency exit stairwell wall mounted battery-backed lighting systems, it's a 12V 7Ah to 8Ah AGM lead acid, rectangular/flat size. It should be fairly easy to find a replacement if needed from a local distributor of commercial electrician supplies/parts. Those things should go on a fairly frequent replacement schedule since they're held at 100% state of charge near constantly, and that one is probably exposed to hot summer sunlight temperatures in June/July/August. As a general rule if you don't know how old it is or have any records of when it was last replaced, it's time to replace it.

    by walrus01

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