curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Yesterday I decided that I was going to quit drinking. Often when I come home from work I will disappear into the basement and get drunk while doing tank stuff. This upsets the gf to no end. So we decided that I will stop. Anyways, that's the setup for the story.
So yesterday I got home from work around 6, mind set on not drinking, already ahead of the game because I skipped my trip to the LCBO. To help me along my new quest, Beth says to me: "No going downstairs!! I can't trust you down there!" Fair enough, so I head into the kitchen and prepare dinner. A shitty roast. (Looked decent enough on the outside but turned out to be riddled with hunks of unchewable fat.) Two hours later, we are done eating, and ready to move into the bedroom for some Netflix. Before I do that, I think, I'm going to let the dogs out for last call and go downstairs to feed the cats.
When I get downstairs, my heart literally stopped for a moment. My tank was dark, and quiet. Nothing was on. Not the lights, skimmer, return pump, powerhead, heater, zilch. I start panicking and call for Beth to come downstairs. As I am frantically searching for the source of the problem, she suggests I check the breaker panel. I run over there, all good. Back to the tank, I check to make sure that powerbar#1 is plugged into the wall still, all good. I unplug the return pump and put it into powerbar #1. Water flowing again! Yay! So then I move the light powerbar from powerbar#2 to powerbar#1, make sure that the first power bar is still working. Yep... all good. SO it's something with the second power bar. I start unplugging things and then plugging them back in... nothing. Then I remember that these power bars have a mini breaker switch in them! I check the first power bar first, the button is still pressed in. Good. Check the second one, popped out. Yay! I've found the source of my troubles! Press it in, nothing. EFF. Then I realized that I had unplugged it as part of my frantic troubleshooting. Plugged it back in, everything powered up again. Huzzah!
Checked the timer on the light powerbar and it appears to have gone off at 1:30. So the tank had 7 hours without power. Everything seems to still be OK thankfully.... but damn that was scary!
I've been thinking for a long time that it would be cool to get one of those electric current sensors to wrap around my powerbar cords, hook them up to the Arduino and see how much power the tank is using. Now I'm thinking it's more essential then I originally thought - it could be used to alert me if something like this happens again!
So yesterday I got home from work around 6, mind set on not drinking, already ahead of the game because I skipped my trip to the LCBO. To help me along my new quest, Beth says to me: "No going downstairs!! I can't trust you down there!" Fair enough, so I head into the kitchen and prepare dinner. A shitty roast. (Looked decent enough on the outside but turned out to be riddled with hunks of unchewable fat.) Two hours later, we are done eating, and ready to move into the bedroom for some Netflix. Before I do that, I think, I'm going to let the dogs out for last call and go downstairs to feed the cats.
When I get downstairs, my heart literally stopped for a moment. My tank was dark, and quiet. Nothing was on. Not the lights, skimmer, return pump, powerhead, heater, zilch. I start panicking and call for Beth to come downstairs. As I am frantically searching for the source of the problem, she suggests I check the breaker panel. I run over there, all good. Back to the tank, I check to make sure that powerbar#1 is plugged into the wall still, all good. I unplug the return pump and put it into powerbar #1. Water flowing again! Yay! So then I move the light powerbar from powerbar#2 to powerbar#1, make sure that the first power bar is still working. Yep... all good. SO it's something with the second power bar. I start unplugging things and then plugging them back in... nothing. Then I remember that these power bars have a mini breaker switch in them! I check the first power bar first, the button is still pressed in. Good. Check the second one, popped out. Yay! I've found the source of my troubles! Press it in, nothing. EFF. Then I realized that I had unplugged it as part of my frantic troubleshooting. Plugged it back in, everything powered up again. Huzzah!
Checked the timer on the light powerbar and it appears to have gone off at 1:30. So the tank had 7 hours without power. Everything seems to still be OK thankfully.... but damn that was scary!
I've been thinking for a long time that it would be cool to get one of those electric current sensors to wrap around my powerbar cords, hook them up to the Arduino and see how much power the tank is using. Now I'm thinking it's more essential then I originally thought - it could be used to alert me if something like this happens again!
