Hot and sticky today, with a chance of rain. But I’m headed out of town, and I hope it will be just a bit cooler at the BOL.
I spent the morning yesterday doing a pickup, then headed to my client’s house to install the other end of the ‘wire replacement’ wireless link.
Which went better than it might have, but not well. First I had to dig a bunch of holes trying to find the buried conduit. I couldn’t back pull, nothing moved even a smidgen. So I thought I’d find a corner in the run, open the conduit, pull the new wires in, and install a box where I broke it. Yeah, for some reason, after I’d followed it for more than 30 ft, I still hadn’t found where it turned toward the gate control box. I decided to just put my new enclosure on the pedestal side of the gate, and right at the gate, so I wouldn’t have to dig as much new trench.
Spent some time digging, and poking a fiberglas rod through the dirt, and got the cable run installed. Couldn’t quite finish at the pedestal, because I needed a couple of right angle conduit fittings. I built the enclosure out the night before, so once I had that mounted, I could terminate the cables… except that I pulled one pair, instead of cat cable. In my defense, I didn’t even KNOW I had single pair cable in my stock, let alone the size and blue color of the cat I normally use… I’ll have to re-pull that on Monday. I spent far too much time getting the nano set up, linked to the other end, and poking at networking issues. Which all came down to using a ubiquiti EdgeRouter at the gate instead of a simple switch. Once I swapped it for a Flex 4 port switch, I had wired internet at the gate.
There were other mis-steps involving PoE injectors at 48v instead of 24v, and configuring the automagic stuff in the wrong order, but it all got resolved. I stopped at Lowe’s on the way home and got the conduit stuff I need, and I’ll bring home some liquidtite conduit and cat cable from the BOL on Sunday. Nothing is as easy as it should be.
So today I’m doing a pickup this morning on my way to the BOL. Wife and kid went up last night. The location isn’t directly on the way, but it’s mostly in the right direction, and the grill is going to the BOL. I’ll throw some other stuff in the truck to ’round out’ my pack and then I’m off like a prom dress…
I’ve been stacking up knowledge I probably won’t use again while it’s still relevant… But at least I’m stacking something. You should too.
nick