u/barnaclebill22

My parents live in Pennsburg, PA in a house that's around 20 years old. Can anyone tell me whether code would require their sump pump drain to go to the sewer or would it drain into the ground?
I'm asking because their sump pump runs *constantly* whenever there is any rain (which is frequent in Pennsylvania). The dirt is almost entirely clay, so it's possible that the dirt gets saturated and the rain just pools under the foundation. But it's also possible that nobody connected the pump to anything and it is just dumping water near the foundation, which is going right back into the sump. Figuring that out would involve a lot of digging, some beneath concrete.

I will be heading to Lopez Island on the 18th. Looks like I can still fish there that day (MA7), but salmon closes on the 19th. However, MA6 is open, so I can fish when I cross a line between Smith Island and Deception Pass, correct?

Any Anacortes people here? (Anacorteans? Anacortish?)

I will be bringing a small boat to the San Juans. Last year I launched using the hoist at Cap Sante, but it would be slightly easier to launch at the ramp at Washington Park and leave the car+trailer there. Does anyone know how many parking spots they have for 2+ nights, and whether they are usually full in summer? We're going in a couple of weeks on a Saturday.

Last year we caught a boatload of king and coho but no hatchery/keepers. Still a lot of fun though.

Does anyone know the minimum tide for the Mukilteo boat ramps? I'd like to go out for crab in MA 8/9 with my son on Thursday, but the tide chart shows -0.4 at 10:28am.
Also, any opinions on whether Mukilteo trailer parking will fill up Thursday? (Parking near Golden Gardens ramp on opening day means walking a half hour to your car).
And as a bonus, Mukilteo vs. Everett? Everett is huge and only a bit farther from home, how does the crabbing there compare? We're in a 12-foot RIB with 3 pots so range is a bit limited by speed at which we can avoid bouncing the pots out of the boat :-)

Pi 5 cannot see Starlink wifi.

6.12.47+rpt-rpi-2712 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.12.47-1+rpt1~bookworm (2025-09-16) aarch64 GNU/Linux

I've tried splitting Starlink into 2.4 and 5GHz, neither works.
The pi is maybe 8 feet from the Starlink Mini. Right now the Pi is using a phone hotspot, and the phone's uplink is Starlink (on wifi). All other devices can see the Starlink SSID.

nmcli device wifi list --rescan yes
IN-USE BSSID SSID MODE CHAN RATE SIGNAL BARS SECU>
* 2A:A6:1E:CE:EF:91 NEWspot Infra 11 130 Mbit/s 65 ▂▄▆_ WPA2>

https://preview.redd.it/99kzl1slpr5h1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=589418f9c2a103ee18bb867b8ff5393609edfac6

TLDR: looking for human input on comparing two solar panels. Of course AI is very enthusiastic and says I'm doing exactly what I need to.
Long version:
I have a small sailboat with two solar panels and a Victron charge controller. It felt intuitively like the panels weren't producing as much power as they had in the past, but this is really hard to measure with a single charge controller. You can unplug one panel at a time, but how do you know the conditions are the same? So I made an A/B comparison gadget. It uses an ESP32 microcontroller and a relay to switch between two INA219 current/power sensors and a 200-watt power resistor once per minute and it measures total accumulated power.
So basically all it does is tell you if one panel is producing more power than the other, and how much. The one on the right is my baseline: a Renogy 100-watt panel. The one on the left is a cheap AMZN flexible 100-watt panel. Eventually I will swap the one on the left for the other panel that was on the boat, but it will also be interesting to see how the high-end panel compares to the cheap one.
Aside from the obvious...22ga wire connecting a 100-watt panel to a 200-watt resistor (/sheepish grin emoji), am I going to get the information I want?

I'm working on a gadget that will automatically record your downrigger depth (as well as location, speed, air and water temps...) so you can go back later and use the info to help figure out what is working and what is not. Basically, a device that's like the little counter on your rigger except it saves the data. Would this be interesting to fishermen or am I the only one that thinks it's a good idea?