u/mshaefer

Fairly simple idea: a can that gets buried in the ground, the can has a hole in the bottom for drainage, another in the bottom/side for low-voltage wiring to enter/exit, and a sacrificial lid with a a frangible zone around the thick central mounting ring designed to bend, deform, or break before the light is damaged. Swapping in a new lid is as easy as removing the screws, mounting the light to a new lid, and screwing the new lid back down. All the wires stay safely buried and there's nothing to dig up. There's also the anti-mower version with a raised edge (we'll see if that works).

It seemed like no matter what I did, the landscape path/driveway lights kept getting clipped by the yardman or a vehicle. I even tried moving them farther from the edge of the driveway, but then people just started driving on the grass thinking the driveway was wider than it is.

Before, the lights were installed with those stakes that you hammer down and screw the light into. The wire had to be buried right up to the stake and then the light screwed in, twisting up the wire and messing up the insulation. If a light got hit, that inevitably pried the wire up out of the ground and, if it didn't also tear the wire, either broke or damaged the stake.

Now, if a light gets hit, the lid just bends or breaks at the weak point. No wires get pried up because there's excess in the can. The lid takes the damage instead of the light, and replacing a lid takes 5 minutes without having dig up and rebury any wires.

[TL:DR - controlling an '06 B&K Components CT600 multi-zone / multi-source amp via HA and ESP Home, plenty of these amps on ebay too.] Before I bought Sonos amps, our house came wired with speakers and volume controllers and in-wall keypads for a whole-home audio system that was peak tech in 2006 (B&K Components CT600). Fast forward 20 years and this massive multi-zone amp has been sitting in the attic for at least the last 5, and I start to think. The amp has a RJ45 connector for programming via B&Ks program BKSuite (WinXP). It uses an ASCII command protocol for programming but includes simple stuff like turning a zone on and off, switching sources, volume up and down.

It hits me that if an ESP32 can pass these same commands to the RJ45 com port, I could have an entire set of controls as buttons in Home Assistant via Esphome that would do everything the wall keypads could do, and then some. I found the DIP-Command document (B&Ks command protocol) and fed it into Claude code and asked it to write the yaml and make a couple of basic custom cards for my dashboard.

It took a bit of trial and error to get everything dialed in and, while Claude accomplished 90% of it, there was some fine tuning to get it to really work well. But the end result was a 6-zone whole home audio system controlled entirely from my phone that had the added benefit of being dead simple to tie into automations and scenes.

There are too many potential commands to even list, but the cards here show the most basic for 3 of the zones. The amp itself (and its smaller 3-zone counterpart, CT300 / 300.1) can be found on eBay for between $150-500. Considering a single Sonos amp runs $700, I’d say that’s a pretty sweet deal.

Wish I’d gotten better pics. Camera don’t do justice to the depth of the color. I see a few of these around, but never is this condition.

I got tired of the black plastic tube, those little barbed connectors, and the inability to swap things out, so I made this! All copper and brass, and the brass parts are garden hose sized. Currently it’s all misters. One end connects to my irrigation manifold on a Rachio controller. My mom’s a master gardener. I very much am not, but I must’ve paid attention over the years. She loved it so I figured I’d share here.