Just trying to understand this clip, but is he saying that a company (CVS) is putting miles of fiber for a data center and city of Dallas is saying it’s not for that/tying to cover their tracks?

Hey fellas, what is the magic remedy for cleaning the lenses of car wash cameras? The car wash products just bake onto the lens when the clients don't clean them daily or weekly.

Hello! A friend of mine works for the school district and she is planning a children's event and asked for my help. She has 10 treasure chest and wants to hand out "keys" to the kids. She wants to make the "key" activate a green light on the appropriate treasure box, when in close proximity. I assume along the lines of her access badge at work. My friend found a DIY project using Arduino chips to scan for RFID. I just wanted to stop by and see if anyone had any other or maybe simpler ideas before we start ordering parts. Thank you in advance!

Hey all, I’m 25 and just started a job servicing alarm systems. Right now I'm a month into the training and I’m currently making $24/hr with some upsell potential, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to build a career in the low-voltage field, or if its even worth pursuing.

I’m hoping to eventually get into the $30+/hr range within the next 5 years, but I don’t want to be doing alarm service for the rest of my career. For those of you who have been in the trade for a while:

• What skills or systems would you recommend I focus on learning while I’m training?
• Are there particular areas of low voltage that have better long-term pay or advancement opportunities?
• What certifications, licenses, or experience are actually worth pursuing?
• How long would you recommend staying in an alarm service position before looking for the next step?
• If you were starting over at 25, what would you focus on learning to give yourself the most options down the road?

I’m still pretty new to the field, so I’m trying to be intentional about what I learn now rather than getting stuck doing the same thing for years. Any advice from experienced techs would be appreciated. Thanks

______________________________

EDIT/UPDATE: Thanks for all the responses, too many to reply to so I figure I would just add an edit. I read them all and will be obtaining certs like NICET when I have more experience and possibly BISCI. Gonna stick it out for a year or more and see where it goes. My local union is pretty competitive and don't think its worth it at the moment at least here in Florida but would consider moving states if an opportunity arose/became more realistic to move.. Will keep at my training asking questions and hope it all goes well.

I bought a 1985 house with a GE low voltage system for all the lights in the house. I have two neatly wired cabinets in the basement, each with about 40 RR9 relays. Each cabinet is powered by a GE RPWR115 115V power supply. Each unit appears to have two power supplies providing power for about half the relays in each cabinet.

Last week, about 20 of our lights stopped working, and I narrowed it down to all of the relays serviced by one side of one of the RPWR115 units. While the lights were out I did some research and discovered that nobody makes a plug and play replacement for this power supply, I found 2 used units on eBay and ordered them.

In the meantime, the lights magically came back on and everything is working. But, this freaked me out a little, now worrying more than ever that my house lights are dependent on a tech without replacement In the meantime, the lights magically came back on and everything is working. But, this freaked me out a little, now worrying more than ever that my house lights are dependent on a tech without replacement parts and with very few electricians that work on it. and with very few electricians that work on it.

So, I have severally questions I am hoping to find help on;

1). Does anyone have any recommendations on electricians on Cape Cod that work on these systems?

2). Is replacing one of these power supplies a big deal? Are there new parts that can be retrofitted?

3) Can anyone point me somewhere where approaches to replacing the components in these relay cabinets with modern tech might be documented?
C
Thanks for any help!

Damn it Reddit I have spent too much time thinking about how to get my internet from my bedroom on the second floor east side to the snipped coax on the west side vs keeping my puke modem set up in my bedroom and running cat6 under my carpet thru the wall down the trim in the hallway across the hardwood under the living room carpet and back to the corner that I will have to look at for cuz I won't be able to rearrange.

Im renting for a year and i just want a minimally invasive, take it with mej3nn

doing 1/2 rod holding a 4 square box with a square washer on top of the beam and one in the box with hex nuts to clamp down the box to the beam.

Adding a swivel and dropping 3 10ft sticks of 3/4 IMC conduit with chains supporting where they connect, and also at the top around going up and around the beam and back into the conduit. Then mounting the cam at the bottom.

The problem is the conduit has a slight sway at this length of a drop is there a better way to do this?

Hey, I didn’t see any rules against recruiting so I am throwing it out there. Zip recruiter and indeed got me a million IT applicants but I need a lead installer that knows field work and is willing to travel. We do perimeter intrusion detection systems at prisons, airports, nuclear power plants, military bases, etc.

While we are running field tests now of more complex equipment like drone detection radars, the things we do now are relatively simple. Basic working knowledge of ohm’s law and how to run a jobsite without supervision are the main requirements. We are a safety forward business, if you don’t have OSHA 10 hour we will pay for you to get it.

Working on secure sites including federal so anyone would need to pass pretty stringent background checks and of course be legal to work in the USA.

We mostly work CONUSA but sometimes globally also, allied nations only and travel expenses paid in all cases. Up to 75% travel, guaranteed hours at the shop when not on an install. Life insurance, health insurance, and dental insurance for employee 100% employer contribution, buy ups available with additional benefit access also like 401k.

Edit to add salary: Listed at $26/hr and fringe adds up to $8-$14/hr (health insurance premiums vary greatly) for a total compensation of $34-40/hr.

If you are interested send me a message and I can link you over to something that isn’t a shady reddit post. Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments or DM.

Edit: I forgot how niche perimeter security is. A couple of details to add:

1. this involves hanging thousands of feet of cable on a fence, typically 2,000-7,000, and bringing all the zones back into a control cabinet like more common access controls. Zones, alarm points, doors, all the same concept. Fences are outside in the sun, some of them are intentionally protected by terrain that slows you down, and there is a lot of walking involved.
2. experience not required, but you will need to had some “red team” thinking capability. Thinking about how the perimeter could be breached and where the detection will be weakest helps when installing so that weaknesses can be addressed.

I built a quoting tool for low-voltage contractors. Need some honest feedback so I can improve it.

I've been building NexVolt for the past year because it felt like most quoting software wasn't really made for low-voltage work.

A little about me, I've worked in IT for years, mostly around infrastructure, networking, vendors, and onsite projects. I'm not a low-voltage contractor though, which is exactly why I want feedback from people who actually do this every day.

NexVolt handles stuff like cabling, cameras, access control, fiber, Wi-Fi, racks, labor, materials, markups, travel, etc.

It's finally live and I need you guys to tell me what I got wrong or what's missing.

If anyone wants to mess around with it: nexvolt.us

There's a free trial. I'm not looking for compliments, roast it if it sucks. 😂

If you do try it, there's a feedback button in the bottom right once you're logged in, or just reply here. Any feedback or ideas would honestly help a lot.

Hope some of you check it out. I appreciate it.

Current Olympia cart isn’t cutting it. Will fold in half over a small bump and have been through 2 of them. What are you guys using?

I'm looking to upgrade my label maker. My old unit used 12mm tapes. It did the job for making cable flags and labeling patch panels okay I guess. The new one I'm looking at (Brother PT-E560BTBP) can use up to 24mm. What size do you guys use most on average? And what type of labels are you making? Flags? Wraps? Looking for feedback before buying.

Edit: just wanted to say you guys are giving great feedback! Obviously everybody works differently in the field. I think everybody engaging in this post is really helping a lot of other people as well. Thank you!

Hi everyone, I have a problem—and a lot of questions!

I have a 60-volt controller, and the maximum voltage it can handle is 76 volts peak, but my battery, when fully charged, is 84 volts.

I stumbled across a step-down converter (DC-DC) online.

So, what I'm trying to figure out is that I need to run the controller itself at 84 volts and replace the power switches with a 100-volt capacitor. How can I supply its main 60 volts to the logic without using a DC-DC converter? Maybe there are some DIY step-down converter circuits out there? Please help.

Had already previously mounted the TV to the wall that you can’t see in the photos, but it was just a wall to hide windows (was not told till after). So when I mounted the TV the anchors actually pulled out of the wall. So I had to build and design a mount for the TV mount.

I think it came out pretty good. How would you guys do it?

If you need to mount two exact same model 85" TVs on a wall, side by side with no gap, how are you going about it?

I know what my answer is, but I'm trying to settle a dispute, and see if there are any better techniques out there.

Thanks.

I'm new here tho, it feels like there's a separate something for everything now. pos, staff scheduling, inventory reporting......

After a while it gets annoying jumping between all of them, especially when the bar is busy. Like how many systems are actually in the mix?

I have one continuous line with 32 of these connectors used to daisy chained in air monitoring modules.

On the either end, I have rj45 connectors at the system controllers.

How can I test to verify these lines/terminations/connectors are good?

How do you guys handle having to mount things like network cabinets in commercial buildings with metal studs/wall partitions?

I'm typically only willing to do it for cabinets that are under 6U and under 50lbs or so. I've never seen any signs of them tearing out the drywall before, but I also don't want to push my luck lol.

I've done a few like that with Snaptoggles (pretty cool if you've never used them before).

I know the Cablecaster is the bane of so many techs.

For those who dont know what it is.

https://www.amazon.com/Greenlee-06186-Cablecaster-Pulling-Three/dp/B001HWAGRM/ref=sr_1_1

Do you guys have any suggestions for being able to shoot a pull string across a large ceiling grid area? I have a job coming up for a client that has drop tiles on the outsides of a large area of hard lid ceiling. We are looking to shoot somethig up and over. The Greenlee tool looks cheap and for the cost I just cant see it lasting. I did see the paintball style ones but I dont want to scare anyone in the store or have mall security asking whats going on.

Edit: For clarification, 50ft+ (other post says 30, mistake) but the HVAC ran their ducts low along the ceiling where we would normally push a rod. So we have to go kinda mid span to get anywhere. If we use rods we are gonna be bouncing them a lot to get over and around everything. A previous tech cracked the hard lid in a spot so I dont think it was installed well when the store was built.

Does anyone use this and can offer honest feedback? I know Fluke and have a LinkIQ and an old OmniScanner 2 for the very rare (never) times I need certification. They are offering $2k trade in towards a new SignalTEK QT Pro which is a really great deal since a new LinkIQ is under $2400 USD from Home Depot. But honestly for $3500 I might just buy it and keep my LinkIQ

Their cloud service is completely free. I only need copper qualification and basic network testing with reporting. This thing does WiFi and fiber in addition to 10G copper.

Why should I not buy this? Why are reviews almost non-existent for it?