• RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Working on a camera system to automatically detect and notify operations of arc breakdowns in switchgear. Our facilities are big enough that when something goes bang, a lot of times we don’t know where it happened.

    I do the hardware and software… Not the career I went to school for, but I’m having fun and it’s interesting.

    • Cratermaker
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      1 year ago

      Out of curiosity, why not go off-the-shelf? I think you can buy ready made systems for that job.

      • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Couple of reasons: this is a high energy pulsed-power environment, so aside from concerns on how to reliably power it (I’m designing PoE into this new version), we also need it to be reasonably small and really fast.

        Are we saving money? Individual units are certainly cheaper than COTS solutions. Maybe no real savings, but it’s meeting our needs without any compromises.

        Besides, this is one of my simpler projects off the top of my head that wouldn’t bust an NDA. 😆