I’m not a fan of one night stands, so I made two. From the very last leftovers of the cedar wood I had. I had to improvise a little, but I think this looks nice.
Here’s a closer look at one night stand;
As this bedroom has no air conditioning of its own, I added a tower fan that is quiet and has a remote.
Today I picked up some free storage space for upstairs; The Armoir fits pretty well here;
The upstairs bedroom had 0 storage room also, so this one fills up the corner nicely;
Next I will need some storage space for the HCPL amenities such as towels, paper towels, shampoo etc. But that’s for local stock to easily re-supply the bathrooms and kitchen, so I might add some shelve space in the technical room.
With the upstairs bedroom now also having a nicely finished floor, all floors are finished
Time for a beer 🍻
Today I installed the office floor. It’s called Beach sand and I think it definitely makes the upstairs look more finished.
It looks like wood, but for costs and practical reasons I went for vinyl.
I treated myself to a new gadget. A man can never have too many gadgets. It’s a Bluetooth hot tub thermometer, that is linked to wifi using a base station with display and of course an app.
It has a little display on the thermometer (I’m holding it in place as the bubbles make the thermometer dance around) but the main purpose is that you can see from inside what the water temperature is. You can even set an alert when it reaches a certain temperature.
This was taken after I used the tub for about an hour. It only went down from 100F (37C) to 97 so still very comfy. The additional purpose of this gadget is to have a historic view of temperatures, both in the house as well as the hot tub.
That way I can keep better track of the temperature inside. I could already see the current temperature, but no historic data so now when a guest says it was hot, I can check how hot it really was.
Sadly, they don’t have an API yet, so I cannot link it to the smart mirror.
Today the windshield of my truck was replaced. The crack that passed inspection for 6 years finally was a reason to fail inspection.
Tomorrow I’ll try get through inspection again. Fingers crossed 🤞
Today my truck passed inspection, and renewed my registration, so I can finally legally drive again. If the cops pull me over and yell “License and registration!” I’m good.
As a developer I had fun making some improvements on the Smart Mirror App I made;
As a metric fan, I decided to display both Imperial and metric units, so I don’t have to do the math in my head. Top left is the outside temperature. Next to it the expected weather for today, followed by a detailed forecast which shows the next 8 hours temperatures, icon for weather, chance of rain, wind direction and speed. It also shows the date and current time. To the right is a weekly forecast with max and min temperatures, a temperature curve per hour and a weather icon.
On the left, below the temperature is the current local wind direction and speed. Under that is the barometer with a trend icon. Below that is the precipitation window, showing current precipitation, the amount of minutes it rained today and how much in the last 1 hours and the total this day. During Saturday’s thunderstorm, which included a rare nearby tornado (25 miles away) the precipitation was several inches in one hour.
On the right below the weekly forecast is the relative humidity, under that the UV index, followed by the Comal county burn ban status.
At the bottom right you can see the last detected lightning strike, with the distance. And the number of strikes the last 1 and 3 hours.
The centered text now rotates between an unlimited amount of custom texts I can set remotely, for instance to provide the wifi password, ask the guests to store the outdoor chair cushions indoors overnight and what ever else I would like to display.
Finally, the red motion sensed icon shows when the passive infra red sensor registers motion.
After a few minutes of no detected motion, the screen switches off, to save energy and preserve the monitor.
In the future I will likely add some new features but for now it works pretty well.
Although the IKEA seats are fine, they’re not made for spending many hours a day on. So I ordered an office chair, which arrived today;
It’s comfortable and has an adjustable spring tension when you lean back.
My SmartMirror that my brother Karel made has been serving Ozuye well over the last 5 years. But when I arrived it had old information on it and an update did not help. Being a software developer that also creates Raspberry Pi apps, I decided to make my own Smart Mirror App;
Here’s a first version of it. The font is more in style and the mirror is even smarter; it now talks to the Tempest weather station, and shows the data in both metric and imperial units. The API was pretty easy to use. I also included a new feature; burn ban status. Here in Texas, a burn ban can be active when there’s a risk of fires due to lack of rain. I found a way to read the fire department posted data to display an icon indicating the burn ban status.
The forecast information shows the week ahead, with both an icon per day, minimum and maximum temperatures and an hourly temperature curve.
The green line is comfortable, the red line the highest recorded temp ever in Texas and the blue line the lowest. That way the curve gives an easy overview on what kind of temperatures are expected.
One thing I still have to do is read the PIR sensor (Passive infra red) to blank the screen when nobody is around for a while.
The large centered text will rotate between 5 different messages, which I will be able to set from the cloud. That way I can even show a custom message for guests when needed.
In the future, I will try add a location chip in each of the outdoor seat cushions. Then when it starts to rain and the pillow are outside, I can show a message to store them inside.
Today I put the remaining 7 sheets of Birch on the upstairs floorboards.
It’s definitely more smooth and feels more rigid than when the floor was just the boards.
I did have to remove the railings, and afterwards put it back on top of the sheets. Next step will be priming the floor to get a stronger bond with the vinyl tiles that will be placed on this floor.
Above is a picture of the ceiling above the couch downstairs. Before, you could see through the cracks, and dust would fall down on the couch, table and bar. Now that the birch floor is in, that issue is solved.