blog.txt

9/27/20017 Cutting one last bit of wood for the birdhouse, and the table saw started making an awful noise.  Two hours later, the saw was in pieces scattered around my garage, my back yard, and my basement, and I had identified the problem -- a bearing in the motor felt as if the ball bearings were made from gravel.  I ordered a new bearing, and looked for a different way to cut the wood.

Luckily I did, because Ian came up with a great idea of gluing the front of the birdhouse to the roof such that gravity holds the whole thing together.  A small pin somewhere will hold it together in the event of hurricanes or earthquakes.  The birdhouse looks great, and has plenty of room for sensors inside.

9/28/2017 Spent all day trying to get Thingsboard to build locally.  Mostly frustrating.

9/29/2017 Got Thningsboard building and running locally!  Yay!  Also got the temp/humidity sensors, some circuit boards, and a new roll of solder in the mail.  Things are looking up!
10/1/2017 Got new bearing for saw.  Removing old one was very difficult.  Borrowed a torch and tried to heat it to loosen it a bit, bu that didn't work.  I ended up cuttin the bearing off with my Dremel.  I took a chunk of the shaft off with it, but I got the motor reassembed, and it works beautifully.  I got the saw about 3/4 reassembled, but am having trouble with one bolt that is hard to reach.  Will try again tomorrow.
10/2/2017 I gave up on NetBeans -- it didn't play well with my monitor, and I don't like the way it works.  I spent some time importing the project into IntelliJ, and that seems to be workinig better now.  My first code submission to Thingsboard didn't build, so I've withdrawn it until I can figure out why.
10/4/2017 Table saw now completely fixed and reassembled.  I oiled the adjustment cranks and it's a lot easier to raise and lower the blade.  Fixed the TB code submission, got it to pass all tests on my fork, but it still won't pass tests on TB trunk.  Lame.  I mounted the Shinyei sensor in the birdhouse, and got screws for the temp sensor.  Alas, I left the sample screw at home, so guessed on the size, and got screws that were way too big.  I'll go back tomorrow and get new temp sensor mounting screws.