Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

IWankToTits t1_j56gijy wrote

Reply to comment by GoArray in The Lights Have Been On At a Massachusetts School For Over a Year Because No One Can Turn Them Off by AStartIsBorn

How in the hell do they service the electrical system without a physical shutoff?

257

GoArray t1_j56hfno wrote

The breakers still work, it's apparently how staff has been managing the issue. But yeah, the fact that no one thought to add a manual switch(es) is a bit absurd.

Sadly, I dont imagine this is a fluke by any stretch, hands off automation's a helluva drug.

237

PatrickKieliszek t1_j56qgmt wrote

I have been on a project that no one put a manual switch on. I insisted they add one. No one wanted to. Eventually they complied because I wouldn't stop saying we needed it.

Adding the shut-off cost less than a thousand dollars. Probably saved sevral thousand hours of machine downtime over the life of the project.

107

apcolleen t1_j57iwoc wrote

God the things I see people cheap out on in industrial facilities astounds me. My bf installs fire alarms and there are things he shows me from industrial sites he has to inspect is just idiotic. He saved a company thousands a week ago by screwing up a piece of flashing to divert a dripping pipe away from the fire alarm so they stop getting tickets from the fire department for false alarms.

46

BoldestKobold t1_j57p2zj wrote

I'm gonna reply to your comment more to highlight a pet peeve of mine. As a (state) government employee at a management level, I always get a bit miffed when people try to single out government for inefficiency or shortsighted decision making. In my experience, the private sector is as bad or worse, in many respects. Reporters don't report on waste, fraud, straight up incompetence, etc inside private companies nearly as often as they do in government, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

"But boldestkobold," you say, "that's because we all pay taxes and are impacted by that waste and incompetence!" To which I respond, "you think you aren't paying for the waste and incompetence at AT&T in your cell phone bill, or at General Mills in your breakfast foods? Or if BP gets fined for an ecological disaster caused by penny pinching stupidity, they don't just roll that cost down to the customer?

(Sorry for using your comment chain to vent)

82

SilkwormAbraxas t1_j58js8d wrote

Thanks for highlighting this trend. Ridiculous penny pinching on critical systems so executives can show a minor increase in profits and thus justify massive bonuses will be the death of us.

20

atomicxblue t1_j5bqnjt wrote

Your comment was cogent and timely, something we don't see often around these parts.

5

Aazadan t1_j5oal5j wrote

The theory as I’m sure you’re aware (but some posters might not be) is that competition should motivate companies to fix stuff like that. While government doesn’t have the same profit incentive.

In the real world things don’t work out that way because governments use those private profit driven services, and don’t have nearly the same level of oversight, while private companies don’t get any competitive advantage for all their mistakes to be looked for and made public.

And so mistakes happen and get ignored all the time.

1

Alphamullet t1_j5bgb2y wrote

"Value Engineering"

...fucking hate that term.

3

apcolleen t1_j5djiau wrote

Don't hate the term, hate the practice.

4

Alphamullet t1_j5dyqd9 wrote

Sound advice there, seriously. I'll try to keep that in mind the next time my budget gets slashed.

2

usrevenge t1_j57m05g wrote

I work at Amazon

There is a big automation push. One of the things being automated is boxes getting labels applied for sorting.

One of the sites near me had a few conveyor lines replaced with this machine back in like September.

It didn't work October they came and fixed it and it broke again shortly after.

November came and the operations team at that building was sick of it and threw it into manual mode.

They spent hundreds of thousands on a these machines and didn't use them 1 time during the holiday season. They just put them in manual which turned it into a dumb conveyor that just move box from point a to b without applying the label. Someone still had to manually scan and put the label on.

19

Finagles_Law t1_j5ex9iz wrote

I used to work at a very large online furniture store. A few years back, they were in the middle of increasing their warehouse automation with smart conveyor belts for picking - instead of having humans grab a box off of the belt, a barcode scanner would read the label and divert it automatically to the right truck bay.

It took a good year to get them really working reliably, but in the end they did work, and enabled the dotcom to run with a much leaner warehouse staff.

Make no mistake, this is the way things are headed, and it will get figured out. Picking random items from a shelf is one of the harder automation problems to solve, but it will be solved, and those terrible jobs will be gone forever.

2

Zorro_Returns t1_j58b41o wrote

Shutting off the entire system is not the problem. The article states they are using the breaker panels, but that's obviously not a solution. The title is somewhat misleading. They can be turned off and on, but they can't be controlled in a practical way.

Product does not work as advertised.

12

ScientificSkepticism t1_j582yn7 wrote

Manual override switches should be on a dedicated control panel on the side of a unit that's only accessible with an O&M manual.

Now disconnect switches, those are big shiny red buttons, but manual switches? Oh god the stupidity that results. People will literally just not change the automation programming and hit a switch, it wrecks everything.

10

mrcolon96 t1_j5739wc wrote

Lmao true. I was doing that to my house and had to stop because my mom hated the smart lights. Tbh the lights were glitchy AF.

6

pegothejerk t1_j56hb4j wrote

Subscription type service, they send out a guy that knows how to turn it off in software.

24

DragoonDM t1_j570gny wrote

Gotta upgrade your subscription to the Diamond+ tier to get access to the "turn off the lights" feature.

12

GoArray t1_j57cfz3 wrote

Unfortunately, the Diamond+ electrons cost twice as much.

8

The_ODB_ t1_j59tqyl wrote

There were no subscriptions involved. The company went bankrupt.

2

echo1432 t1_j5752yi wrote

Installed lots of lighting that doesn't actually have a physical switch, everything is controlled by networked relays or even wirelessly.

5

PurveyorOfUselesFact t1_j5aeh0p wrote

Lighting controls like the system at the school usually operate using 12-24v while the lights themselves use 277v(US) or 347v(canada). It's safe to work on the low voltage controls without shutting anything off. If the electrician bothers shutting off the controls at all, it's to prevent damaging components while making connections.

1

Rampage_Rick t1_j5bxi0i wrote

Since they say it dimmed throughout the day, I'm going to assume that it was a 0-10V control system. Probably each room was on it's own 0-10V channel, daisy-chained between each luminarie. Power for luminaries could come from any number of branch circuits (probably 277V)

Master controller fails, every channel goes to 10V, everything goes full bright.

2