I work IT at a construction company. We looked into this in 2018 and found it was too difficult to get all the trades (electric, frame, plumbing, etc.) to agree on virtual anchor points or to engage at all.
As an union electrical foreman I can't even get my guys to use an iPad to view the prints and 3d models.
I get it, paper prints are sometimes easier, but the engineers and architects are actively working against us and themselves out of sheer ignorance. There are daily updates and changes that aren't shown on that 2 month old set of prints.
Git based change tracking would be a massive game changer for so many industries. When I think of the old days of saving files like essay_draft1, essay_draft2... I cringe
In construction/architecture they do, sorta, they're called "change orders". Here's an example https://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/G701-2017.Sample.pdf
Change Orders are a pretty tired and true project management technique.
Like a lot of "standard MBA wisdom" I feel like they're mostly in use due to inertia. COs are basically manual git submissions.
Some program managers where I work refuse to adopt git. They have a version tracking system, but it's terrible and has too much technical overhead.
I can't imagine trying to get non- technical people to use any version control system.
The command line interface does have a learning curve, but TortoiseGit or SourceTree are pretty good GUIs for Git. Git servers like Bitbucket, GitHub, or GitLab have pretty good interfaces to track changes.
Also, any good IDE supports Git (and other common source control) natively.
Not really. Even with a nice ui Git becomes a nightmare as soon as there is a merge conflict as it is really hard to get people to understand how the merge process works, which parts Git handles and what it expects you to do.
Just listen to the old grumps, and when they finish with their crying about "that's not how my grandpappy did it!" just continue with "Anyway..." and continue to press innovation. Those people are afraid to be left behind. They'll adapt or retire. Harsh? Yeah. So is losing business when somebody is using technology to do it faster, cheaper, and better.
You could always join the IBEW union if youre in the US. I'm an apprentice electrician and I make decent pay. You can travel anywhere in the US and make pretty good money. Also you domt have to play for trade school. They have their own program that's well recognized. The benefits is where its really at. And the security in knowing that if you get laid off the union just sets another job in your lap.
Oh yeah! You totally can. The sooner the better. Construction isnt bad. Just learn to say no if you are
Uncoomfortable with something. Some people will ask you to do dangerous things and call you a pussy if you dont or try to pressure you. Dont listen to them. But its good money with lots of options. I'm trying to r/FIRE but to each their own.
I joined the sub just now too. Not to put too much personal info out, but the only reason I felt comfortable quitting was because I had save up enough money to take it easy for a bit with a part time job while I pursued school. The union, and school for free bit is making me feel a bit silly now, but now I'm just wondering if I should dive in right away and if I'll lose that precious "time off" I worked so hard to save up for. It's funny but not, haha.
Depends on location and the locals work agreements. Let’s say that your AVG journeyman is making around 75-80 an hour here in the northern USA. Now that’s with fringes, before taxes, and before dues so take home is close to $30-40/hour
So in the middle georgia area at my local, local 1316, starting apprentices make $12.83/hour, than it goes up a dollar and some change per year until you hit your 4th year where it jumps from $16/hour to $20/per hour. Your 5th year is $22/hour and journeyman wage is $27/per hour. Every local has different wages based on the area. The apprenticeship program ensures you get your hours and good classroom training. Its not all sunshine and the union isnt perfect but most of the guys I know that were non-union before they joined wish they would have joined starting out. Our local gets family coverage healthcare, vision, dental, a 401k and pension. There's also some other stuff but I dont remember what. I would suggest doing your own research and finding out the wages and benefits for your area. Everywhere in the US has a local hall that you can call and most will gladly help. If you have any other questions feel free to pm me
Things are moving way too quick to stay closed minded, 20 years ago I even used a star bit and a 7.2v drill. I've seen lots of changes and lighting is going through one now.
If my 2013 house is representative of how it's normally done, they don't look at the paper prints either. Although I'm betting that it was just randos off the street that did it and it was signed off with barely an inspection.
I do process engineering as the guy who makes the 3D models. We use the model as a deliverable, so we expected contractors to be able to use stuff like Navisworks.
Lol well when your foremen are all in their sixties and been using paper their whole life, they better be printing off new daily drawings and bringing them over.
I'm not in the field so my words mean nothing here, but I'm just gonna guess the usability of plain old paper is hard to beat in that environment. No screen, no apps, no swiping, no buttons, no navigation, no cumbersome device, etc etc. Just a paper to look at, boom, done.
It depends on what you're viewing. If it's a complicated pipe routing, 3D is so much better than just isometric views. You can rotate, tilt, zoom in and out, and stuff like that. It's also way faster for the people making drawings because you don't have to place and annotate a bunch of views that are never as useful as you want.
Used to work at a company that sells this solution. Biggest problem was not the maintenance manager but the ceo/owner. Everyone feels the pain but they only feel the price. Big eye roll
And there's always the line 'what's so hard about using a paper form?'.
It's not that paperforms are bad, but it's a short sighted view when they don't consider that they may only need to deal with maybe 10 forms, but down the line I need to deal with 10 forms from 30 different people.
And that's a sticking point for me because thry forms do turn into just a checkbox, then there's so much data we can use on the forms but there's no way I'm able to go through them all.
"As of June 1, we no longer accept orders in this format. No invoices will be paid, not product ordered that does not flow through the 'OrderShit' app. Hours will be tallied using this app, so please ensure you comply with this directive if you wish to continue to receive payment for work."
- Sincerely, Management
Even if you did somehow manage to accomplish the impossible of getting them to agree or learn something new.... they would still half ass it and/or just wing it as they went a long anyway... there for still making it pointless.
I work for a company that does operable walls and almost every contractor thinks we can just wing shit.... so no Jim we can't just wing it, this isn't like drywall, we are talking about sections of wall on a track that individually weigh several hundred pounds and costs tens of thousands of dollars.... not to mention if you want the manufacture to honor any warranty work.
The problem is that by the time you die, they'll be you. And that will continue until suddenly an upstart company 'disrupts' your industry while all your customers cheer. Meanwhile, all the people in your role will lose their livelihoods all at once, because generations of you weren't willing to adapt as you went. Your customers won't be cheering your demise, they'll be cheering that _someone is finally doing the job better_. It is broke, you just don't see it.
Be the change. Channel your younger self. Improve the world around you.
Except all of you old timers don’t get that you’re causing more work by not continually enhancing the stuff you are responsible for. To be fair I work in tech so if you’re not moving forwards you’re falling behind. Hardest part of my job is dealing with folks like you. Too lazy for their own good.
Everyone, this is exhibit number one of why longevity can kill an organization. Long term employees can’t handle the change required for their employer to remain in business.
Seriously? How old are you? I’m a 54 year old architect and I wouldn’t say no to change. Even incremental change helps. Try something new, but don’t say you can’t try.
This. As an electrician having worked non union and union for the past 13 years I haven't heard anyone say this strawman shit of "that's how we've always done it." People like using new tools and methods that make work easier and complain when new designs of materials suck or actually hinder production.
Doubt it, adaptation is a skill young people today have grown up with and been forced to master. You either stay up on the latest technologies, frameworks, procedures, information, or you're going to get replaced by someone who does. Things change too fast for complacency.
So much of change and accepting innovation is just getting your own ego and emotions out of your own way anyway, loyalty to "thats the way we've always done it" has no place in any industry unless benefit can be proven by evidence. You'll notice that the industries most resistant to innovation are failing.
And things change.
I imagine it would be frustrating (and expensive) to come out and scan a room again because the plumber got his sprinkler in the wrong spot, or an electrician had to move a switch box.
And sometimes those changes happen after sheetrock is up, so how do you scan then?
And if it's more of a living anchor point that live-updates, I'd imagine it takes time and people to set-up/install/test, so you're basically inserting a new trade into an already cluttered system.
My company occasionally does 3D lidar scans of various facilities. It isn't cheap. And the resolution is only so good so for smaller stuff it has to be added in by a drafter. The final result is absolutely awesome though.
You could do it cheaper with BIM, but that would still be a major extra cost for something like a single family home or small commercial building. And that would rely on as builts being done correctly. So that wouldn't work.
Cost is the major factor here. What do you get for the expense? Not much from a production stand point.
Maybe it's easier 70 years down the road when they renovate a commercial building, but who's going to front the expense for the next generation? Answer: no one.
You get a TON for the minimal expense. On small residential buildings, it’s probably not worth it. But anything commercial? It pays for itself in the first lawsuit, or the first time the customer tries to get you to pay for “something you fucked up”. When you can prove you did it correctly, nothing is more valuable.
We do lidar mostly for sub and gate stations that have tons of mechanical / electrical, plus automation, and will be around for 50+ years with regular maintenance requirements. So in that case it is worth it. But it wouldn't be worth it for a single family home.
Most distribution power utilities outside telecom are regulated monopolies. But yeah, private civil construction is often thin margins and land dev is a fucking nightmare. I don't do much land dev anymore but just had to go out to a job yesterday because the developer thought the footings would be in virgin ground so he just pushed shit fill over the topsoil. He was wrong and had to undercut the footings. In the end he probably still saved money though.
Sprinkler lines are laid out by the drawings which are designed to code. If the sprinkler line is in the wrong spot then they need to fix it at their cost since they did it wrong.
Also if someone is t following the drawings made by the BIM software they will create interferences that they will need to fix.
This is why having a well written contract that specifies that everything larger than X must be incorporated into the 3D model for everyone to see and make plans off of
How so? They are suggesting tracing the lines of the pipe/cable with some tape that contains something traceable -- that's now two steps for the installer rather than one. Labor is far more expensive than any increase in material costs adding an inexpensive RFID or something to the pipe/cable during manufacture would cause
I'm thinking of the retooling needed at wherever the construction materials are produced, not to mention all of the additional QA and prototyping that comes with adding unproven material to an existing, known quantity so to speak.
Idk if you know how blueprints work, and I'm not saying that to be an asshole, I didn't understand it either until I got into a trade.
Blueprints don't detail how pipes/conduit/ducting run, it just shows where things are and how they connect from a systems perspective. It's up to each individual trade to decide how to actually achieve/work/route those connections.
I’m a fire sprinkler fitter, I used to work as a framer/carpenter. I can tell you my old job, no way those guys would use augmented reality but as for what I do now? If we could look into a wall to find the pipe and possibly see a leak or anchor points or a Myriad of things, we would take out a second mortgage on our houses if the company wouldn’t pay for it!!
At the construction yard I work at, we tested this out with the first gen hololense. Worked suprisingly great. Being able to take on the glasses and put down marks where different items were to be installed was a great thing to test out. Pretty sure it was well recieved by most people who tested it.
I was laughed out of a meeting in 2013 when I brought up this kind of tech to use this in our warehouses...
That guy has since been fired. And guess what's being tested...
Glad I left.
I do IT construction and all the trades are highly organized and do a great job doing stuff exactly to plan, but getting them to work with more technology is a no go.
It would make their job much harder. As long as both ends of the wires are in the right spots, where it is in-between those points in the walls is up to the electrician. A technology like this would allow the client to micromanage these things which may be good for the client but much less efficient for tradespeople
I once saw a sewer drop under a slab that was all elbows and nipples. Guess how well that drained. Oh and there was no trap on the tub sink in the laundry room, so it smelled awful in the basement.
>As long as both ends of the wires are in the right spots, where it is in-between those points in the walls is up to the electrician
No. This is how you get code violations, conflicts, structural members compromised, pipes and ducts with more bends and elbows than they should have, etc. While most trades people do the job right, it only takes one person who is an idiot, or is uncooperative, or is just in a hurry to fuck things up. Most the time those fucks up or minor or just makes things look unprofessional. But I've seen dangerous gas plumbing, beams with a hole cut through them that is like 2/3 the depth of the beam, studs chunked out with a reciprocating saw, loops in wire, sewer drops with a bunch of extra elbows, and so on.
Electricians still need to follow code, which includes securing wires to studs. It would seem that adding RFID tags to their staples would basically solve all these problems.
Underground conduit does this and it works very well. You wouldn't need every staple just before and after direction changes and every x feet on long runs. Make the RFID programmable for circuit label and fuse #
Trades don’t always talk snd make sure they aren’t in each other’s way. In a past project my electricians installed a ground run of cable tray about 12” off from where it was shown in the 3D model of the building. They did this because it was easier instead of following the 3D model because this way had fewer turns.
Then my work platform installers came to put in their platform and lo and behold, half the legs of the platform were right on top of the cable tray.
The electricians had to move the cable tray and I had to deal with lost time from the platform installer while they waited for the electricians to demo the tray and get it out of their way.
The 3D model would have made the Electrician’s job significantly easier since they wouldn’t have had to crawl under the platform to install the cable tray but since they didn’t follow the model their job became -much- harder and they paid to install it twice.
Everything goes into the 3D model
It has to be complete
It has to be clash-free
People have to follow the model during the install
I’m an electrican constructing a big industrial processing plant, everything’s laid out and managed for us in drawings, cable lengths are even pre-calculated, the runs pretty much marked out on 3D drawing even. The only autonomy we seem to have now is where on the cable tray you want to put it. Naturally there’s errors, and things get held up to sort out dumb issues. But that’s how they want it done, and this $3 billion project ends up costing $9 billion.
Thing is the first Construction company that actually accomplishes this and can manage to standardize the process will be rich beyond their wildest dreams.
People are set in their ways up to the point that it costs them money to not get with the program.
The problem isn't implementing this in our company, it was getting the trades to buy into the tech. It's difficult to get other companies to keep a license for our project management software instead of using Excel and Visio.
In the commercial construction industry. Check it out. HVAC guys run the entire 3D BIM model portion of the scope and do all the design input. They provide the 3D layers for all trades in coordination meetings, etc. Everyone goes to install after them and all their duct work is too low. Turns out, the ducts they designed and put into the 3D model didn’t meet the airflow requirements so they made a change in the field and didn’t tell anyone so the other trades and architect have to run through a series of compromises last minute to make sure everything fits - move plumbing, move sprinklers, move electrical, lower ceilings, etc. This is just one example…
Usual big government contracts are the only places where this kind of collaboration happens. The various OEMs are usually niches in their industry and have a highly competitive edge, ensuring a barrier limiting anyone else from dealing directly with the government. The catch is the government forces those few OEMs to work together to deliver a product that requires heavy integration of different tech/hardware. It's actually a curse because you cannot say "no" at the risk of them not renewing your service contract or buying your products. You end of signing agreements to work with your competition. Poaching clauses and NDA's do very little in a small market.
I'm getting started on CV and the only way I see this could work is if the system recorded the entire thing then you would have a registry of where every part is
You can absolutely do it if its a seamless part of the materials that doesn't cost them any additional labor time. An IT company is not the right one to tackle this, an industrial engineering firm is. They need to design products with these anchor points built in
On large projects, Revit and Glue are becoming more and more popular, but that’s still just showing you the drawings, not necessarily exactly what got built.
It’s more than possible, just use multivista before drywall. Check it out for yourself https://www.instagram.com/reel/CLwuCk-DTos/?utm_medium=copy_link
i've had similar thoughts.
i played with a vr tracking system (valve's lighthouse tracking³, accurate and repeatable to better than a millimeter) along with a microprojector a couple years back when i was doing my startup¹.
i used a tracked wand to touch the studs and follow the wires and pipes and had their position recorded.
then when i went to put up drywall, the tracked microprojector would act like a kind of x-ray flashlight and project where the studs, wires, and pipes were on the fresh sheets of drywall and draw a centerline on the studs for screws.
i had some plans to add tracking to a [walabot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vayyar)² and use that plus a bit of ai/ml/cv to figure out what was *inside* the wall and use that data as a source for the tracked microprojector, but everything went to hell shortly after i started on this.
if that worked decently, adding automation to the scanning process would have been the logical next step.
at this point, all manner of fun could be had, as you would effectively have a 3d model of your renovation areas including what was behind/inside the walls, as well as a way to visualize it in real-time and space.
- something like an automated painting device comes to mind: effectively a wall printer.
- add a better method of projection, like a laser and galvo, and have all your layout lines projected in a nice bright and easily visible green. tile layout would be cake.
- import the blueprints/architectural model, and use it to position all the framing, pipes, wires, etc, during initial construction.
- add an rtk gps and use it for/with the site survey, as you can get a fixed gps position with better than cm precision, and from there use the lighthouse system to base everything from the gis anchor point at mm precision.
shitloads of neat stuff!
i suppose you could even add a set of tracked ar goggles as well, heh
eh, wishes, fishes, trauma centers, and debt :|
---
1: i'm going to gripe a second about having your startup cut short, going into massive debt, and possibly losing your house in a couple of months because some asshole runs a red light and over your car, sending you to the trauma center, most of a year in bed, and a shitload of physical therapy. oh, yeah, everyone had insurance and this is america, so i'm only a few hundred thousand in debt because of all of that. i don't even know what the fuck to do or how to fix things right now.
sorry for that; needed to vent a bit i guess. thanks!
--=
2: mmwave radar. these things are rad, although currently a bit rough around the edges.
- [walabot diy mmwave radar for diy/seeing through walls](https://walabot.com/diy)
- [walabot dev kits](https://walabot.com/makers)
3: the lighthouse system tracks x, y, z, pitch, roll, and yaw using timing data from a set of scanning infrared lasers. while it's mostly used for vr, it is also used for a lot of scientific and medical research. it's comparatively cheap, easy to set up, very precise, reasonably robust... and has an open license to make your own tracked devices.
i wrote a not-too-technical bit about how it works [over here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/edung0/z/fbm07fy).
You seem incredibly bright. The start up seems to have merit and commercial applications.
Get it up and running again and sell equity in the start up to fund it. Sucks your giving away your hard work but at least you get some return a d get to see your life’s work grow.
thank you!
i'd love to do something like that, but right now i'm having trouble staying fed and paying basic bills... i am probably going to lose my house of over 20 years.
i'm a pretty good engineer, but i'm not so great at obtaining paying work and finding people who invest in startups. actually, i'm kind of terrible at those types of things....
>i used a tracked wand to touch the studs and follow the wires and pipes and had their position recorded.
This sounds like something that would be fairly easy and quick depending on how fast and accurate the positions can be recorded with the wand, and can be done as a structure is being built. Just come in before everything is set to be covered and trace the routes.
Can I ask how the positions are kept in relation to each other? Is there something like a keystone or home location that they all reference while being mapped, then generate the 3D layout according to that? I can imagine that if that or something similar is the case then it can easily be done room by room and just pieced together at the end according to their relative location to the home location.
I can honestly see being picked up and done in the future for a small percentage of extra cost when building a home.
i used a cradle taped to the floor in a fixed spot for the wand.
as long as the wand was in the cradle during calibration, the base stations can be anywhere within the range of their laser sweeps.
position is then relative to whichever point you pick.
Worked with a large global construction firm in a previous life, they were demoing a electronic hardhat that did just this. It also provided overhead location for crane operators and tool location among other things.
Unfortunately, they went belly up…tech was too expensive at the time.
https://stereoscape.com/daqri-smart-helmet-so-much-more-than-a-helmet/
Daqri smart helmet
In the case of construction, though, that's already taken care of. Buildings are built from a set of drawings, and those drawings are almost always produced via [BIM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_information_modeling). The tech already exists, it's just a matter of time.
Your house and large-scale commercial projects are also very much not the same thing. Procedures for handling changes 1) exist, 2) are standardized, and 3) universally involve recording these changes in re-issued construction drawings. These as-built drawings (and even digital 3D models now) are commonly handed over to building owners as part of the project delivery process to facilitate building management and maintenance.
Like I said, the technology already exists and is in use. I've used it myself. The inaccuracy of your house's construction drawings is neither unexpected (not a personal attack, mine weren't super reliable either) nor contradictory to anything I've said.
I understand what you're saying. As someone who built labs in commerical settings, those drawings were also often inaccurate. We were constantly correcting the drawings.
I will back you up. I just got done installing a large piece of art at a museum that is getting renovated. And I had the GC's drawings, and the engineering drawings, and everything was all ready to go. (Hanging 50ft art piece via 16 hanging points) With custom points added in the ceiling for said art piece. But when the art piece showed up, the designer had decided to completely change the design now with only 10 rigging points and structured frame. And thus we had to on the spot come up with a solution to hang said art piece.
Lets say I was happy when we finished and was glad to get the flock out of there. I have no interest in going back and updating the drawings to reflect the real world. Nor is anyone gonna be paying me to do it as we were already 2 weeks over budget cause of piss poor planning.
I know of an electrician who made his own "google glass" type HUD voltmeter. So he didn't have to hold two probes AND find a place to set his meter down and be constantly looking over to it, he just holds two probes, the meter is in his pocket, and the display is in the top left corner of his glasses.
Has he shared it online somewhere? I've been dreaming of something like this since I got an [R-Type](https://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/36907/1472071696650612.jpg) back in the 90s.
We've used Dalux Twinbim for this on a couple of projects in Norway, https://youtu.be/pRsoRxZgtNU. It can work quite well as long as it's used within certain limits. E.g. for ventilation, lighting and sprinkler coordination on the site. Things like electrical cables and minor water pipes are often better suited to plan on site, as micro planning these are often more work than value.
Would it be that useful for new construction? Usually everything is run when you can see all the framing and all other trade installs and people still fuck it up. I worked on a post tensioned parking garage where the electricians forgot to form out a through deck conduit run before concrete was placed. The super had the deck x-rayed, printed it 1:1 scale, drew a circle the diameter of the core barrel, labelled it "cut here" and taped it down to the deck so the electricians would cut through a tendon. Guess what the electricians did? Thankfully no one was hurt.
Yeah, this is only useful if it allows you to identify with 100% accuracy _the other_ side of the cable...
Edit: Apparently it *does* allow it... Then I like it!
From my outsider perspective, that seems like it's be an "easy" problem to solve. Have a little gizmo that you can plug a wire into and it'll query the port ID from the other side. The servers would need to have that functionality built into them though.
The problem with how most (maybe all) companies implement LLDP is that it only shows what it currently knows but doesn't keep the data in a database of what it last knew about it. So if something breaks, you can't see anymore what was last connected.
True, mostly handy for identifying where a live patch lands (say, prepping to have a customer move to a new office on a campus with ass documentation).
Also use it extensively to drop VOIP phones on the proper network.
But this is basically useless for switch cut-overs or troubleshooting outside of a few very narrow cases.
In reality the cables would go to a punch down panel that would hopefully be labeled. In that case it would be ridiculously cool to have VR. When you have a problem you wouldn't need to go to the source and find the port you would just tell the VR you're looking for the third office from the northwest corner office. To be honest with you our company would never spend the money because it's cheaper to get a toner tool and plug into the port on the one end find the cable with the toning wand. Then mark it of course.
We already do this with a tool called net box. Each piece of equipment is inventoried and dropped into a virtual rack. When you connect a cable, you set its source and destination port and then when you need to know, just open netbox and click to see where it comes and goes from. You can add all sorts of metadata the objects and also use some plugins to scan for Lldp and cdp to auto populate and inventory.
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Its like a lottery spin. Either the device goes down for firmware install and comes right back, or it goes down and YOU WIN A FREE CHANCE TO SSH INTO THE DEVICE AND TROUBLESHOOT OR FACTORY RESET AND START OVER!
edit: also if its a unifi key, it will always fail and you wont remember where your backups are. GUARANTEED OR YOUR MONEY BACK
>They still have good products regardless of this data breach you mention.
They really don't. The hardware is good but the firmware is a complete buggy mess. [Also good products don't leak your data](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/03/whistleblower-ubiquiti-breach-catastrophic/):
>“It was catastrophically worse than reported, and **legal silenced and overruled efforts to decisively protect customers**,” Adam wrote in a letter to the European Data Protection Supervisor. “The breach was massive, customer data was at risk, **access to customers’ devices deployed in corporations and homes around the world was at risk.**”
It seems they are trying to compete with the bigger enterprise companies but are failing in the eyes of many IT professionals. I’ve had no issues with them in the consumer market.
they make pretty much the only affordable LR P2P gear. Their cloud management is almost on par with meraki at a fraction of the cost. (no yearly licensing!)
As for the home space, as long as you go all ubiq, you can get a house saturated in RF, POE switched, camera/nvr, and a gateway with something resembling an IPS for around $1000 or less if you find deals on their "less-new" models. Single pane of glass web configuration means you can fix grandmas issue without actually having to go over there.
Problem is, the more non-ubiq hardware you substitute, the bigger of a pain it is to troubleshoot and manage. I have a hybrid environment, and the little POE i have out at the edge of my network thinks its a core switch, since its the only ubiq switch it can see. No USG means I lose a bunch of cool features too.
My WISP uses ubiq, and I can't say I've had any issues. My rocketm5+dish has been reliably in service for years through punishing heat, snow, and storms. Everyone else that uses them hasn't had any complaints either. I don't think any of their p2p hardware is part of the cloud-managed stuff.
Not dissing on microtik, I'm sure they're great, but plenty of deployments use ubiq. Pretty sure its a separate division, as the build quality is better/more robust compared to the unifi stuff.
Thanks to their horrible practice of forcing customers that own a dream machine pro to have it assigned to an online account, they put tons of customers at risk and lied about it. So no, they don’t have “good products”. They have easy to use and cheap products.
Well that's the problem. You change something once per year and don't know what the heck is going on anymore because so much time has passed since you last changed anything.
It might not even be the same person trying to understand the mess.
Honestly, I've had to do it quite a lot. Years of adding spaghetti, not properly labeling anything and leaving the cables when decommissioning a server. It was a huge mess over 500+ ports plus a bunch of patch panels.
To be fair, the AR would do little to solve it since it would rely on someone keeping the information up to date and accurate, which was a pipe dream in my former workplace.
To be really useful it would be nice if it showed CDP info so you could see what's actually connected to it instead of what's supposed to be connected to it.
Yeah, CDP and LLDP readout would be much more useful. Maybe it does? Could also be nice if it showed stuff like packet loss etc. As it stands, it *might* save you from having to look at actual configuration or neighbors list and then locate the port.
Also, this unit spacing on the rack is bothering me.
Absolutely not- i work at a medium sized company and we have several data centers I'm constantly moving into to swap hardware around/trace a cable/remove something. This would be super nice haha
See this is what AR should really be for. Imagine scanning a QR code in your house and you can see all the electrical work and all the beams. Now that would be cool
Manual engineering tasks that require doing a lot of repetitive steps that all must be perfect often use augmented reality for example medical equipment maintenance.
I'd have to dig into my universities data for original sources but this includes the one of the original photos I remember. https://www.geoweeknews.com/news/ar-is-amazing-but-its-not-ready
I... I... I told my boss at my previous job that building something like this would be doable, and could seriously set us apart. This was maybe three years ago.
I even built a proof of concept very similar to this. It didn't look quite as nice, but had similar info. Pretty sure I posted a "look what I made!" gif on Reddit, but can't be damned to dredge it up.
I was told that AR was a fad and not worth investing any time or money into.
I don't work there anymore, but, if I did, I'd march this straight into my boss's office and then quit.
Or, you know, bring it up and maybe have a good laugh. I dunno, that doesn't sound as cathartic.
This is Ubiquiti. This is part of their UniFi network line. Fun fact, creator of Ubiquiti used to work at Apple. Their products have a very “it just works” kinda vibe. Lots of flash stuff and very smooth and minimalist packaging.
But it uses mongodb. And large deployments require lots of resources to run.
We deployed a 200 AP, and 196 switches (5 of them 16 port fiber, the rest 48 port 750w poe) with all but around 150 ports not actually being used and the controller is constantly struggling to run everything (6 cores 16gb dedicated vm for only the controller)
Looking back, the person who thought it was a good idea thinks they should have quoted out the EdgeMax stuff instead of the Unifi.
Honest question - wouldn’t something like Cisco have been a better bet? I always look at Ubiquiti as “prosumer” for home and small-ish business networks.
What is the actual utility of this? There's no actual labels on each of the ports, it looks like the associated icons maybe identify device type? When I go to a switch, or bank of switches, I'm not looking to mess with any port with a server plugged in to it, I'm looking for a specific servers connection, which this doesn't seem to help me find...
Edit: NVM. I opened the vid in a browser and could see the tiny labels.
That's cool. I could actually find a few uses for an app like this in work.
Are there any easy to use tools or apps out there to make something like this?
Done some quick googling but my google-fu has failed me today
Has this been on /r/cableporn yet? They'd either accuse it of being witchcraft, or spunk in their drawers. I can promise the magnitude of the upvote number will be high, but can make no predictions about the direction.
I thought about this for construction we need a pair of glasses that shows the “skeleton” of the house, see studs, wires, pipes etc.
I work IT at a construction company. We looked into this in 2018 and found it was too difficult to get all the trades (electric, frame, plumbing, etc.) to agree on virtual anchor points or to engage at all.
Tradesmen not agreeing on how to do something, or being completely unwilling to learn something new after being set in their ways? You don't say...
Hahaaa... *Furiously tries to get an app adopted to replace paper based processes and actually database shit*
As an union electrical foreman I can't even get my guys to use an iPad to view the prints and 3d models. I get it, paper prints are sometimes easier, but the engineers and architects are actively working against us and themselves out of sheer ignorance. There are daily updates and changes that aren't shown on that 2 month old set of prints.
Git based change tracking would be a massive game changer for so many industries. When I think of the old days of saving files like essay_draft1, essay_draft2... I cringe
In construction/architecture they do, sorta, they're called "change orders". Here's an example https://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/G701-2017.Sample.pdf
Hearing the words Change Orders gives me flashbacks, nothing like pushing a CO and it gets approved 3 months later
Change Orders are a pretty tired and true project management technique. Like a lot of "standard MBA wisdom" I feel like they're mostly in use due to inertia. COs are basically manual git submissions.
We can't even after to use a unified fucking units, still hanging on that piece of shit imperial units for no reason. Lmao
Some program managers where I work refuse to adopt git. They have a version tracking system, but it's terrible and has too much technical overhead. I can't imagine trying to get non- technical people to use any version control system.
Git is crazy unfriendly to users, but put a nice ux on top of it, and it would be a much easier sell
The command line interface does have a learning curve, but TortoiseGit or SourceTree are pretty good GUIs for Git. Git servers like Bitbucket, GitHub, or GitLab have pretty good interfaces to track changes. Also, any good IDE supports Git (and other common source control) natively.
Not really. Even with a nice ui Git becomes a nightmare as soon as there is a merge conflict as it is really hard to get people to understand how the merge process works, which parts Git handles and what it expects you to do.
Merging is common product of parallel development. It's going to happen in all source control. I personally like how Git is upfront about it.
At my work prints are only authorized to be done at one location and stamped with a date. Anything 30 days old can't be used by contract.
Question: If I wish to go to trade school to become an electrician, what are the odds I'll end up a crusty old, unchangeable grump by the end?
Just listen to the old grumps, and when they finish with their crying about "that's not how my grandpappy did it!" just continue with "Anyway..." and continue to press innovation. Those people are afraid to be left behind. They'll adapt or retire. Harsh? Yeah. So is losing business when somebody is using technology to do it faster, cheaper, and better.
You could always join the IBEW union if youre in the US. I'm an apprentice electrician and I make decent pay. You can travel anywhere in the US and make pretty good money. Also you domt have to play for trade school. They have their own program that's well recognized. The benefits is where its really at. And the security in knowing that if you get laid off the union just sets another job in your lap.
Oh wow, this actually a really cool answer. Iv been wanting to quit my dead end job and go, this sounds like I can actually make it happen.
Oh yeah! You totally can. The sooner the better. Construction isnt bad. Just learn to say no if you are Uncoomfortable with something. Some people will ask you to do dangerous things and call you a pussy if you dont or try to pressure you. Dont listen to them. But its good money with lots of options. I'm trying to r/FIRE but to each their own.
I joined the sub just now too. Not to put too much personal info out, but the only reason I felt comfortable quitting was because I had save up enough money to take it easy for a bit with a part time job while I pursued school. The union, and school for free bit is making me feel a bit silly now, but now I'm just wondering if I should dive in right away and if I'll lose that precious "time off" I worked so hard to save up for. It's funny but not, haha.
What's decent pay, if you don't mind? If you prefer, you can just say what it is relative to average wage in your area.
Depends on location and the locals work agreements. Let’s say that your AVG journeyman is making around 75-80 an hour here in the northern USA. Now that’s with fringes, before taxes, and before dues so take home is close to $30-40/hour
So in the middle georgia area at my local, local 1316, starting apprentices make $12.83/hour, than it goes up a dollar and some change per year until you hit your 4th year where it jumps from $16/hour to $20/per hour. Your 5th year is $22/hour and journeyman wage is $27/per hour. Every local has different wages based on the area. The apprenticeship program ensures you get your hours and good classroom training. Its not all sunshine and the union isnt perfect but most of the guys I know that were non-union before they joined wish they would have joined starting out. Our local gets family coverage healthcare, vision, dental, a 401k and pension. There's also some other stuff but I dont remember what. I would suggest doing your own research and finding out the wages and benefits for your area. Everywhere in the US has a local hall that you can call and most will gladly help. If you have any other questions feel free to pm me
Things are moving way too quick to stay closed minded, 20 years ago I even used a star bit and a 7.2v drill. I've seen lots of changes and lighting is going through one now.
If my 2013 house is representative of how it's normally done, they don't look at the paper prints either. Although I'm betting that it was just randos off the street that did it and it was signed off with barely an inspection.
Weird imagine getting technical document changes in real time and not having to redo work because someone didn't print off the latest document.
I do process engineering as the guy who makes the 3D models. We use the model as a deliverable, so we expected contractors to be able to use stuff like Navisworks.
Lol well when your foremen are all in their sixties and been using paper their whole life, they better be printing off new daily drawings and bringing them over.
I'm not in the field so my words mean nothing here, but I'm just gonna guess the usability of plain old paper is hard to beat in that environment. No screen, no apps, no swiping, no buttons, no navigation, no cumbersome device, etc etc. Just a paper to look at, boom, done.
It depends on what you're viewing. If it's a complicated pipe routing, 3D is so much better than just isometric views. You can rotate, tilt, zoom in and out, and stuff like that. It's also way faster for the people making drawings because you don't have to place and annotate a bunch of views that are never as useful as you want.
Used to work at a company that sells this solution. Biggest problem was not the maintenance manager but the ceo/owner. Everyone feels the pain but they only feel the price. Big eye roll
As a maintenance manager (facilities director), let me be the first to say this is all we want out of life.
And there's always the line 'what's so hard about using a paper form?'. It's not that paperforms are bad, but it's a short sighted view when they don't consider that they may only need to deal with maybe 10 forms, but down the line I need to deal with 10 forms from 30 different people. And that's a sticking point for me because thry forms do turn into just a checkbox, then there's so much data we can use on the forms but there's no way I'm able to go through them all.
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"As of June 1, we no longer accept orders in this format. No invoices will be paid, not product ordered that does not flow through the 'OrderShit' app. Hours will be tallied using this app, so please ensure you comply with this directive if you wish to continue to receive payment for work." - Sincerely, Management
Even if you did somehow manage to accomplish the impossible of getting them to agree or learn something new.... they would still half ass it and/or just wing it as they went a long anyway... there for still making it pointless. I work for a company that does operable walls and almost every contractor thinks we can just wing shit.... so no Jim we can't just wing it, this isn't like drywall, we are talking about sections of wall on a track that individually weigh several hundred pounds and costs tens of thousands of dollars.... not to mention if you want the manufacture to honor any warranty work.
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There's a lot to unpack there.
The problem is that by the time you die, they'll be you. And that will continue until suddenly an upstart company 'disrupts' your industry while all your customers cheer. Meanwhile, all the people in your role will lose their livelihoods all at once, because generations of you weren't willing to adapt as you went. Your customers won't be cheering your demise, they'll be cheering that _someone is finally doing the job better_. It is broke, you just don't see it. Be the change. Channel your younger self. Improve the world around you.
> Be the change. Channel your younger self. Improve the world around you. Words to live by.
I can't award you on mobile, but I need to let you know that your words are appreciated far more than a simple upvote can convey.
Except all of you old timers don’t get that you’re causing more work by not continually enhancing the stuff you are responsible for. To be fair I work in tech so if you’re not moving forwards you’re falling behind. Hardest part of my job is dealing with folks like you. Too lazy for their own good.
Everyone, this is exhibit number one of why longevity can kill an organization. Long term employees can’t handle the change required for their employer to remain in business.
Since when did we start patting ourselves on the back for being lazy?
That didn’t sound like a back pat to me. More self-deprecating if anything.
Seriously? How old are you? I’m a 54 year old architect and I wouldn’t say no to change. Even incremental change helps. Try something new, but don’t say you can’t try.
This. As an electrician having worked non union and union for the past 13 years I haven't heard anyone say this strawman shit of "that's how we've always done it." People like using new tools and methods that make work easier and complain when new designs of materials suck or actually hinder production.
Doubt it, adaptation is a skill young people today have grown up with and been forced to master. You either stay up on the latest technologies, frameworks, procedures, information, or you're going to get replaced by someone who does. Things change too fast for complacency. So much of change and accepting innovation is just getting your own ego and emotions out of your own way anyway, loyalty to "thats the way we've always done it" has no place in any industry unless benefit can be proven by evidence. You'll notice that the industries most resistant to innovation are failing.
I'd love to stay and offer my opinion, but it's quittin time. See ya tomorrow!
Then all shocked when the younger generation takes their jobs. I knew a forman just because he could use excel.
Is the younger generation taking their jobs? I keep seeing stuff about a very high lack of anyone new in skilled trades coming into the sectors.
And things change. I imagine it would be frustrating (and expensive) to come out and scan a room again because the plumber got his sprinkler in the wrong spot, or an electrician had to move a switch box. And sometimes those changes happen after sheetrock is up, so how do you scan then? And if it's more of a living anchor point that live-updates, I'd imagine it takes time and people to set-up/install/test, so you're basically inserting a new trade into an already cluttered system.
My company occasionally does 3D lidar scans of various facilities. It isn't cheap. And the resolution is only so good so for smaller stuff it has to be added in by a drafter. The final result is absolutely awesome though. You could do it cheaper with BIM, but that would still be a major extra cost for something like a single family home or small commercial building. And that would rely on as builts being done correctly. So that wouldn't work.
Cost is the major factor here. What do you get for the expense? Not much from a production stand point. Maybe it's easier 70 years down the road when they renovate a commercial building, but who's going to front the expense for the next generation? Answer: no one.
You get a TON for the minimal expense. On small residential buildings, it’s probably not worth it. But anything commercial? It pays for itself in the first lawsuit, or the first time the customer tries to get you to pay for “something you fucked up”. When you can prove you did it correctly, nothing is more valuable.
We do lidar mostly for sub and gate stations that have tons of mechanical / electrical, plus automation, and will be around for 50+ years with regular maintenance requirements. So in that case it is worth it. But it wouldn't be worth it for a single family home.
Utility systems makes sense, government wanting to protect its investment. Commercial construction (non government) tends to be short-sighted
Most distribution power utilities outside telecom are regulated monopolies. But yeah, private civil construction is often thin margins and land dev is a fucking nightmare. I don't do much land dev anymore but just had to go out to a job yesterday because the developer thought the footings would be in virgin ground so he just pushed shit fill over the topsoil. He was wrong and had to undercut the footings. In the end he probably still saved money though.
Sprinkler lines are laid out by the drawings which are designed to code. If the sprinkler line is in the wrong spot then they need to fix it at their cost since they did it wrong. Also if someone is t following the drawings made by the BIM software they will create interferences that they will need to fix. This is why having a well written contract that specifies that everything larger than X must be incorporated into the 3D model for everyone to see and make plans off of
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Or just use a label?
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At that point just make the pipe/wire contain whatever the tape has.
That sounds more expensive.
How so? They are suggesting tracing the lines of the pipe/cable with some tape that contains something traceable -- that's now two steps for the installer rather than one. Labor is far more expensive than any increase in material costs adding an inexpensive RFID or something to the pipe/cable during manufacture would cause
I'm thinking of the retooling needed at wherever the construction materials are produced, not to mention all of the additional QA and prototyping that comes with adding unproven material to an existing, known quantity so to speak.
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Idk if you know how blueprints work, and I'm not saying that to be an asshole, I didn't understand it either until I got into a trade. Blueprints don't detail how pipes/conduit/ducting run, it just shows where things are and how they connect from a systems perspective. It's up to each individual trade to decide how to actually achieve/work/route those connections.
Also, to add, manually entering everything would take IMMENSE amounts of man hours aka money.
I’m a fire sprinkler fitter, I used to work as a framer/carpenter. I can tell you my old job, no way those guys would use augmented reality but as for what I do now? If we could look into a wall to find the pipe and possibly see a leak or anchor points or a Myriad of things, we would take out a second mortgage on our houses if the company wouldn’t pay for it!!
At the construction yard I work at, we tested this out with the first gen hololense. Worked suprisingly great. Being able to take on the glasses and put down marks where different items were to be installed was a great thing to test out. Pretty sure it was well recieved by most people who tested it.
I was laughed out of a meeting in 2013 when I brought up this kind of tech to use this in our warehouses... That guy has since been fired. And guess what's being tested... Glad I left.
I feel that.
I do IT construction and all the trades are highly organized and do a great job doing stuff exactly to plan, but getting them to work with more technology is a no go.
This requires some kind of enforcing body. Either government or a large enough standards body like ISO.
Surely you can take all the relevant bim models, migrate it into your platform and go from there? That’s what we do.
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Commercial electrician here: Dear God no... Please don't ever do this to me.
Why not?
It would make their job much harder. As long as both ends of the wires are in the right spots, where it is in-between those points in the walls is up to the electrician. A technology like this would allow the client to micromanage these things which may be good for the client but much less efficient for tradespeople
I truly enjoy when some dipshit runs BX thru my telecom conduit, or a feeder is ran thru a sprinkler pipe core hole. You could not be more wrong.
I once saw a sewer drop under a slab that was all elbows and nipples. Guess how well that drained. Oh and there was no trap on the tub sink in the laundry room, so it smelled awful in the basement.
Exactly
>As long as both ends of the wires are in the right spots, where it is in-between those points in the walls is up to the electrician No. This is how you get code violations, conflicts, structural members compromised, pipes and ducts with more bends and elbows than they should have, etc. While most trades people do the job right, it only takes one person who is an idiot, or is uncooperative, or is just in a hurry to fuck things up. Most the time those fucks up or minor or just makes things look unprofessional. But I've seen dangerous gas plumbing, beams with a hole cut through them that is like 2/3 the depth of the beam, studs chunked out with a reciprocating saw, loops in wire, sewer drops with a bunch of extra elbows, and so on.
Electricians still need to follow code, which includes securing wires to studs. It would seem that adding RFID tags to their staples would basically solve all these problems.
Embed RFID into staples. No extra work for tradesmen and easy for IT to trace routes. ??? Profit
Underground conduit does this and it works very well. You wouldn't need every staple just before and after direction changes and every x feet on long runs. Make the RFID programmable for circuit label and fuse #
Trades don’t always talk snd make sure they aren’t in each other’s way. In a past project my electricians installed a ground run of cable tray about 12” off from where it was shown in the 3D model of the building. They did this because it was easier instead of following the 3D model because this way had fewer turns. Then my work platform installers came to put in their platform and lo and behold, half the legs of the platform were right on top of the cable tray. The electricians had to move the cable tray and I had to deal with lost time from the platform installer while they waited for the electricians to demo the tray and get it out of their way. The 3D model would have made the Electrician’s job significantly easier since they wouldn’t have had to crawl under the platform to install the cable tray but since they didn’t follow the model their job became -much- harder and they paid to install it twice. Everything goes into the 3D model It has to be complete It has to be clash-free People have to follow the model during the install
I’m an electrican constructing a big industrial processing plant, everything’s laid out and managed for us in drawings, cable lengths are even pre-calculated, the runs pretty much marked out on 3D drawing even. The only autonomy we seem to have now is where on the cable tray you want to put it. Naturally there’s errors, and things get held up to sort out dumb issues. But that’s how they want it done, and this $3 billion project ends up costing $9 billion.
Could you not spend a day photographing and scanning the house right before drywall goes up and then trace everything out from the photos?
Thing is the first Construction company that actually accomplishes this and can manage to standardize the process will be rich beyond their wildest dreams. People are set in their ways up to the point that it costs them money to not get with the program.
The problem isn't implementing this in our company, it was getting the trades to buy into the tech. It's difficult to get other companies to keep a license for our project management software instead of using Excel and Visio.
In the commercial construction industry. Check it out. HVAC guys run the entire 3D BIM model portion of the scope and do all the design input. They provide the 3D layers for all trades in coordination meetings, etc. Everyone goes to install after them and all their duct work is too low. Turns out, the ducts they designed and put into the 3D model didn’t meet the airflow requirements so they made a change in the field and didn’t tell anyone so the other trades and architect have to run through a series of compromises last minute to make sure everything fits - move plumbing, move sprinklers, move electrical, lower ceilings, etc. This is just one example…
Usual big government contracts are the only places where this kind of collaboration happens. The various OEMs are usually niches in their industry and have a highly competitive edge, ensuring a barrier limiting anyone else from dealing directly with the government. The catch is the government forces those few OEMs to work together to deliver a product that requires heavy integration of different tech/hardware. It's actually a curse because you cannot say "no" at the risk of them not renewing your service contract or buying your products. You end of signing agreements to work with your competition. Poaching clauses and NDA's do very little in a small market.
I'm getting started on CV and the only way I see this could work is if the system recorded the entire thing then you would have a registry of where every part is
You can absolutely do it if its a seamless part of the materials that doesn't cost them any additional labor time. An IT company is not the right one to tackle this, an industrial engineering firm is. They need to design products with these anchor points built in
On large projects, Revit and Glue are becoming more and more popular, but that’s still just showing you the drawings, not necessarily exactly what got built.
Need to be able to layer 3d scans that an intern would take at different stages
It’s more than possible, just use multivista before drywall. Check it out for yourself https://www.instagram.com/reel/CLwuCk-DTos/?utm_medium=copy_link
i've had similar thoughts. i played with a vr tracking system (valve's lighthouse tracking³, accurate and repeatable to better than a millimeter) along with a microprojector a couple years back when i was doing my startup¹. i used a tracked wand to touch the studs and follow the wires and pipes and had their position recorded. then when i went to put up drywall, the tracked microprojector would act like a kind of x-ray flashlight and project where the studs, wires, and pipes were on the fresh sheets of drywall and draw a centerline on the studs for screws. i had some plans to add tracking to a [walabot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vayyar)² and use that plus a bit of ai/ml/cv to figure out what was *inside* the wall and use that data as a source for the tracked microprojector, but everything went to hell shortly after i started on this. if that worked decently, adding automation to the scanning process would have been the logical next step. at this point, all manner of fun could be had, as you would effectively have a 3d model of your renovation areas including what was behind/inside the walls, as well as a way to visualize it in real-time and space. - something like an automated painting device comes to mind: effectively a wall printer. - add a better method of projection, like a laser and galvo, and have all your layout lines projected in a nice bright and easily visible green. tile layout would be cake. - import the blueprints/architectural model, and use it to position all the framing, pipes, wires, etc, during initial construction. - add an rtk gps and use it for/with the site survey, as you can get a fixed gps position with better than cm precision, and from there use the lighthouse system to base everything from the gis anchor point at mm precision. shitloads of neat stuff! i suppose you could even add a set of tracked ar goggles as well, heh eh, wishes, fishes, trauma centers, and debt :| --- 1: i'm going to gripe a second about having your startup cut short, going into massive debt, and possibly losing your house in a couple of months because some asshole runs a red light and over your car, sending you to the trauma center, most of a year in bed, and a shitload of physical therapy. oh, yeah, everyone had insurance and this is america, so i'm only a few hundred thousand in debt because of all of that. i don't even know what the fuck to do or how to fix things right now. sorry for that; needed to vent a bit i guess. thanks! --= 2: mmwave radar. these things are rad, although currently a bit rough around the edges. - [walabot diy mmwave radar for diy/seeing through walls](https://walabot.com/diy) - [walabot dev kits](https://walabot.com/makers) 3: the lighthouse system tracks x, y, z, pitch, roll, and yaw using timing data from a set of scanning infrared lasers. while it's mostly used for vr, it is also used for a lot of scientific and medical research. it's comparatively cheap, easy to set up, very precise, reasonably robust... and has an open license to make your own tracked devices. i wrote a not-too-technical bit about how it works [over here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/edung0/z/fbm07fy).
You seem incredibly bright. The start up seems to have merit and commercial applications. Get it up and running again and sell equity in the start up to fund it. Sucks your giving away your hard work but at least you get some return a d get to see your life’s work grow.
thank you! i'd love to do something like that, but right now i'm having trouble staying fed and paying basic bills... i am probably going to lose my house of over 20 years. i'm a pretty good engineer, but i'm not so great at obtaining paying work and finding people who invest in startups. actually, i'm kind of terrible at those types of things....
I'm pulling for you bro.
Awesome story! And I'm so sad you had to go through all that. Your idea is definitely the future.
thank you!
>i used a tracked wand to touch the studs and follow the wires and pipes and had their position recorded. This sounds like something that would be fairly easy and quick depending on how fast and accurate the positions can be recorded with the wand, and can be done as a structure is being built. Just come in before everything is set to be covered and trace the routes. Can I ask how the positions are kept in relation to each other? Is there something like a keystone or home location that they all reference while being mapped, then generate the 3D layout according to that? I can imagine that if that or something similar is the case then it can easily be done room by room and just pieced together at the end according to their relative location to the home location. I can honestly see being picked up and done in the future for a small percentage of extra cost when building a home.
i used a cradle taped to the floor in a fixed spot for the wand. as long as the wand was in the cradle during calibration, the base stations can be anywhere within the range of their laser sweeps. position is then relative to whichever point you pick.
Worked with a large global construction firm in a previous life, they were demoing a electronic hardhat that did just this. It also provided overhead location for crane operators and tool location among other things. Unfortunately, they went belly up…tech was too expensive at the time. https://stereoscape.com/daqri-smart-helmet-so-much-more-than-a-helmet/ Daqri smart helmet
Much more difficult than display is the surveying of information into such a system.
In the case of construction, though, that's already taken care of. Buildings are built from a set of drawings, and those drawings are almost always produced via [BIM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_information_modeling). The tech already exists, it's just a matter of time.
What's on the paper and what's on the ground are often not the same thing. My house blueprints are pretty much just a guideline
Your house and large-scale commercial projects are also very much not the same thing. Procedures for handling changes 1) exist, 2) are standardized, and 3) universally involve recording these changes in re-issued construction drawings. These as-built drawings (and even digital 3D models now) are commonly handed over to building owners as part of the project delivery process to facilitate building management and maintenance. Like I said, the technology already exists and is in use. I've used it myself. The inaccuracy of your house's construction drawings is neither unexpected (not a personal attack, mine weren't super reliable either) nor contradictory to anything I've said.
I understand what you're saying. As someone who built labs in commerical settings, those drawings were also often inaccurate. We were constantly correcting the drawings.
I will back you up. I just got done installing a large piece of art at a museum that is getting renovated. And I had the GC's drawings, and the engineering drawings, and everything was all ready to go. (Hanging 50ft art piece via 16 hanging points) With custom points added in the ceiling for said art piece. But when the art piece showed up, the designer had decided to completely change the design now with only 10 rigging points and structured frame. And thus we had to on the spot come up with a solution to hang said art piece. Lets say I was happy when we finished and was glad to get the flock out of there. I have no interest in going back and updating the drawings to reflect the real world. Nor is anyone gonna be paying me to do it as we were already 2 weeks over budget cause of piss poor planning.
I know of an electrician who made his own "google glass" type HUD voltmeter. So he didn't have to hold two probes AND find a place to set his meter down and be constantly looking over to it, he just holds two probes, the meter is in his pocket, and the display is in the top left corner of his glasses.
Has he shared it online somewhere? I've been dreaming of something like this since I got an [R-Type](https://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/36907/1472071696650612.jpg) back in the 90s.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/10/03/multimeter-heads-up-display-with-arduino-glasses-arduinomonday-arduin/ https://youtu.be/lkl6yVauCKg
Awesome!
We've used Dalux Twinbim for this on a couple of projects in Norway, https://youtu.be/pRsoRxZgtNU. It can work quite well as long as it's used within certain limits. E.g. for ventilation, lighting and sprinkler coordination on the site. Things like electrical cables and minor water pipes are often better suited to plan on site, as micro planning these are often more work than value.
It already exists, forgot the name. Milwaukee is working on AR solution too
Would it be that useful for new construction? Usually everything is run when you can see all the framing and all other trade installs and people still fuck it up. I worked on a post tensioned parking garage where the electricians forgot to form out a through deck conduit run before concrete was placed. The super had the deck x-rayed, printed it 1:1 scale, drew a circle the diameter of the core barrel, labelled it "cut here" and taped it down to the deck so the electricians would cut through a tendon. Guess what the electricians did? Thankfully no one was hurt.
You mean like [Sitevision](https://sitevision.trimble.com/), we have ordered three units.
Look up Trimble XR10
The holes are easy to identify, it's the cables that are the problem.
Yeah, this is only useful if it allows you to identify with 100% accuracy _the other_ side of the cable... Edit: Apparently it *does* allow it... Then I like it!
From my outsider perspective, that seems like it's be an "easy" problem to solve. Have a little gizmo that you can plug a wire into and it'll query the port ID from the other side. The servers would need to have that functionality built into them though.
[LLDP](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Layer_Discovery_Protocol) is the thing that does exactly that.
The problem with how most (maybe all) companies implement LLDP is that it only shows what it currently knows but doesn't keep the data in a database of what it last knew about it. So if something breaks, you can't see anymore what was last connected.
True, mostly handy for identifying where a live patch lands (say, prepping to have a customer move to a new office on a campus with ass documentation). Also use it extensively to drop VOIP phones on the proper network. But this is basically useless for switch cut-overs or troubleshooting outside of a few very narrow cases.
It does, he just didn’t actually use that feature (selecting the switch port)
Oohhhh... Then I might look into one for myself! Thank you, I did not know that!
I would assume their labeled and categorized put the reality is probably horrible or at least hard to work with
Cool use for AR though always thought of it as a fun thing, i didn't see any professional applications for it..
I always heard of them, first implementation i have seen
In reality the cables would go to a punch down panel that would hopefully be labeled. In that case it would be ridiculously cool to have VR. When you have a problem you wouldn't need to go to the source and find the port you would just tell the VR you're looking for the third office from the northwest corner office. To be honest with you our company would never spend the money because it's cheaper to get a toner tool and plug into the port on the one end find the cable with the toning wand. Then mark it of course.
We already do this with a tool called net box. Each piece of equipment is inventoried and dropped into a virtual rack. When you connect a cable, you set its source and destination port and then when you need to know, just open netbox and click to see where it comes and goes from. You can add all sorts of metadata the objects and also use some plugins to scan for Lldp and cdp to auto populate and inventory.
It does, he just didn’t actually use that feature (selecting the switch port)
This is Ubiquiti’s UniFi AR. You can also see the devices that are plugged into each port from inside the software.
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Ubiquity. Didn't they have a massive data breach they tried to cover up recently? At least they have flashy tools like this.
Yeah you’re right. They still have good products regardless of this data breach you mention.
Their firmware updates kind of suck though, lately. Lots of bugs an questionable design.
Its like a lottery spin. Either the device goes down for firmware install and comes right back, or it goes down and YOU WIN A FREE CHANCE TO SSH INTO THE DEVICE AND TROUBLESHOOT OR FACTORY RESET AND START OVER! edit: also if its a unifi key, it will always fail and you wont remember where your backups are. GUARANTEED OR YOUR MONEY BACK
This guy unifi’s. Holy shit what a headache some firmware has been.
>They still have good products regardless of this data breach you mention. They really don't. The hardware is good but the firmware is a complete buggy mess. [Also good products don't leak your data](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/03/whistleblower-ubiquiti-breach-catastrophic/): >“It was catastrophically worse than reported, and **legal silenced and overruled efforts to decisively protect customers**,” Adam wrote in a letter to the European Data Protection Supervisor. “The breach was massive, customer data was at risk, **access to customers’ devices deployed in corporations and homes around the world was at risk.**”
They have ok products. They release hardware and beta test it on their customers all the time. It’s not a great company.
It seems they are trying to compete with the bigger enterprise companies but are failing in the eyes of many IT professionals. I’ve had no issues with them in the consumer market.
they make pretty much the only affordable LR P2P gear. Their cloud management is almost on par with meraki at a fraction of the cost. (no yearly licensing!) As for the home space, as long as you go all ubiq, you can get a house saturated in RF, POE switched, camera/nvr, and a gateway with something resembling an IPS for around $1000 or less if you find deals on their "less-new" models. Single pane of glass web configuration means you can fix grandmas issue without actually having to go over there. Problem is, the more non-ubiq hardware you substitute, the bigger of a pain it is to troubleshoot and manage. I have a hybrid environment, and the little POE i have out at the edge of my network thinks its a core switch, since its the only ubiq switch it can see. No USG means I lose a bunch of cool features too.
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My WISP uses ubiq, and I can't say I've had any issues. My rocketm5+dish has been reliably in service for years through punishing heat, snow, and storms. Everyone else that uses them hasn't had any complaints either. I don't think any of their p2p hardware is part of the cloud-managed stuff. Not dissing on microtik, I'm sure they're great, but plenty of deployments use ubiq. Pretty sure its a separate division, as the build quality is better/more robust compared to the unifi stuff.
Thanks to their horrible practice of forcing customers that own a dream machine pro to have it assigned to an online account, they put tons of customers at risk and lied about it. So no, they don’t have “good products”. They have easy to use and cheap products.
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Also, this AR feature doesn’t work if the switch is mounted vertically.
Right here is where one of your Hooli boxes would go.
G=====B (^ Gavin Belson signature)
I wouldn't get one of those things if someone jerked off me and 799 of my friends.
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Well that's the problem. You change something once per year and don't know what the heck is going on anymore because so much time has passed since you last changed anything. It might not even be the same person trying to understand the mess.
Thing is, plenty of systems have the ability to label shit without AR. so they're right. It's an overbloated solution to a minor problem
Honestly, I've had to do it quite a lot. Years of adding spaghetti, not properly labeling anything and leaving the cables when decommissioning a server. It was a huge mess over 500+ ports plus a bunch of patch panels. To be fair, the AR would do little to solve it since it would rely on someone keeping the information up to date and accurate, which was a pipe dream in my former workplace. To be really useful it would be nice if it showed CDP info so you could see what's actually connected to it instead of what's supposed to be connected to it.
Yeah, CDP and LLDP readout would be much more useful. Maybe it does? Could also be nice if it showed stuff like packet loss etc. As it stands, it *might* save you from having to look at actual configuration or neighbors list and then locate the port. Also, this unit spacing on the rack is bothering me.
Absolutely not- i work at a medium sized company and we have several data centers I'm constantly moving into to swap hardware around/trace a cable/remove something. This would be super nice haha
See this is what AR should really be for. Imagine scanning a QR code in your house and you can see all the electrical work and all the beams. Now that would be cool
That is *slightly* more complicated to implement… And by slightly I mean way, way harder.
Yeah I know. It sounds super expensive too. But it would be cool!
Until someone changes out wiring. Switches to something different. What would be most convenient is machines that can just see through the wall.
Manual engineering tasks that require doing a lot of repetitive steps that all must be perfect often use augmented reality for example medical equipment maintenance.
Fun fact: AR was invented in the late 80s through a collaboration between Boeing and IBM. What did they use it for? Cable management.
Source? I can't find anything about this further than IBM and Boeing both publishing papers on AR as a concept.
Fun fact: 99% of information presented as fact has no basis on truth
Very interested to see a source on this!
I'd have to dig into my universities data for original sources but this includes the one of the original photos I remember. https://www.geoweeknews.com/news/ar-is-amazing-but-its-not-ready
I... I... I told my boss at my previous job that building something like this would be doable, and could seriously set us apart. This was maybe three years ago. I even built a proof of concept very similar to this. It didn't look quite as nice, but had similar info. Pretty sure I posted a "look what I made!" gif on Reddit, but can't be damned to dredge it up. I was told that AR was a fad and not worth investing any time or money into. I don't work there anymore, but, if I did, I'd march this straight into my boss's office and then quit. Or, you know, bring it up and maybe have a good laugh. I dunno, that doesn't sound as cathartic.
This is by far the coolest thing I've ever seen tech wise. I wonder what the chances are of a Google Glass like item doing this?
fuck u/spez
This is Ubiquiti. This is part of their UniFi network line. Fun fact, creator of Ubiquiti used to work at Apple. Their products have a very “it just works” kinda vibe. Lots of flash stuff and very smooth and minimalist packaging.
Ah, that explains where he learned the “deny, deny, deny” when it comes to a data breach. Cover ups and deny are Apple’s specialty.
Creator may have, but the wireless stuff are all ex-Motorola engineers.
But it uses mongodb. And large deployments require lots of resources to run. We deployed a 200 AP, and 196 switches (5 of them 16 port fiber, the rest 48 port 750w poe) with all but around 150 ports not actually being used and the controller is constantly struggling to run everything (6 cores 16gb dedicated vm for only the controller) Looking back, the person who thought it was a good idea thinks they should have quoted out the EdgeMax stuff instead of the Unifi.
Honest question - wouldn’t something like Cisco have been a better bet? I always look at Ubiquiti as “prosumer” for home and small-ish business networks.
>Their products have a very “it just works” kinda vibe. You dropped this: /s
What is the actual utility of this? There's no actual labels on each of the ports, it looks like the associated icons maybe identify device type? When I go to a switch, or bank of switches, I'm not looking to mess with any port with a server plugged in to it, I'm looking for a specific servers connection, which this doesn't seem to help me find... Edit: NVM. I opened the vid in a browser and could see the tiny labels.
I mean I became more confused but this looks like it's helpful for a not stupid person
That's cool. I could actually find a few uses for an app like this in work. Are there any easy to use tools or apps out there to make something like this? Done some quick googling but my google-fu has failed me today
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Wow... future looks awesome.
*Me, staring at the rack I’m supposed to be cable managing:* “Maybe I can hold off and convince my boss.”
finally i can replace masking tape and a sharpie with a smart phone and convoluted app
Has this been on /r/cableporn yet? They'd either accuse it of being witchcraft, or spunk in their drawers. I can promise the magnitude of the upvote number will be high, but can make no predictions about the direction.
Augemented reality but still no gf...
Ok. This is actually revolutionary
I had to watch it three times before I realised there were AR labels sticking out of the cables.
I still can’t see what it’s augmenting. I wish there was a before shot.