[TriLUG] OT: need ideas for a project that just landed in my lap

[Jon Carnes]

On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 21:31, Pat Regan wrote:
> Greg Brown wrote:
> > Sadly the problem seems to lie somewhere in the wire path under the existing
> > roadway.  And they say digging up the road in any way, shape, or form is not
> > possible.
> > 
> 
> I may be naive, but wouldn't the wire have to be running through some
> kind of conduit?  If it isn't, I would imagine that would have helped it
> to fail :p.
> 
> If it is, you could just tie the new wire to the old and pull it through.
> 
> Pat

If it's an old park road then most likely whatever conduit there was has
either cracked or rusted to dust and you'll never get the wire to move.
That's probably why the circuit got cut as well.

Still there are two very obvious non-linux solutions here:
1) Rent a trencher with a boring rod (drill down, then *under* the road)
and this time put a decent conduit under the road.
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/sw_sod/article/0,2029,DIY_14369_2278540,00.html

2) Buy a "garage" door opener and glue it to the old button stand. Yes
you'll have to bring out spare batteries every now and then, but it's a
cheap solution that gets you up and running fast.

Other than that, I've used some old A/D cards that cost around $20 to
turn really old PC's into rather elegant switches and sensors. That
would easily turn on/off a relay to open/close the gates remotely.

Good Luck!