Author: Kyle Dickerson

My Christmas Tree Tells me when it’s Thirsty – Redux

December 18, 2022 8:02 am

Last year, I built a float sensor to tell me when the tree needed water.

This year I found a water sensor that accepts leads and I thought I’d try it out and see if it would work or if being wet would drain the battery. I grabbed an Aqara Zigbee water leak sensor ($15 at time of purchase) and some old wire to use as leads; hooked up the leads and ran them into the tree stand and mounted the sensor on the outside.

I left the float sensor in from last year, but it seems to be getting gummed up and not rising/falling smoothly, so it’s not really working anymore. It looks a bit messy, but the tree skirt completely hides it.

I also bought a funnel, spray-painted it green, and stuck a hose on the end. The funnel sits about 4.5 feet up the tree around the back and the hose runs down into the stand. It was like $15 for the funnel, spray-paint, and hose. Well worth it.

So now the tree sends us a notification when it’s thirsty and we add water through the funnel until it says it’s happy. It’s amazingly convenient. One of my best ideas. No more crawling under the tree trying to see how much water is there, finagle a pitcher around the branches, or figure out how much more to add!

My Home Assistant automation is really simple, when the sensor goes dry, send a notification to my tablet and to Jess’ phone. Since it’s a real water sensor I don’t have to muck about telling the system to pretend it is one.

Someone should make a tree-stand water-level sensor that just lines up five sets of leads onto a piece of plastic, then you would get readings for “full”, “3/4 full”, “1/2 full”, “1/4 full”, and “dead empty.” I’ll probably add a 2nd sensor next year so I get “low” and “full” at least.

Ready for Christmas

7:45 am

Pictures from getting ready for Christmas this year. We went and got a tree on the 11th. We like grand firs, but they tend to not last as long, so they’re not stocked until a little later in the month. We went to Home Depot to see what they had, but first we had to wait for someone to come out and open the tree pen. While waiting we did see that they had a sign for grand firs, so there was hope.

An employee came out and let us in and they had one bin of grand firs, about 10 trees. So we found the tallest one and called it good. And then the employee gave it to us for free, just because. He said he’d been giving out the first tree each day for free and we were first today. Hard to argue with free tree!

So we brought it home and Corinne and Heather performed the ceremonial “Freeing of the Tree.”

I got the lights on and the next day Jess put on ribbon and on the evening of the twelfth we put on the ornaments. London was becoming greatly concerned about all of this. Some time ago Jess bought these little bird decorations at Target. Corinne desperately wanted to use the branches I trimmed off the bottom of the tree for something so we made “nests” for the birds and distributed them throughout the house.

And, finally, the outside decorations. I put the arch in the yard and ran some fishing line from the tree to the house to stabilize it. Our whole street is pretty well decorated, which is fun. The wineries in town run a holiday lights trolley tour which comes down our street 3 or 4 times a night. So we’re officially a destination.

Halloween 2022

November 1, 2022 7:47 pm

For something new this year we read Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October (a Halloween tale told one day at a time). So we finished reading it on Halloween after dinner, which was orange pancakes, eaten after Corinne got back from swim class. It was fun and the girls even mostly listened to the story. That put us a little behind schedule though, so getting ready for trick or treating was a little rushed and there was very little light left to get any pictures, so they’re pretty lousy, oh well.

“We” carved pumpkins on Sunday. By which I mean, I carved pumpkins based on designs drawn by the girls. Though this year Corinne did help scoop some guts out. Heather drew a horse head, Corinne made a square-eyed, pointy-toothed creature, I went with a simple Triforce.

Since I had procured a fog machine to use, in part, for Heather’s birthday adventure I set it up along our sidewalk for some extra Halloween ambiance.

Our whole neighborhood was pretty hopping this year with kids. Seems to have completely changed character from when we moved in 10 years ago. Lots of younger families with kids now. I seem to recall things being pretty dead on Halloween when we first got here.

We went down our street and back up the next one over. By the time we got home both girls’ buckets were overflowing, so it was a successful night.