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Comment by eigenvalue | Hacker News Reader

More like a DIY arson investigation. You might not only burn down your house, but also get in trouble with the law and not receive compensation from your property insurance company. This is a horrendous idea. Just do basically anything else DIY besides high current/voltage electronics.

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Page is hugged to death right now but I strongly disagree with parent. I'm an EE and I'm quite familiar with the National Electric Code. I build high current/voltage devices and I've wired two houses (both of which passed inspection).

If you're trained, experienced, and generally know what you're doing there's nothing wrong with working on high power electronics.

Suppose you aren't trained, experienced or generally know about working with high voltage systems, like the author?

Then you learn you some, like the author.

Same way I learned to drive actually, behind the wheel of an 18 wheeler going down the freeway in the snow.

The whole point of this post is that he isn't trained on that stuff.

To be honest, I think the guy learned more than most electrical contractors actually know or care to check when it comes to the EVSE. I certainly would object if he is selling this or installing on other people's houses, but this looks actually acceptable for now. The longevity is a big question, since usually there's no easy way to check / test that with a singleton bespoke design/build, and that's sometimes what distinguishes the one-off vs mass manufactured stuff, albeit in both directions. Sometimes a bespoke design misses some subtle design choice and it breaks down sooner, but sometimes you can do a lot more careful handcrafting and "simple" over-engineering with a bespoke singleton to make things last even longer than mass produced stuff. I think the mechanical and the environmental aspects - condensation, thermal expansion, etc - are probably the biggest question mark here.

Some of us on here don’t know just software engineering and nothing else

Congrats to OP on a clean project

source: electrical engineer who writes high performance software you’ve definitely have used

240v is not high voltage come on, in most European countries you don't need a permit / can DIY yourself electrical circuits and they're all 240v. It's hard to burn down your house with electricity, breakers are pretty good at what they do.

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