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Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

> Without modifying anything intrusive to the mechanism, a cheap way of monitoring to make sure it's still running OK would be to install a low cost PoE IP camera mounted in such a way that it's aimed at the gear mechanism then feed its video into something like Frigate. As cheap as $75 for a camera, some cat5e cable and staples to take the cable to where you need it, and an old desktop PC (plug it into anything that gives it a DHCP lease and default route outbound, make it a VPN client).

You can also just look at the clock from outside to see if it's got the correct time.

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Sure, but that doesn't tell you if the gearing has bound up or the motor is trying to turn something and it's jittering back and forth (or a small trail of smoke has emitted from the motor 3 hours ago). Plus it's a fun thought exercise.

This came to mind because I recently had reason to set up automated sump pump monitoring for a rental property which doesn't have a proper basement, just a crawl space.

We had the choice of just installing a binary state (wet or not wet) zigbee liquid sensor, which we did, talking to a cheap USB dongle and home assistant, just above the height of the sump pump. But in addition to that I put a $60 camera which has a medium-wide overview of the whole crawl space, generally centered on the sump pit so that it can be checked in the event the liquid alarm goes off.

Stapled some cat5e across the floor joists that comes up through a small hole in the utility room where the PoE switch is. Theoretically it should also serve to check for things like "are raccoons inhabiting the crawl space?" or a few other possibilities.

Pro tip for sump pumps: Get a float switch instead of a liquid sensor. That tells you if the water level is too high or not, not if the sensor is wet.

- You want to know this before water is on the floor.

- Sump pits tend to be splashy in heavy water flow.

- The float switch will correctly return to "it's fine" status when the problem is no longer occurring.

Liquid sensors are great for "my basement is flooding", float switches are great for "I need to fix my pumps before my basement floods.

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