LEGOS in the Aquarium

The fish tank has been empty for a couple months now. A few weeks ago, we started the arduous process of cleaning out the aquarium. I quickly lost track of how many fish skeletons I found in the aquarium gravel.

This morning, I finally called it "good enough", and put in a number of my Star Wars Lego sets that I've collected over the years:

I probably need to do another pass with windex, but I was ready to take a break from the fish tank for a while.

Eventually, I'd like to have some of the space ships suspended with fishing line, but that will be a project for another day.

I did do one cool thing, though:

See the little cylinder hanging from the ceiling in the top right corner of that photo? That's a motion sensor, and it controls the light in the fish tank.

Specifically, I dug out my Wemo motion sensor and smart plug, and paired them for this task. I had packed them away because they don't really play nicely with the rest of my home automation stuff, but this is a fairly stand-alone application, and it feels good to have them do something beyond gathering dust.

More Electrical

Continuing with the theme of doing electrical work while Brianna is away, I fixed the outlet that powers a lot of the fish tank.

There was a two-gang junction box with only one outlet in it. There were three electrical cords running to this outlet via an adapter. I decided to add a second outlet to the two-gang box.

When I took the cover off the junction box, one of the neutral wires popped out of the wire nut, and the wire nut on the hot wires fell off the wires and onto the floor.

At this point, I am really thinking I need to inspect the wiring of the entire basement, which the previous owners had remodeled themselves.

Anyway, I got a second outlet in the junction box and fixed the wiring with new wire nuts.