That's correct in my experience. Galvanic corrosion was never a problem for the capacitive sensors I developed a few years back (unlike the resistive sensors linked by the parent). However you typically want them more rugged than a bare PCB for industrial settings and since the capacitive field can pass through plastic I had them in a plastic housing filled with resin. Perfectly isolated from the outside environment and hard as a rock.
I can see how your prototype defends against corrosion, not so much this b-parasite toy.
What I don't see anyone talking about is the impact of dielectric moisture absorption[1], which is typically around 0.3-0.5% over 24 hours exposure for cheaper FR-4 on the market, let alone how this product intends to maintain sensor calibration over time.
I'd expect to see external corrosion impact at the solder joints first, especially around the battery terminals, but corrosion creep may happen alot sooner than that: vias in the b-parasite prototype are clearly tented[2], but that masking is superficial and won't protect against hygroscopic exposure from the inside; being open source certainly doesn't preclude hobbyists from making even worse material decisions either.
Unreinforced masonry is weak in tension because of the weak binding interface between the masonry unit and the mortar. The reason masonry is used in wall construction and not in, say, a suspended floor, is precisely because walls don't typically experience tensile forces. Any tensile force resulting from e.g.: wind loading on the entire structure is typically overcome by the self-weight of the masonry.
If there is a special case where tensile forces are expected, for example a retaining wall, or a mid-rise structure, or earthquake load, the engineer will specify the the masonry is reinforced with steel and then it can resist tension through the unit/mortar interface just fine.
It is a poor structural engineer who tells the architect masonry isn't an option because tension.
The tension is resisted via the steel, not the CMU/mortar interface. Masonry behaves similar to concrete (that’s what the C in CMU stands for...) and suffers from the same issue as concrete re: lack of tensile strength. It is not the mortar interface which makes masonry a problem for tensile loading conditions but the structure of the masonry and mortar itself. They simply are not amenable to carrying tensile load at a microscopic level.
I don’t know what structural engineering you’ve done or what jurisdiction it’s in, but for practical purposes on the west coast in America, structural masonry isn’t an option beyond maybe 3 stories because of tension (due to seismic demand) and any structural engineer that says otherwise is looking to get sued for negligence.
Elsewhere in America this is less true but still most modern engineering doctrines would lead you quickly away from masonry for anything substantial, although cost and schedule is obviously a key factor in masonry’s favor.
Everything else about the use of masonry in walls I generally agree with, although the move away from allowable stress has impacted it as described above. Except maybe I would quibble about the use for retaining walls. CMU can be particularly cost effective for some geometries of retaining walls when used with steel.
Spectacular! Well done on shipping a product/service which I've wanted for a long time. In particular the financing option will enable me to take the leap into the world of fine art for the first time.
M3 provides local storage but is not experimental, on top of that with cluster replication which VictoriaMetrics does not provide, and has a kubernetes operator to help scale out a cluster.
Disclosure: I work on the TSDB underlying M3 (M3DB) at Uber. Still worth checking out though!
Are concrete crossties pre-stressed? It makes sense now I think about it, but I'm just surprised more effort than "pour concrete into a mold" goes into such an unassuming structural member.
I'd guess that poured concrete is not cost-competitive with timber crossties, and pre-stressing is the only way to make them cheaply enough to compete.
Chronosphere (https://chronosphere.io/) was recently started by ex-Uber engineers to build a commercial ecosystem around M3. M3 is Uber's metrics platform and isn't going anywhere. M3DB (the TSDB built to support M3) is becoming fairly integral to Uber in its own right. I'd say the trajectory is positive.
Here's a prototype: https://imgur.com/9yO28CY