Today, I finally got in touch with the makers of the AlarmDecoder, Nu Tech Software Solutions. To be more accurate, I spent a bit over an hour on the phone with the owner and creator, Sean Mathews, trying to find out what was going wrong with my AD2PI. I seem to have broken it, too – it won’t talk to any of my remaining Raspberry Pis and he thinks something’s wrong with the GPIO connector on the AD2PI.

I bought the AD2PI several years ago, and was prepared to buy a replacement – but Sean is sending me the newest version (one which is less fragile!) for free. That is unbelievably good customer service and I’m amazed and delighted.

While we were working on the problem, we noticed that the Raspberry Pi was dying after about five minutes – that didn’t stop the debugging, but after we were done I took a closer look.

I was using the same Pi I was so happy about removing from the case last night. I should have used spudgers earlier in the process – my best guess is that I cracked a trace on the Pi’s printed circuit board (or maybe the whole board) when I was using screwdrivers to try to torque the Pi out of the case, and when it heats up after running for a few minutes, something moves and that’s the end of the story.

I’ve ordered two more Pi Zero Ws and should be back on the air in a few days.

While I was talking with Sean, he mentioned that he has a very cheap small HDMI monitor to attach to a Pi for testing, and that would be a good thing to use to let us see what music is playing on our Sonos. I need a new project, right? And I should have a spare Pi Zero W….

When we lived in South Florida, Eckerd Drugs was our go-to drugstore. They were convenient, friendly, well-stocked, and not too expensive, at least not for sundries, which is mostly what we bought there. One of the things we bought there, and brought with us to California nearly 36 years ago, was a pumice stone.

I’ve always been amused by the old-fashioned look of the box and the claim: “when soap fails…pumice prevails”.

Sadly, both Eckart Drugs and Requa Mfg. Co. have vanished, but the pumice stone still works as well as ever.t all

I spent most of this afternoon working on the alarm interface to the Raspberry Pi; I found problems with my wiring and fixed them, but that didn’t solve my problem. In fact, things got worse – the Raspberry Pi is no longer able to talk to the AD2PI at all. So I decided to take the Raspberry Pi out of its case so I could make absolutely sure that I was properly mounting the AD2PI to the Pi.

One end of the Pi released from the mounting pins very easily; the other end didn’t want to move. I kept tugging and nothing happened; I tried flexing the case, but nothing happened. I tried to put the Pi back onto the mounting pins – no dice. I swore – it made me feel better, but did nothing to solve the problem. Even a screwdriver wasn’t helpful.

Finally, I found a posting that suggested using spudgers to get just enough leverage to release the board, and that worked!

When all else fails, spudgers prevail!