Earlier today, I was writing about a product that has a pretty neat feature: line monitoring. Basically, every time something small happens to a power line (a tree branch brushes against it, lightning strikes it, a squirrel, uh, makes an unfortunate choice), a device makes a note and tries to figure out where that thing happened. After enough of them happen, the device alerts someone that something seems to be wrong at that location.
It’s pretty rad if you’ve got a power line that stretches for hundreds of miles and a single tree branch could potentially start a fire. Or, even if it doesn’t start a fire, some intermittent hazard might eventually cause a permanent problem that shuts down the power line.
The benefit comes from your ability to now send a maintenance crew out to a specific location, rather than ask them to patrol the entire line looking for the issue. (And, just from some pictures I’ve seen, a patrol can involve climbing up every tower to look for the tiniest scorch marks from an electrical arc.)
But, I kept misspelling it: line minotor.
And, I wonder: what is an automated line minotaur?
I know what a minotaur is. I’ve played enough D&D for that one.
I have a pretty good idea what happens when you automate a minotaur.
But what’s a line minotaur?
Spent way too long today trying to figure that out.
