After toppling over, they probably rolled downward into the parapets, crashing through the parapets along with the green bag of roofing materials, and then falling further to the deck below right in front of the three critical columns holding up the middle section building. This amount of tilt would have caused some of the air conditioning units to topple over because they are already top-heavy as a result of their motors being near the top of the units and placing them even higher on raised metal frames would have caused their centers of gravity to extend over the footing of the frames. This would have caused the penthouse roof to tilt down at about a 20° angle (see photo). Building on the narrative that warrenslo and Dold have elaborated, I believe that as a result of penthouse roof weakening induced by the recent installation of anchors close to column tops that may have compromised the rebar underneath and the additional load of roofing materials added to the already critical load of air conditioning units, the penthouse roof may have given way at the front causing the parapet for the penthouse roof over the middle section of the building to crash down behind the parapet for the 12th floor roof, leaving the rear part of the penthouse roof attached like a hinge. The parapet for the penthouse roof over the middle section of the building appears to be missing while the parapet for the roof of the 12th floor remains. I love the concept of open sprinkler, but after using it and doing more research, I think any benefits that are gained by local control, smart home integration and open source software are far outweighed by the need to constantly troubleshoot a system that I just want to install once and never think about again.In the first frame of the surveillance video, the center of the building had already dropped down 2 to 3 floors. DarkSky was recently acquired by apple, meaning another modification will soon be needed to keep the open sprinkler functional. Originally the OpensSrinkler used Weather Underground data for weather based adjustments and when that service went away they switched to DarkSky. OpenSprinkler relies on free cloud services for weather, and as these services inevitably shut down or change their free APIs because they don’t make them any money. OpenSprinker seems like the safest option since it’s open source, but unfortunately I think it’s actually one of the worst. Scotts has no other market share in irrigation, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them cut their losses as sales of the Gro controller line stagnate and costs of maintaining the cloud remain constant. Due to their size they could easily shoulder the burden of keeping a failing cloud service alive, but their line of sprinklers: Gro, is actually just another startup like Skydrop that needed to be acquired by a larger company to help with ongoing costs. Scotts is a huge company within the fertilizer industry. Rainbird is another huge player in the irrigation world, and while I can’t imagine Rainbird pulling the plug on their cloud servers since it would be a PR nightmare, I don’t think the Rainbird product is on par with Rachio and BHyve. Their significant investment in the BHyve line indicates a commitment to this future technology and that their cloud will continue to be functional and free. The parent company, Orbit, is massive compared to startups like Rachio and Skydrop is not going out of business any time soon. Orbit, is a major player in all types of irrigation systems and has invested significantly in their BHyve line of controllers. Rachio, which was SkyDrop’s initial opponent in the early smart sprinkler system market has earned a huge market share, meaning the company is healthy, products will continue to be sold, and the cloud service will likely remain free and operational for the foreseeable future. How do you protect yourself from being extorted for a monthly fee, or being left with an expensive paperweight attached to your sprinkler system? My advice to you is to go with company reputation, size and market share. I cut this part for time (and because I thought it was boring in the video), but you might be interested in my thoughts on continued cloud service, particularly regarding OpenSprinkler:
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