[HN Gopher] What's that touchscreen in my room?
___________________________________________________________________
What's that touchscreen in my room?
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 1273 points
Date : 2024-01-20 00:17 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (laplab.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (laplab.me)
| asylteltine wrote:
| Small bit about that Wi-Fi remark. Yes in your case it's close to
| the server but Wi-Fi lets you mount the touchscreen anywhere. Wi-
| Fi completely makes sense here.
| Retr0id wrote:
| The equivalent energy monitoring device in my flat uses an RF
| link (no idea what kind, I haven't investigated further) to
| talk to its base station. Wireless seems fine, but WiFi itself
| seems like overkill.
| archi42 wrote:
| Absolutely. Try retrofitting this into a multi unit home and
| "just run a digital data cable up there". With some bad luck,
| this can easily cost as much as the whole unit.
|
| I don't like getting everything on WiFi, too. OTOH I have ~30
| devices on an VLAN isolated IoT WiFi network. This easily saved
| us a 4 digit expense and a lot of time(!) as opposed to
| installing new additional wire (redoing all the old ones was
| bad enough). Plus, I can do dumb stuff like control my office's
| window blinds individually, which is nice when only one of them
| has the sun blinding me while using the PC (temporary desk
| location due to ongoing renovations).
| crummy wrote:
| Did you take notes along the way? Usually when I am "exploring" a
| problem like that it's hard to reproduce my steps later.
| laplab wrote:
| Yes! I started taking some notes when I was halfway through,
| that helped a lot with the thought reconstruction. There is no
| chance I would find these TCF links organically again
| qingcharles wrote:
| Ah, it's not just me that does this. I also start taking notes
| from the beginning now, otherwise when I go back to write it up
| for others I sometimes can't even replicate the starting
| conditions.
| incanus77 wrote:
| For me, a particular browser window's (many) open tabs are
| usually a pretty good record.
| josu wrote:
| >DATE & TIME ARE ALWAYS CORRECT AND NEVER NEED TO BE ADJUSTED
|
| Reads like a quote from a Philip K. Dick book.
| Ayesh wrote:
| My guess was that it probably had a time correction feature
| from those British radio tower integration, but this device is
| from 2015 (says in the article), so probably not.
| Aaron2222 wrote:
| Maybe they originally intended for them to be internet
| connected? That would also explain the MQTT.
| Ayesh wrote:
| Yeah I think it makes more sense like you said. It has the
| Wifi stuff there already too.
| adolph wrote:
| Could prolly take it out of access point and attach it to
| your network (or one you segregated from your actual
| network). Set up nat, dyndns, wireshark and see what
| happens.
| qsantos wrote:
| From the Mastodon thread:
|
| > Turns out, they found out an even more innovative time sync
| mechanism. When you open the UI in the browser, they quickly
| redirect you to "/set-time/" + Date.now(). This sets a global
| variable in the Node.js app responsible for "now".
|
| (https://mastodon.social/@laplab/111789584104871367)
| skrebbel wrote:
| Maybe it's the technical writer's way of saying "we ping an NTP
| server so don't worry"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39065780
|
| (Clearly that didn't pan out so well)
| niklasrde wrote:
| Without internet access?
| hacker_newz wrote:
| Nice write-up, I wish my apartment had this.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If the live and neutral cables of your electricity supply are
| seperate and accessible, you can buy a meter that measures
| power use with a clamp (loop) that fits around the live cable.
| Perfectly safe, they were often given away by electric
| companies in Britain in the 2010s to encourage thriftiness.
|
| Here's a zigbee one: https://smarthomescene.com/reviews/tuya-
| zigbee-single-clamp-...
|
| Here's one with an app: https://aeotec.com/products/aeotec-
| home-energy-meter/
|
| You'll find many more if you search "clamp energy meter".
| IlliOnato wrote:
| I am curious, what "jira_version" in that listing means. Surely
| not Jira?.. :-)
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| Why not? It most likely means "version in the sense of a
| release version we configured in Jira to attach tickets to"
| aworks wrote:
| "urban archeology": The device was using an ARM processor
| extension that could directly execute Java bytecode.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle
| Something1234 wrote:
| I want to know more. History of java is just insanely weird.
| astrange wrote:
| SIM cards and secure elements (contactless credit cards) both
| use this, or did at one point.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| For a time, Java was set to be the 'everything everywhere'
| language, IIRC in some quarters the hype behind Java on
| everything was even bigger than Cloud, then Crypto, then
| AI.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I remember those days well. I had the misfortune of
| working for one of Java's biggest advocates at Sun,
| Patrick Naughton
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Naughton
|
| To this day, I refuse to use Java or anything on the Java
| ecosystem, like Clojure, or Groovy, etc.
| lpapez wrote:
| I've always thought of Java programming as being kind of
| perverse with the patterns and verbosity, now I see where
| the perversion is coming from.
| AVincentInSpace wrote:
| Just you watch, WASI is gonna be next
| conradfr wrote:
| It kind of was, I remember my "pre-smart" Sony phones
| having Java games.
| a2800276 wrote:
| SIM cards and secure elements still use this, but it's
| arguably less Java than Javascript. Except that the
| trademark and tech (JavaCard) was owned by Sun, now Oracle.
| It's the basis of the claim, that gazillion devices run
| Java.
|
| JavaCard is a massively trimmed down version which is more
| a dumbed down C (with no standardization, little
| documentation and no third-party tool support) which is
| essentially Java reduced to basic arithmetic operator, an
| arguably saner, much trimmed down standard library focusing
| on cryptography and most importantly no GC.
| Everdred2dx wrote:
| The Nintendo Wii's "Starlet" processor also supported this
| though never used it!
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Very nostalgic, I have developed several apps before with
| Lollipop and was surprised with their choice of using WebView. I
| believe they set the NetThings app as a "launcher" app?
| laplab wrote:
| I also assumed that they would, but weirdly no. When the tablet
| booted up, I was greeted with stock launcher.
|
| Also, WebView is only part of the app, they used something else
| (which did not look like Android native UI) for the WiFi
| network picker.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| The launcher with its Holo tabs and the icon style look more
| like Android 4.something (I to K) to me, by the way. Android
| 5 (L) was the first Material Design release (the one[1] that
| had actual coherent principles behind it).
|
| [1] https://m1.material.io/
| exikyut wrote:
| Yeah, I'd be curious to see what the About activity shows.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Yeah you are right, I believe it is on Jelly Bean. This was
| Holo running on ICS.
| https://law.gmnz.xyz/uploads/2023/169e32e731.png
| krackers wrote:
| Yeah given the holoyolo look it's almost certainly ICS or
| jelly bean. I think kitkat's launcher looked a bit
| different, it didn't have the tabs: by then they had moved
| from tron blue to white.
| exikyut wrote:
| Ooh, what did it look like?
| MenhirMike wrote:
| Okay, but: Did the author find the configuration for the energy
| cost (money and CO2) and update it, so that the touchscreen shows
| the proper info now?
| laplab wrote:
| He did! :) It was located in the `/srv/server/bin/cfg` file.
| MenhirMike wrote:
| Awesome! I had some instances of "digging so deep into a
| fascinating problem that I forgot the initial reason I
| started digging" :)
|
| It actually looks like a reasonable system overall. Maybe a
| bit bloated on the node.js side (what isn't?), but I wonder
| if they just had that toolchain already in place/experience
| with it, even though it's overkill for the system as-is. Or
| maybe they just googled how to do networking and copy/pasted
| the top Stack Overflow answer that included Socket.IO.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Did you figure out what the green graph on the right of the
| display represents? :)
| zikohh wrote:
| Do a follow up plan with the grafana bit. I'm intrigued
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I really hope we'll look back at this fad of android powered wifi
| domestic IoT devices one day and laugh about how silly it all
| was.
|
| Not an IoT hater. I've worked for IoT companies, and there's a
| lot of very smart embedded engineers doing very cool things in
| the space. But an old android tablet installed in the wall with a
| WiFI point? oh dear.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| To be fair, that particular Android device is still installed
| and at least marginally useful. How many other Android devices
| from that era can say that?
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Also back then, you can fit an Android OS (pre-lollipop)
| inside a USB and plug it in a TV. It was really cool.
| ilaksh wrote:
| What do you recommend as an alternative?
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| basic electronics, mostly
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| You should host your write-up on the device itself in case your
| domain succumbs to the sands of time
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Hey Nikita, that was an excellent read. It felt like a pivotal
| scene in a movie that would change the course of the succeeding
| narrative. I envy the ability to write so nicely and clearly,
| making it enjoyable for most generally technical people and
| keeping us engaged. I will watch out for more articles.
| rideontime wrote:
| Hi Brajeshwar, that was a nice comment. It convinced me to read
| the article, and I'm glad I did.
| tome wrote:
| Same! This is my favourite of all recent HN posts.
| chefandy wrote:
| Weird to see some micromuse thing listed as the service listed
| for 1534. I worked for them back in like 2006 and we got eaten by
| IBM/Tivoli and I don't believe they kept the name for anything? I
| always knew nobody really updated those but man, _really_ nobody
| updates those.
| Nursie wrote:
| Hah, weird to see micromuse come up. I started working for them
| two weeks before the acquisition was announced!
| chefandy wrote:
| Ha! I did support there for Proviso-- the product of a
| startup that Micromuse had acquired not too long before the
| IBM acquisition. I started in between the acquisitions.
| alexfoo wrote:
| 1534 was the port used by the license manager (elmd - Elan
| license manager). The bane of many a Netcool installation until
| we joyfully ripped it out post IBM acquisition.
|
| -Alex (Micromuse 1997 to 2021).
| chefandy wrote:
| I was wondering what it was. I only worked on Proviso out of
| Massachusetts so I never even touched anything that was
| _Netcool proper._
| alexfoo wrote:
| I think I was in Lowell for a few weeks helping out on some
| App Packs when I heard about the acquisition. Working with
| JFK? and another guy with a short nickname that escapes me
| right now. Wedge?
| BubbleRings wrote:
| I like the part where you flip the neighbor's power off for a
| couple seconds. That'll teach 'em to get a UPS!
| borissk wrote:
| Next step - format all their SSDs to teach them to make backups
| :)
| laplab wrote:
| I felt pretty bad about it, but my curiosity took over :) It
| was only the power for their Energy Manager though, not the
| power to the entire apartment!
|
| In any case, I doubt they were actually using this Energy
| Manager thing anyway. The number one feature listed on websites
| selling these things is "Earn two code credits under the code
| for sustainable homes". I assume you do not need to teach
| people how to use the thing to earn these credits...
|
| https://uk-metering.net/products/netthings-energy-manager
| virexene wrote:
| that was only the power to the energy measuring device i
| believe.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Correct, since its only on a 3A fuse it would have blown as
| soon as the owner tried to make a coffee, if the house power
| literally ran through it.
|
| Most likely this is just a current clamp style meter. Most of
| these kinds of meters are.
| borissk wrote:
| Curios what was the price the developer paid for these devices.
| k1t wrote:
| While I doubt they paid the retail price, and the price has
| probably increased in the 9 years since installation, the
| current price is PS385.00.
|
| https://uk-metering.net/products/netthings-energy-manager
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Turns out, I need a 3A fuse, so I ordered one from Amazon_
|
| OP might want to watch Louis Rossmann's video about buying things
| from Amazon.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU
| Symbiote wrote:
| I was surprised someone would order this from Amazon, rather
| than get one from the nearest convenience shop or supermarket.
| Those places _only_ sell the normal thing for local use.
|
| I was further surprised that someone would be worried about
| installing the fuse. Is he also worried about plugging things
| in generally?
| xattt wrote:
| I see the recommendation every so often to buy a fuse
| locally, but I don't live in Akihabara.
|
| I _HAVE_ to buy online electronic components, and usually it
| ends up being Amazon, because other national suppliers insist
| on charging $15 for courier shipping on a $2 part.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The person lives in an apartment in Britain. Apartments are
| only built in towns and cities, and are generally within
| walking distance of convenience shops and supermarkets.
|
| Every plug in Britain has a fuse, so they are about as easy
| to buy as replacement light bulbs. Probably on the same
| shelf.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| This is fascinating! I did not know this about british
| plugs.
|
| Why is that? Is it a safety measure?
| tjohns wrote:
| British household electrical systems are normally built
| as one large ring circuit, originally in order to save
| copper after WW2.
|
| This means you don't have breakers for each branch
| circuit (there are no branch circuits), just the single
| mains breaker for the house. This single breaker is too
| large to trip from a short from occuring in the smaller
| wires inside an appliance.
|
| So each plug (or hardwired device) needs it's own
| dedicated smaller fuse instead.
| zarzavat wrote:
| To add: Many pre-90s buildings don't even have circuit
| breakers, they have fuse boxes with fuse wire (different
| fuse to the one being talked about). Literally just a
| piece of wire that burns out at a certain current and
| breaks the connection. You "reset" it by putting a new
| piece of wire in.
|
| The second fuse at the plug allows using a narrower gauge
| of wire in the device's cord. Let's say you have a lamp
| with a 3A fuse, the cord only needs to be able to handle
| 3A, so then it can be lighter and cheaper. If it had to
| handle the same amperage as the circuit it's plugged into
| then it would be seriously impractical and expensive.
|
| Of course there are modern ways of solving this but fuses
| are dirt cheap and already implemented.
| outofmyshed wrote:
| My last place had a 1970s Wylex board, which at least had
| plug-in MCB modules that replaced the fuse wire holders
| and can be reset. However given you can still buy fuse
| wire in DIY stores there still must be installations out
| there that need it. Shudder.
| Angostura wrote:
| I recently replaced the old fusewire plugs with MCB
| modules. Really didn't fancy trying to wind a bit of wire
| around the terminals in the cellar in the dark :)
| Symbiote wrote:
| My parents' house still has fuses with fuse wire. They
| had it rewired when they bought it in the 1980s, and that
| was the standard then.
|
| A fuse blowing is so rare I don't think they're worried
| by the inconvenience. It might happen every 5 years or
| more.
| outofmyshed wrote:
| Houses built post-1960s (with more than one floor) will
| have more than one socket ring each protected by a
| circuit breaker at the distribution board, usually one
| per floor for general sockets, with a separate one for
| the kitchen, and usually individual 32A breakers for
| things like electric ovens and hobs.
|
| Lighting rings are also separate, usually on 6A breakers.
| We cheap out on cable by not running neutrals to the
| switches, which causes nerds headaches when they want to
| install generic smart light switches.
|
| My house is reasonably large (worked hard, all my own
| money) and has a 20-way distribution board with separate
| socket and light rings for groups of rooms. It's handy
| for isolation purposes.
|
| More recent builds' rings will be protected by a
| combination of MCBs and RCDs, or individual RCBOs (now
| the cost has come down) which combine the two functions
| and is ultimately the safest option for most situations.
|
| Individually fusing plugs (and in the case of high-draw
| appliances like washing machines and dryers, protecting
| with a fused socket) is still a very good idea. And don't
| get me started on earthing practices in other
| countries...
| xattt wrote:
| Im curious as to why the practice continues. Are any
| houses built with branch circuits?
| zarzavat wrote:
| Let's say you desperately need a cup of tea. So you buy a
| cheap 4-way extension cable and 4 electric kettles. You
| fill all the kettles and turn them on at the same time
| for maximum tea-making throughput.
|
| The combined load of all the kettles exceeds the rating
| of the extension cable.
|
| With a fuse: the fuse in the extension cable plug blows,
| you buy another fuse, and learn some patience.
|
| Without a fuse: the extension cable overheats and causes
| a fire, your house burns down, and worst of all you still
| don't have any tea.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Without a fuse, the circuit breaker trips and then you go
| reset it and hopefully learn not to plug in so many
| kettles next time.
|
| You would have to be a maniac to wire up a house without
| fuses or breakers.
| oasisaimlessly wrote:
| From sibling comment:
|
| > British household electrical systems are normally built
| as one large ring circuit, originally in order to save
| copper after WW2.
|
| > This means you don't have breakers for each branch
| circuit (there are no branch circuits), just the single
| mains breaker for the house.
| manarth wrote:
| In the UK, there's typically one ring circuit and one
| lighting circuit per storey, a separate ring circuit for
| the kitchen, and dedicated circuits for large current
| draws such as an electric oven or hob, shower, or
| immersion heater.
|
| Each circuit would have a dedicated MCB (Miniature
| Circuit Breaker) which will trip if too much current is
| drawn. The standard MCB rating for a ring circuit in the
| UK is 32A.
| Angostura wrote:
| Your 6-way extension strip cable has still caught on fire
| thiugh
| xattt wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying. I took the fuse in the article to
| mean something like an appliance fuse, which for some
| reason, was conveniently located in an accessible place.
| neither_color wrote:
| For US readers: The big orange or blue store are probably
| better for you for anything electric that would go in your
| walls. I went down a rabbit hole of amazon clones of popular
| brand things like switches/dimmers/outlets and what I found is
| dubious UL certificates shared by multiple "brands".
| inetknght wrote:
| > _what I found is dubious UL certificates shared by multiple
| "brands"_
|
| Have you reported it to UL?
|
| https://www.ul.com/resources/market-surveillance-departments
| ikt wrote:
| That's what immediately stood out to me, why the hell would you
| order it from Amazon instead of literally driving 5 minutes
| down the road to pick one up from any electronics or hardware
| store? what a horribly inefficient way to do things
| daviddever23box wrote:
| Security through obscurity, I suppose? Seems to be a common thing
| with UK-based home or energy automation edge devices....
| user_7832 wrote:
| > C in IoT stands for "cost-effective" I guess.
|
| Thanks, that got a laugh out of me.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The old joke asks what is the S in HTTPS, what is the S in
| SFTP, what is the S in IoT.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Also works for the P (privacy).
| mkl wrote:
| Protocol.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Maybe if you could find an example other than PGP/GPG.
| Ayesh wrote:
| I'm gonna steal this to use in my casual conversations!
| anotherevan wrote:
| I've heard it phrased more directly as, "The S in IoT stands
| for security."
| tim333 wrote:
| Slightly surprisingly there's one still for sale. PS385+VAT.
| "worth two code credits under the Code for Sustainable Homes."
| Further googling finds "The Government scrapped the Code for
| Sustainable Homes and the national net zero carbon homes
| standard in 2015".
|
| https://uk-metering.net/products/netthings-energy-manager
| geon wrote:
| I don't really get his point. Wifi is super cheap. You can get
| a full stm32 with builtin wifi for like $6 for a single one.
| Installing a cable would be far more expensive in labor.
| layman51 wrote:
| I recognize the forum post as being Salesforce Chatter. So it is
| one of those Experience Cloud sites.
| azalemeth wrote:
| A fun read! I feel compelled to say that all British (type G
| plugs) _have_ to be fused as the ring main has a maximum current
| of (typically) 30A yet the plug and socket maximum is 13A. So
| every appliance plug is fused, and the consumer unit has an RCD
| on most accessible circuits in addition to a circuit breaker.
|
| Some plugs don't make the fuse obvious, but the traditional
| values are 1A, 3A, 5A, 7A, 10A and 13A (iirc -- for some reason!)
|
| There are actually many features of the British and European
| wiring system that I think are really quite good. The device is
| closely related to a "smart meter", which are being slowly rolled
| out -- the UI is similar to those rolled out nationally, but it's
| a bit different.
|
| Keep exploring (and don't play with the mains!)
| Symbiote wrote:
| Fuses in plugs in Britain are either 3A or 13A, by regulation.
| 5A used to be another value, but is no longer used (though
| replacement 5A fuses are easily available.)
|
| I've never seen 7A or 10A fuses, and I was the kind of boy to
| rummage through my grandparent's workshops. ..
| leoedin wrote:
| I've had 10A fused cables before - IEC leads are pretty
| common. https://www.cablewarehouse.co.uk/10a-uk-plug-to-
| iec-c13-main... for example.
| azalemeth wrote:
| They are available in the sizes I mentioned, plus 2A -
| https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1683350.pdf - and your
| comment made me actually look up the regulation out of
| curiosity as I know I have seen some of those other sizes in
| the lab! The wiring regs are enforced in statute by The Plugs
| and Sockets (Etc) Statutory Instrument 1994 [1] which
| mandates the compliance of two British standards, BS 1362 and
| BS 1363 for fuses and plugs respectively. The exact wording
| of BS 1363 (at least the version of it I can access) is
|
| > [...] all rewirable plugs shall be marked on the engagement
| surface with the rated current. All non-rewirable plugs shall
| be marked with the rated current of the fuse link fitted,
| which shall not exceed the value given in Table 2 for the
| appropriate size of flexible cord
|
| Table 2 itself prescribes a _maximum_ fuse rating of 3 A or
| "(5 A)" [see below] for a conductor cross-sectional area of
| 0.5 mm^2, and 13 A for all larger conductor areas (0.75, 1,
| 1.25, and 1.5 mm^2). It is entitled "Rated current and
| maximum fuse rating in normal use, and load for flexing and
| cord grip tests related to size of flexible cord"
|
| > [...] The figure in brackets indicates the fuse rating when
| a non rewirable plug is used with certain types of equipment
| where the use of a 5 A fuse link is necessary because of the
| high instantaneous inrush current
|
| So there we go, I think - we're all sort of right. Thanks for
| sending me down this rabbit hole!
|
| [1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1994/1768/made
| alanfranz wrote:
| Why don't you use a 13A circuit breaker in UK? That's what we
| do in the rest of the EU, I think.
|
| There's a main input to the house which usually is around
| 15A-30A , then we've got multiple sublines with individual
| circuit breakers, typically 10A or 16A.
| alanfranz wrote:
| I just read up about radial vs ring circuits; I had seen ring
| circuits only in industrial contexts here in Italy, so the
| fused approach makes sense I suppose.
| leoedin wrote:
| That seems really low. Most houses in the UK have a 60 - 100A
| supply. Just my stove alone can draw about 7.3kW - about 32A.
| alanfranz wrote:
| Probably depends on the country. In Italy we usually employ
| natural gas stoves and we use natural gas furnaces for
| heating, so normally you get a 3kw to 6kw max inbound
| power. I think you can easily get to 10kw, but above that
| it's quite difficult.
| leoedin wrote:
| Ring circuits may have made sense in the past, but they really
| don't any more. It's basically impossible to test a ring
| circuit in place - you have to break the connection somewhere
| to ensure the ring is complete. That's a huge downside. They
| were conceived at a time when circuit breakers were expensive
| and wire was in short supply - neither is true now, yet people
| are still installing them.
| Angostura wrote:
| The weirdest bit for me was when he ordered a 3am fuse from
| Amazon, rather than just wandering down to the corner shop for
| a little blister pack that has 13amp, 5amp and 3amp fuses.
| Usually just next to the sewing kits
| belinder wrote:
| Cool article! You have a small typo towards the end, coincedence
| -> coincidence
| xydac wrote:
| this is first time i have read something completely in a long
| span of time !!
| PNWChris wrote:
| I agree, I really enjoyed the author's curiosity and writing
| style!
| kelnos wrote:
| > _There were two strings printed with labels "SSID" and "Pwd". I
| froze in horror. They wouldn't dare. It is literally 3 meter
| distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this
| complexity..._
|
| Not surprising at all. I would expect that a lot of these are
| bought as retrofits, and not as a part of new construction.
| Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and they
| don't want to put that barrier to sale in front of them. And you
| can get a good-enough WiFi chipset for a few bucks these days.
|
| > _I need a 3A fuse [...] After installation, I checked the
| temperature of the fuse multiple times during the day to get at
| least some indication that things are not going to get worse. It
| worked fine for a more than a week now, but I still do not
| recommend experiments like this to anyone._
|
| Probably don't need to be so worried here. If it's a 3A fuse, the
| entirety of your apartment's mains power is not running through
| it. A 3A fuse would burn out in a fraction of a second if you
| tried to do that.
|
| Also, oh, man, Jazelle. I'd forgotten about that. Hardware
| support for Java bytecode... that did not pan out well.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Probably don 't need to be so worried here. If it's a 3A
| fuse, the entirety of your apartment's mains power is not
| running through it._
|
| If it's a "3A fuse" that doesn't blow at 6A or worse, then it
| will get _very_ hot (fire hazard) if /when there's a short
| regardless of the distance to the mains power.
|
| If it truly is a 3A fuse, then great. If it's bought from
| Amazon then I doubt it's truly a 3A fuse.
| naitgacem wrote:
| Louis Rossman over at YouTube has been going over this fuses
| thing from Amazon. All the fuses he tried from top-results
| didn't blow until he put 4x or 5x the current rating through
| them.
| stavros wrote:
| Really? What the hell? That seems extremely unsafe, why are
| people doing this? Are 12A fuses cheaper to make than 3A
| fuses?
| kevincox wrote:
| Probably not. But precision is expensive. A 3A +- 0.1A
| fuse will be more expensive to make them a 3A +- 6A fuse.
| And of course a customer will be upset with a 3A - 2A =
| 1A fuse so they really make a 9A +- 6A fuse and sell it
| as 3A.
|
| So if you are "lucky" you can pass 12A though it no
| problem.
|
| (Numbers make up for illustration.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Fuse needs to protect against 2 main things:
|
| 1) a dead short in the circuit. Fuse will blow pretty much
| instantly.
|
| 2) an overload on the circuit. Fuse will blow sooner or later
| depending on how great the load excess is. If the fuse is
| rated at 3A, it's not going to be fine at 2.9A and then
| instantly blow at 3.1A. You'd need actual current monitoring
| to do that.
|
| And some fuses are "delayed" to allow an overload for a few
| moments, such as when starting a motor.
|
| None of this disputes that Amazon is well known to sell
| garbage, and not just limited to fuses. That's why I don't
| buy anything there.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Also, too: Wifi has inherent galvanic isolation with a wide
| gap.
|
| It isn't strictly necessary, as anyone here obviously knows,
| but it can be a cost-effective way to isolate the [electrical]
| pokey-bits from the [meat-based] pokey-bits, and to avoid loops
| when things go wrong.
|
| Wireless has uses beyond just eliminating wires.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| > A 3A fuse would burn out in a fraction of a second if you
| tried to do that.
|
| he bought it on Amazon. He has every reason to be worried that
| it won't burn out. Louis Rossman did a video[0] where he put 8
| amps through a 2 amp fuse and left the room for quite a long
| time, I think it was several minutes with 8a going through a 2a
| fuse.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU
| userbinator wrote:
| Fuses are notoriously imprecise, even "fast blow" ones:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG11rVcMOnY
| dns_snek wrote:
| I'm not going to watch the whole video but it doesn't seem
| like it supports the point you're trying to make.
|
| > How long does it take for your 400mA multimeter fuse to
| blow at 600mA?
|
| > The amazing unpredictability of fusing current ratings at
| low overloads.
|
| It makes a point of saying that fuses are imprecise, i.e.
| that a fuse likely won't blow when 600mA of current passes
| through a 400mA fuse for a few seconds.
|
| What Rossmann discovered was that fuses from Amazon took 4x
| the rated current for minutes. That's many orders of
| magnitude out of spec.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > 4x the rated current
|
| > That's many orders of magnitude
|
| An order of magnitude is 10 times, in my timeline.
| dns_snek wrote:
| The relationship between the amount of overload and how
| fast the fuse is supposed to blow is quadratic, not
| linear. As an example with somewhat made-up numbers, at
| 1x it might take hours to blow, at 2x it might take a
| minute or two, at 3x it shouldn't take more than a second
| and at 4x it should be nearly instant.
|
| If it's supposed to blow in 0.1 seconds when overloaded
| by 4x, then taking 10 minutes is many orders of magnitude
| in my book. While that fuse is taking its sweet time,
| wiring or other components are being heated out of spec
| (16x more heat at 4x the current), potentially posing a
| fire hazard or damaging the device it's supposed to be
| protecting.
| fulladder wrote:
| That is very disturbing. Does Amazon reimburse you when your
| house burns down?
| eastbound wrote:
| Seriously, I think they would refund the fuse since you are
| not satisfied.
|
| I think the only way for Amazon to stop organizing
| countraband would be if dozens of people die in each
| country and it makes a big media mess and public
| prosecutors finally rule that Amazon is responsible for
| mingling and smuggling the products in-country.
|
| Which will impact all marketplaces, requiring
| Craigslist/Leboncoin/Gumtree to asses the liability of the
| sellers on the marketplace.
|
| Which could be a good thing.
| rokweom wrote:
| In general, people have the wrong idea about how fuses work.
| They're not supposed to blow at their rated current, they're
| supposed to withstand it _indefinitely_ , and only blow at
| much higher currents. Look up any datasheet from a well
| established manufacturer and see for yourself (like this one
| from littelfuse:
| https://littelfuse.com/products/fuses/cartridge-
| fuses/5x20mm... )
| megous wrote:
| People also have a wrong idea about how buying electronic
| components on Amazon/Aliexpress/eBay/etc. works. You buy a
| few of the same, test them, then use them if they work.
| Otherwise ask for refund.
|
| Otherwise you're up for a big surprise that all your
| TL081's are LM356 instead, or that mosfet you bought has 3x
| the Rds(on) than expected, or that your fuse doesn't work.
| jart wrote:
| Amazon had one of their buildings in California shut down a
| few months ago by the fire department when a generator
| started smoking. It was probably due to a bad fuse they
| bought off Amazon. https://signalscv.com/2023/07/fire-breaks-
| out-at-amazon/ That's how blinded by their avarice Amazon has
| become; they can't even protect their own house. Notice how
| the Nilight fuses (https://amzn.to/3S06G2n) are still listed,
| even after a YouTube video with 300,000 views demonstrated
| that their 2 ampere fuse takes 10 amps to blow. I even had an
| electrical fire in my house recently, due to components that
| I purchased off Amazon. I know Amazon monitors Hacker News PR
| closely, since they took down those ChatGPT generated
| listings within minutes of us posting them here. Yet they do
| nothing about product listings that put our lives, and their
| own lives, in critical danger.
| ayewo wrote:
| > _I know Amazon monitors Hacker News PR closely, since
| they took down those ChatGPT generated listings within
| minutes of us posting them here._
|
| Like other engineers at Big Tech, Amazon Engineers also
| read HN and the post in question happened to be on the HN
| front page around the lunch break of a work day, IIRC.
|
| It's easy to imagine one or more Amazon engineers
| internally pinging the team responsible for Amazon listings
| hence the appearance that Amazon was able to take down/hide
| those ChatGPT generated listings in less than an hour of it
| landing here.
| kelnos wrote:
| Well yeah, there's that. My assumption about the worry the
| author expressed was that it was just an "I'm a little
| uncomfortable with mains power" type worry, not "did I buy a
| crappy part that's going to explode" type worry. If it was
| the latter, that's, well... entirely avoidable.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and
| they don't want to put that barrier to sale in front of them.
|
| It also makes it more convenient to compromise the device from
| across the street (or across town with a directional antenna).
| Though of course that's not a problem if your security is up to
| par and the device continues to receive regular security
| updates, and we can only surmise that the author has discovered
| a rare outlier in this space where that is not the case.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Though of course that 's not a problem if your security is
| up to par and the device continues to receive regular
| security updates_
|
| Just remember that the S in IoT stands for security :)
| injidup wrote:
| Secure Home
| bbarnett wrote:
| _device continues to receive regular security updates_
|
| Have to reply to this, and my response was covered a bit by
| your statement of "security up to par".
|
| Nothing should be considered secure. All those bug bounties
| are to entice black hats, into giving up juicy pre-0day
| vulnerabilities.
|
| So just because a device is up to date with security updates,
| we all must understand, there are countless bugs unknown,
| needing to be patched, and often, being discovered by those
| that will never tell, never disclose, never report, and only
| use them for nefarious purposes.
|
| This is why security is nothing without monitoring.
|
| And why nothing is ever "safe", only likely "more safe" due
| to a security update.
|
| Consider everything that is network connected as compromised.
| Everything.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Consider everything that is network connected as
| compromised. Everything.
|
| This doesn't seem like useful advice.
|
| If you know something is compromised, you're going to want
| to stop using it and build a clean system etc. You can't
| just do that continuously the instant you've built the new
| system.
|
| Likewise, how does monitoring even work? Every device and
| app wants to phone home to some random server. The
| connection will be encrypted and even if it wasn't it could
| be some arbitrary custom protocol you'd have to spend
| several hours to reverse engineer. You could just block
| them all but that will cause massive breakage and possibly
| impair security when the thing you're blocking is whatever
| thing's security update mechanism.
|
| What's a solution someone can actually use?
| bbarnett wrote:
| _This doesn 't seem like useful advice._
|
| Understanding reality is always useful advice. Wishing
| reality isn't as it is, won't help.
|
| The mindset I have described, is how one must view all
| electronics. Unsecure.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| But what does that mean in practice? Throw them all into
| the fire and go back to pen and paper?
| bbarnett wrote:
| If that is your choice.
|
| You may also understand that your devices are not secure,
| take steps to reduce risk, and so on.
|
| Why do you think yubikeys are a useful thing? Or hardware
| crypto wallets?
|
| Devices that reduce risk, that are designed with the
| thought that connected computers aren't secure, can never
| be secure.
|
| Know where risk sits.
| mrmanner wrote:
| I think this discussion mostly comes down to how we
| interpret the word "secure". Do we mean "zero risk",
| "nothing can go bad", "no potential attack, ever"?
|
| Or do we mean "low enough risk for this thing , here,
| now"? I prefer the latter, even if that implies that
| statements like "this thing is secure" are somewhat
| useless due to the subjectivity.
| pmontra wrote:
| Same thing as the security of the lock on our doors. We
| know that if somebody really want to get into our homes
| they will. In the case of IoT and computers add to it the
| automation of the attack.
|
| What do we do with our homes? Tradeoffs.
|
| We put some valuables in banks, we keep some at home. We
| insure precious items, if we do have them. We curse when
| burglars steal from us.
|
| We also install curtains so people outside cannot look at
| us and at what we are doing at home. There are several
| level of protections to do the same thing for networks
| and devices. Of course vulnerabilities mean that they are
| not perfect. Curtains are not perfect too. Add to that
| imaging through walls with WiFi or mobile network
| signals, but that's still fringe at best even if you
| should read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37469920
|
| So, tradeoffs and be conscious of them.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I agree with your first part, but not with your second.
| It really depends what you use, you can easily build up a
| while home automation system that doesn't phone home or
| require internet at all
| a2800276 wrote:
| > we can only surmise that the author has discovered a rare
| outlier in this space where that is not the case.
|
| Exactly what I was thinking! What luck that the author found
| the single IoT device out there that's a cobbled together
| piece of bodged electronics designed by a graduate from a
| webdev bootcamp with a Corel Draw focus. A device that, while
| only ~15 years old is not only hopelessly useless, but also
| obsolete and insecure.
|
| It's a good thing all other consumer IoT device manufacturers
| think about and prioritize security, longevity! Also, that
| customers nowadays are more focused on installing something
| fit-for-purpose and sustainable once than buying the cheapest
| shit possible with the blinkiest LEDs.
|
| I shudder to think about how long they tried to get the
| string-and-cups based telephone to work in my building until
| the 1930's when they installed the copper still used today
| for DSL. Or how terrible the paper-straw based water system
| must have been up to the 1890's when they realized investing
| in metal pipes has advantages. So glad the days of short-term
| thinking are behind us.
| eastbound wrote:
| I'm passionate about the problem of software maintenance:
|
| - Can we solve this with some companies dedicated to
| maintaining simple code (1 probe, 2 charts for each IoT, or
| more if the IoT subscribed for more) multiplied by 10k
| different IoT objects over 30 years?
|
| - How would upgrading all of them look like? Can we batch
| the upgrade of NPM's package.json? Can we define a minimum
| toolset, say NPM+Next+React, for long-term support?
|
| - How can we keep software engineers passionate for that
| software over dozens of years? Can the challenge of
| upgrading and migrating to newer frameworks and applying
| security upgrade be ever a trove of genius and a competiton
| of the best hacks?
|
| For the moment, when it's done, it's all GitHub Actions.
| Released in 2018. Well, not a good start. Plus everyone has
| a different pile of ... in their actions, it's all custom
| code, nothing is standardized, and each new IoT requires a
| new guy writing new ones.
|
| - Is this already done in some part of OSS (openWrt?) and
| how do they deal with the boredom of engineers?
| speed_spread wrote:
| You have exceeded your weekly sarcasm quota. Your internet
| license has been suspended pending review by the serious
| committee.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, but manufacturers -- as we should well know by now --
| don't particularly care about that.
|
| And for a device like this -- a rare one where it seems they
| sold it without any kind of online subscription service --
| their goal is to sell units, and telling people they'll have
| to cut holes in their walls and run wires (for most people
| this probably means hiring someone) is certainly going to
| sell fewer units.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _Also, oh, man, Jazelle. I 'd forgotten about that. Hardware
| support for Java bytecode... that did not pan out well._
|
| I'd love someday to learn more about why Jazelle failed.
|
| The first SoC I worked on almost 20 years ago was built around
| an ARM926EJ-S, just like in the story. It was built for Nokia,
| who used Symbian OS [1], and supported user-installable apps
| written against Java Micro Edition [2].
|
| The utter mess of Symbian's app discovery and installation, I
| suspect, was a prime reason Apple created their App Store for
| the iPhone.
|
| Nevertheless, the fundamental concept of HW-accelerated Java
| apps doesn't sound crazy. What happened? Were they just stuck
| with a sinking ship, Symbian?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Micro_Edition
| alexambarch wrote:
| > Also, oh, man, Jazelle. I'd forgotten about that. Hardware
| support for Java bytecode... that did not pan out well.
|
| As someone who was too young to be paying any attention during
| this time, what were some of the reasons this didn't pan out?
| Java seems so dominant looking back that I'm surprised
| something like this wouldn't have been a success.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I have also wondered this for years, and always was told
| "because JITs work better", but that felt a bit handwavy.
| Luckily for both of us David Chisnall _just_ published an
| article on ACM about designing ISAs that properly explains
| the reasoning behind Jazelle and why it did not work in the
| long run:
|
| > _Small code is also important_ [for a simple single-issue
| in-order core]. _A small microcontroller core may be as small
| as 10KB of SRAM (static random access memory). A small
| decrease in encoding efficiency can dwarf everything when
| considering the total area cost: If you need 20 percent more
| SRAM for your code, then that can be equivalent to doubling
| the core area. Unfortunately, this constraint almost directly
| contradicts the previous one_ [about decoder complexity].
| _This is why Thumb-2 and RISC-V focused on a variable length
| encoding that is simple to decode: They save code size
| without significantly increasing decoder complexity._
|
| > _This is a complex tradeoff that is made even more
| complicated when considering multiple languages. For example,
| Arm briefly supported Jazelle DBX (direct bytecode execution)
| on some of its mobile cores. This involved decoding Java
| bytecode directly, with Java VM (virtual machine) state
| mapped into specific registers. A Java add instruction,
| implemented in a software interpreter, requires at least one
| load to read the instruction, a conditional branch to find
| the right handler, and then another to perform the add. With
| Jazelle, the load happens via instruction fetch, and the add
| would add the two registers that represented the top of the
| Java stack. This was far more efficient than an interpreter
| but did not perform as well as a JIT (just-in-time) compiler,
| which could do a bit more analysis between Java bytecodes._
|
| > _Jazelle DBX is an interesting case study because it made
| sense only in the context of a specific set of source
| languages and microarchitectures. It provided no benefits for
| languages that didn 't run in a Java VM. By the time devices
| had more than about 4MB of RAM, Jazelle was outperformed by a
| JIT. Within that envelope, however, it was a good design
| choice._
|
| > _Jazelle DBX should serve as a reminder that optimizations
| for one size of core can be incredibly bad choices for other
| cores_
|
| So: a decent JIT works better if you can afford the overhead
| of the JIT. Jazelle was only a good idea in a very brief
| period of time when this wasn't true, and even then only if
| you insist on running a Java VM.
|
| [0] https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3639445
| bitwize wrote:
| The Lisp machine failed because Lisp compiler technology got
| better and better at targeting generic 32-bit CPU hardware,
| which was becoming increasingly cheap and plentiful. So the
| benefits of having all this custom hardware to specially
| execute Lisp code were nullified -- leaving only the costs.
|
| The same thing happened to Java in hardware. It seemed like a
| good idea at the time because it allowed developers to target
| a language they were already familiar with, and present an
| alternative to Wintel -- especially when you realize that
| Java was _all the rage_ as a sort of universal programming
| environment, and in particular J2ME was a big deal for proto-
| "smart" phones before the iPhone came along. But embedded
| Java didn't really pan out, memory and CPU time got cheaper,
| and compiler and JIT tech improved to the point where there
| was just no benefit to adding the hardware it took to decode
| Java instructions. So Jazelle was deprecated and replaced
| with something called ThumbEE, which was a more generic
| framework based on ARM's Thumb instruction set for running
| code for an abstract machine, providing features like
| automatic null-pointer checking and that. Like you could set
| up a ThumbEE environment for running Python or .NET code in
| addition to Java. Nowadays even ThumbEE is deprecated.
| Neither feature appears in ARMv8 processors, for instance.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Because it be behind an NDA and a paywall and the cost of
| getting the info was not worth the speedup.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| >> To be honest, the whole thing was a bit scary, since I was
| very close to the mains
|
| I laughed at this. Changing a fuse is... a bit scary? They
| literally teach this in elementary school in the U.K. - or they
| did. As you say, no need to fretfully check the fuse - either
| it blows or it doesn't, and you'll know when it does. At least
| he didn't find the receptacle holding a dead fuse, carefully
| wrapped in the ceremonial aluminium shroud of eternal life and
| certain death, which is a crime I may have committed in my
| younger, more fire-prone years.
|
| I find it interesting how uncomfortable some people are outside
| of their comfort zones - but then I am a person who spends his
| life sticking his nose in stuff he has no business with.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't know how old the author is, but I'm not surprised
| when people even 10-15 years younger than I am (I'm in my
| 40s) shy away from digging into the guts of how things work.
|
| I feel like I was at the tail end of when it was ok to
| experiment with technology as a kid and teen. The early '00s
| brought much more in the way of disposable, locked-down
| devices. Kids growing up today (despite the educational push
| of orgs like the Raspberry Pi Foundation) are presented with
| hermetically-sealed devices that present a sanitized
| interface. Manufacturers explicitly don't want their
| customers taking things apart, discovering how they work, or
| tinkering with them in any way... and often even try to put
| legal barriers in place to keep people from doing stuff like
| this.
|
| This is a far cry from when I was very young (and before I
| was born) when computers and kits would come with full
| schematics and datasheets!
| pmontra wrote:
| Yeah, the author makes this pun
|
| > C in IoT stands for "cost-effective" I guess
|
| but it's actually C for cableless.
| j1elo wrote:
| > _tcf-agent is [...] probably the second biggest security
| vulnerability after passwordless root SSH._
|
| I thought that passwordless SSH is actually a good idea in
| general for servers? Assuming, that is, that the public/private
| key login mechanism is used as the alternative to passwords.
| bombcar wrote:
| Passwordless meaning a blank root password allowing login with
| no credentials- not public/private key.
| ncann wrote:
| > TCF seems to be closedly tied to Eclipse ecosystem. The Getting
| Started guide suggests several plugins for Eclipse as the main
| way to interact with tcf-agent. I tried installing these plugins
| on a new version of Eclipse and it is absolutely impossible.
| There are dependency issues everywhere and when you actually try
| to install the missing dependencies, Eclipse does not let you
| because they conflict with some other dependencies.
|
| I laughed out loud at this part. Some things never changed I
| guess.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| This is also what happens whenever I try to install anything
| that uses the package managers for python or perl. For some
| reason, these two always fail with messages about conflicting,
| non-existent, or failed-to-compile dependencies. I work in
| bioinformatics - everything is in python or perl. My life is
| pain.
| metadat wrote:
| _> There were two strings printed with labels "SSID" and "Pwd". I
| froze in horror. They wouldn't dare. It is literally 3 meter
| distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this
| complexity..._
|
| Responding with disbelief seems a little over the top. It isn't
| typically easy to run wires in pre-built spaces. Sounds like a
| resilient design to me.
| 65a wrote:
| Not resiliant, because in the 10-20 year lifespan of a home
| electrical panel, at least one critical vulnerability is going
| to allow complete remote pwnage of that device. It's stupid IOT
| garbage that belongs in ewaste, especially with a trivial
| remote code execution mechanism.
| rini17 wrote:
| Layperson will always prefer wireless. "But what if I need to
| move the tablet?"
|
| Never bet against convenience.
| leoedin wrote:
| There's not really much those devices can do - they're just
| metering, and don't have an active internet connection.
|
| WiFi isn't a bad choice of communications protocol.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I recently got into microcontrollers and one of the most
| surprising things to me was the low cost and small size of
| ESP32s with wifi. Having grown up at a time when it wasn't
| unusual to buy a PCI card for your desktop computer that added
| wifi capability I had assumed that we'd still be looking at a
| target large device that goes for ~$20+ to get WiFi. Explicitly
| thinking about the ubiquity of cheap devices with wifi around
| me would immediately correct this view, but I had never done
| that and I'm sure many others haven't either
| efitz wrote:
| Did you ever fix the cost per kWh?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > Turns out, I need a 3A fuse, so I ordered one from Amazon and
| installed it the next day.
|
| Ummm. 3A is 720W. If that tiny box dissipated that much, the
| entire closet full of them would be a literal oven. Besides
| there's not much point in an energy meter using that much power.
| It defeats the purpose. It's like testing matches :P it'll be 10W
| at most. Even peak inrush current would be nowhere near that
| high.
|
| 1A fuse would be more than enough.
|
| > To be honest, the whole thing was a bit scary, since I was very
| close to the mains.
|
| Nah this is all installed very cleanly.
| hales wrote:
| Depends on the fuse time rating and the inrush current for the
| power supply (which can sometimes be more than 10A). Some 1A
| fuses might occasionally blow when you turn the unit on.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Hm yreah but if it's 10A it will be really short like <
| 100ms. A physical melt fuse should have no issues with that.
| Most general-purpose fuses are really slow.
| alphabetter wrote:
| The 3A fuse is due to the way the UK wiring system works rather
| than what is optimal for this device.
|
| All appliances in the UK have a fuse where they connect to the
| building wiring, normally in the plug, but can be in a fixed
| fuse-holder like this device. Somewhere in the process it was
| recognized that having lots of different fuse values would be
| confusing and awkward for users, so these fuses are the same
| size and always one of three standard values: 13A, 5A, and 3A.
| As noted elsewhere, you can buy these particular fuses in UK
| supermarkets and convenience stores.
|
| If 3A is too high for the appliance then what the designer has
| to do is to fit it with a flex rated at 3A so that is protected
| by the fuse at the plug-end and then add additional, lower
| current, protection at the device end.
|
| The UK system is clever and has subtle details like the
| standard fuse values which were good at the time it was
| introduced. But, it is also rather over-engineered, and not
| optimized for modern homes that have a lot of low-current
| appliances.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Oh yeah the UK system.. I lived in Ireland for a long time
| and it was a bit archaic sometimes.
|
| I like the idea of fuses in every plug, mind you. Because
| some equipment just can't be trusted. I didn't like the
| switches in every outlet (even though they're not mandatory,
| they are very common). And the way the plugs are so huuuge
| and always fall with the pins up do to the design so they are
| a foot-piercer.
|
| In Ireland 1A fuses _were_ available though even in the fuse
| kits in Tesco. With the same size as the others. And the
| practice doesn 't always lead to actual safety, I've seen a
| lot of tinfoil and paperclips. Yes, really.
|
| But the thing I really thought was the worst was the concept
| of having only one tap connected to the mains water line in
| the house, and having all the others fed by a huge dirty
| water tank in the attic, full of dead insects brewing away in
| the summer heat (yes even there it can get hot in summer). It
| seems like an ecological disaster and locals were always
| warning me to not drink the water from the bathroom or
| bedrooms taps. It's also a big possible cause of leaks. Here
| in Spain and in my home country of Holland we just feed all
| taps onto the mains.
|
| But overall I tend to prefer EU standards rather than BS. The
| "Schuko" does have a few serious design flaws like the
| ability to plug it in upside-down so neutral and phase are
| reversed, but the French have found a solution for that :)
| harry8 wrote:
| Still for sale?
|
| https://uk-metering.net/products/netthings-energy-manager
| r4indeer wrote:
| Only 2 left, probably for a while already. I'd guess that's old
| stock.
| neilv wrote:
| Even if this device (presumably with known vulnerabilities) isn't
| directly reachable via the Internet, could the device be bumped
| off the WiFi and onto an impersonating AP, where the device can
| be taken over?
|
| The photo on the retail box has a tablet camera hole. Does this
| particular unit have a camera and mic, placed in a living area?
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| "DATE & TIME ARE ALWAYS CORRECT AND NEVER NEED TO BE ADJUSTED"
| sounds like it's straight out of a fever dream
| justinator wrote:
| THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT.
| mlk wrote:
| It would if it had an NTP client running
| xyst wrote:
| Yet another reminder: I really need to get off my ass and isolate
| all of the IoT junk connected to my network away from
| home/work/lab devices.
| anotherevan wrote:
| Honestly, this is the main reason1 I just haven't got into IoT
| much as I love the idea in theory. I don't want an adversarial
| relationship with the electronics I'm putting in the house, so
| I just don't.
|
| I want my IoT to work off-line with no talking to the Internet
| unless I explicitly let it for some reason. I want it to
| interoperate with other things and not just some shitty app on
| my phone - I don't carry my phone with me around the house all
| the time and it's a PITA anyway.
|
| I could go the DIY route and bust out the soldering iron and
| some ESPHome compatible chips, but that's not my passion and
| life is too bloody short. And even if I did I'd still have
| strong reservations doing DIY around the 240V AC mains power.
|
| 1 That, and the first thing I'd automate is light switches2,
| but the regulations around mains power wiring in Australia are
| pretty stringent and the only AES certified IoT light switches
| I've seen look like I would have and adversarial relationship
| with and can only be controlled by a shitty app.
|
| 2 Automating light bulbs themselves is a sub-optimal solution
| in most circumstances, in my opinion. Perhaps if I wanted to
| control the colour, but not for on, off and brightness. If I
| did that it would just make me feel sad.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| You can go far using only Zigbee or Z-Wave devices with a
| Home Assistant server, and then nothing (but the server) has
| to be networked.
|
| As for switches vs. bulbs, at this point I can't go back to
| the life I led before picking up a bunch of Hue White
| Ambiance bulbs and having HA automatically adjust the color
| temperature throughout the day.
| anotherevan wrote:
| Yeah colour temperature would be my rationale for smarter
| bulbs as well.
| geocrasher wrote:
| WiFi is not only reasonable but preferable. Because if a cat5
| cable is going to be ran, it'll be done by an electrician. And
| when they get to the end of a spool, they will break out the wire
| nuts and splice away. I've seen it first hand.
|
| Not even electricians can screw up WiFi :D
| neither_color wrote:
| It's a little more expensive but it's always worth it to get a
| low voltage specialist to run your ethernet. To an electrician
| a conductor is just a conductor no matter how you splice it.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| This was an extremely well written article. It had me gripped in
| the story. Thanks for posting!
| neither_color wrote:
| >More out of desperation than anything else, I decided to look at
| sshd config of the host and finally found the offending line.
| sshd_config had PermitRootLogin no line included, which is a very
| sensible security measure as long as you are not providing a full
| disk access to anyone on the network.
|
| Enjoyed this article because I've wasted countless hours of my
| own getting into devices I bought or poking around networks I've
| airBnB'd at. I'm not as smart as the author but I found his whole
| approach relatable.
| girvo wrote:
| > C in IoT stands for "cost-effective" I guess
|
| I know this sounds pithy (and it is!) but you'd be surprised
| exactly how cheap and cost effective Wi-fi enabled SoCs are. A
| lot of the time we're getting Wi-Fi for free, and most of those
| SoC's don't have the Ethernet controller by default, so it's more
| cost-effective to use Wi-fi if it can fit your use-case.
|
| Other physical protocols/connection types can be supported of
| course (I wonder what the longest I2C run ever is), but when
| you're talking about a retro-fitted client like this is, Wifi or
| wireless protocols in general are best.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Purely from a materials perspective, 2x cheap WiFi-capable
| microcontrollers (e.g. esp8266) will cost the manufacturer
| something like $4-$5 total for both devices - which is
| comparable to 3m cable+connectors+cheap chips to handle the
| cable connection (even ignoring the cost of some person to
| install the cable which is far more expensive than that) so
| indeed I don't get why the author considers that doing the
| connection over WiFi is somehow wasteful.
| dijit wrote:
| > so indeed I don't get why the author considers that doing
| the connection over WiFi is somehow wasteful.
|
| Power consumption.
|
| Up front vs ongoing cost; the creators chose to minimise the
| up-front cost in favour of a marginally higher ongoing cost.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I'd be interested in crunching the numbers if I had time
| because there can't be too much in the cost delta.
| gabrielhidasy wrote:
| Is it really a problem? An ESP8266 (which is not the most
| efficient thing, but is very cheap) uses about 0.5W while
| transmitting, much less most of the time.
|
| For reference, I have some smart outlets that I measured
| using a while ago, pulling about 0.05W on average from the
| wall, or 36Wh a month. That's about as much energy as
| making 500ml of coffee or charging a phone 2-3x.
| dijit wrote:
| not sure if its a problem in reality, radios are the
| second most power consuming subsystem of my laptop at
| idle. (first being screen due to the backlight).
| paradox460 wrote:
| ESP32s are basically universal at this point. You can have them
| for under a dollar if you order in any sort of bulk, and you
| get Wifi and Bluetooth right out of the box. At this point is
| more expensive to not use Wifi
| userbinator wrote:
| Interesting article but one thing stood out:
|
| _The landlord had no idea what this is. There are no buttons or
| labels on the thing, just a tiny yellow light to let you know it
| has the power._
|
| You move in and find a mysterious device on the wall that, at
| least to me, appears somewhat ominous and it's not obvious
| whether it may have a camera and possibly a microphone (the
| picture of it on the manual appears to show that it does have at
| least a camera)...
|
| _Roughly a year ago I moved into my new apartment._
|
| ...and you were perfectly fine with living in its presence for a
| year? When I saw the picture, my first thought was closer to
| "that's a _telescreen_ ", and I'd certainly try to find out more
| about it ASAP.
|
| _From what I can tell, this is an Android 5, but I am not
| exactly sure._
|
| I believe those icons are from 4.1-4.3 - Lines up with the Linux
| kernel version being mid-2013. Android 5 was released in 2014.
| UberFly wrote:
| That was my first though as I read it. It would be disabled or
| removed the first day.
| NautilusWave wrote:
| He hadn't read 1984
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _The landlord had no idea what this is._
|
| Golgafrincham B Ark candidate detected.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Hey, he might be an exceedingly skilled telephone sanitiser.
| CPLX wrote:
| Which, if you recall, turned out to be a bit of a linchpin
| role.
| tim333 wrote:
| As a landlord this is quite common. You buy through an
| estate, let through a letting agent and have very little idea
| what gizmos are installed. Until maybe something packs up and
| you have to pay for a new one.
| wkjagt wrote:
| The person showing them around might not even have been the
| landlord.
| lynguist wrote:
| It should be Android 4.4 as per
| https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/51651/which-andr...
|
| Kernel 3.10 is used only for Android 4.4.
| fortran77 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > I am not an embedded Linux expert, but this does seem like a
| lot after tinkering with Raspberry Pi Pico and such.
|
| ...but of course the Pi Pico doesn't run Linux and doesn't need a
| lot of memory
| lynguist wrote:
| Yes, the Pico cannot run an operating system as it has a -M
| (microcontroller) processor and not an -A (application)
| processor.
|
| It has no MMU etc etc.
|
| It is built to just run one process in essence with minuscule
| amounts of RAM.
| famicom0 wrote:
| Probably a long shot, but would anyone happen to know the color
| scheme used by the author in the snippet of Python code showing
| an example of tcf-agent? I really like the mix of bold, italics,
| underline and shading to achieve a distinct syntax highlighting
| with such a limited color palette.
| nurettin wrote:
| I loved the final touch where they leave a note in a text file.
| Feels much like the talos principle.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people
| to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of
| utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need
| far better data than a single figure per month.
|
| You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5
| minutes.
|
| That way people can spot things like "having my electric heater
| on for those couple of hours used more electricity than all my
| lights use for a month".
|
| I have an inverter and solar panels in my place (very common now
| in South Africa middle class homes due to unreliable electricity
| producer) and I can see a full history of electricity usage.
|
| It's easy for me to see where I can improve my efficiency or why
| my consumption was so high.
|
| It's still only an overall figure though, so you have to do an
| informed assumption as to what caused the consumption.
|
| For example it's obvious that the 3kw draw for about an hour or
| so after I shower is the geyser heating itself back up. I can see
| from the usage stats that my battery was depleted from the night,
| that the solar production is still low due to my showering in the
| early morning and that the energy was thus coming from the grid
| (the inverter records all these figures).
|
| It is then obvious that I can very simply save money on
| electricity by putting a timer on my geyser so that it only heats
| after 10am or so, once the sun is high enough for solar
| production to cover the energy usage.
|
| Now I just wish I had something as convenient for monitoring
| water consumption.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| About water consumption: depending on your make of water meter,
| there's often a small reflective wheel that turns eg. once for
| every liter. Sometimes these are made out of metal or even
| slightly magnetic. An arduino with an optical or Hall effect
| sensor might get you real far in real time, high resolution
| data collection!
|
| Alternatively I've had success in wiring up a temperature probe
| directly to the incoming water line, and comparing that
| temperature to the ambient temperature. Where I live that works
| because the water arrives from underground & is always much
| cooler than ambient air. The time-integrated difference between
| the two is a proxy for how much water you use... this is much
| more involved to get meaningful data from, tho.
|
| ---
|
| Edit: a proximity sensor that detects metal might be the most
| straightforward thing, if you have a water meter with a
| rotating metal gauge
| https://www.alldatasheet.com/view.jsp?Searchword=LJ12A3-4-Z/...
| cricalix wrote:
| On mobile so hard to link, but memory says
| OpenEnergyMonitor's docs site on pulse counters has a
| computer vision approach too. Think it reads the numbers from
| the display.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| A lot of water meters these days have rfid for the water
| company to scan so maybe you can just abrogate that directly
| systemz wrote:
| About monitoring water consumption, maybe using some webcam +
| OCR would help to recognize reading of a water meter? Then Home
| Assistant would be helpful to see charts with energy
| consumption etc
| tomqueue wrote:
| This is what I am using for this exact purpose:
| https://github.com/jomjol/AI-on-the-edge-device
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Something in my apartment is consuming a ton of power and I
| don't know what. I would love a graph with a resolution better
| than a day.
| yread wrote:
| Check the coffee machine. Full auto espresso machines can be
| huge hogs
| Jedd wrote:
| Do you have a conventional HWS? These are notoriously power-
| hungry, often poorly maintained and calibrated, and hard to
| monitor.
|
| You can buy a power meter plug - that sits between appliance
| and socket - and work your way around almost all your
| appliances apart from, typically, oven, air conditioner(s),
| and hot water systems. For those you're going to need to
| experiment by turning as many things off as you can, to
| establish a baseline, and review your switch meter
| periodically for short (several minute) intervals, with and
| without the larger appliances turned on.
|
| (You _can_ get induction coil systems to report usage of
| these larger appliances, but they 're typically onerously
| priced.)
| cricalix wrote:
| If you can isolate the legs of the larger appliances, a CT
| clamp sensor is sufficient for an idea, and you can get
| those as handheld meters with screen - or something you
| plug into a microcontroller board and send the data to a
| local collection system.
| erhaetherth wrote:
| What's an HWS? Hot water system...?
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| If you're looking for something simple to try work it out, I
| bought a smart plug a few years back which could record usage
| for around 20USD, you can then move it between your devices
| getting a sense of each's usage.
|
| Long term tracking usage of individual device energy usage is
| nice, but just knowing from past measurements how much a
| device tends to use is already very useful.
| dns_snek wrote:
| If you're going to go down this route and aren't afraid of
| a little DIY, then I'd highly recommend something that
| doesn't depend on the cloud.
|
| Either ESPhome- or Tasmota-based plugs are great if you
| want fully local control (e.g. Athom, LocalBytes), or
| Shelly for local-first control with an option of connecting
| to their cloud.
|
| Mostly everything else will lock you into the
| manufacturer's app & cloud. Zigbee is fully local too, but
| it requires additional hardware.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Need to pop the cover off the main breaker panel and use a
| clamp-type current meter to see which circuit(s) are using
| power.
|
| Or hire an electrician to do it, if you aren't totally
| confident in your ability to do that safely.
| ako wrote:
| Depending on your water meter this device may be useful:
| https://www.homewizard.com/watermeter/
| bradley13 wrote:
| Being able to see your usage is helpful - at least, for those
| of us interested.
|
| For example, I was surprised to see how much our electronics
| (stereo, amplifier, TV, etc.) in the living room use, even when
| off (some devices are older, with high standby currents). It
| motivated me to put everything on a timer that only turns power
| own in the evenings, since that's the only time they get used.
|
| It's a small thing, but small things add up.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Not when you're on solar. Its more akin to being poor and
| shopping at dollar tree - cash/solar flow is more important
| than total cost.
| gambiting wrote:
| Yeah we were away from home recently and it was interesting
| to see that with everything "off" we were still using a
| constant 200W or so, so even with no one home we used just
| over 4kWh each day. 120kWh each month just for "idle" usage
| definitely is not trivial amount of money, at current prices
| that's PS20!
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Half of that is fridge which at 10 quid a month is cheap.
| Then another 20w for wifi router which again, looking at
| what you pay to your ISP is nothing.
|
| So you got 8 pounds to account for which at UKs minimum
| wage is about 1 hours worth of work?
| gambiting wrote:
| That's a weird point to make - I'm just saying 120kWh a
| month for a house with no one in it and just some basic
| appliances and network equipment is a LOT - in developing
| countries 120kWh would be the average energy consumption
| of the entire house with people living in it, and we just
| "waste" that because I couldn't be bothered to switch off
| some devices in my house. It's not about whether I can
| afford it or not.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| For comparison, I live alone in a mid-terraced 2-bedroom
| house in the UK, heated with gas - and I'm currently
| there most of the time. My monthly electricity usage is
| about 180kWh a month.
|
| I'm guessing a big chunk of the 60kWh I'm using over your
| baseline is the kettle! :D
| gambiting wrote:
| Uhm. We have a 3 bed semi detached house, my consumption
| for November was 1267kWh of electricity. In October it
| was 1148kWh. And I also heat with gas(well we have a
| minisplit upstairs that we sometimes use for heat, but it
| uses like 5kWh/day max)
|
| No idea how you use so little lol.
| wolpoli wrote:
| > It motivated me to put everything on a timer that only
| turns power own in the evenings, since that's the only time
| they get used.
|
| I was surprised to learn that a timer itself also uses power.
| I borrowed a Kill-a-watt from the library and found that an 2
| decades old timer uses 2.3W while a newer one uses 0.6W. That
| tells me that I should just keep the old timer for the rare
| occasions.
| failingslowly wrote:
| > if you want people to be more environmentally conscious [...]
| they need far better data
|
| This is one of the reasons all UK homes are being fitted for
| free with smart meters. (There are others, such as enabling
| better grid control.)
|
| > You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5
| minutes.
|
| My one updates every few seconds and has a set of traffic light
| LEDs at the bottom giving a visible guide to energy use.
|
| https://www.edfenergy.com/smart-meters/using-a-smart-meter/c...
| gambiting wrote:
| We have one as well, but since we're on a variable rate
| tariff(Octopus Tracker) it's completely useless - it doesn't
| know the current electricity/gas price, it seems to receive
| rate updates from the network about once every few weeks - so
| the numbers it displays are just wrong.
|
| I've made my own little Raspberry Pico display that queries
| today's energy prices and shows those, but I have not been
| able to show today's energy consumption alongside(and
| therefore show the day's cost so far). Octopus provides an
| API to query the kWh used....but only for the last day. I
| even got their little Octopus Mini that broadcasts live usage
| to their app but I have not been able to query the live data
| from it from my raspberry, I don't have the necessary skills
| in web technologies to do that unfortunately :-(
| Angostura wrote:
| If you use Home Assistant on the Pi there is an Octopus
| integration that you might find handy. It even works with
| the Octopus Mini
|
| https://bottlecapdave.github.io/HomeAssistant-
| OctopusEnergy/
|
| Hope this is useful
| gambiting wrote:
| Ooooooh thanks that is actually super useful - had no
| idea this existed! Thank you!
| maccard wrote:
| Mine comes with a display that shows live usage by energy
| rather than price. The octopus app shows my usage for
| yesterday in PS for octopus tracker, broken down into 30m
| increments.
| verisimi wrote:
| The consumer element is the sugar to help the masses swallow
| the pill. If it was just about the consumer, the unit would
| never report its findings back to base. But blurting back
| your information is integral to, well, all smart devices.
| That is the point.
|
| Once the government has that info, it will be able to come up
| with bespoke taxes for you according to what it ordains as
| fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'your toolshed is too
| big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you need to buy carbon
| credits to offset the environmental damage you are causing'.
|
| It's the slow descent to greater tyranny, and loss of
| personal control. It's amazing that people put up with it,
| but a slight discount in the short term, or visibility of
| your own data, is probably enough to get most people to
| accept spying infrastructure in their lives forever.
| gambiting wrote:
| I don't understand your point - these meters only report
| your overal usage, not _what_ is using the energy /water.
| It's letting you skip the step where you manually upload
| the reads every couple months or whatever, or worse, where
| the energy company employee has to visit your house to read
| them in person. Why does it matter if I upload my meter
| reads to my provider every month or if the device reports
| it automatically? The end result is the same.
|
| (At least that's how it works in the UK - the "smart"
| meters don't report live usage back to providers, they just
| submit kWh reads, the live readout is local device only)
| userbinator wrote:
| _the "smart" meters don't report live usage back to
| providers_
|
| Either they can be easily upgraded to do that, or they
| already are and the energy company merely gives you the
| total every month to maintain the impression that they
| aren't.
|
| If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you know
| with much greater certainty that they aren't gathering
| live data.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Either they can be easily upgraded to do that
|
| I mean no offence, but you are literally just guessing
| and not talking about technologies that people have in
| their houses. The smart meters here in UK, the latest
| SMET2 standard ones, cannot broadcast live data back to
| the grid because they simply don't have the bandwidth to
| do so, they use low frequency communication back to the
| area controller and they can barely report the kWh number
| roughly every hour or so. The live communication with the
| display you have in your house is done over ZigBee and
| unless the energy company parks the van outside of your
| house to get those reads, they aren't getting them.
|
| Like, your points about surveilance are true, sure - but
| they address an imaginary situation you built in your
| head, not the actual technical solution that exists in
| the real world.
|
| >>If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you
| know with much greater certainty that they aren't
| gathering live data.
|
| Yeah and I need to let them into my house, which to me
| personally is a far greater invasion of my privacy than
| my meter automatically uploading kWh numbers to the grid.
|
| Also just as a general remark - on HN I think people are
| likely to divide into two groups - nerds who want ALL the
| data and they would gladly upload live data to an online
| system if they could just so they could monitor it live,
| and people who think _any_ IoT functionality is a massive
| invasion of privacy and that it 's some greater ploy by
| government to control you. The truth - as always - is
| somewhere in the middle.
| michaelt wrote:
| Maybe your installation is different, but usually the
| _electricity_ meter uses normal GPRS to talk to the
| electricity company. They literally have SIM cards
| inside.
|
| The low energy 'HAN' stuff is used for the _gas_ meter,
| so it can run for 10 years on a battery, allowing it to
| be installed without installing wired power. The
| electricity meter has plenty of electricity available, so
| it acts as a bridge. The portable screen thingy also uses
| the 'HAN'.
|
| However, it's pretty clear the policy intent isn't _only_
| to let people monitor their usage. If that was all that
| was needed, there are much cheaper options designed for
| consumer self-install. Why did they go for the much more
| expensive and inconvenient smart meter+gprs option, if
| not to enable time-of-use tariffs?
| gambiting wrote:
| Is that in the UK or somewhere else?
|
| >>However, it's pretty clear the policy intent isn't only
| to let people monitor their usage.
|
| Of course - but I contest OP's claim that it has enough
| granularity to tell you that you're showering too much or
| that your tool shed uses too much energy - it doesn't
| allow that in the slightest.
| michaelt wrote:
| In the UK, yes.
|
| You can see a UK smart meter being taken apart here [1]
| with the GPRS module shown at around the 2 minute mark.
| And you can look at meter datasheets [2] which list GPRS
| WAN as a feature.
|
| Smart meters often send a reading every 30 minutes. Some
| energy companies will then show a breakdown on their
| website that _purports_ to show how much you 're spending
| on lighting, fridges, appliances and things like that
| [3].
|
| I suspect they use a lot of guesswork to arrive at that
| breakdown, given the limited input data. Although it's
| probably fairly easy to recognise certain multi-hour-and-
| distinctively-large loads, like EV charging and heat
| pumps.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G32NYQpvy8Q [2]
| https://www.securemeters.com/sea/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/15... [3]
| https://imgur.com/a/L0xwWEo
| sofixa wrote:
| > Maybe your installation is different, but usually the
| electricity meter uses normal GPRS to talk to the
| electricity company. They literally have SIM cards
| inside.
|
| Where? In France the devices, called Linky and
| manufactured to a common standard by a few different
| companies, and mandatory, communicate via the grid itself
| over the CPL protocol. There are no SIM cards inside, and
| thankfully, lunatics have been suing to refuse to get
| their meter upgraded to Linky "BECAUSE WAVES 5G COVID
| CHIPS" bullshit which doesn't have any basis in reality.
| CaptainMarvel wrote:
| I mean no offence, but you are literally just guessing
| and not talking about technologies that people have in
| their houses.
|
| Hilarious that I'm sending your own words back to you.
|
| I worked at an energy supplier. I saw minutely energy
| readings from customers with my own eyes. It was a lot of
| data!
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Hilarious that I'm sending your own words back to you.
|
| I don't know if it's hilarious, more like unhelpful at
| best, rude at worst .
|
| >>I saw minutely energy readings from customers with my
| own eyes. It was a lot of data
|
| It wasn't "live" data though, was it? Just a breakdown of
| usage per-minute, but uploaded in batches, right? And
| which energy supplier was that? Because with Octopus you
| can only get live data by installing an extra(and
| optional) device called Octopus mini, their SMET2 meters
| have no such capability.
| CaptainMarvel wrote:
| That's not quite right. All new smart meters have the
| ability to report electricity usage minute-by-minute.
|
| You _currently_ have the choice to only report month-by-
| month, by kindly asking them to only do that. However, I
| agree with verisimi, and I believe that it's only a
| matter of time before the government via energy suppliers
| can monitor your real time electricity usage.
|
| It'll be dressed up, of course, as being in your best
| interest, but you won't have a choice. Smart meters were
| sold as being beneficial for customers, but in reality
| they take power away from people and consolidate it in
| energy suppliers.
|
| At the most basic level this is a history of when you are
| at home or not.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>but in reality they take power away from people and
| consolidate it in energy suppliers.
|
| What kind of power did you have before the introduction
| of smart meters, exactly?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Fossil fuel interests have really rotted a lot of minds
| with their propaganda.
|
| In some ways this may turn out to be a bigger crime than
| the carbon issues you think are just a conspiracy to
| control shower length.
| concordDance wrote:
| I don't think this is fair to him. He's not alleging
| carbon stuff is a conspiracy to control shower length,
| merely that moralizers will want to control everything
| they see as "waste".
| beebeepka wrote:
| > Once the government has that info, it will be able to
| come up with bespoke taxes for you according to what it
| ordains as fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'your
| toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you
| need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental
| damage you are causing'.
|
| I am very conflicted. Deeply share your concerns regarding
| misuse of such info. It will be used as a weapon. But I am
| totally in favour of making wasters pay up, and not just
| fixed amounts.
|
| I hate wasting resources.
| concordDance wrote:
| "Waster" isn't really a coherent concept when taken
| outside of an individual's value system. What might be
| waste for one person might simply be a sensible use of
| resources for another.
|
| Doing for a drive to the countryside for a walk? Having a
| long and relaxing bath? Go-karting? Using a heated pool?
| Keeping the heater on a single house-level timer so they
| don't have to think about it rather than planning ahead
| what rooms they will be in later?
|
| Everyone will have a different place they draw the
| "waste" vs sensible expenditure line.
|
| The correct economic solution to this is CO2-offsetting
| taxes and letting each individual decide how they want to
| spend their resources. Trying to centrally plan for a
| hundred million diverse people with different things they
| like and care about is a recipe for unneeded misery.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Taxes just push the problem into poor people. If you want
| a fair solution we should have carbon/resource rationing.
| In fact, I'd prefer a solution in which the governments
| work hard (much harder than they are) to bootstrap the
| brave new world so everyone can benefit from a
| sustainable world.
| concordDance wrote:
| Rationing is ridiculously inefficient.
|
| People's desire for heavily carbon consuming things vs
| lightly carbon consuming things varies massively. If
| you're worried about the poor don't ignore the
| externalities of their consumption but subsidise them
| directly via UBI or somesuch.
|
| Rationing is a very worst of all possible worlds
| solution, losing you all the benefits of trade.
| hgomersall wrote:
| We don't want trade. We want people to reduce their
| carbon consumption. In any case, you could always allow
| trading of rations.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _Just as a thought exercise, if anything was possible:_
|
| UBI seems to work towards the goal of making sure people
| don't die due to lack of resources (it is a basic income,
| after all). It's less clear how it works towards the goal
| of reducing carbon emissions.
|
| Rationing, on the other hand, has the potential: Natural
| resources (publicly owned ones anyways), and perhaps
| natural limits like how much CO2 the skies can take, are
| collectively owned by the people. So it could make sense
| to distribute those amongst the people. The people could
| then sell them in a free(r) market. This means we can
| work towards both goals at once: Those seeking to pollute
| more, could simply buy the carbon credits from their
| fellow people, who can now better afford to live. And, at
| the same time, total pollution is capped-ish, depending
| on the scheme.
|
| As a fun note, UBI is just rationing out the available
| funds for UBI, so it would suffer from any rationing-
| specific failings that carbon rationing would suffer
| from.
| concordDance wrote:
| A tradeable carbon rationing is indeed equivalent to a
| UBI, but with side effects. In particular, if the market
| is efficient then the consumption of CO2 credits will
| exactly equal production, but the price will be unrelated
| to the actual externality cost or mitigation cost of the
| marginal CO2 release. So you either get more CO2 released
| than you would with an externality tax or you get less
| CO2 released than you should given that you can mitigate
| against that particular CO2 release.
|
| Ideally you'd have credits being available for purchase
| at prices that correspond to the costs of mitigating
| their externalities (CO2 emission is not in and of itself
| evil, its the consequences that we don't want).
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> A tradeable carbon rationing is indeed equivalent to a
| UBI_
|
| On the contrary -- I was saying it was _not_ equivalent,
| because it also works towards the goal of reducing CO2
| consumption, whereas I can 't imagine how a UBI would do
| so.
|
| _> if the market is efficient then the consumption of
| CO2 credits will exactly equal production_
|
| The carbon credits I am imagining would not be _"
| produced"_ per se -- they would, in total, represent the
| total amount of carbon we as a country want to emit, to
| reduce climate disaster, allocated equally to each
| individual, who all collectively "own" that natural
| limit. Those individuals can then sell their _"
| contribution ration"_ to companies which wish to emit
| more than the CO2 allocated individually to their CEO, or
| whatever. So ideally credits will be available for
| purchase by the CEO, at whatever rate the CEO's fellow
| people are willing to charge the CEO. Mitigations will
| need to be done by humanity regardless, or else.
| CaptainMarvel wrote:
| It's up to individuals to decide if they are wasting
| their own resources. Everyone has a different
| perspective. Personally, I think SUVs are a waste and
| should be banned, but wouldn't that be overreaching?
|
| Individuals don't pay for their waste when they aren't
| paying for negative externalities.
|
| That's why a carbon tax is a better solution - it ensures
| people are paying the true price for a resource. Let
| people decide their own life after that, they'll do a
| better of job of it than someone else deciding their life
| for them.
|
| (You probably need more than just a carbon tax to fairly
| price the resource. For example, mining fossil fuels
| causes health issues for workers, and impacts the local
| environment.
| beebeepka wrote:
| It's a slippery slope for sure but you have to draw the
| line somewhere.
|
| For example, if there's a water shortage and someone
| decides they can afford (financially) to use as much as
| they please, that's not going to end well.
|
| I don't quite understand the obsession with carbon. Not
| everything can be mapped to carbon without some mental
| gymnastics.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Once the government has that info, it will be able to
| come up with bespoke taxes for you according to what it
| ordains as fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'your
| toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you
| need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental
| damage you are causing'.
|
| This is likely to happen and is economically awful (far
| better to have constant carbon taxes), but it will be done
| because the majority supports it, not due to some
| government plot against the people.
| smolder wrote:
| Elected officials get into office with majority support
| of a constituency, but that's very far away from the
| majority of people supporting their collective actions
| while in office. In the US, politicians do what money
| wants them to, not voters. Consent of voters is often
| manufactured and misinformed.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| As evidenced by the article, the problem is that some of
| these devices within less than 10 years can become
| essentially bricks.
|
| I think these devices must be required to send the data to
| the utility company and the utility company must be forced to
| make the data easily accessible in a standard format so that
| independent analysis is trivially possible.
|
| This way you don't have a situation where a device
| manufacturer goes out of business and the capability to
| monitor is lost.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| At least in the EU (don't know about the UK), currently
| these sort of devices are installed by the government. They
| are replacement of the previous analog meters. In Belgium,
| they report the data to the (public) electricity grid
| company, which then forwards the data to your (private)
| electricity company. They are much simpler than the device
| in the article (no JavaScript or SSH access). They will
| surely last for more than 10 years given the investment the
| government is putting in. (I think roll-out started like 7
| years ago and is expected to be finished around 2030 in
| Belgium.)
| sofixa wrote:
| Same in France, the meters report _via the grid_ to the
| grid operator, which is a public utility and shares your
| usage data with the (public or private) electricity
| company from which you buy your electricity. They have a
| local physical port with an open spec (and e.g. I have a
| device that connects to it and shares the usage data live
| over Zigbee for my Home Assistant), and there are ways of
| getting the data over an API from either the public
| utility or the electricity company which are more or less
| complex depending on the entity.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >As evidenced by the article, the problem is that some of
| these devices within less than 10 years can become
| essentially bricks.
|
| >I think these devices must be required to send the data to
| the utility company and the utility company must be forced
| to make the data easily accessible in a standard format so
| that independent analysis is trivially possible.
|
| The core problem is that these devices are garbage, and
| nobody cares. I don't mean that scornfully, I'm saying
| these devices are way over-provisioned and yet are
| unreliable anyway because they are very carelessly
| designed, and nobody cares because 1) they have no economic
| incentive to care, and 2) in the software world it's
| _normal_ for cheap devices to fail within 10 years, and the
| people who refuse to accept this norm have no recourse
| except building their own piece of electronics (i.e. take
| up a hobby).
|
| Demanding they provide the data 'in a standard format' lets
| us put lipstick on the pig, it doesn't actually solve the
| core problem of the device being a piece of shit.
| paganel wrote:
| I have one here in Bucharest and, while fancy, as in it blips
| a red light when the power consumptions is higher than usual,
| it doesn't help me at all.
|
| As in, yeah, running the washing machine is power consuming,
| I knew that, and the same goes for the electric oven or for
| the vacuum cleaner, but what am I supposed to do with that
| information? Not wash my clothes anymore? Not using the oven?
| Leaving dust all over the place for longer?
| cjfd wrote:
| Sounds pretty good as such. The worry to have these days,
| though, is if we can also get this without energy usage data
| being traded between all sorts of shady companies and/or
| criminal organizations.
| verisimi wrote:
| > shady companies and/or criminal organizations.
|
| You mean energy companies and governments?
| oarsinsync wrote:
| There was a report recently that Facebook users have their
| data sold to 1000-5000 companies, and Facebook takes input
| from up to 100k companies when compiling data on people.
|
| Supermarkets are also into the data game, exploiting the
| gold mine of data that is shopper loyalty cards.
|
| Smart TVs are in the data game, selling details of what
| you're watching on to other people.
|
| Cars are recording visuals, audio, telemetry, and selling
| that on.
|
| I think it's reasonable to assume that energy companies are
| selling the data they're collecting about you onto data
| brokers (aka shady companies and/or criminal organisations)
| mtsr wrote:
| Home Assistant with a connector for whatever smart meter you
| have will happily do this for you without the data ever
| leaving your home.
| lloeki wrote:
| Per device energy tallies also give you interesting data.
|
| Home Assistant can do that in the Energy dashboard, and you can
| answer questions/learn surprising things, like how much energy
| my "rack" (UPS+mac mini+5 disk bay+a few other things) actually
| uses vs e.g my fridge or my washing machine, or my desk compute
| actually is quite low but boy does the screen costs a lot when
| active, or what does charging the electric bike costs, or
| what's the effect of setting thermostat to 19 instead of 20 in
| winter, or oh wow in summer this fan that we use a lot to make
| things bearable actually ends up using as much energy as our
| water heater!
|
| (power measurements are done using Shelly Plug Plus S + 3EM +
| 4PM devices, thermal measurements using Shelly H&T Plus)
| nijave wrote:
| > like how much energy my "rack" (UPS+mac mini+5 disk bay+a
| few other things) actually uses
|
| I find it better to remain ignorant in that regard. Jokes
| aside, it's also interesting seeing wall draw vs UPS draw vs
| PSU draw if each piece of your equipment supports that.
|
| The Shelly stuff is also quite fun to play with (I recommend
| a AC adapter for H&T). I have the little black spherical
| sensors and the data resolution is significantly worse on
| battery since it tries to sleep in low power state as much as
| possible. It's fun to see the server cabinet (mine's
| enclosed) vs room vs different room temps. You can also see
| when the HVAC cycles on and off and when someone takes a
| shower (humidity spikes).
| stdbrouw wrote:
| Your experience also points to the limits of monitoring and
| subsequent behavioral change, though. I mean, yeah, it might
| prompt you to start your washing machine a bit earlier or a bit
| later to align with high production by your solar panels... but
| how much consumption can you really move around like that, and
| how many energy hogs can you just decide to not use? If you
| notice high energy use while cooking, are you going to start
| eating more salads instead? Across Europe electricity meters
| are being replaced by smart meters and people are really hyping
| up the advantages of being able to continuously monitor your
| energy usage, but I think the jury is still out whether it'll
| actually lead to significant energy savings.
|
| Ultimately the biggest wins are when big appliances and
| heating/cooling respond to self-production or take advantage of
| times when electricity is cheap (if you're on a per-hour or
| per-day dynamic contract), whether that's with a simple timer
| like the one you installed, a relay that shuts down heating
| when you're cooking or something fancier like a Fronius
| Ohmpilot [1] that tweaks heating power to exactly match PV
| (over)production.
|
| [1] https://www.fronius.com/en/solar-energy/installers-
| partners/...
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| Agree completely.
|
| However, knowing that a particular device is bad means that
| when I eventually need to replace it in the future, I will
| also factor in energy efficiency and features such as it
| being able to check energy prices in my purchasing decision.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| There's been a few simple experiments in the UK - where
| consumers have been encouraged to reduce usage at peak time
| that have been successful. But as you say its going to need
| the appliances to support it. Everything needs a "Get this
| done by X o'clock" whether thats a dishwasher/washing
| machine/car charger.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/23/households-
| gre...
| Angostura wrote:
| I'm on Octopus Agile in the UK which offers pricing in 30
| minute increments.
|
| I'm lucky in that I have a small solar panel setup (3kW)
| and battery system (5kWh) to go with it. With this battery
| set-up you really don't need appliance support - most of
| the advantages are accrued by force-charging the batteries
| to avoid mains usage at the peak cost period (usually
| around 5pm-7pm).
|
| I also have a few smart plugs which turn things on and off
| based on the current price and battery charge - using Home
| Assistant, but that's mainly me just nerding about. Handy
| when prices go negative, though and my electric immersion
| heater goes on to heat my hot water tank
|
| Notably Octopus is working on taking much of the complexity
| away. There is now an opt-in service for certain battery
| makes where Octopus will take control of the battery
| charginng and discharging, to minimise your bill. It will
| even generate you money by doing a force charge and
| discharge when the grid is paying premium amounts
| srmarm wrote:
| Your battery usage sounds exactly like the kind of
| behaviour they're trying to encourage but which aren't
| apparent to most people without an interest in these
| things so you left with the energy monitor which is
| really just a nice bonus to the system rather but is
| tangible to the lay person.
|
| Of course the very real benefits of this can be abused by
| the gov and there are some conspiracy types using that to
| push their own agenda but on the whole I'm largely
| positive about the smart grid stuff.
| sampo wrote:
| > I think the jury is still out whether it'll actually lead
| to significant energy savings.
|
| In Finland you can get an electricity contract that follows
| the hourly spot prices. Usually the hourly prices varies in
| the range from 5c to 20c/kWh, but sometimes it jumps up to
| 40c, even 80c/kWh. The record was 2EUR/kWh for a couple hours
| in one day.
|
| Current hourly prices for today and tomorrow:
|
| https://oomi.fi/en/electricity/electricity-
| contracts/active/...
|
| People who have chosen this kind of contract, usually reduce
| their consumption during the ridiculously expensive hours,
| which usually occur when there happens both low wind energy
| production, and simultaneously some power plant being offline
| for maintenance.
|
| You can also get a contract with a fixed price, if you want.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Is there a cap? AIUI this is how those Texas power bills
| got to $xx,000 last year.
| teekert wrote:
| I agree fully, I believe that my Home Assistant energy
| dashboard has done more for our energy consumption than any
| other measure.
|
| If you're in the Netherland you can get something like a
| "slimme lezer", plug it into the p1 port of your energy meter
| and it will pop up in Home Assistant with the right sensors.
|
| The energy dashboard will give an overview of your gas and
| electricity usage, solar production, proportion used from
| grid/solar and even a home battery if present. It's really
| great.
|
| Combine it with some Aqara (zigbee but easily overloaded) or
| Shelly (WiFi and I find them very robust) energy monitoring
| power sockets and you get a very good idea of the simplest
| measures to take to save power. You can even add cost/kWh and
| M3 (gas) to the sensors in HA.
| kabes wrote:
| I have the same setup. I used it to make a green light go on
| when we have more than 500 watt excess solar production, so
| my wife knows she can turn on the washing machine for free.
| teekert wrote:
| That's very cool. Btw our dishwasher (and laundry machine)
| has 2 peaks at 2 kW, our dryer does 500 W continuous.
| masklinn wrote:
| Makes sense since you're in the netherlands, euro
| appliances generally get fed cold water and warm it
| internally, the 2kW peaks would be when it needs to warm
| up the cold water.
|
| The dryer has to warm air up pretty continuously to dry
| the contents. At 500W I assume it's a heat pump? (IIRC
| condensers are usually around or above 1kW)
| teekert wrote:
| Ah yes, the dish and laundry washers are indeed not "hot
| fill", that is hard to find here indeed.
|
| The dryer is a heat pump yes, some years ago it was the
| most energy efficient one we could find. (But I guess it
| runs longer, relying more on tumbling than heat, and
| wears out cloth faster).
| snickmy wrote:
| I always wondered why we cannot find hot filled
| appliances in the old continent.
|
| Also, I wonder why compressors in heatpumps are not
| multi-speed (basically energy consumption can be
| modulated). If you are an expert please let me know I'd
| love to talk more.
| masklinn wrote:
| > I always wondered why we cannot find hot filled
| appliances in the old continent.
|
| You can find them but they'll be in the semi-professional
| space and above (relatively expensive high-duty).
|
| They're very rare in the consumer space because
|
| - it requires running more hot water lines / extensions,
| historically houses are built with lots of cold water
| lines but hot water lines only where required
|
| - for their heating requirement, a normal electric plug
| is _more_ than sufficient in the land of 230V, this is is
| a similar issue to kettles basically
|
| - they require an internal heater anyway as residential
| water circuits come nowhere near the high temperature
| cycles: 50-53C is common to avoid risks of scalding but
| some are set as low as 45, the standard high temp cycles
| for washing machines are 60 and 90, and dishwasher
| commonly have a heavy cycle around 65
|
| - it makes the machines more convoluted since they needs
| more inlets, a mixing valve, etc...
|
| - they're not really compatible with hot water tanks: you
| don't want your dishes or laundry to empty your shower
| water, plus hot water tanks are commonly electrical so
| there's no real gain given per the above the machines
| need a heater anyway
| philwelch wrote:
| > for their heating requirement, a normal electric plug
| is more than sufficient in the land of 230V, this is is a
| similar issue to kettles basically
|
| US uses a split phase system so you can combine two 120V
| circuits to get 240V. This is how most heavy appliances
| are wired.
| masklinn wrote:
| Right but that means you need a special setup either way.
| In europe you just have a normal electric plug, nothing
| special.
| philwelch wrote:
| North America has standard plugs for 240V too. They're
| different from the 120V plug for the obvious reason, but
| it's not a particularly special setup.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Also, in quite a few houses, the initial run of water out
| of the hot tap is cold for quite some time until the hot
| water has either made it round from the hot tank, or if
| you have a combi boiler system then after that has fired
| itself up, got up to temperature, and then the hot water
| has made it round the pipes from there. It may be that
| the washing machine uses so little water that most of the
| water it gets from the hot supply is cold, wasting all
| that energy.
| masklinn wrote:
| That is true, I assume hot water appliances handle that
| case internally, but that's yet more complexity.
| teekert wrote:
| For me indeed it takes >30 sec to get hot water in the
| kitchen (modern kitchens have small boilers), but the
| washers are near the boiler, so hot fill would be more
| efficient. The boiler supplies 60 deg C water though, so
| that is not enough for the 90 deg C program for example.
| And then you need a heating element anyway...
| amluto wrote:
| My dishwasher is European and is hot-fill. It doesn't
| even have a cold water connection. I don't think I've
| ever seen a cold fill dishwasher in the US.
|
| I wonder what's up in Europe.
| ballenf wrote:
| What happens if it gets hot water, but expects cold?
| Seems like if it's not too hot to melt plastic parts, it
| would be ok?
| masklinn wrote:
| The colder cycles will not work correctly (they have only
| one inlet and no mixing circuit), they might scale more
| than normally, and I wouldn't be surprised if some put
| themselves into a security mode.
|
| The plastics used for some of the inlet circuitry might
| also age abnormally when it gets 50C water rather than
| the, say, 10~30C range it is designed for.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > If you're in the Netherland you can get something like a
| "slimme lezer", plug it into the p1 port of your energy meter
| and it will pop up in Home Assistant with the right sensors.
|
| If only the meters had ny power nearby or offered a 5V USB
| port on it so you could plug in your reader and forget it.
| But no. Now I'd have to keep a small Li-ion battery living in
| -20C since the meters are typically outside and there is
| never any power nearby since they are in a closed cabinet.
| Only the people who have indoor power meters (I know zero
| cases of that with detached houses, I think the power
| companies require the meter to be outside in a cabinet they
| can access without access to the house.
| nagisa wrote:
| P1 ports in the newer standard versions supply power.
| teekert wrote:
| I just made a socket near it ;)
| swozey wrote:
| I have no frame of reference but I have a feeling here (usa)
| it's super illegal to "tamper" with any pub utilities
| infrastructure. Could be wrong, though, but no usb ports.
|
| That's really cool though I wish we could do that.
| teekert wrote:
| P1 port is specifically to read values and "open". There a
| 10EUR cable to convert it (passively) to usb.
|
| You could consider one of those clamps that measure the
| power through a cable from the fields around it?
| bloomingeek wrote:
| No doubt about the tampering comment. However, my gas,
| water, and electric meters are all wireless and now I want
| to be able to monitor them for on demand usage. We shall
| see.
| swozey wrote:
| Has there been talk about that becoming a thing?
| amluto wrote:
| In PG&E land, you can buy one of a handful of approved
| ZigBee gadgets that can read out your meter data.
| zilti wrote:
| Corollary: people are cheap and lazy, so if you want them to
| not do something, make it cumbersome in a way that does not
| justify the cost difference, or vice versa.
| risyachka wrote:
| I'd argue that if you want people to be environmentally
| friendly, you need to abstract all data, dashboards , etc,
|
| The system must just work behind the scenes and optimise energy
| use as much as possible automatically.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have a friend that is diabetic (a number of friends,
| actually).
|
| He has been doing a pretty lousy job of managing his diet.
|
| Until his doctor prescribed a monitor for a few weeks.
|
| This is a device that looks like a big Band-Aid that you put on
| your arm, inserting a fine needle under the skin, and
| communicates with an app on the phone, reporting things like
| glucose levels.
|
| Once he realized the effects of the foods he was eating, he
| immediately changed his diet, and has been sticking to it,
| since (he no longer wears the monitor).
|
| The UI of the app was pretty good. The historical data readout
| is what did it for him.
| wkjagt wrote:
| I think even people who don't have diabetes could benefit
| from this. Would having access to my own glucose levels
| throughout the day give me some insights into how what I eat
| influences my own mood, energy levels etc?
| hgomersall wrote:
| Yeah, it's pretty common. You can buy them for a reasonable
| amount and learn quite a bit:
| https://chemist2customer.com/freestyle-libre-2-sensor
| masklinn wrote:
| Might, but as a non-diabetic your body self-regulate, so
| you'd usually see a large increase in blood sugars followed
| by a large drop as insulin blood levels increase and
| trigger its handling.
|
| And because the sensor needle goes through the skin it
| _must_ be replaced pretty regularly, and if it 's not
| covered by insurance it's not exactly free (the link from
| the sibling indicates PS57, that's per fortnight).
|
| My diabetic colleague was super happy when they got one
| though, the "beep" of their checking their BAC is pretty
| funny and it's definitely more comfortable and sanitary
| than having to prick their finger every time, plus the full
| history view is useful as point check means there are dark
| holes between checks and you might not see some of the
| opportunities for improvements.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > because the sensor needle goes through the skin it must
| be replaced pretty regularly
|
| I am an MRI radiographer and get patients to take these
| off for their scans.
|
| According to the link below [1] they are good for 7 days.
| They aren't cheap and removing them does cause some
| friction so I try tie the MRI scan up with a pending
| monitor change and quiz diabetic patients about them at
| booking.
|
| Some have gone into the scanner by accident (patients not
| declaring them) and they seem to survive but I emphasise
| that the results might not be accurate afterwards.
|
| [1] https://www.diabeticwarehouse.org/products/dexcom-g4-
| and-g5-...
| mywacaday wrote:
| This company is offering it as a service
| https://www.limborevolution.com/, it's expensive though. I
| haven't used it but the owner has had a few success. Shaq is
| also an investor.
| slow_typist wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Does the system supply grid voltage to your
| home autonomously, i.e. when the grid is offline? Does it work
| on all three phases? In Germany, most of the systems need the
| grid to be online in order to work.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Like you I have a solar system (Sunsynk) and it gives all sorts
| of wonderful stats, but I hardly bother looking at it as it is
| meaningless information - just wish it was more intelligent to
| balance battery discharge vs loadshedding schedule vs weather
| of the day.
|
| I have to manually set things up for winter vs summer.
|
| My geyser which is not on solar is on a IOT controller (Hotbot)
| and I set the times I want the water to be heated and it knows
| when there is loadshedding (3G) so it can intelligently deviate
| from my set times.
| TheRoque wrote:
| Also, we need to stop gaslighting people with fake solutions
| like "planting trees" or "deleting emails". Sure, it's good,
| but the scale is so small that you're actually losing focus on
| what really makes changes.
| nagisa wrote:
| > Now I just wish I had something as convenient for monitoring
| water consumption.
|
| You can set this up non-invasively with ultrasonic flow meters
| like the TUF-2000M. It isn't _cheap_ , but it does work quite
| alright if you don't want any of the risks associated with
| cracking open your pipes.
|
| (There are also cheaper options if you don't mind opening up
| your pipes too.)
| yelite wrote:
| If your meter is not too old, it probably sends wireless signal
| for consumption data. It can be read with
| https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr
| nijave wrote:
| Overlaying outdoor temperature is also helpful. One degree HVAC
| change makes a lot bigger difference when it's 0F (-18C) vs 40F
| (4C) outside
|
| I've seen decent reviews on the "no plumbing required" water
| meters. Flume has a product available in the U.S. that gets
| pretty good reviews (https://www.amazon.com/Flume-Smart-Water-
| Monitor-Detector/dp...).
| roland35 wrote:
| The Sense system is great for this, gives you second level
| data, and identifies most appliances when they turn on. I enjoy
| using it!
| barelyauser wrote:
| This problem can easily be solved without any device at all. Of
| course, it demands education and "intelligent behavior". If
| people only had the curiosity to read the specs on a heater and
| see "2000W" of power, and compare it to "15W" of power on the
| specs of the LED bulb. Same for water. One can just place a
| bowl under the faucet and measure the time it takes to fill up.
| Now you have your water consumption rate. We can choose the
| "device based" route, but this road end with Idiocracy and
| problems so "big" nobody can solve them.
| argiopetech wrote:
| If we're comparing apples to apples all the time, sure. I
| think it's pretty obvious to most people who care to look
| that a 60w conventional bulb uses more energy than a 15w LED
| bulb (which, for the record, is the 100w conventional
| equivalent). Consider, however, these questions:
|
| If my 2000w heater is running on the 800w setting and turns
| on when my room has dropped below the point I consider
| acceptably chilly and turns off above that point, how much
| electricity have I used in the last hour?
|
| If I have 3 15w LEDs on a dimmer and run them intermittently
| throughout the day, how much electricity have I used in the
| last hour?
|
| If my TV is off, but plugged in, and accesses the Internet a
| few times a day automatically to check for new versions, how
| much power has it used today?
|
| I think this makes the case for, at least, a kill-a-watt
| style device. A whole home solution with sufficient report
| granularity and a report interface visible in the home would
| be worth the extra trouble, IMHO.
|
| Edit: For the record, these are all real-scenarios from my
| house.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| A while ago I bought one of those plug-in power monitors,
| and went around measuring everything I could find around
| the house. It's a worthwhile exercise, I think. You can
| leave an appliance plugged into it for as long as you like
| to get an average. I was able to make a pie chart of where
| my electricity is used in my house, which was enlightening,
| and led to some useful changes.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: shifting environmental blame to individual
| consumers is a form of gaslighting (pun not intended, but still
| good). You may use spend a fortune on solar, heating pumps and
| A-clsss appliances, but will never save a fraction of power
| consumption of a single datacenter cabinet or aluminium
| furnace. One large enough manufacturing plant cancels out all
| environmental initiatives of a medium town, including public
| spaces.
| Affric wrote:
| Great article.
|
| Not so sure about the usefulness of these devices without having
| a battery though.
| miellaby wrote:
| I like how the author is surprised by the technological
| aberration that form Linux powered home appliances. A node server
| to power and publish over wifi a web site, an API, a web socket,
| while the site is being displayed by a outdated webview engine
| within an heavily constrained terminal which cant be reused for
| anything else. That's... the norm.
|
| All this is very common. And yet displaying a couple of digits
| and a bar graph could be done with a pair of microcontrollers
| communicating onto some wired bus.
|
| With the power supplies of this era, this pair of devices
| probably pumps 16w idle. Running 24/24 7/7, they probably consume
| as much as a small fridge as a whole. The LCA of the solution
| must be consterning as well, especially compared with few one
| dollard microcontrollers.
|
| The worst of all is that this whole mess turned into bricks
| probably 3 years after it was installed, maybe less.
| thrwwycbr wrote:
| The reason why the Mirai botnet is still at large is: Android.
|
| From a business perspective nobody wants to pay the costly
| people that can do microcontroller programming. Frontend devs
| are dirt cheap, especially for something as simple as that
| interface displaying the bar charts.
| justinclift wrote:
| > nobody wants to pay the costly people that can do
| microcontroller programming
|
| The embedded world isn't known for paying well.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Actually competent microcontroller programmers definitely
| earn way more then bargain barrel front end devs.
| throw310822 wrote:
| There is also an enormous amount of flexibility gained when,
| instead if designing and building your own single-purpose
| device, you just use a cheap, mass produced, off the shelf,
| general purpose device.
| PeterisP wrote:
| From employee perspective it was my impression that EE
| developers tend to get _lower_ salaries than web developers.
|
| But it could be the case that building an android or web app
| for a simple UI would take less dev-months than an embedded
| app with similar functionality.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > building an android or web app for a simple UI would take
| less dev-months than an embedded app with similar
| functionality
|
| I'm quite sure that's correct.
| XorNot wrote:
| Pulling wires through anywhere after it's finished is an
| immense installation hassle though. It might be possible...or
| it might be completely impractical even if you can (i.e. low
| voltage buses and unshielded power wires don't play nice
| together if they're parallel).
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah I don't understand why he is shocked that this
| communicates wirelessly. He even bought a modern flat with
| Ethernet because he clearly knows how much pain it is to add
| wiring to a house. Very weird.
| freetanga wrote:
| He probably would get more savings by removing the fuse again
| than keeping that useless thing on...
| squarefoot wrote:
| > within an heavily constrained terminal which cant be reused
| for anything else.
|
| Except for botnets and/or spying. Some of those boards already
| contain MEMS microphones and cameras (the box in the picture
| even shows the camera objective). I'd have took apart the
| device to take a look inside, or at least run some diagnostics
| to explore which hardware was installed/detected.
| netsharc wrote:
| I wonder if cat /dev/video1 would be enough to turn it into a
| surveillance device..
| squarefoot wrote:
| Not sure about cat, but if one could sneak in netcat or
| better ffmpeg on Android, then opening a audio/video
| channel to the outside could become trivial.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > With the power supplies of this era, this pair of devices
| probably pumps 16w idle. Running 24/24 7/7, they probably
| consume as much as a small fridge as a whole. The LCA of the
| solution must be consterning as well, especially compared with
| few one dollard microcontrollers.
|
| At the average cost of electric in the USA this amounts to
| under $2/month. Seems negligible to me?
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=16+watts+*+24+hours+*+3...
| israrkhan wrote:
| $2 is median daily wage for several countries. Negligible in
| US but not everywhere
|
| source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-
| income
| bdavbdav wrote:
| Still cheap, but the cost per KWH in UK is at least twice the
| average in the US.
| cm2187 wrote:
| A bit of a dick move to remove the root password on an IOT device
| of a flat you only rent.
| caslon wrote:
| It was completely non-functional before, so there's really no
| loss.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I see half of the article about how he struggled to get the
| password, so not that dysfunctional.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Considering that: - the Wi-Fi is password protected - root
| privileges can already be granted via the "backdoor" - exactly
| as the author did
|
| I don't think it's a dick move, the device security wasn't
| decreased (or increased) since RCE was already possible via the
| tcf port
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| The landlord didn't know what it was and apparently doesn't
| care at all.
| acdha wrote:
| If it was powered off before, it's clearly not a selling point
| of the apartment.
| yashg wrote:
| I thought it would a Telescreen. (1984 reference)
| petepete wrote:
| On a related note, I had a new boiler installed last year with
| Vaillant's smart controls. There's a little puck shaped 'control
| unit' with WiFi/radio which allows the app to talk to it, and it
| to talk to the thermostat.
|
| Like most people in the UK, the boiler's in the garage. A brick
| rectangle separate from the house. Did Vaillant include an
| ethernet port? You bet they didn't. The support team suggested I
| installed WiFi in my garage, which definitely wasn't going to
| happen.
|
| I had to get the installer back and he ran the cable through the
| wall so it's now inside and working fine - but how did this ever
| make it to market? No wonder the reviews are all terrible.
| knolan wrote:
| Most people in the UK don't have a garage. Almost every home
| I've lived in has had a gas boiler somewhere inside.
| petepete wrote:
| Fair. But I strongly suspect nearly every house with a garage
| has the boiler in it.
|
| Edit. So having done a little research this probably isn't
| the case. Maybe it's a regional thing, all the (mostly
| suburban) houses I've lived in and visited, in the north west
| of England, are set up that way.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| There's enough boilers in garages, lofts, the other side of
| the house, etc, once you overlap it with UK houses being
| brick, you get enough situations where getting WiFi from one
| place to another becomes a pain. A lot of the time, the WiFi
| AP is 30 cm from where the phone line came into the house
| when it was built (before the internet even existed), which
| is not optimally placed for coverage.
| pinkahd wrote:
| Not quite I've noticed in east of England the boiler is in the
| garage only when a conservatory or kitchen extension is made.
|
| I've also tried to move mine from kitchen to garage and the
| builder I had at the time wasn't aware of such things.
|
| But agree with the point, I think if a wifi is added to an
| appliance an ethernet port should also be added.
| Angostura wrote:
| I probably would have just installed an an extender plug that
| extends Wifi by signalling through the mains. Cheap and works
| quite well
| petepete wrote:
| I totally could have run a cable through the wall and
| installed an extra access point - I was planning on running
| the cable anyway to connect the control unit via ethernet,
| until I found that it didn't have one (yeah, I should have
| checked, I assumed it would).
|
| I didn't really like the idea of having an access point in
| the garage just to service my boiler. Seems very wasteful.
| oynqr wrote:
| If you actually want to crack a password, use hashcat. Although
| even md5crypt is comparatively hard to crack.
| M6WIQ wrote:
| The name of the company (Netthings) seemed familiar with me,
| turns out I had read an blog article regarding the hardcoded NTP
| servers that they used in their devices being firewalled off and
| therefore losing time sync.
|
| Article: https://strugglers.net/~andy/blog/2018/12/24/the-
| internet-of...
|
| It also appears that they went into liquidation in 2018, so good
| luck getting any support with that device from them!
| laplab wrote:
| This is absolutely amazing, thank you for sharing that! I have
| added the link in the end of the article.
| justusthane wrote:
| That makes the " DATE & TIME ARE ALWAYS CORRECT AND NEVER NEED
| TO BE ADJUSTED" from the manual even better!
| DougBTX wrote:
| Interesting point about not having internet access: these smart
| meters typically report usage to the energy supplier for billing.
| I'd go look for a mobile network connection, maybe still up?
| cr3ative wrote:
| These aren't meters (in that sense) - generally they're reading
| from CT clamps placed on the tails from your meter.
| smingo wrote:
| Putting the WiFi SSID and password on the side of the energy
| monitor sensor box allowed for this:
|
| > The whole thing was quite dissapointing. However, I do have a
| few Raspberry Pico microcontrollers lying around at home. If I
| could connect to the WiFi network of the energy manager directly
| and get the data from the server, I could just extract kW
| consumption from the API, multiply it by a correct rate and then
| display it on some Grafana instance.
|
| Love it!
| P5210 wrote:
| laplab, awesome job and great writeup!
|
| I had a similar experience when moving into my "smart apartment"
| 9 years ago and finding a wall-mounted Galaxy Tab 3. I went on to
| develop a one-click root to allow my neighbors to "free" their
| systems, too:
|
| https://hackaday.io/project/181646-hacking-tabs/logs?sort=ol...
| methou wrote:
| I remember when I rented a palace in Singapore, my landlord asked
| me to download an app called MyKNX to control the lights and
| blinds in the room. I dumped some packets, and found system is
| using tcp/ip and the KNX is standardized protocol.
|
| The box is more like a PLC than "smart things", so it doesn't
| need internet to function.
|
| It's also supported by home-assistant. I want to get one when I'm
| building my own home.
|
| Edit: added something details
| 55555 wrote:
| Please, please write a blog to document the build of your next
| palace.
| wkjagt wrote:
| I'm curious about the palace in Singapore.
| cybrox wrote:
| As someone who works in IoT, I very much enjoyed your disbelief.
|
| I'd place this right about in the middle in terms of useless
| complexity. There's a lot worse and a lot better.
|
| A lot better usually only comes from bigger vendors that can
| afford dev teams with possible rotations.
|
| As a small company or startup, good luck finding a successor to
| your embedded developer if they leave, so they just slap everyday
| tech on way overpowered hardware which makes it easier to find
| devs.
| INTPenis wrote:
| That was so interesting because around 2015 they built some new
| apartment buildings in Malmo Sweden and they also included touch
| screens in every apartment.
|
| Not the same system, but I wonder if that system is as abandoned
| today as this one was 8 years later.
| jacobr wrote:
| "The concrete description of what is going on here is spread
| atom-thin across several websites, all of which expect you to
| know the terminology. Each of these websites provides you with a
| tiny piece of the puzzle and you are expected to combine it
| together on your own."
|
| Oh how I unironically love these types of quests.
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| I relate to this a lot. As part of my job, I'm regularly given
| IoT devices that do similar tasks, but from different
| manufacturers and with varying age ranges (new last year with a
| raspberry pi 4 inside, to something over a decade old with custom
| firmware on an ancient microcontroller).
|
| I have to figure out how they work, and somehow coerce their data
| into a standard format before sending it to our server.
|
| Often, they'll have a built-in mechanism for retrieving data
| programmatically, but it's usually too slow and sends data in
| large batches, so I end up needing to reverse engineer their
| socket IO + handlebars web UI for closer to real-time data
| streaming. It's a janky nightmare, but it's so satisfying once
| you make it work.
| bloqs wrote:
| Slid out, not slided :)
| rwky wrote:
| I wonder if the previous tenant removed the fuse to stop the box
| broadcasting a wifi signal. In an apartment block the 2.4ghz band
| will already be congested!
| jenadine wrote:
| If you were to develop a device like that "properly", how would
| you do it? What kind of hardware and what software stack would
| one use?
| konschubert wrote:
| Probably an esp32 on both ends. And an eink screen.
|
| The tricky part is passing the networking and auth credentials
| from the server to the client. But you can marry them during
| manufacturing.
| conradfr wrote:
| That was fun.
|
| Are the csv files rotated or can they hypothetically make the
| device run out of space in n^n years? :)
| layer8 wrote:
| The space was probably calculated to be sufficient until 2038,
| after which the clock won't be correct anymore anyway. ;)
| living_room_pc wrote:
| Now that you have root access. Check for a microphone device or
| other things that could be utilized for surveillance.
|
| Im always skeptical of IoT devices.
| atribecalledqst wrote:
| I was thinking about how the future software engineer to move
| into the house is probably more likely to curse him rather than
| thank him for making the server MORE vulnerable than it was
| before, by removing the SSH password.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > I now have access to one of the weirdest Edge Computing
| platforms imaginable.
|
| If you think that's "weird", I have a bad news for you...
|
| Not that your intuition is bad. It's sensible and fully
| justified. It's just weird to call common things weird ;)
| joemaller1 wrote:
| "hello_stranger.txt" feels like something I would've written as a
| 11 year old pretending to be a mad scientist.
|
| I'm going to start leaving those files on every system I touch.
| Thank you Nikita.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I do something like that but it's actually a Canary token. So I
| can know if someone is snooping.
| bouk wrote:
| For those wondering _why_ this device is there, it seems it gave
| points under the Code for Sustainable Homes
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_for_Sustainable_Homes so the
| apartment could have a better environmental rating, as mentioned
| at https://uk-metering.net/products/netthings-energy-manager
|
| Seems that making sure the device actually works and is accurate
| was not a requirement however...
| orenlindsey wrote:
| > There were two strings printed with labels "SSID" and "Pwd". I
| froze in horror. They wouldn't dare. It is literally 3 meter
| distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this
| complexity...
|
| > Socket.IO! Wow, I honestly did not expect that. Client
| literally needs to receive 5 numbers from the server, Socket.IO
| seems to be a complete overkill for this usecase.
|
| > The client code also looks very complicated for what it does.
| There are at least 6 RequireJS modules, all loading dynamically
| through different requests of course. There is Handlebars,
| Backbone.js, Underscore.js
|
| I just kept getting more incredulous throughout this article. No
| way someone would put in _that_ much effort for a device like
| this. The laziest option is usually the most common in software
| development. I guess in this case, it 's not.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Laziest option would probably be the option that developer is
| most familiar with.
| guptaneil wrote:
| If anyone is interested in having this type of real-time usage
| data for their own own home, I highly recommend IoTaWatt:
| https://iotawatt.com
|
| It's a completely local energy monitor that you can install into
| your home's circuit breaker panel, and then view dashboards or
| read data via an API from a local web server running on-device.
| You choose how many sensors you want, but you can monitor your
| whole home as well as individual circuits.
|
| For example, I track and trigger automations when my various
| appliances (laundry, dishwasher, microwave, etc) start/stop. It's
| very cool. Just be warned that it does require some research,
| basic understanding of electricity, and comfort working with high
| voltage mains connections if you plan to DIY it but I found it
| approachable and easy to setup.
|
| What it looks like: https://i.ibb.co/qBVmBD1/IMG-1595.jpg
| tartrate wrote:
| I'm curious, how do people record the history of their adventures
| like this? I assume this doesn't all come from memory. And
| writing some kind of diary for everything you mess around with
| must be hard. Or is it common?
| haswell wrote:
| Personally, I tend to create a master note for each project
| like this I dig into, and dump as much information into it as I
| can. This helps me keep track of what I've looked at and avoid
| retracing my steps too much, and in the end would be a good
| basis for a blog post.
|
| I used to be able to write about things like this from memory,
| but as I've gotten older, I've come to rely quite a bit more on
| journaling and using "2nd brain" tools like Obsidian.
|
| One of the most useful habits I ever started is using
| Obsidian's daily journal feature to jot things down every day:
|
| - Things I'm working on that day
|
| - How I'm feeling
|
| - Ideas that pop up about projects
|
| - References to useful sites / code snippets / various
| explorations
|
| It's one of the few tools I've found that lets me dump truly
| just about everything into it, and by the end of a project, I
| either have a nice collection of draft paragraphs to clean up
| in a blog post, or a nice future reference for myself when I
| want to do something similar in the future. And because of the
| automatic note-to-note connections that Obsidian builds, the
| daily journal always links back to the more concrete topic
| notes I've touched that day.
|
| > _writing some kind of diary for everything you mess around
| with must be hard_
|
| It was only hard until I had established the habit. Now I can't
| imagine _not_ doing it because of the productivity gains that
| come with it. I get further on things because everything I do
| leaves behind a tangible bit of progress (in the form of a
| note) that I can pick back up later.
| CliffStoll wrote:
| Keeping a logbook is a part of experimental physics. In grad
| school, I learned "If you don't write it down, it didn't
| happen." And a diary is easy and fun - just a
| sentence or two every day (even on a wall calendar) reminds you
| of experiences, travels, travails, and the daily whatnot of
| life. Useful? Sure! My lab notebook and home diary
| were prime ingredients in writing m'book, The Cuckoo's Egg.
| boulos wrote:
| I made a simple bash alias for this: mknote ()
| { emacs -nw $HOME/notes/`date "+%Y-%m-%d-"`${1}.txt
| }
|
| so that I can do: $ mknote FooTopic
|
| and start recording things.
|
| I also have enote: enote () { local
| newest=$(ls -Ft $HOME/notes/\*.txt | grep "$1" | head -n 1)
| emacs -nw $newest }
|
| to go back and edit them by name.
| scotty79 wrote:
| The bit about how this device gets it's "Always accurate time" is
| the best part:
|
| The device itself does not seem to be connected to the internet
| at all.
|
| Actually, the time on the device itself is entirely incorrect,
| somewhere in 2015. But when I open the web UI, it now shows the
| correct time, even without an initial 15 minute delay.
|
| Turns out, they found out an even more innovative time sync
| mechanism. When you open the UI in the browser, they quickly
| redirect you to "/set-time/" + Date.now(). This sets a global
| variable in the Node.js app responsible for "now".
|
| https://mastodon.social/@laplab/111789584104871367
| yieldcrv wrote:
| ChatGPT4V is pretty good at this by the way
| fiznool wrote:
| After reading this (very entertaining) article, I think I can
| guess why the fuse on his machine was missing. This is exactly
| what I would do, if I was met with this monstrosity!
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