Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25 • Hacker News Board

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#11

Post by lucaspiller » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:06 AM UTC

linker3000 wrote: post #9

* OWL power monitor with inductive clamp and separate LCD display (in the reduced bin at the local DIY barn), transmits data on 433MHz - £12 * Arduino Mega+ESP8266 combo board - £8 * Rflink Rx/TX board - order a kit or build your own ( http://www.rflink.nl/blog2/wiring ) 433 or 868MHz operation, can also work with some devices at 2.4GHz - About £15 * Rflink software ( http://www.rflink.nl/blog2/ ) + Serial link softw…

You can also buy clamp sensors that can be connected directly to a microcontroller (with an ADC - so not a Raspberry Pi without external hardware).

http://www.homautomation.org/2013/09/17/current-monitoring-w...

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#12

Post by yummybear » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:14 AM UTC

I would think it would be a bit of a security hole to have anyone read your meter. You'd easily be able to determine who is on vacation for instance. I'm guessing you might also be able to deduce a lot of information such as bedtimes, when you are doing laundry, when you leave for work, etc.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#13

Post by dawnerd » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:17 AM UTC

yummybear wrote: post #12

I would think it would be a bit of a security hole to have anyone read your meter. You'd easily be able to determine who is on vacation for instance. I'm guessing you might also be able to deduce a lot of information such as bedtimes, when you are doing laundry, when you leave for work, etc.

I feel like that'd be a lot more work than just watching their house for activity.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#14

Post by colordrops » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:32 AM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #13

yummybear wrote: post #12

I would think it would be a bit of a security hole to have anyone read your meter. You'd easily be able to determine who is on vacation for instance. I'm guessing you might also be able to deduce a lot of information such as bedtimes, when you are doing laundry, when you leave for work, etc.

I feel like that'd be a lot more work than just watching their house for activity.

It's a different set of criminals and crimes, and some of it is organized.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#15

Post by manmal » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:36 AM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #13

yummybear wrote: post #12

I would think it would be a bit of a security hole to have anyone read your meter. You'd easily be able to determine who is on vacation for instance. I'm guessing you might also be able to deduce a lot of information such as bedtimes, when you are doing laundry, when you leave for work, etc.

I feel like that'd be a lot more work than just watching their house for activity.

You could just build a device with GSM module, a battery, and above mentioned components, and hide it somewhere near the house. Voila, 24/7 observation from the comfort of your home. And the data is easily analyzable/mineable, not like a video feed you have to view on fast-forward.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#16

Post by ascorbic » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:47 AM UTC

yummybear wrote: post #12

I would think it would be a bit of a security hole to have anyone read your meter. You'd easily be able to determine who is on vacation for instance. I'm guessing you might also be able to deduce a lot of information such as bedtimes, when you are doing laundry, when you leave for work, etc.

Considering the fact that it took him three hours to identify his own house, when he could see the current reading, I'd say that's not much of a problem.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#17

Post by icelancer » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:49 AM UTC

>>I use PHP. There, I admitted it.

Very happy to see stuff like this in blog posts. I use it all the time to stand up scripts like this. It makes me REALLY happy to see hacky code like:

>>exec("/scripts/gocode/bin/rtlamr -msgtype={$type} --format=json --filterid={$unitid} --single=true",$output);

I also do this all the time, even to control Windows processes on client/slave machines (generally killing and relaunching stalled programs).

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#18

Post by kabes » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:57 AM UTC

JSONwebtoken wrote: post #10

I hadn't heard of the company Sense before I read about this blog. I looked up their product... 300 bucks, are you kidding me? And it requires licensed installation on top of that, so maybe even more in labor. Who's buying this stuff and how is their margin defensible from Tesla or somebody selling Raspberry Pi kits for $25?

Of course the people without the technical skills, but also everybody who counts their time in terms of money. I used to reason like you when I was a student and had seemingly unlimited time on my hands. But now I'm a consultant who bills by the hour which makes me somehow always translate time into money. If I bill $100/hour and the raspberry PI solution would take me a day to set up and working, then buying the sense is $500 cheaper.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#19

Post by masklinn » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 10:01 AM UTC

> Some research told me that the power company accomplishes this via a simple radio broadcast on the 900Mhz spectrum.

Interesting. Around here (mainland Europe) they're currently installing "smart" meters which do this using CPL rather than radio.

> And with one simple command, I was reading the power (and probably water) meters for my entire neighborhood

That is a bit troubling from a physical security perspective, once you've mapped meters to accommodation you can now remotely check for presence across an entire neighbourhood, and can ignore the usual "fake presence" indicators (randomised lighting & blinds manipulation) entirely. In fact those would help you as seeing lights in a house whose owners are on holidays would not surprise the neighbours.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#20

Post by eoin_murphy » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 10:03 AM UTC

yummybear wrote: post #12

I would think it would be a bit of a security hole to have anyone read your meter. You'd easily be able to determine who is on vacation for instance. I'm guessing you might also be able to deduce a lot of information such as bedtimes, when you are doing laundry, when you leave for work, etc.

It is. In Germany at least all communications must be encrypted. And often multiple meters will communicate via one gateway.

Though, if someone has the time and technical ability to implement this kind of surveillance then there are probably easier ways to get better info than inferring activity from energy readings.