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Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

blog.kroy.io

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Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#21

Post by windowsworkstoo »

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?

Its defensible because people are paying it...go on, you can buy the current clamps for a few bucks and make your own competitor for $25 a pop... you wont though because its easier to shit on things than actually do something.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#22

Post by aequitas »

"I'm not going to lie. It felt weird polling the meter readings for the entire neighborhood."

Yikes, and I though we had it bad here in the Netherlands where you explicitly needed to opt-out of your power supplier being able to read your meter.

At least here it is ordered that if these newer 'smart meters' are to be installed they always need to include a 'P1 port' which allows the home owner to simply read out the metrics every 10 seconds using a serial device.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#23

Post by garmaine »

ascorbic wrote: post #16
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.

Because it took him that long in his first try doesn’t mean that holds true of everyone.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#24

Post by masklinn »

eoin_murphy wrote: post #20
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.

> 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.

I don't know, the original mapping probably isn't the most difficult thing in the world, and then you can just passively (programmatically) wait for oddities in consumption patterns against an entire neighbourhood.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#25

Post by masklinn »

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.

Sure but for theft it's much more useful to have information about an entire neighbourhood at once, there's a much larger ROI to casing dozens or hundreds of homes at once than to casing each one individually.

You can have "small hands" doing the initial survey (e.g. triangulate signal strengths to meter locations), automate the surveillance/pattern checking, and call in more professional break-in teams when you have high confidence.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#26

Post by nickysielicki »

PostOnce wrote: post #2

Tangential, but what other fascinating things can I do with an SDR dongle? I've had one for years and have not heard of this. * Listen to various radio stations * Track airplane positions * Receive weather images from a satellite what else? One other thing off the top of my head is combining ship position and cargo databases: https://github.com/marcdacosta/ambient-shipping

* decode trunked p25 radio, eg: local EMS https://github.com/DSheirer/sdrtrunk

* listen to air traffic control nearby

* tap the IF on a hf transceiver for a panadapter

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#27

Post by JohnMort »

masklinn wrote: post #19

> 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,…

What about thieves going around selecting data and pinpointing the house the one with the least consumption so they can find out if you are absent or not. Incredible techonology

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#28

Post by ascorbic »

garmaine wrote: post #23
ascorbic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because it took him that long in his first try doesn’t mean that holds true of everyone.

There's no way to tie the signal to a specific house without the serial number or a reading.

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#29

Post by floatboth »

PostOnce wrote: post #2

Tangential, but what other fascinating things can I do with an SDR dongle? I've had one for years and have not heard of this. * Listen to various radio stations * Track airplane positions * Receive weather images from a satellite what else? One other thing off the top of my head is combining ship position and cargo databases: https://github.com/marcdacosta/ambient-shipping

Listen to unintentional radio emissions of various devices: https://youtu.be/5N1C3WB8c0o?t=17m48s

Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

#30

Post by masklinn »

JohnMort wrote: post #27
masklinn wrote: post #19

> 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,…

What about thieves going around selecting data and pinpointing the house the one with the least consumption so they can find out if you are absent or not. Incredible techonology

That's what my second paragraph is talking about.

Note that "least consumption" is not the right indicator, different people have different levels of consumption. What you want is a break in the consumption pattern, a home with lower than usual consumption of electricity.

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