Job titles of the 21st century: Reverse engineering bounty hunter.
Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
11–20 of 171 posts
Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
#12For all the money this system costs more than conventional off-the-shelf energy efficient bulbs, switches, and dimmers, you could hire a janitor's assistant to keep an eye out that the lights are off in the evening and turned on in the morning, and have a system that is maintainable with very little training, off-the-shelf replacement parts, and which will work for decades. But the smart system they installed came wi…
> you could hire a janitor's assistant to keep an eye out that the lights are off in the evening and turned on in the morning
This is ultimately the biggest failing, and what makes this so sad. For a fraction of the cost of this system you could employee someone and have this as part of their responsibility.
For automation to make sense, it can't just replace at the same cost (and certainly not cost more), it needs to be an order of magnitude saving. They may have done the math on this over say a 30 year period, but these systems never last that long.
I imaging the "half life" of a IOT system is about five years.
Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
#13costs thousands a months, and over a million to fix. Whatever energy savings they are getting from that system, it doesn't seem to be enough for it to pay for itself.
It costs millions to replace the entire system which may or may not be done since they are working on a fix.
The system has 7000 bulbs and has been installed for 10 years. The energy savings already occurred and the inability to shut off the lights isn't a normal occurrence
Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
#14This is fundamentally why I'm so sceptical of putting "smart" control equipment into my home. It's very expesive to fit in the first place, and then there is the incredibly high chance it will become redundant or unmaintainable in the next 5 to 10 years. You just won't see the payoff in that time. Much better to just turn the lights off when you leave a room, or turn the heating down and wear another layer. We have N…
It reminds me of my sister installing an Alexa controlled light in the living room with no switch. My dad, who doesn't speak english, couldn't turn them on when he stayed there.
I keep thinking turning on lights with a switch takes even less time than interacting with Alexa.
Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
#15This is fundamentally why I'm so sceptical of putting "smart" control equipment into my home. It's very expesive to fit in the first place, and then there is the incredibly high chance it will become redundant or unmaintainable in the next 5 to 10 years. You just won't see the payoff in that time. Much better to just turn the lights off when you leave a room, or turn the heating down and wear another layer. We have N…
Just looking at the absolute nightmare that Linus from Linus Tech Tips (a popular YouTube tech channel) is going through with his smart house is enough to make it obvious that those solutions just suck.
Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
#16costs thousands a months, and over a million to fix. Whatever energy savings they are getting from that system, it doesn't seem to be enough for it to pay for itself.
No problem it's free.
Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
#17This is fundamentally why I'm so sceptical of putting "smart" control equipment into my home. It's very expesive to fit in the first place, and then there is the incredibly high chance it will become redundant or unmaintainable in the next 5 to 10 years. You just won't see the payoff in that time. Much better to just turn the lights off when you leave a room, or turn the heating down and wear another layer. We have N…
I went with standards based stuff, zigbee specifically. Matter/thread are the new standard that seems to stick.
Basically, anything that doesn't require a specialized app to work, but rather a standardized protocol through a hub - and if the hub fails or sucks, you can replace it.
Fortunately, it seems like the vendors are finally standardizing.
Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
#18Surely there is a circuit breaker somewhere.
You can't flip a circuit breaker every night and every morning.
Firstly the school's safety code would not allow it. Secondly they are not designed for that. Thirdly, there are probably lots of things in a high school which need to be kept on overnight: computers, fridges, lab equipment.
Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
#19This is fundamentally why I'm so sceptical of putting "smart" control equipment into my home. It's very expesive to fit in the first place, and then there is the incredibly high chance it will become redundant or unmaintainable in the next 5 to 10 years. You just won't see the payoff in that time. Much better to just turn the lights off when you leave a room, or turn the heating down and wear another layer. We have N…
Electronics hobbyist magazines of the 70s and 80s are full of better Nest replacements.
Considering parent, myself and most people I talk to consider the point of Nest being the ability to control their thermostat when they are out of the house, I don't understand how any system in the 70s or 80s could even work at all like a Nest, let alone better.
No mobile phones, no widespread use of the internet and a hobbyist can make a thermostat you can control when out of the house? Would love to know how?
Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off
#20Duplicate, although this one is gaining more traction.