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Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

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Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#151

Post by yencabulator »

imgabe wrote: post #33
newaccount74 wrote: post #29

I've never seen a "smart" lighting system that was meaningfully better than a light switch. Every place I've been to that had fancy ways to control the lighting was just annoying. In school and uni teachers had issues dimming the lights, people who have smart lights at home can't figure out how to turn on/off some of the lights, you can't turn off flickering lights because they are motion activated... My favorite "sm…

You literally can’t. Some form of automatic lighting control is required by code in most commercial or public buildings.

Clearly there aren't huge consequences for breaking that rule, considering this school...

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#152

Post by yencabulator »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #111
jt2190 wrote: post #107

Some great details provided by a student reporter: > Edward Cenedella, the Director of Facilities and Operations for the Hampden Wilbraham Regional School District, says that the issue is more complicated than just a computer server problem. > When the high school was rebuilt in 2012, an energy conservation software was added which relied on a daylight harvesting system for the lights to use daylight to equalize the…

Old proprietary software, everyone's favorite. Next time they should just use Home Assistant or some other open system so they don't have to rely on the continued existence of the maintainer.

In the Home Assistant world, the thing that is inaccessible here would likely be a proprietary box controlling a bunch of relays and LED dimmers, that stopped responding to its network API.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#153

Post by newaccount74 »

jon-wood wrote: post #68
newaccount74 wrote: post #29

I've never seen a "smart" lighting system that was meaningfully better than a light switch. Every place I've been to that had fancy ways to control the lighting was just annoying. In school and uni teachers had issues dimming the lights, people who have smart lights at home can't figure out how to turn on/off some of the lights, you can't turn off flickering lights because they are motion activated... My favorite "sm…

There are loads of examples of smart lighting systems that are more efficient than a light switch. You didn't notice them, because the lighting was doing exactly what you expected it to. You only notice the instances where the system is badly calibrated or had a poor control system and it annoyed you. For me that's basically the definition of good automation. If its really good you don't engage with it at all. The li…

> The lights come on when people want lights, they turn off or dim when they want less light.

How do you imagine that to work?

I prefer the lights off, my coworkers want the lights on, so when I'm alone I leave the lights off, when the others come into the office they turn them on. This situation is very easy to deal with because fortunately we have normal light switches in the office.

There is no way that automation could improve this situation, unless they install cameras with facial recognition to see who is in the office today and send everyone questionnaires to ask about their preferred lighting levels.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#154

Post by shapefrog »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #142
shapefrog wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> highly consumer tech literate person Watching his videos on this subject I do not get the impression that he falls into this category.

If he's not then pretty no one is; and the solutions are overcomplicated.

My grandmother, at the grand age of 95, shows better understanding of tech than is demonstrated in those videos.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#155

Post by Aeolun »

chopin wrote: post #70
Aeolun wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you can turn off the lights with a normal switch every night and morning, I’m inclined to say you can do the same with an entire circuit.

Circuit breakers are not designed for many cycles.

Well, I can’t speak to the school of course, but mine are.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#156

Post by aequitas »

tbran wrote: post #124
willcipriano wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does any government agency claim to be funded correctly?

There was an article here on HN some time ago about some enormous project in California (a bridge? a tunnel?). IIRC the state's engineering department was quite small and underfunded, and so they depended on the contracted company for their engineering expertise. This did not go well. As I recall, the problems were that the state engineers were not experienced enough (because private pays better and seniors leave) an…

I remember this story to. Probably from a YouTube channel. My first guess would be this one[0] but I can’t find it.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/@PracticalEngineeringChannel/videos

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#157

Post by richrichardsson »

braingenious wrote: post #66
richrichardsson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how intentionally[1] opting into an agreement to have your thermostat remotely controlled is an argument against having it connected to the internet. The best argument would be the hypothetical remote control by a bad actor without any consent. [1] what's curious about this particular story is how "intentional" this was; the report is vague and hints that some people were unaware exactly what they were o…

>I'm not sure how intentionally[1] opting into an agreement to have your thermostat remotely controlled is an argument against having it connected to the internet. ??? I think you immediately followed that up with more than one answer to that?

Users being stupid and not reading what they are signing up for is not a argument against connecting the thermostat to the internet, and hypothetical bad actors are just that, "hypothetical". If you'd linked an article demonstrating concrete proof I'd accept it as an "argument against connecting one’s thermostat to the internet".

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#158

Post by imgabe »

yencabulator wrote: post #151
imgabe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally can’t. Some form of automatic lighting control is required by code in most commercial or public buildings.

Clearly there aren't huge consequences for breaking that rule, considering this school...

They had a compliant system that stopped working, that's not the same. If you didn't design it to comply in the first place you wouldn't get a building permit.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#159

Post by roxgib »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #114
Symbiote wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have wireless light switches in my rented apartment, and I don't like them. 1. I can't see from the position of the switch the state of the light, so I still after 5 years press the wrong switch sometimes. 2. Sometimes, maybe 5% of the time, the light doesn't change instantly, but up to 2 seconds after I pressed the button. 3. About 5% of the time, the light doesn't change at all. Then I either think I've pressed t…

This seems to reveal that the problem with automated lights, etc. is that we no longer have a single source of truth for the state of the light or other device. I think the problem is that we are updating the state of the light but not updating the state of the UI i.e. the switch. The solution would seem to be that the automated system should be moving the switch in order to turn the light on or off instead of adding…

But that adds yet another point of failure, and something with mechanical parts is probably going to wear out much quicker. And if it fails can I still flick the switch, or do I need to replace it?

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#160

Post by roxgib »

imgabe wrote: post #32
Freak_NL wrote: post #9

For 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…

Yeah but that won’t get you points for LEED, or comply with the energy codes for that matter.

This seems like the problem to me. Staff at the school would have probably turned off the light in their classroom at the end of each day regardless, but no credit is given unless you add this system which does the same thing for more money and probably more emissions.
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