211–220 of 576 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what does that mean in practice? Throw them all into the fire and go back to pen and paper?
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.
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.
Not the same system, but I wonder if that system is as abandoned today as this one was 8 years later.
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 electr…
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 sma…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Oh how I unironically love these types of quests.
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 electr…
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 l…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 energ…
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', 'you…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 est…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sma…
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 £20!
So you got 8 pounds to account for which at UKs minimum wage is about 1 hours worth of work?