Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What's that touchscreen in my room?

laplab.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 576 posts

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#241

Post by Angostura »

outofmyshed wrote: post #161
zarzavat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add: Many pre-90s buildings don’t even have circuit breakers, they have fuse boxes with fuse wire (different fuse to the one being talked about). Literally just a piece of wire that burns out at a certain current and breaks the connection. You “reset” it by putting a new piece of wire in. The second fuse at the plug allows using a narrower gauge of wire in the device’s cord. Let’s say you have a lamp with a 3A fus…

My last place had a 1970s Wylex board, which at least had plug-in MCB modules that replaced the fuse wire holders and can be reset. However given you can still buy fuse wire in DIY stores there still must be installations out there that need it. Shudder.

I recently replaced the old fusewire plugs with MCB modules. Really didn't fancy trying to wind a bit of wire around the terminals in the cellar in the dark :)

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#242

Post by Angostura »

manarth wrote: post #215
oasisaimlessly wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the UK, there's typically one ring circuit and one lighting circuit per storey, a separate ring circuit for the kitchen, and dedicated circuits for large current draws such as an electric oven or hob, shower, or immersion heater. 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.

Your 6-way extension strip cable has still caught on fire thiugh

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#243

Post by concordDance »

verisimi wrote: post #194
failingslowly wrote: post #181

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…

> 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', 'your toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental damage you are causing'.

This is likely to happen and is economically awful (far better to have constant carbon taxes), but it will be done because the majority supports it, not due to some government plot against the people.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#244

Post by kevincox »

stavros wrote: post #227
naitgacem wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Louis Rossman over at YouTube has been going over this fuses thing from Amazon. All the fuses he tried from top-results didn't blow until he put 4x or 5x the current rating through them.

Really? What the hell? That seems extremely unsafe, why are people doing this? Are 12A fuses cheaper to make than 3A fuses?

Probably not. But precision is expensive. A 3A +- 0.1A fuse will be more expensive to make them a 3A +- 6A fuse. And of course a customer will be upset with a 3A - 2A = 1A fuse so they really make a 9A +- 6A fuse and sell it as 3A.

So if you are "lucky" you can pass 12A though it no problem.

(Numbers make up for illustration.)

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#245

Post by concordDance »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #218
verisimi wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fossil fuel interests have really rotted a lot of minds with their propaganda. 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.

I don't think this is fair to him. He's not alleging carbon stuff is a conspiracy to control shower length, merely that moralizers will want to control everything they see as "waste".

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#246

Post by tim333 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #134
userbinator wrote: post #100

Interesting article but one thing stood out: The landlord had no idea what this is. There are no buttons or labels on the thing, just a tiny yellow light to let you know it has the power. You move in and find a mysterious device on the wall that, at least to me, appears somewhat ominous and it's not obvious whether it may have a camera and possibly a microphone (the picture of it on the manual appears to show that it…

The landlord had no idea what this is. Golgafrincham B Ark candidate detected.

As a landlord this is quite common. You buy through an estate, let through a letting agent and have very little idea what gizmos are installed. Until maybe something packs up and you have to pay for a new one.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#247

Post by dns_snek »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #210
8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #157

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.

If you're looking for something simple to try work it out, I bought a smart plug a few years back which could record usage for around 20USD, you can then move it between your devices getting a sense of each's usage. Long term tracking usage of individual device energy usage is nice, but just knowing from past measurements how much a device tends to use is already very useful.

If you're going to go down this route and aren't afraid of a little DIY, then I'd highly recommend something that doesn't depend on the cloud.

Either ESPhome- or Tasmota-based plugs are great if you want fully local control (e.g. Athom, LocalBytes), or Shelly for local-first control with an option of connecting to their cloud.

Mostly everything else will lock you into the manufacturer's app & cloud. Zigbee is fully local too, but it requires additional hardware.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#248

Post by concordDance »

beebeepka wrote: post #221
verisimi wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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', 'your toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental damage you are causing'. I am very conflicted. Deeply share your concerns regarding misuse of such info. It will be used as a weapon. But…

"Waster" isn't really a coherent concept when taken outside of an individual's value system. What might be waste for one person might simply be a sensible use of resources for another.

Doing for a drive to the countryside for a walk? Having a long and relaxing bath? Go-karting? Using a heated pool? Keeping the heater on a single house-level timer so they don't have to think about it rather than planning ahead what rooms they will be in later?

Everyone will have a different place they draw the "waste" vs sensible expenditure line.

The correct economic solution to this is CO2-offsetting taxes and letting each individual decide how they want to spend their resources. Trying to centrally plan for a hundred million diverse people with different things they like and care about is a recipe for unneeded misery.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#249

Post by tim333 »

user_7832 wrote: post #31

> C in IoT stands for “cost-effective” I guess. Thanks, that got a laugh out of me.

Slightly surprisingly there's one still for sale. £385+VAT. "worth two code credits under the Code for Sustainable Homes." Further googling finds "The Government scrapped the Code for Sustainable Homes and the national net zero carbon homes standard in 2015".

https://uk-metering.net/products/netthings-energy-manager

Post reply on HN