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What's that touchscreen in my room?

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Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#401

Post by avgcorrection »

stdbrouw wrote: post #222
jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

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…

Your experience also points to the limits of monitoring and subsequent behavioral change, though. I mean, yeah, it might prompt you to start your washing machine a bit earlier or a bit later to align with high production by your solar panels... but how much consumption can you really move around like that, and how many energy hogs can you just decide to not use? If you notice high energy use while cooking, are you go…

> but how much consumption can you really move around like that, and how many energy hogs can you just decide to not use? If you notice high energy use while cooking, are you going to start eating more salads instead?

There’s been some interest in this locally due to energy regulation moving to a more punishing system for peak usage. Also high electricity prices. And the topic came up that people would be encouraged to do things that are considered unsafe like washing their clothes while they are sleeping.

Things like this need to be automated. (And be safe.) Manually following fancy gadgets won’t make much of a difference.

Meanwhile we’re (or were, don’t know the current status) selling hydropower to the rest of the Europe during the fall, emptying the reservoirs before the winter so that electricity prices become unreasonable (leading to strategies like washing your clothes while you sleep or just being content to freeze while indoors).

And I have never seen a good argument for the export/import (Europe) arrangement. But I guess we can try to sideline that whole conversation by nagging people to turn off the light in the bathroom when it’s not busy.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#402

Post by mindslight »

jimmaswell wrote: post #371
miellaby wrote: post #136

I like how the author is surprised by the technological aberration that form Linux powered home appliances. A node server to power and publish over wifi a web site, an API, a web socket, while the site is being displayed by a outdated webview engine within an heavily constrained terminal which cant be reused for anything else. That's... the norm. All this is very common. And yet displaying a couple of digits and a ba…

> With the power supplies of this era, this pair of devices probably pumps 16w idle. Running 24/24 7/7, they probably consume as much as a small fridge as a whole. The LCA of the solution must be consterning as well, especially compared with few one dollard microcontrollers. At the average cost of electric in the USA this amounts to under $2/month. Seems negligible to me? https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=16+watts…

For a device with so little functionality and non-critical functionality at that, I wouldn't call $24/year negligible. My whole home Ryzen router/server idles around there. Honestly I'd bet the fuse was missing because the last tenant was an engineer, investigated this thing themselves, found it a useless waste, and pulled it.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#403

Post by avgcorrection »

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.

Rotting minds, really?

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#404

Post by avgcorrection »

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…

We’re all (well you know) a bunch of primates who travel from single home suburbs in metal boxes in order to work in front of a screen. Going around worrying about who waters their lawn the most excessively[1] is largely a waste of time.

There are exceptions though for things like droughts. But largely this goes beyond this obsession with looking over each other’s hedges (digitally or actually).

[1] Because the agricultural lobby would like to redirect the focus from them to random suburbanites (see California).

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#405

Post by albert180 »

lostlogin wrote: post #333
masklinn wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might, but as a non-diabetic your body self-regulate, so you'd usually see a large increase in blood sugars followed by a large drop as insulin blood levels increase and trigger its handling. And because the sensor needle goes through the skin it must be replaced pretty regularly, and if it's not covered by insurance it's not exactly free (the link from the sibling indicates £57, that's per fortnight). My diabetic co…

> because the sensor needle goes through the skin it must be replaced pretty regularly I am an MRI radiographer and get patients to take these off for their scans. According to the link below [1] they are good for 7 days. They aren’t cheap and removing them does cause some friction so I try tie the MRI scan up with a pending monitor change and quiz diabetic patients about them at booking. Some have gone into the scan…

The Freestyle ones aren't that accurate anyways. That's why my university hospital trys to avoid them for new patients

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#406

Post by Hbruz0 »

miellaby wrote: post #136

I like how the author is surprised by the technological aberration that form Linux powered home appliances. A node server to power and publish over wifi a web site, an API, a web socket, while the site is being displayed by a outdated webview engine within an heavily constrained terminal which cant be reused for anything else. That's... the norm. All this is very common. And yet displaying a couple of digits and a ba…

> And yet displaying a couple of digits and a bar graph could be done with a pair of microcontrollers communicating onto some wired bus

Can you expand on that? Would 7 segment displays and a couple of leds be enough ? Which hardware would you use ?

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#407

Post by albert180 »

failingslowly wrote: post #181
jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

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…

> 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…

Your Grid is operated by the french government? Is there some infrastructure you haven't sold out abroad

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#408

Post by erhaetherth »

SoftTalker wrote: post #386
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.

Need to pop the cover off the main breaker panel and use a clamp-type current meter to see which circuit(s) are using power. Or hire an electrician to do it, if you aren't totally confident in your ability to do that safely.

Didn't know that was possible. I think I'd be too afraid.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#410

Post by quickthrowman »

swozey wrote: post #314
teekert wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree fully, I believe that my Home Assistant energy dashboard has done more for our energy consumption than any other measure. If you’re in the Netherland you can get something like a “slimme lezer”, plug it into the p1 port of your energy meter and it will pop up in Home Assistant with the right sensors. The energy dashboard will give an overview of your gas and electricity usage, solar production, proportion use…

I have no frame of reference but I have a feeling here (usa) it's super illegal to "tamper" with any pub utilities infrastructure. Could be wrong, though, but no usb ports. That's really cool though I wish we could do that.

This is not utility infrastructure. It’s a submeter connected to a set of current transformers.

In general in the US, for commercial buildings, everything beyond the utility transformer secondary is the responsibility of the customer. For a residence, anything beyond the meter socket is the responsibility of the customer.

I’m unfamiliar with UK utility standards though so perhaps it’s different there.

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