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What's that touchscreen in my room?

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Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#281
post #197

I remember when I rented a palace in Singapore, my landlord asked me to download an app called MyKNX to control the lights and blinds in the room. I dumped some packets, and found system is using tcp/ip and the KNX is standardized protocol. The box is more like a PLC than “smart things”, so it doesn’t need internet to function. It’s also supported by home-assistant. I want to get one when I’m building my own home. Ed…

I’m curious about the palace in Singapore.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#282
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend that is diabetic (a number of friends, actually). He has been doing a pretty lousy job of managing his diet. Until his doctor prescribed a monitor for a few weeks. This is a device that looks like a big Band-Aid that you put on your arm, inserting a fine needle under the skin, and communicates with an app on the phone, reporting things like glucose levels. Once he realized the effects of the foods he…

I think even people who don’t have diabetes could benefit from this. Would having access to my own glucose levels throughout the day give me some insights into how what I eat influences my own mood, energy levels etc?

Yeah, it's pretty common. You can buy them for a reasonable amount and learn quite a bit: https://chemist2customer.com/freestyle-libre-2-sensor

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ro…

Taxes just push the problem into poor people. If you want a fair solution we should have carbon/resource rationing. In fact, I'd prefer a solution in which the governments work hard (much harder than they are) to bootstrap the brave new world so everyone can benefit from a sustainable world.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#284
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same setup. I used it to make a green light go on when we have more than 500 watt excess solar production, so my wife knows she can turn on the washing machine for free.

That’s very cool. Btw our dishwasher (and laundry machine) has 2 peaks at 2 kW, our dryer does 500 W continuous.

Makes sense since you're in the netherlands, euro appliances generally get fed cold water and warm it internally, the 2kW peaks would be when it needs to warm up the cold water.

The dryer has to warm air up pretty continuously to dry the contents. At 500W I assume it's a heat pump? (IIRC condensers are usually around or above 1kW)

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of that is fridge which at 10 quid a month is cheap. Then another 20w for wifi router which again, looking at what you pay to your ISP is nothing. So you got 8 pounds to account for which at UKs minimum wage is about 1 hours worth of work?

That's a weird point to make - I'm just saying 120kWh a month for a house with no one in it and just some basic appliances and network equipment is a LOT - in developing countries 120kWh would be the average energy consumption of the entire house with people living in it, and we just "waste" that because I couldn't be bothered to switch off some devices in my house. It's not about whether I can afford it or not.

For comparison, I live alone in a mid-terraced 2-bedroom house in the UK, heated with gas - and I'm currently there most of the time. My monthly electricity usage is about 180kWh a month.

I'm guessing a big chunk of the 60kWh I'm using over your baseline is the kettle! :D

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#287

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…

Like you I have a solar system (Sunsynk) and it gives all sorts of wonderful stats, but I hardly bother looking at it as it is meaningless information - just wish it was more intelligent to balance battery discharge vs loadshedding schedule vs weather of the day.

I have to manually set things up for winter vs summer.

My geyser which is not on solar is on a IOT controller (Hotbot) and I set the times I want the water to be heated and it knows when there is loadshedding (3G) so it can intelligently deviate from my set times.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#288

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…

Realtime data is nice, especially when I can get it from the source instead of having to fiddle with individual outlets. When we upgraded to smart meters in the UK (which you actually get an account credit for doing), our power company gave us a portable touch display that read from both the gas and electricity with different breakdowns of consumption.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#290
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend that is diabetic (a number of friends, actually). He has been doing a pretty lousy job of managing his diet. Until his doctor prescribed a monitor for a few weeks. This is a device that looks like a big Band-Aid that you put on your arm, inserting a fine needle under the skin, and communicates with an app on the phone, reporting things like glucose levels. Once he realized the effects of the foods he…

I think even people who don’t have diabetes could benefit from this. Would having access to my own glucose levels throughout the day give me some insights into how what I eat influences my own mood, energy levels etc?

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 colleague was super happy when they got one though, the "beep" of their checking their BAC is pretty funny and it's definitely more comfortable and sanitary than having to prick their finger every time, plus the full history view is useful as point check means there are dark holes between checks and you might not see some of the opportunities for improvements.

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