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

311–320 of 576 posts

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#311

Post by laplab »

M6WIQ wrote: post #176

The name of the company (Netthings) seemed familiar with me, turns out I had read an blog article regarding the hardcoded NTP servers that they used in their devices being firewalled off and therefore losing time sync. Article: https://strugglers.net/~andy/blog/2018/12/24/the-internet-of... It also appears that they went into liquidation in 2018, so good luck getting any support with that device from them!

This is absolutely amazing, thank you for sharing that! I have added the link in the end of the article.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#312

Post by CaptainMarvel »

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…

It’s up to individuals to decide if they are wasting their own resources. Everyone has a different perspective. Personally, I think SUVs are a waste and should be banned, but wouldn’t that be overreaching?

Individuals don’t pay for their waste when they aren’t paying for negative externalities.

That’s why a carbon tax is a better solution - it ensures people are paying the true price for a resource. Let people decide their own life after that, they’ll do a better of job of it than someone else deciding their life for them.

(You probably need more than just a carbon tax to fairly price the resource. For example, mining fossil fuels causes health issues for workers, and impacts the local environment.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#313

Post by yelite »

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 your meter is not too old, it probably sends wireless signal for consumption data. It can be read with https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#314

Post by swozey »

teekert wrote: post #229
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…

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.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#315

Post by teekert »

alkonaut wrote: post #299
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…

> 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. If only the meters had ny power nearby or offered a 5V USB port on it so you could plug in your reader and forget it. But no. Now I'd have to keep a small Li-ion battery living in -20C since the meters are typically outside and there is n…

I just made a socket near it ;)

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#316

Post by teekert »

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.

P1 port is specifically to read values and “open”. There a 10€ cable to convert it (passively) to usb.

You could consider one of those clamps that measure the power through a cable from the fields around it?

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#317

Post by michaelt »

gambiting wrote: post #268
michaelt wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your installation is different, but usually the electricity meter uses normal GPRS to talk to the electricity company. They literally have SIM cards inside. The low energy 'HAN' stuff is used for the gas meter, so it can run for 10 years on a battery, allowing it to be installed without installing wired power. The electricity meter has plenty of electricity available, so it acts as a bridge. The portable screen…

Is that in the UK or somewhere else? >>However, it's pretty clear the policy intent isn't only to let people monitor their usage. Of course - but I contest OP's claim that it has enough granularity to tell you that you're showering too much or that your tool shed uses too much energy - it doesn't allow that in the slightest.

In the UK, yes.

You can see a UK smart meter being taken apart here [1] with the GPRS module shown at around the 2 minute mark. And you can look at meter datasheets [2] which list GPRS WAN as a feature.

Smart meters often send a reading every 30 minutes. Some energy companies will then show a breakdown on their website that purports to show how much you're spending on lighting, fridges, appliances and things like that [3].

I suspect they use a lot of guesswork to arrive at that breakdown, given the limited input data. Although it's probably fairly easy to recognise certain multi-hour-and-distinctively-large loads, like EV charging and heat pumps.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G32NYQpvy8Q [2] https://www.securemeters.com/sea/wp-content/uploads/sites/15... [3] https://imgur.com/a/L0xwWEo

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#318

Post by nijave »

lloeki wrote: post #200
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…

Per device energy tallies also give you interesting data. Home Assistant can do that in the Energy dashboard, and you can answer questions/learn surprising things, like how much energy my "rack" (UPS+mac mini+5 disk bay+a few other things) actually uses vs e.g my fridge or my washing machine, or my desk compute actually is quite low but boy does the screen costs a lot when active, or what does charging the electric b…

> like how much energy my "rack" (UPS+mac mini+5 disk bay+a few other things) actually uses

I find it better to remain ignorant in that regard. Jokes aside, it's also interesting seeing wall draw vs UPS draw vs PSU draw if each piece of your equipment supports that.

The Shelly stuff is also quite fun to play with (I recommend a AC adapter for H&T). I have the little black spherical sensors and the data resolution is significantly worse on battery since it tries to sleep in low power state as much as possible. It's fun to see the server cabinet (mine's enclosed) vs room vs different room temps. You can also see when the HVAC cycles on and off and when someone takes a shower (humidity spikes).

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#319

Post by bouk »

For those wondering _why_ this device is there, it seems it gave points under the Code for Sustainable Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_for_Sustainable_Homes so the apartment could have a better environmental rating, as mentioned at https://uk-metering.net/products/netthings-energy-manager

Seems that making sure the device actually works and is accurate was not a requirement however...

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#320

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

dns_snek wrote: post #253
userbinator wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuses are notoriously imprecise, even "fast blow" ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG11rVcMOnY

I'm not going to watch the whole video but it doesn't seem like it supports the point you're trying to make. > How long does it take for your 400mA multimeter fuse to blow at 600mA? > The amazing unpredictability of fusing current ratings at low overloads. It makes a point of saying that fuses are imprecise, i.e. that a fuse likely won't blow when 600mA of current passes through a 400mA fuse for a few seconds. What R…

> 4x the rated current

> That's many orders of magnitude

An order of magnitude is 10 times, in my timeline.

Post reply on HN