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What's that touchscreen in my room?

jonathanlydall
107 replies
11h23m

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 electricity than all my lights use for a month”.

I have an inverter and solar panels in my place (very common now in South Africa middle class homes due to unreliable electricity producer) and I can see a full history of electricity usage.

It’s easy for me to see where I can improve my efficiency or why my consumption was so high.

It’s still only an overall figure though, so you have to do an informed assumption as to what caused the consumption.

For example it’s obvious that the 3kw draw for about an hour or so after I shower is the geyser heating itself back up. I can see from the usage stats that my battery was depleted from the night, that the solar production is still low due to my showering in the early morning and that the energy was thus coming from the grid (the inverter records all these figures).

It is then obvious that I can very simply save money on electricity by putting a timer on my geyser so that it only heats after 10am or so, once the sun is high enough for solar production to cover the energy usage.

Now I just wish I had something as convenient for monitoring water consumption.

failingslowly
33 replies
9h34m

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 energy use.

https://www.edfenergy.com/smart-meters/using-a-smart-meter/c...

verisimi
23 replies
9h10m

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', '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'.

It's the slow descent to greater tyranny, and loss of personal control. It's amazing that people put up with it, but a slight discount in the short term, or visibility of your own data, is probably enough to get most people to accept spying infrastructure in their lives forever.

gambiting
10 replies
8h59m

I don't understand your point - these meters only report your overal usage, not what is using the energy/water. It's letting you skip the step where you manually upload the reads every couple months or whatever, or worse, where the energy company employee has to visit your house to read them in person. Why does it matter if I upload my meter reads to my provider every month or if the device reports it automatically? The end result is the same.

(At least that's how it works in the UK - the "smart" meters don't report live usage back to providers, they just submit kWh reads, the live readout is local device only)

userbinator
7 replies
8h51m

the "smart" meters don't report live usage back to providers

Either they can be easily upgraded to do that, or they already are and the energy company merely gives you the total every month to maintain the impression that they aren't.

If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you know with much greater certainty that they aren't gathering live data.

gambiting
6 replies
8h19m

>Either they can be easily upgraded to do that

I mean no offence, but you are literally just guessing and not talking about technologies that people have in their houses. The smart meters here in UK, the latest SMET2 standard ones, cannot broadcast live data back to the grid because they simply don't have the bandwidth to do so, they use low frequency communication back to the area controller and they can barely report the kWh number roughly every hour or so. The live communication with the display you have in your house is done over ZigBee and unless the energy company parks the van outside of your house to get those reads, they aren't getting them.

Like, your points about surveilance are true, sure - but they address an imaginary situation you built in your head, not the actual technical solution that exists in the real world.

>If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you know with much greater certainty that they aren't gathering live data.

Yeah and I need to let them into my house, which to me personally is a far greater invasion of my privacy than my meter automatically uploading kWh numbers to the grid.

Also just as a general remark - on HN I think people are likely to divide into two groups - nerds who want ALL the data and they would gladly upload live data to an online system if they could just so they could monitor it live, and people who think any IoT functionality is a massive invasion of privacy and that it's some greater ploy by government to control you. The truth - as always - is somewhere in the middle.

michaelt
3 replies
6h29m

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 thingy also uses the 'HAN'.

However, it's pretty clear the policy intent isn't only to let people monitor their usage. If that was all that was needed, there are much cheaper options designed for consumer self-install. Why did they go for the much more expensive and inconvenient smart meter+gprs option, if not to enable time-of-use tariffs?

gambiting
1 replies
6h11m

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.

michaelt
0 replies
3h47m

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

sofixa
0 replies
4h24m

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.

Where? In France the devices, called Linky and manufactured to a common standard by a few different companies, and mandatory, communicate via the grid itself over the CPL protocol. There are no SIM cards inside, and thankfully, lunatics have been suing to refuse to get their meter upgraded to Linky "BECAUSE WAVES 5G COVID CHIPS" bullshit which doesn't have any basis in reality.

CaptainMarvel
1 replies
3h56m

I mean no offence, but you are literally just guessing and not talking about technologies that people have in their houses.

Hilarious that I’m sending your own words back to you.

I worked at an energy supplier. I saw minutely energy readings from customers with my own eyes. It was a lot of data!

gambiting
0 replies
3h28m

>Hilarious that I’m sending your own words back to you.

I don't know if it's hilarious, more like unhelpful at best, rude at worst .

>I saw minutely energy readings from customers with my own eyes. It was a lot of data

It wasn't "live" data though, was it? Just a breakdown of usage per-minute, but uploaded in batches, right? And which energy supplier was that? Because with Octopus you can only get live data by installing an extra(and optional) device called Octopus mini, their SMET2 meters have no such capability.

CaptainMarvel
1 replies
3h58m

That’s not quite right. All new smart meters have the ability to report electricity usage minute-by-minute.

You _currently_ have the choice to only report month-by-month, by kindly asking them to only do that. However, I agree with verisimi, and I believe that it’s only a matter of time before the government via energy suppliers can monitor your real time electricity usage.

It’ll be dressed up, of course, as being in your best interest, but you won’t have a choice. Smart meters were sold as being beneficial for customers, but in reality they take power away from people and consolidate it in energy suppliers.

At the most basic level this is a history of when you are at home or not.

gambiting
0 replies
3h17m

>but in reality they take power away from people and consolidate it in energy suppliers.

What kind of power did you have before the introduction of smart meters, exactly?

beebeepka
7 replies
8h20m

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 I am totally in favour of making wasters pay up, and not just fixed amounts.

I hate wasting resources.

concordDance
5 replies
7h22m

"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.

hgomersall
4 replies
5h9m

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.

concordDance
3 replies
4h16m

Rationing is ridiculously inefficient.

People's desire for heavily carbon consuming things vs lightly carbon consuming things varies massively. If you're worried about the poor don't ignore the externalities of their consumption but subsidise them directly via UBI or somesuch.

Rationing is a very worst of all possible worlds solution, losing you all the benefits of trade.

ImPostingOnHN
1 replies
1h37m

Just as a thought exercise, if anything was possible:

UBI seems to work towards the goal of making sure people don't die due to lack of resources (it is a basic income, after all). It's less clear how it works towards the goal of reducing carbon emissions.

Rationing, on the other hand, has the potential: Natural resources (publicly owned ones anyways), and perhaps natural limits like how much CO2 the skies can take, are collectively owned by the people. So it could make sense to distribute those amongst the people. The people could then sell them in a free® market. This means we can work towards both goals at once: Those seeking to pollute more, could simply buy the carbon credits from their fellow people, who can now better afford to live. And, at the same time, total pollution is capped-ish, depending on the scheme.

As a fun note, UBI is just rationing out the available funds for UBI, so it would suffer from any rationing-specific failings that carbon rationing would suffer from.

concordDance
0 replies
1h1m

A tradeable carbon rationing is indeed equivalent to a UBI, but with side effects. In particular, if the market is efficient then the consumption of CO2 credits will exactly equal production, but the price will be unrelated to the actual externality cost or mitigation cost of the marginal CO2 release. So you either get more CO2 released than you would with an externality tax or you get less CO2 released than you should given that you can mitigate against that particular CO2 release.

Ideally you'd have credits being available for purchase at prices that correspond to the costs of mitigating their externalities (CO2 emission is not in and of itself evil, its the consequences that we don't want).

hgomersall
0 replies
4h11m

We don't want trade. We want people to reduce their carbon consumption. In any case, you could always allow trading of rations.

CaptainMarvel
0 replies
3h51m

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.

concordDance
1 replies
7h31m

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.

smolder
0 replies
2h13m

Elected officials get into office with majority support of a constituency, but that's very far away from the majority of people supporting their collective actions while in office. In the US, politicians do what money wants them to, not voters. Consent of voters is often manufactured and misinformed.

ZeroGravitas
1 replies
8h23m

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.

concordDance
0 replies
7h29m

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".

jonathanlydall
3 replies
8h58m

As evidenced by the article, the problem is that some of these devices within less than 10 years can become essentially bricks.

I think these devices must be required to send the data to the utility company and the utility company must be forced to make the data easily accessible in a standard format so that independent analysis is trivially possible.

This way you don't have a situation where a device manufacturer goes out of business and the capability to monitor is lost.

JW_00000
1 replies
5h39m

At least in the EU (don't know about the UK), currently these sort of devices are installed by the government. They are replacement of the previous analog meters. In Belgium, they report the data to the (public) electricity grid company, which then forwards the data to your (private) electricity company. They are much simpler than the device in the article (no JavaScript or SSH access). They will surely last for more than 10 years given the investment the government is putting in. (I think roll-out started like 7 years ago and is expected to be finished around 2030 in Belgium.)

sofixa
0 replies
4h28m

Same in France, the meters report via the grid to the grid operator, which is a public utility and shares your usage data with the (public or private) electricity company from which you buy your electricity. They have a local physical port with an open spec (and e.g. I have a device that connects to it and shares the usage data live over Zigbee for my Home Assistant), and there are ways of getting the data over an API from either the public utility or the electricity company which are more or less complex depending on the entity.

Qwertious
0 replies
4h18m

As evidenced by the article, the problem is that some of these devices within less than 10 years can become essentially bricks.

I think these devices must be required to send the data to the utility company and the utility company must be forced to make the data easily accessible in a standard format so that independent analysis is trivially possible.

The core problem is that these devices are garbage, and nobody cares. I don't mean that scornfully, I'm saying these devices are way over-provisioned and yet are unreliable anyway because they are very carelessly designed, and nobody cares because 1) they have no economic incentive to care, and 2) in the software world it's normal for cheap devices to fail within 10 years, and the people who refuse to accept this norm have no recourse except building their own piece of electronics (i.e. take up a hobby).

Demanding they provide the data 'in a standard format' lets us put lipstick on the pig, it doesn't actually solve the core problem of the device being a piece of shit.

gambiting
3 replies
9h12m

We have one as well, but since we're on a variable rate tariff(Octopus Tracker) it's completely useless - it doesn't know the current electricity/gas price, it seems to receive rate updates from the network about once every few weeks - so the numbers it displays are just wrong.

I've made my own little Raspberry Pico display that queries today's energy prices and shows those, but I have not been able to show today's energy consumption alongside(and therefore show the day's cost so far). Octopus provides an API to query the kWh used....but only for the last day. I even got their little Octopus Mini that broadcasts live usage to their app but I have not been able to query the live data from it from my raspberry, I don't have the necessary skills in web technologies to do that unfortunately :-(

Angostura
1 replies
7h44m

If you use Home Assistant on the Pi there is an Octopus integration that you might find handy. It even works with the Octopus Mini

https://bottlecapdave.github.io/HomeAssistant-OctopusEnergy/

Hope this is useful

gambiting
0 replies
6h44m

Ooooooh thanks that is actually super useful - had no idea this existed! Thank you!

maccard
0 replies
1h35m

Mine comes with a display that shows live usage by energy rather than price. The octopus app shows my usage for yesterday in £ for octopus tracker, broken down into 30m increments.

paganel
0 replies
1h24m

I have one here in Bucharest and, while fancy, as in it blips a red light when the power consumptions is higher than usual, it doesn't help me at all.

As in, yeah, running the washing machine is power consuming, I knew that, and the same goes for the electric oven or for the vacuum cleaner, but what am I supposed to do with that information? Not wash my clothes anymore? Not using the oven? Leaving dust all over the place for longer?

teekert
21 replies
7h52m

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 used from grid/solar and even a home battery if present. It’s really great.

Combine it with some Aqara (zigbee but easily overloaded) or Shelly (WiFi and I find them very robust) energy monitoring power sockets and you get a very good idea of the simplest measures to take to save power. You can even add cost/kWh and M3 (gas) to the sensors in HA.

kabes
12 replies
6h28m

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.

teekert
11 replies
5h43m

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

masklinn
10 replies
5h4m

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)

teekert
9 replies
4h44m

Ah yes, the dish and laundry washers are indeed not “hot fill”, that is hard to find here indeed.

The dryer is a heat pump yes, some years ago it was the most energy efficient one we could find. (But I guess it runs longer, relying more on tumbling than heat, and wears out cloth faster).

snickmy
6 replies
3h38m

I always wondered why we cannot find hot filled appliances in the old continent.

Also, I wonder why compressors in heatpumps are not multi-speed (basically energy consumption can be modulated). If you are an expert please let me know I'd love to talk more.

masklinn
4 replies
2h21m

I always wondered why we cannot find hot filled appliances in the old continent.

You can find them but they'll be in the semi-professional space and above (relatively expensive high-duty).

They're very rare in the consumer space because

- it requires running more hot water lines / extensions, historically houses are built with lots of cold water lines but hot water lines only where required

- for their heating requirement, a normal electric plug is more than sufficient in the land of 230V, this is is a similar issue to kettles basically

- they require an internal heater anyway as residential water circuits come nowhere near the high temperature cycles: 50-53C is common to avoid risks of scalding but some are set as low as 45, the standard high temp cycles for washing machines are 60 and 90, and dishwasher commonly have a heavy cycle around 65

- it makes the machines more convoluted since they needs more inlets, a mixing valve, etc...

- they're not really compatible with hot water tanks: you don't want your dishes or laundry to empty your shower water, plus hot water tanks are commonly electrical so there's no real gain given per the above the machines need a heater anyway

philwelch
1 replies
1h42m

for their heating requirement, a normal electric plug is more than sufficient in the land of 230V, this is is a similar issue to kettles basically

US uses a split phase system so you can combine two 120V circuits to get 240V. This is how most heavy appliances are wired.

masklinn
0 replies
1h36m

Right but that means you need a special setup either way. In europe you just have a normal electric plug, nothing special.

mnw21cam
1 replies
1h41m

Also, in quite a few houses, the initial run of water out of the hot tap is cold for quite some time until the hot water has either made it round from the hot tank, or if you have a combi boiler system then after that has fired itself up, got up to temperature, and then the hot water has made it round the pipes from there. It may be that the washing machine uses so little water that most of the water it gets from the hot supply is cold, wasting all that energy.

masklinn
0 replies
1h36m

That is true, I assume hot water appliances handle that case internally, but that's yet more complexity.

amluto
0 replies
38m

My dishwasher is European and is hot-fill. It doesn’t even have a cold water connection. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cold fill dishwasher in the US.

I wonder what’s up in Europe.

ballenf
1 replies
2h47m

What happens if it gets hot water, but expects cold? Seems like if it's not too hot to melt plastic parts, it would be ok?

masklinn
0 replies
2h20m

The colder cycles will not work correctly (they have only one inlet and no mixing circuit), they might scale more than normally, and I wouldn't be surprised if some put themselves into a security mode.

The plastics used for some of the inlet circuitry might also age abnormally when it gets 50C water rather than the, say, 10~30C range it is designed for.

swozey
4 replies
3h50m

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.

bloomingeek
2 replies
3h32m

No doubt about the tampering comment. However, my gas, water, and electric meters are all wireless and now I want to be able to monitor them for on demand usage. We shall see.

swozey
0 replies
3h11m

Has there been talk about that becoming a thing?

amluto
0 replies
37m

In PG&E land, you can buy one of a handful of approved ZigBee gadgets that can read out your meter data.

teekert
0 replies
3h47m

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?

alkonaut
2 replies
4h23m

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 never any power nearby since they are in a closed cabinet. Only the people who have indoor power meters (I know zero cases of that with detached houses, I think the power companies require the meter to be outside in a cabinet they can access without access to the house.

teekert
0 replies
3h48m

I just made a socket near it ;)

nagisa
0 replies
4h8m

P1 ports in the newer standard versions supply power.

bradley13
7 replies
9h45m

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 small things add up.

gambiting
4 replies
9h7m

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!

dzhiurgis
3 replies
8h22m

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?

gambiting
2 replies
8h17m

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.

robinsonb5
1 replies
5h4m

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

gambiting
0 replies
4h53m

Uhm. We have a 3 bed semi detached house, my consumption for November was 1267kWh of electricity. In October it was 1148kWh. And I also heat with gas(well we have a minisplit upstairs that we sometimes use for heat, but it uses like 5kWh/day max)

No idea how you use so little lol.

wolpoli
0 replies
8h32m

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.

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.

calvinmorrison
0 replies
9h43m

Not when you're on solar. Its more akin to being poor and shopping at dollar tree - cash/solar flow is more important than total cost.

stdbrouw
5 replies
8h20m

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 going to start eating more salads instead? Across Europe electricity meters are being replaced by smart meters and people are really hyping up the advantages of being able to continuously monitor your energy usage, but I think the jury is still out whether it'll actually lead to significant energy savings.

Ultimately the biggest wins are when big appliances and heating/cooling respond to self-production or take advantage of times when electricity is cheap (if you're on a per-hour or per-day dynamic contract), whether that's with a simple timer like the one you installed, a relay that shuts down heating when you're cooking or something fancier like a Fronius Ohmpilot [1] that tweaks heating power to exactly match PV (over)production.

[1] https://www.fronius.com/en/solar-energy/installers-partners/...

helsinkiandrew
2 replies
7h59m

There's been a few simple experiments in the UK - where consumers have been encouraged to reduce usage at peak time that have been successful. But as you say its going to need the appliances to support it. Everything needs a "Get this done by X o'clock" whether thats a dishwasher/washing machine/car charger.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/23/households-gre...

Angostura
1 replies
7h48m

I'm on Octopus Agile in the UK which offers pricing in 30 minute increments.

I'm lucky in that I have a small solar panel setup (3kW) and battery system (5kWh) to go with it. With this battery set-up you really don't need appliance support - most of the advantages are accrued by force-charging the batteries to avoid mains usage at the peak cost period (usually around 5pm-7pm).

I also have a few smart plugs which turn things on and off based on the current price and battery charge - using Home Assistant, but that's mainly me just nerding about. Handy when prices go negative, though and my electric immersion heater goes on to heat my hot water tank

Notably Octopus is working on taking much of the complexity away. There is now an opt-in service for certain battery makes where Octopus will take control of the battery charginng and discharging, to minimise your bill. It will even generate you money by doing a force charge and discharge when the grid is paying premium amounts

srmarm
0 replies
5h25m

Your battery usage sounds exactly like the kind of behaviour they're trying to encourage but which aren't apparent to most people without an interest in these things so you left with the energy monitor which is really just a nice bonus to the system rather but is tangible to the lay person.

Of course the very real benefits of this can be abused by the gov and there are some conspiracy types using that to push their own agenda but on the whole I'm largely positive about the smart grid stuff.

sampo
0 replies
24m

I think the jury is still out whether it'll actually lead to significant energy savings.

In Finland you can get an electricity contract that follows the hourly spot prices. Usually the hourly prices varies in the range from 5c to 20c/kWh, but sometimes it jumps up to 40c, even 80c/kWh. The record was 2€/kWh for a couple hours in one day.

Current hourly prices for today and tomorrow:

https://oomi.fi/en/electricity/electricity-contracts/active/...

People who have chosen this kind of contract, usually reduce their consumption during the ridiculously expensive hours, which usually occur when there happens both low wind energy production, and simultaneously some power plant being offline for maintenance.

You can also get a contract with a fixed price, if you want.

jonathanlydall
0 replies
8h9m

Agree completely.

However, knowing that a particular device is bad means that when I eventually need to replace it in the future, I will also factor in energy efficiency and features such as it being able to check energy prices in my purchasing decision.

ChrisMarshallNY
5 replies
6h5m

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 was eating, he immediately changed his diet, and has been sticking to it, since (he no longer wears the monitor).

The UI of the app was pretty good. The historical data readout is what did it for him.

wkjagt
3 replies
5h31m

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?

masklinn
1 replies
4h57m

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.

lostlogin
0 replies
2h40m

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 scanner by accident (patients not declaring them) and they seem to survive but I emphasise that the results might not be accurate afterwards.

[1] https://www.diabeticwarehouse.org/products/dexcom-g4-and-g5-...

hgomersall
0 replies
5h17m

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

mywacaday
0 replies
3h54m

This company is offering it as a service https://www.limborevolution.com/, it's expensive though. I haven't used it but the owner has had a few success. Shaq is also an investor.

8n4vidtmkvmk
5 replies
10h15m

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.

jonathanlydall
1 replies
8h46m

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.

dns_snek
0 replies
7h24m

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.

Jedd
1 replies
10h0m

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 establish a baseline, and review your switch meter periodically for short (several minute) intervals, with and without the larger appliances turned on.

(You can get induction coil systems to report usage of these larger appliances, but they're typically onerously priced.)

cricalix
0 replies
8h23m

If you can isolate the legs of the larger appliances, a CT clamp sensor is sufficient for an idea, and you can get those as handheld meters with screen - or something you plug into a microcontroller board and send the data to a local collection system.

yread
0 replies
10h12m

Check the coffee machine. Full auto espresso machines can be huge hogs

cjfd
3 replies
9h27m

Sounds pretty good as such. The worry to have these days, though, is if we can also get this without energy usage data being traded between all sorts of shady companies and/or criminal organizations.

verisimi
1 replies
9h19m

shady companies and/or criminal organizations.

You mean energy companies and governments?

oarsinsync
0 replies
8h48m

There was a report recently that Facebook users have their data sold to 1000-5000 companies, and Facebook takes input from up to 100k companies when compiling data on people.

Supermarkets are also into the data game, exploiting the gold mine of data that is shopper loyalty cards.

Smart TVs are in the data game, selling details of what you’re watching on to other people.

Cars are recording visuals, audio, telemetry, and selling that on.

I think it’s reasonable to assume that energy companies are selling the data they’re collecting about you onto data brokers (aka shady companies and/or criminal organisations)

mtsr
0 replies
9h10m

Home Assistant with a connector for whatever smart meter you have will happily do this for you without the data ever leaving your home.

isoprophlex
2 replies
10h35m

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 line, and comparing that temperature to the ambient temperature. Where I live that works because the water arrives from underground & is always much cooler than ambient air. The time-integrated difference between the two is a proxy for how much water you use... this is much more involved to get meaningful data from, tho.

---

Edit: a proximity sensor that detects metal might be the most straightforward thing, if you have a water meter with a rotating metal gauge https://www.alldatasheet.com/view.jsp?Searchword=LJ12A3-4-Z/...

kjkjadksj
0 replies
1h6m

A lot of water meters these days have rfid for the water company to scan so maybe you can just abrogate that directly

cricalix
0 replies
8h25m

On mobile so hard to link, but memory says OpenEnergyMonitor's docs site on pulse counters has a computer vision approach too. Think it reads the numbers from the display.

barelyauser
2 replies
2h29m

This problem can easily be solved without any device at all. Of course, it demands education and "intelligent behavior". If people only had the curiosity to read the specs on a heater and see "2000W" of power, and compare it to "15W" of power on the specs of the LED bulb. Same for water. One can just place a bowl under the faucet and measure the time it takes to fill up. Now you have your water consumption rate. We can choose the "device based" route, but this road end with Idiocracy and problems so "big" nobody can solve them.

argiopetech
1 replies
2h12m

If we're comparing apples to apples all the time, sure. I think it's pretty obvious to most people who care to look that a 60w conventional bulb uses more energy than a 15w LED bulb (which, for the record, is the 100w conventional equivalent). Consider, however, these questions:

If my 2000w heater is running on the 800w setting and turns on when my room has dropped below the point I consider acceptably chilly and turns off above that point, how much electricity have I used in the last hour?

If I have 3 15w LEDs on a dimmer and run them intermittently throughout the day, how much electricity have I used in the last hour?

If my TV is off, but plugged in, and accesses the Internet a few times a day automatically to check for new versions, how much power has it used today?

I think this makes the case for, at least, a kill-a-watt style device. A whole home solution with sufficient report granularity and a report interface visible in the home would be worth the extra trouble, IMHO.

Edit: For the record, these are all real-scenarios from my house.

mnw21cam
0 replies
1h36m

A while ago I bought one of those plug-in power monitors, and went around measuring everything I could find around the house. It's a worthwhile exercise, I think. You can leave an appliance plugged into it for as long as you like to get an average. I was able to make a pie chart of where my electricity is used in my house, which was enlightening, and led to some useful changes.

systemz
1 replies
10h31m

About monitoring water consumption, maybe using some webcam + OCR would help to recognize reading of a water meter? Then Home Assistant would be helpful to see charts with energy consumption etc

tomqueue
0 replies
8h51m

This is what I am using for this exact purpose: https://github.com/jomjol/AI-on-the-edge-device

lloeki
1 replies
9h2m

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 bike costs, or what's the effect of setting thermostat to 19 instead of 20 in winter, or oh wow in summer this fan that we use a lot to make things bearable actually ends up using as much energy as our water heater!

(power measurements are done using Shelly Plug Plus S + 3EM + 4PM devices, thermal measurements using Shelly H&T Plus)

nijave
0 replies
3h43m

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).

zilti
0 replies
7h49m

Corollary: people are cheap and lazy, so if you want them to not do something, make it cumbersome in a way that does not justify the cost difference, or vice versa.

yelite
0 replies
3h51m

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

tibbydudeza
0 replies
5h0m

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.

slow_typist
0 replies
5h37m

Thanks for sharing. Does the system supply grid voltage to your home autonomously, i.e. when the grid is offline? Does it work on all three phases? In Germany, most of the systems need the grid to be online in order to work.

roland35
0 replies
2h31m

The Sense system is great for this, gives you second level data, and identifies most appliances when they turn on. I enjoy using it!

risyachka
0 replies
6h29m

I’d argue that if you want people to be environmentally friendly, you need to abstract all data, dashboards , etc,

The system must just work behind the scenes and optimise energy use as much as possible automatically.

nijave
0 replies
3h35m

Overlaying outdoor temperature is also helpful. One degree HVAC change makes a lot bigger difference when it's 0F (-18C) vs 40F (4C) outside

I've seen decent reviews on the "no plumbing required" water meters. Flume has a product available in the U.S. that gets pretty good reviews (https://www.amazon.com/Flume-Smart-Water-Monitor-Detector/dp...).

nagisa
0 replies
4h15m

Now I just wish I had something as convenient for monitoring water consumption.

You can set this up non-invasively with ultrasonic flow meters like the TUF-2000M. It isn’t cheap, but it does work quite alright if you don't want any of the risks associated with cracking open your pipes.

(There are also cheaper options if you don’t mind opening up your pipes too.)

ako
0 replies
10h7m

Depending on your water meter this device may be useful: https://www.homewizard.com/watermeter/

TheRoque
0 replies
4h33m

Also, we need to stop gaslighting people with fake solutions like "planting trees" or "deleting emails". Sure, it's good, but the scale is so small that you're actually losing focus on what really makes changes.

SergeAx
0 replies
53m

Unpopular opinion: shifting environmental blame to individual consumers is a form of gaslighting (pun not intended, but still good). You may use spend a fortune on solar, heating pumps and A-clsss appliances, but will never save a fraction of power consumption of a single datacenter cabinet or aluminium furnace. One large enough manufacturing plant cancels out all environmental initiatives of a medium town, including public spaces.

kelnos
35 replies
15h50m

There were two strings printed with labels “SSID” and “Pwd”. I froze in horror. They wouldn’t dare. It is literally 3 meter distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this complexity…

Not surprising at all. I would expect that a lot of these are bought as retrofits, and not as a part of new construction. Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and they don't want to put that barrier to sale in front of them. And you can get a good-enough WiFi chipset for a few bucks these days.

I need a 3A fuse [...] After installation, I checked the temperature of the fuse multiple times during the day to get at least some indication that things are not going to get worse. It worked fine for a more than a week now, but I still do not recommend experiments like this to anyone.

Probably don't need to be so worried here. If it's a 3A fuse, the entirety of your apartment's mains power is not running through it. A 3A fuse would burn out in a fraction of a second if you tried to do that.

Also, oh, man, Jazelle. I'd forgotten about that. Hardware support for Java bytecode... that did not pan out well.

AnthonyMouse
13 replies
13h19m

Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and they don't want to put that barrier to sale in front of them.

It also makes it more convenient to compromise the device from across the street (or across town with a directional antenna). Though of course that's not a problem if your security is up to par and the device continues to receive regular security updates, and we can only surmise that the author has discovered a rare outlier in this space where that is not the case.

bbarnett
7 replies
12h22m

device continues to receive regular security updates

Have to reply to this, and my response was covered a bit by your statement of "security up to par".

Nothing should be considered secure. All those bug bounties are to entice black hats, into giving up juicy pre-0day vulnerabilities.

So just because a device is up to date with security updates, we all must understand, there are countless bugs unknown, needing to be patched, and often, being discovered by those that will never tell, never disclose, never report, and only use them for nefarious purposes.

This is why security is nothing without monitoring.

And why nothing is ever "safe", only likely "more safe" due to a security update.

Consider everything that is network connected as compromised. Everything.

AnthonyMouse
6 replies
12h4m

Consider everything that is network connected as compromised. Everything.

This doesn't seem like useful advice.

If you know something is compromised, you're going to want to stop using it and build a clean system etc. You can't just do that continuously the instant you've built the new system.

Likewise, how does monitoring even work? Every device and app wants to phone home to some random server. The connection will be encrypted and even if it wasn't it could be some arbitrary custom protocol you'd have to spend several hours to reverse engineer. You could just block them all but that will cause massive breakage and possibly impair security when the thing you're blocking is whatever thing's security update mechanism.

What's a solution someone can actually use?

bbarnett
4 replies
10h43m

This doesn't seem like useful advice.

Understanding reality is always useful advice. Wishing reality isn't as it is, won't help.

The mindset I have described, is how one must view all electronics. Unsecure.

AnthonyMouse
3 replies
10h40m

But what does that mean in practice? Throw them all into the fire and go back to pen and paper?

bbarnett
1 replies
9h40m

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.

mrmanner
0 replies
8h40m

I think this discussion mostly comes down to how we interpret the word “secure”. Do we mean “zero risk”, “nothing can go bad”, “no potential attack, ever”?

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.

pmontra
0 replies
9h33m

Same thing as the security of the lock on our doors. We know that if somebody really want to get into our homes they will. In the case of IoT and computers add to it the automation of the attack.

What do we do with our homes? Tradeoffs.

We put some valuables in banks, we keep some at home. We insure precious items, if we do have them. We curse when burglars steal from us.

We also install curtains so people outside cannot look at us and at what we are doing at home. There are several level of protections to do the same thing for networks and devices. Of course vulnerabilities mean that they are not perfect. Curtains are not perfect too. Add to that imaging through walls with WiFi or mobile network signals, but that's still fringe at best even if you should read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37469920

So, tradeoffs and be conscious of them.

Semaphor
0 replies
9h29m

I agree with your first part, but not with your second. It really depends what you use, you can easily build up a while home automation system that doesn't phone home or require internet at all

a2800276
2 replies
10h22m

we can only surmise that the author has discovered a rare outlier in this space where that is not the case.

Exactly what I was thinking! What luck that the author found the single IoT device out there that's a cobbled together piece of bodged electronics designed by a graduate from a webdev bootcamp with a Corel Draw focus. A device that, while only ~15 years old is not only hopelessly useless, but also obsolete and insecure.

It's a good thing all other consumer IoT device manufacturers think about and prioritize security, longevity! Also, that customers nowadays are more focused on installing something fit-for-purpose and sustainable once than buying the cheapest shit possible with the blinkiest LEDs.

I shudder to think about how long they tried to get the string-and-cups based telephone to work in my building until the 1930's when they installed the copper still used today for DSL. Or how terrible the paper-straw based water system must have been up to the 1890's when they realized investing in metal pipes has advantages. So glad the days of short-term thinking are behind us.

speed_spread
0 replies
4h19m

You have exceeded your weekly sarcasm quota. Your internet license has been suspended pending review by the serious committee.

eastbound
0 replies
9h29m

I’m passionate about the problem of software maintenance:

- Can we solve this with some companies dedicated to maintaining simple code (1 probe, 2 charts for each IoT, or more if the IoT subscribed for more) multiplied by 10k different IoT objects over 30 years?

- How would upgrading all of them look like? Can we batch the upgrade of NPM’s package.json? Can we define a minimum toolset, say NPM+Next+React, for long-term support?

- How can we keep software engineers passionate for that software over dozens of years? Can the challenge of upgrading and migrating to newer frameworks and applying security upgrade be ever a trove of genius and a competiton of the best hacks?

For the moment, when it’s done, it’s all GitHub Actions. Released in 2018. Well, not a good start. Plus everyone has a different pile of … in their actions, it’s all custom code, nothing is standardized, and each new IoT requires a new guy writing new ones.

- Is this already done in some part of OSS (openWrt?) and how do they deal with the boredom of engineers?

inetknght
1 replies
13h8m

Though of course that's not a problem if your security is up to par and the device continues to receive regular security updates

Just remember that the S in IoT stands for security :)

injidup
0 replies
11h55m

Secure Home

xerox13ster
9 replies
13h38m

A 3A fuse would burn out in a fraction of a second if you tried to do that.

he bought it on Amazon. He has every reason to be worried that it won't burn out. Louis Rossman did a video[0] where he put 8 amps through a 2 amp fuse and left the room for quite a long time, I think it was several minutes with 8a going through a 2a fuse.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

userbinator
3 replies
13h25m

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

dns_snek
2 replies
6h49m

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 Rossmann discovered was that fuses from Amazon took 4x the rated current for minutes. That's many orders of magnitude out of spec.

B1FF_PSUVM
1 replies
3h39m

4x the rated current

That's many orders of magnitude

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

dns_snek
0 replies
3h19m

The relationship between the amount of overload and how fast the fuse is supposed to blow is quadratic, not linear. As an example with somewhat made-up numbers, at 1x it might take hours to blow, at 2x it might take a minute or two, at 3x it shouldn't take more than a second and at 4x it should be nearly instant.

If it's supposed to blow in 0.1 seconds when overloaded by 4x, then taking 10 minutes is many orders of magnitude in my book. While that fuse is taking its sweet time, wiring or other components are being heated out of spec (16x more heat at 4x the current), potentially posing a fire hazard or damaging the device it's supposed to be protecting.

rokweom
1 replies
5h27m

In general, people have the wrong idea about how fuses work. They're not supposed to blow at their rated current, they're supposed to withstand it indefinitely, and only blow at much higher currents. Look up any datasheet from a well established manufacturer and see for yourself (like this one from littelfuse: https://littelfuse.com/products/fuses/cartridge-fuses/5x20mm... )

megous
0 replies
4h32m

People also have a wrong idea about how buying electronic components on Amazon/Aliexpress/eBay/etc. works. You buy a few of the same, test them, then use them if they work. Otherwise ask for refund.

Otherwise you're up for a big surprise that all your TL081's are LM356 instead, or that mosfet you bought has 3x the Rds(on) than expected, or that your fuse doesn't work.

fulladder
1 replies
12h47m

That is very disturbing. Does Amazon reimburse you when your house burns down?

eastbound
0 replies
9h44m

Seriously, I think they would refund the fuse since you are not satisfied.

I think the only way for Amazon to stop organizing countraband would be if dozens of people die in each country and it makes a big media mess and public prosecutors finally rule that Amazon is responsible for mingling and smuggling the products in-country.

Which will impact all marketplaces, requiring Craigslist/Leboncoin/Gumtree to asses the liability of the sellers on the marketplace.

Which could be a good thing.

jart
0 replies
2h8m

Amazon had one of their buildings in California shut down a few months ago by the fire department when a generator started smoking. It was probably due to a bad fuse they bought off Amazon. https://signalscv.com/2023/07/fire-breaks-out-at-amazon/ That's how blinded by their avarice Amazon has become; they can't even protect their own house. Notice how the Nilight fuses (https://amzn.to/3S06G2n) are still listed, even after a YouTube video with 300,000 views demonstrated that their 2 ampere fuse takes 10 amps to blow. I even had an electrical fire in my house recently, due to components that I purchased off Amazon. I know Amazon monitors Hacker News PR closely, since they took down those ChatGPT generated listings within minutes of us posting them here. Yet they do nothing about product listings that put our lives, and their own lives, in critical danger.

inetknght
3 replies
15h2m

Probably don't need to be so worried here. If it's a 3A fuse, the entirety of your apartment's mains power is not running through it.

If it's a "3A fuse" that doesn't blow at 6A or worse, then it will get very hot (fire hazard) if/when there's a short regardless of the distance to the mains power.

If it truly is a 3A fuse, then great. If it's bought from Amazon then I doubt it's truly a 3A fuse.

naitgacem
2 replies
14h20m

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.

stavros
1 replies
8h2m

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

kevincox
0 replies
7h29m

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.)

alexambarch
2 replies
12h57m

Also, oh, man, Jazelle. I'd forgotten about that. Hardware support for Java bytecode... that did not pan out well.

As someone who was too young to be paying any attention during this time, what were some of the reasons this didn’t pan out? Java seems so dominant looking back that I’m surprised something like this wouldn’t have been a success.

vanderZwan
0 replies
11h38m

I have also wondered this for years, and always was told "because JITs work better", but that felt a bit handwavy. Luckily for both of us David Chisnall just published an article on ACM about designing ISAs that properly explains the reasoning behind Jazelle and why it did not work in the long run:

Small code is also important [for a simple single-issue in-order core]. A small microcontroller core may be as small as 10KB of SRAM (static random access memory). A small decrease in encoding efficiency can dwarf everything when considering the total area cost: If you need 20 percent more SRAM for your code, then that can be equivalent to doubling the core area. Unfortunately, this constraint almost directly contradicts the previous one [about decoder complexity]. This is why Thumb-2 and RISC-V focused on a variable length encoding that is simple to decode: They save code size without significantly increasing decoder complexity.

This is a complex tradeoff that is made even more complicated when considering multiple languages. For example, Arm briefly supported Jazelle DBX (direct bytecode execution) on some of its mobile cores. This involved decoding Java bytecode directly, with Java VM (virtual machine) state mapped into specific registers. A Java add instruction, implemented in a software interpreter, requires at least one load to read the instruction, a conditional branch to find the right handler, and then another to perform the add. With Jazelle, the load happens via instruction fetch, and the add would add the two registers that represented the top of the Java stack. This was far more efficient than an interpreter but did not perform as well as a JIT (just-in-time) compiler, which could do a bit more analysis between Java bytecodes.

Jazelle DBX is an interesting case study because it made sense only in the context of a specific set of source languages and microarchitectures. It provided no benefits for languages that didn't run in a Java VM. By the time devices had more than about 4MB of RAM, Jazelle was outperformed by a JIT. Within that envelope, however, it was a good design choice.

Jazelle DBX should serve as a reminder that optimizations for one size of core can be incredibly bad choices for other cores

So: a decent JIT works better if you can afford the overhead of the JIT. Jazelle was only a good idea in a very brief period of time when this wasn't true, and even then only if you insist on running a Java VM.

[0] https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3639445

bitwize
0 replies
10h29m

The Lisp machine failed because Lisp compiler technology got better and better at targeting generic 32-bit CPU hardware, which was becoming increasingly cheap and plentiful. So the benefits of having all this custom hardware to specially execute Lisp code were nullified -- leaving only the costs.

The same thing happened to Java in hardware. It seemed like a good idea at the time because it allowed developers to target a language they were already familiar with, and present an alternative to Wintel -- especially when you realize that Java was all the rage as a sort of universal programming environment, and in particular J2ME was a big deal for proto-"smart" phones before the iPhone came along. But embedded Java didn't really pan out, memory and CPU time got cheaper, and compiler and JIT tech improved to the point where there was just no benefit to adding the hardware it took to decode Java instructions. So Jazelle was deprecated and replaced with something called ThumbEE, which was a more generic framework based on ARM's Thumb instruction set for running code for an abstract machine, providing features like automatic null-pointer checking and that. Like you could set up a ThumbEE environment for running Python or .NET code in addition to Java. Nowadays even ThumbEE is deprecated. Neither feature appears in ARMv8 processors, for instance.

ssl-3
0 replies
14h10m

Also, too: Wifi has inherent galvanic isolation with a wide gap.

It isn't strictly necessary, as anyone here obviously knows, but it can be a cost-effective way to isolate the [electrical] pokey-bits from the [meat-based] pokey-bits, and to avoid loops when things go wrong.

Wireless has uses beyond just eliminating wires.

pmontra
0 replies
9h56m

Yeah, the author makes this pun

C in IoT stands for “cost-effective” I guess

but it's actually C for cableless.

madaxe_again
0 replies
10h23m

> To be honest, the whole thing was a bit scary, since I was very close to the mains

I laughed at this. Changing a fuse is… a bit scary? They literally teach this in elementary school in the U.K. - or they did. As you say, no need to fretfully check the fuse - either it blows or it doesn’t, and you’ll know when it does. At least he didn’t find the receptacle holding a dead fuse, carefully wrapped in the ceremonial aluminium shroud of eternal life and certain death, which is a crime I may have committed in my younger, more fire-prone years.

I find it interesting how uncomfortable some people are outside of their comfort zones - but then I am a person who spends his life sticking his nose in stuff he has no business with.

AceJohnny2
0 replies
13h18m

Also, oh, man, Jazelle. I'd forgotten about that. Hardware support for Java bytecode... that did not pan out well.

I'd love someday to learn more about why Jazelle failed.

The first SoC I worked on almost 20 years ago was built around an ARM926EJ-S, just like in the story. It was built for Nokia, who used Symbian OS [1], and supported user-installable apps written against Java Micro Edition [2].

The utter mess of Symbian's app discovery and installation, I suspect, was a prime reason Apple created their App Store for the iPhone.

Nevertheless, the fundamental concept of HW-accelerated Java apps doesn't sound crazy. What happened? Were they just stuck with a sinking ship, Symbian?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Micro_Edition

inetknght
18 replies
16h50m

Turns out, I need a 3A fuse, so I ordered one from Amazon

OP might want to watch Louis Rossmann's video about buying things from Amazon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

Symbiote
14 replies
16h11m

I was surprised someone would order this from Amazon, rather than get one from the nearest convenience shop or supermarket. Those places only sell the normal thing for local use.

I was further surprised that someone would be worried about installing the fuse. Is he also worried about plugging things in generally?

xattt
13 replies
16h1m

I see the recommendation every so often to buy a fuse locally, but I don’t live in Akihabara.

I HAVE to buy online electronic components, and usually it ends up being Amazon, because other national suppliers insist on charging $15 for courier shipping on a $2 part.

Symbiote
12 replies
15h48m

The person lives in an apartment in Britain. Apartments are only built in towns and cities, and are generally within walking distance of convenience shops and supermarkets.

Every plug in Britain has a fuse, so they are about as easy to buy as replacement light bulbs. Probably on the same shelf.

MeImCounting
11 replies
15h15m

This is fascinating! I did not know this about british plugs.

Why is that? Is it a safety measure?

tjohns
5 replies
14h47m

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. This single breaker is too large to trip from a short from occuring in the smaller wires inside an appliance.

So each plug (or hardwired device) needs it's own dedicated smaller fuse instead.

zarzavat
3 replies
14h6m

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 fuse, the cord only needs to be able to handle 3A, so then it can be lighter and cheaper. If it had to handle the same amperage as the circuit it’s plugged into then it would be seriously impractical and expensive.

Of course there are modern ways of solving this but fuses are dirt cheap and already implemented.

outofmyshed
2 replies
10h8m

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.

Symbiote
0 replies
6h28m

My parents' house still has fuses with fuse wire. They had it rewired when they bought it in the 1980s, and that was the standard then.

A fuse blowing is so rare I don't think they're worried by the inconvenience. It might happen every 5 years or more.

Angostura
0 replies
7h33m

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 :)

outofmyshed
0 replies
10h15m

Houses built post-1960s (with more than one floor) will have more than one socket ring each protected by a circuit breaker at the distribution board, usually one per floor for general sockets, with a separate one for the kitchen, and usually individual 32A breakers for things like electric ovens and hobs.

Lighting rings are also separate, usually on 6A breakers. We cheap out on cable by not running neutrals to the switches, which causes nerds headaches when they want to install generic smart light switches.

My house is reasonably large (worked hard, all my own money) and has a 20-way distribution board with separate socket and light rings for groups of rooms. It’s handy for isolation purposes.

More recent builds’ rings will be protected by a combination of MCBs and RCDs, or individual RCBOs (now the cost has come down) which combine the two functions and is ultimately the safest option for most situations.

Individually fusing plugs (and in the case of high-draw appliances like washing machines and dryers, protecting with a fused socket) is still a very good idea. And don’t get me started on earthing practices in other countries…

zarzavat
4 replies
14h33m

Let’s say you desperately need a cup of tea. So you buy a cheap 4-way extension cable and 4 electric kettles. You fill all the kettles and turn them on at the same time for maximum tea-making throughput.

The combined load of all the kettles exceeds the rating of the extension cable.

With a fuse: the fuse in the extension cable plug blows, you buy another fuse, and learn some patience.

Without a fuse: the extension cable overheats and causes a fire, your house burns down, and worst of all you still don’t have any tea.

TheCoelacanth
3 replies
13h18m

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.

oasisaimlessly
2 replies
11h1m

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.
manarth
1 replies
8h31m

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.

Angostura
0 replies
7h32m

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

neither_color
1 replies
13h37m

For US readers: The big orange or blue store are probably better for you for anything electric that would go in your walls. I went down a rabbit hole of amazon clones of popular brand things like switches/dimmers/outlets and what I found is dubious UL certificates shared by multiple "brands".

inetknght
0 replies
13h10m

what I found is dubious UL certificates shared by multiple "brands"

Have you reported it to UL?

https://www.ul.com/resources/market-surveillance-departments

ikt
0 replies
10h49m

That's what immediately stood out to me, why the hell would you order it from Amazon instead of literally driving 5 minutes down the road to pick one up from any electronics or hardware store? what a horribly inefficient way to do things

miellaby
10 replies
11h11m

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 bar graph could be done with a pair of microcontrollers communicating onto some wired bus.

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.

The worst of all is that this whole mess turned into bricks probably 3 years after it was installed, maybe less.

thrwwycbr
5 replies
10h54m

The reason why the Mirai botnet is still at large is: Android.

From a business perspective nobody wants to pay the costly people that can do microcontroller programming. Frontend devs are dirt cheap, especially for something as simple as that interface displaying the bar charts.

justinclift
1 replies
9h37m

nobody wants to pay the costly people that can do microcontroller programming

The embedded world isn't known for paying well.

MichaelZuo
0 replies
2h27m

Actually competent microcontroller programmers definitely earn way more then bargain barrel front end devs.

PeterisP
1 replies
8h55m

From employee perspective it was my impression that EE developers tend to get lower salaries than web developers.

But it could be the case that building an android or web app for a simple UI would take less dev-months than an embedded app with similar functionality.

marcosdumay
0 replies
58m

building an android or web app for a simple UI would take less dev-months than an embedded app with similar functionality

I'm quite sure that's correct.

throw310822
0 replies
8h58m

There is also an enormous amount of flexibility gained when, instead if designing and building your own single-purpose device, you just use a cheap, mass produced, off the shelf, general purpose device.

XorNot
1 replies
10h44m

Pulling wires through anywhere after it's finished is an immense installation hassle though. It might be possible...or it might be completely impractical even if you can (i.e. low voltage buses and unshielded power wires don't play nice together if they're parallel).

IshKebab
0 replies
9h3m

Yeah I don't understand why he is shocked that this communicates wirelessly. He even bought a modern flat with Ethernet because he clearly knows how much pain it is to add wiring to a house. Very weird.

squarefoot
0 replies
8h46m

within an heavily constrained terminal which cant be reused for anything else.

Except for botnets and/or spying. Some of those boards already contain MEMS microphones and cameras (the box in the picture even shows the camera objective). I'd have took apart the device to take a look inside, or at least run some diagnostics to explore which hardware was installed/detected.

freetanga
0 replies
10h44m

He probably would get more savings by removing the fuse again than keeping that useless thing on…

azalemeth
9 replies
16h27m

A fun read! I feel compelled to say that all British (type G plugs) _have_ to be fused as the ring main has a maximum current of (typically) 30A yet the plug and socket maximum is 13A. So every appliance plug is fused, and the consumer unit has an RCD on most accessible circuits in addition to a circuit breaker.

Some plugs don't make the fuse obvious, but the traditional values are 1A, 3A, 5A, 7A, 10A and 13A (iirc -- for some reason!)

There are actually many features of the British and European wiring system that I think are really quite good. The device is closely related to a "smart meter", which are being slowly rolled out -- the UI is similar to those rolled out nationally, but it's a bit different.

Keep exploring (and don't play with the mains!)

alanfranz
3 replies
14h7m

Why don’t you use a 13A circuit breaker in UK? That’s what we do in the rest of the EU, I think.

There’s a main input to the house which usually is around 15A-30A , then we’ve got multiple sublines with individual circuit breakers, typically 10A or 16A.

leoedin
1 replies
9h32m

That seems really low. Most houses in the UK have a 60 - 100A supply. Just my stove alone can draw about 7.3kW - about 32A.

alanfranz
0 replies
1h14m

Probably depends on the country. In Italy we usually employ natural gas stoves and we use natural gas furnaces for heating, so normally you get a 3kw to 6kw max inbound power. I think you can easily get to 10kw, but above that it's quite difficult.

alanfranz
0 replies
13h58m

I just read up about radial vs ring circuits; I had seen ring circuits only in industrial contexts here in Italy, so the fused approach makes sense I suppose.

Symbiote
2 replies
15h54m

Fuses in plugs in Britain are either 3A or 13A, by regulation. 5A used to be another value, but is no longer used (though replacement 5A fuses are easily available.)

I've never seen 7A or 10A fuses, and I was the kind of boy to rummage through my grandparent's workshops. ..

leoedin
0 replies
9h35m

I've had 10A fused cables before - IEC leads are pretty common. https://www.cablewarehouse.co.uk/10a-uk-plug-to-iec-c13-main... for example.

azalemeth
0 replies
3h27m

They are available in the sizes I mentioned, plus 2A – https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1683350.pdf – and your comment made me actually look up the regulation out of curiosity as I know I have seen some of those other sizes in the lab! The wiring regs are enforced in statute by The Plugs and Sockets (Etc) Statutory Instrument 1994 [1] which mandates the compliance of two British standards, BS 1362 and BS 1363 for fuses and plugs respectively. The exact wording of BS 1363 (at least the version of it I can access) is

[...] all rewirable plugs shall be marked on the engagement surface with the rated current. All non-rewirable plugs shall be marked with the rated current of the fuse link fitted, which shall not exceed the value given in Table 2 for the appropriate size of flexible cord

Table 2 itself prescribes a maximum fuse rating of 3 A or "(5 A)" [see below] for a conductor cross-sectional area of 0.5 mm^2, and 13 A for all larger conductor areas (0.75, 1, 1.25, and 1.5 mm^2). It is entitled "Rated current and maximum fuse rating in normal use, and load for flexing and cord grip tests related to size of flexible cord"

[...] The figure in brackets indicates the fuse rating when a non rewirable plug is used with certain types of equipment where the use of a 5 A fuse link is necessary because of the high instantaneous inrush current

So there we go, I think – we're all sort of right. Thanks for sending me down this rabbit hole!

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1994/1768/made

leoedin
0 replies
9h45m

Ring circuits may have made sense in the past, but they really don't any more. It's basically impossible to test a ring circuit in place - you have to break the connection somewhere to ensure the ring is complete. That's a huge downside. They were conceived at a time when circuit breakers were expensive and wire was in short supply - neither is true now, yet people are still installing them.

Angostura
0 replies
7h38m

The weirdest bit for me was when he ordered a 3am fuse from Amazon, rather than just wandering down to the corner shop for a little blister pack that has 13amp, 5amp and 3amp fuses. Usually just next to the sewing kits

aworks
9 replies
17h7m

"urban archeology": The device was using an ARM processor extension that could directly execute Java bytecode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle

Something1234
7 replies
16h19m

I want to know more. History of java is just insanely weird.

astrange
6 replies
14h46m

SIM cards and secure elements (contactless credit cards) both use this, or did at one point.

geerlingguy
4 replies
14h30m

For a time, Java was set to be the 'everything everywhere' language, IIRC in some quarters the hype behind Java on everything was even bigger than Cloud, then Crypto, then AI.

fortran77
1 replies
13h29m

I remember those days well. I had the misfortune of working for one of Java's biggest advocates at Sun, Patrick Naughton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Naughton

To this day, I refuse to use Java or anything on the Java ecosystem, like Clojure, or Groovy, etc.

lpapez
0 replies
11h12m

I've always thought of Java programming as being kind of perverse with the patterns and verbosity, now I see where the perversion is coming from.

conradfr
0 replies
6h38m

It kind of was, I remember my "pre-smart" Sony phones having Java games.

AVincentInSpace
0 replies
10h21m

Just you watch, WASI is gonna be next

a2800276
0 replies
10h2m

SIM cards and secure elements still use this, but it's arguably less Java than Javascript. Except that the trademark and tech (JavaCard) was owned by Sun, now Oracle. It's the basis of the claim, that gazillion devices run Java.

JavaCard is a massively trimmed down version which is more a dumbed down C (with no standardization, little documentation and no third-party tool support) which is essentially Java reduced to basic arithmetic operator, an arguably saner, much trimmed down standard library focusing on cryptography and most importantly no GC.

Everdred2dx
0 replies
16h9m

The Nintendo Wii’s “Starlet” processor also supported this though never used it!

userbinator
8 replies
13h36m

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 does have at least a camera)...

Roughly a year ago I moved into my new apartment.

...and you were perfectly fine with living in its presence for a year? When I saw the picture, my first thought was closer to "that's a telescreen", and I'd certainly try to find out more about it ASAP.

From what I can tell, this is an Android 5, but I am not exactly sure.

I believe those icons are from 4.1-4.3 - Lines up with the Linux kernel version being mid-2013. Android 5 was released in 2014.

anigbrowl
4 replies
11h12m

The landlord had no idea what this is.

Golgafrincham B Ark candidate detected.

tim333
1 replies
7h27m

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.

wkjagt
0 replies
5h22m

The person showing them around might not even have been the landlord.

madaxe_again
1 replies
10h20m

Hey, he might be an exceedingly skilled telephone sanitiser.

CPLX
0 replies
6h15m

Which, if you recall, turned out to be a bit of a linchpin role.

lynguist
0 replies
5h36m

It should be Android 4.4 as per https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/51651/which-andr...

Kernel 3.10 is used only for Android 4.4.

UberFly
0 replies
13h12m

That was my first though as I read it. It would be disabled or removed the first day.

NautilusWave
0 replies
12h47m

He hadn't read 1984

user_7832
7 replies
16h43m

C in IoT stands for “cost-effective” I guess.

Thanks, that got a laugh out of me.

dotancohen
5 replies
16h40m

The old joke asks what is the S in HTTPS, what is the S in SFTP, what is the S in IoT.

flyinghamster
2 replies
15h52m

Also works for the P (privacy).

mkl
0 replies
15h32m

Protocol.

dotancohen
0 replies
7h8m

Maybe if you could find an example other than PGP/GPG.

anotherevan
0 replies
14h35m

I've heard it phrased more directly as, "The S in IoT stands for security."

Ayesh
0 replies
15h48m

I'm gonna steal this to use in my casual conversations!

tim333
0 replies
7h19m

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

lawgimenez
6 replies
17h6m

Very nostalgic, I have developed several apps before with Lollipop and was surprised with their choice of using WebView. I believe they set the NetThings app as a “launcher” app?

laplab
5 replies
17h2m

I also assumed that they would, but weirdly no. When the tablet booted up, I was greeted with stock launcher.

Also, WebView is only part of the app, they used something else (which did not look like Android native UI) for the WiFi network picker.

mananaysiempre
3 replies
16h46m

The launcher with its Holo tabs and the icon style look more like Android 4.something (I to K) to me, by the way. Android 5 (L) was the first Material Design release (the one[1] that had actual coherent principles behind it).

[1] https://m1.material.io/

lawgimenez
0 replies
16h15m

Yeah you are right, I believe it is on Jelly Bean. This was Holo running on ICS. https://law.gmnz.xyz/uploads/2023/169e32e731.png

krackers
0 replies
16h13m

Yeah given the holoyolo look it's almost certainly ICS or jelly bean. I think kitkat's launcher looked a bit different, it didn't have the tabs: by then they had moved from tron blue to white.

exikyut
0 replies
16h29m

Yeah, I'd be curious to see what the About activity shows.

exikyut
0 replies
16h29m

Ooh, what did it look like?

josu
6 replies
17h17m

DATE & TIME ARE ALWAYS CORRECT AND NEVER NEED TO BE ADJUSTED

Reads like a quote from a Philip K. Dick book.

Ayesh
3 replies
16h37m

My guess was that it probably had a time correction feature from those British radio tower integration, but this device is from 2015 (says in the article), so probably not.

Aaron2222
2 replies
15h53m

Maybe they originally intended for them to be internet connected? That would also explain the MQTT.

Ayesh
1 replies
15h49m

Yeah I think it makes more sense like you said. It has the Wifi stuff there already too.

adolph
0 replies
14h2m

Could prolly take it out of access point and attach it to your network (or one you segregated from your actual network). Set up nat, dyndns, wireshark and see what happens.

skrebbel
1 replies
9h3m

Maybe it’s the technical writer’s way of saying “we ping an NTP server so don't worry” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39065780

(Clearly that didn't pan out so well)

niklasrde
0 replies
6h31m

Without internet access?

girvo
6 replies
13h54m

C in IoT stands for “cost-effective” I guess

I know this sounds pithy (and it is!) but you'd be surprised exactly how cheap and cost effective Wi-fi enabled SoCs are. A lot of the time we're getting Wi-Fi for free, and most of those SoC's don't have the Ethernet controller by default, so it's more cost-effective to use Wi-fi if it can fit your use-case.

Other physical protocols/connection types can be supported of course (I wonder what the longest I2C run ever is), but when you're talking about a retro-fitted client like this is, Wifi or wireless protocols in general are best.

PeterisP
4 replies
10h13m

Purely from a materials perspective, 2x cheap WiFi-capable microcontrollers (e.g. esp8266) will cost the manufacturer something like $4-$5 total for both devices - which is comparable to 3m cable+connectors+cheap chips to handle the cable connection (even ignoring the cost of some person to install the cable which is far more expensive than that) so indeed I don't get why the author considers that doing the connection over WiFi is somehow wasteful.

dijit
3 replies
7h33m

so indeed I don't get why the author considers that doing the connection over WiFi is somehow wasteful.

Power consumption.

Up front vs ongoing cost; the creators chose to minimise the up-front cost in favour of a marginally higher ongoing cost.

gabrielhidasy
1 replies
1h36m

Is it really a problem? An ESP8266 (which is not the most efficient thing, but is very cheap) uses about 0.5W while transmitting, much less most of the time.

For reference, I have some smart outlets that I measured using a while ago, pulling about 0.05W on average from the wall, or 36Wh a month. That's about as much energy as making 500ml of coffee or charging a phone 2-3x.

dijit
0 replies
1h17m

not sure if its a problem in reality, radios are the second most power consuming subsystem of my laptop at idle. (first being screen due to the backlight).

urbandw311er
0 replies
6h19m

I’d be interested in crunching the numbers if I had time because there can’t be too much in the cost delta.

paradox460
0 replies
9h38m

ESP32s are basically universal at this point. You can have them for under a dollar if you order in any sort of bulk, and you get Wifi and Bluetooth right out of the box. At this point is more expensive to not use Wifi

petepete
5 replies
9h50m

On a related note, I had a new boiler installed last year with Vaillant's smart controls. There's a little puck shaped 'control unit' with WiFi/radio which allows the app to talk to it, and it to talk to the thermostat.

Like most people in the UK, the boiler's in the garage. A brick rectangle separate from the house. Did Vaillant include an ethernet port? You bet they didn't. The support team suggested I installed WiFi in my garage, which definitely wasn't going to happen.

I had to get the installer back and he ran the cable through the wall so it's now inside and working fine - but how did this ever make it to market? No wonder the reviews are all terrible.

knolan
2 replies
9h43m

Most people in the UK don’t have a garage. Almost every home I’ve lived in has had a gas boiler somewhere inside.

sdflhasjd
0 replies
6h5m

There's enough boilers in garages, lofts, the other side of the house, etc, once you overlap it with UK houses being brick, you get enough situations where getting WiFi from one place to another becomes a pain. A lot of the time, the WiFi AP is 30 cm from where the phone line came into the house when it was built (before the internet even existed), which is not optimally placed for coverage.

petepete
0 replies
9h37m

Fair. But I strongly suspect nearly every house with a garage has the boiler in it.

Edit. So having done a little research this probably isn't the case. Maybe it's a regional thing, all the (mostly suburban) houses I've lived in and visited, in the north west of England, are set up that way.

pinkahd
0 replies
8h13m

Not quite I’ve noticed in east of England the boiler is in the garage only when a conservatory or kitchen extension is made.

I’ve also tried to move mine from kitchen to garage and the builder I had at the time wasn’t aware of such things.

But agree with the point, I think if a wifi is added to an appliance an ethernet port should also be added.

Angostura
0 replies
7h40m

I probably would have just installed an an extender plug that extends Wifi by signalling through the mains. Cheap and works quite well

cm2187
5 replies
10h48m

A bit of a dick move to remove the root password on an IOT device of a flat you only rent.

caslon
1 replies
10h40m

It was completely non-functional before, so there's really no loss.

cm2187
0 replies
9h32m

I see half of the article about how he struggled to get the password, so not that dysfunctional.

n_plus_1_acc
0 replies
7h44m

The landlord didn't know what it was and apparently doesn't care at all.

denysvitali
0 replies
9h39m

Considering that: - the Wi-Fi is password protected - root privileges can already be granted via the "backdoor" - exactly as the author did

I don't think it's a dick move, the device security wasn't decreased (or increased) since RCE was already possible via the tcf port

acdha
0 replies
4h59m

If it was powered off before, it’s clearly not a selling point of the apartment.

chefandy
5 replies
16h58m

Weird to see some micromuse thing listed as the service listed for 1534. I worked for them back in like 2006 and we got eaten by IBM/Tivoli and I don't believe they kept the name for anything? I always knew nobody really updated those but man, really nobody updates those.

alexfoo
2 replies
9h17m

1534 was the port used by the license manager (elmd - Elan license manager). The bane of many a Netcool installation until we joyfully ripped it out post IBM acquisition.

-Alex (Micromuse 1997 to 2021).

chefandy
1 replies
4h15m

I was wondering what it was. I only worked on Proviso out of Massachusetts so I never even touched anything that was Netcool proper.

alexfoo
0 replies
29m

I think I was in Lowell for a few weeks helping out on some App Packs when I heard about the acquisition. Working with JFK? and another guy with a short nickname that escapes me right now. Wedge?

Nursie
1 replies
13h28m

Hah, weird to see micromuse come up. I started working for them two weeks before the acquisition was announced!

chefandy
0 replies
12h50m

Ha! I did support there for Proviso— the product of a startup that Micromuse had acquired not too long before the IBM acquisition. I started in between the acquisitions.

wkat4242
4 replies
15h17m

Turns out, I need a 3A fuse, so I ordered one from Amazon and installed it the next day.

Ummm. 3A is 720W. If that tiny box dissipated that much, the entire closet full of them would be a literal oven. Besides there's not much point in an energy meter using that much power. It defeats the purpose. It's like testing matches :P it'll be 10W at most. Even peak inrush current would be nowhere near that high.

1A fuse would be more than enough.

To be honest, the whole thing was a bit scary, since I was very close to the mains.

Nah this is all installed very cleanly.

hales
1 replies
11h26m

Depends on the fuse time rating and the inrush current for the power supply (which can sometimes be more than 10A). Some 1A fuses might occasionally blow when you turn the unit on.

wkat4242
0 replies
17m

Hm yreah but if it's 10A it will be really short like < 100ms. A physical melt fuse should have no issues with that. Most general-purpose fuses are really slow.

alphabetter
1 replies
7h34m

The 3A fuse is due to the way the UK wiring system works rather than what is optimal for this device.

All appliances in the UK have a fuse where they connect to the building wiring, normally in the plug, but can be in a fixed fuse-holder like this device. Somewhere in the process it was recognized that having lots of different fuse values would be confusing and awkward for users, so these fuses are the same size and always one of three standard values: 13A, 5A, and 3A. As noted elsewhere, you can buy these particular fuses in UK supermarkets and convenience stores.

If 3A is too high for the appliance then what the designer has to do is to fit it with a flex rated at 3A so that is protected by the fuse at the plug-end and then add additional, lower current, protection at the device end.

The UK system is clever and has subtle details like the standard fuse values which were good at the time it was introduced. But, it is also rather over-engineered, and not optimized for modern homes that have a lot of low-current appliances.

wkat4242
0 replies
12m

Oh yeah the UK system.. I lived in Ireland for a long time and it was a bit archaic sometimes.

I like the idea of fuses in every plug, mind you. Because some equipment just can't be trusted. I didn't like the switches in every outlet (even though they're not mandatory, they are very common). And the way the plugs are so huuuge and always fall with the pins up do to the design so they are a foot-piercer.

In Ireland 1A fuses were available though even in the fuse kits in Tesco. With the same size as the others. And the practice doesn't always lead to actual safety, I've seen a lot of tinfoil and paperclips. Yes, really.

But the thing I really thought was the worst was the concept of having only one tap connected to the mains water line in the house, and having all the others fed by a huge dirty water tank in the attic, full of dead insects brewing away in the summer heat (yes even there it can get hot in summer). It seems like an ecological disaster and locals were always warning me to not drink the water from the bathroom or bedrooms taps. It's also a big possible cause of leaks. Here in Spain and in my home country of Holland we just feed all taps onto the mains.

But overall I tend to prefer EU standards rather than BS. The "Schuko" does have a few serious design flaws like the ability to plug it in upside-down so neutral and phase are reversed, but the French have found a solution for that :)

metadat
4 replies
15h31m

> There were two strings printed with labels “SSID” and “Pwd”. I froze in horror. They wouldn’t dare. It is literally 3 meter distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this complexity...

Responding with disbelief seems a little over the top. It isn't typically easy to run wires in pre-built spaces. Sounds like a resilient design to me.

65a
2 replies
11h15m

Not resiliant, because in the 10-20 year lifespan of a home electrical panel, at least one critical vulnerability is going to allow complete remote pwnage of that device. It's stupid IOT garbage that belongs in ewaste, especially with a trivial remote code execution mechanism.

rini17
0 replies
10h52m

Layperson will always prefer wireless. "But what if I need to move the tablet?"

Never bet against convenience.

leoedin
0 replies
9h51m

There's not really much those devices can do - they're just metering, and don't have an active internet connection.

WiFi isn't a bad choice of communications protocol.

ajmurmann
0 replies
3h29m

I recently got into microcontrollers and one of the most surprising things to me was the low cost and small size of ESP32s with wifi. Having grown up at a time when it wasn't unusual to buy a PCI card for your desktop computer that added wifi capability I had assumed that we'd still be looking at a target large device that goes for ~$20+ to get WiFi. Explicitly thinking about the ubiquity of cheap devices with wifi around me would immediately correct this view, but I had never done that and I'm sure many others haven't either

MenhirMike
4 replies
17h3m

Okay, but: Did the author find the configuration for the energy cost (money and CO2) and update it, so that the touchscreen shows the proper info now?

laplab
3 replies
17h0m

He did! :) It was located in the `/srv/server/bin/cfg` file.

zikohh
0 replies
4h38m

Do a follow up plan with the grafana bit. I'm intrigued

qingcharles
0 replies
15h30m

Did you figure out what the green graph on the right of the display represents? :)

MenhirMike
0 replies
16h52m

Awesome! I had some instances of "digging so deep into a fascinating problem that I forgot the initial reason I started digging" :)

It actually looks like a reasonable system overall. Maybe a bit bloated on the node.js side (what isn't?), but I wonder if they just had that toolchain already in place/experience with it, even though it's overkill for the system as-is. Or maybe they just googled how to do networking and copy/pasted the top Stack Overflow answer that included Socket.IO.

LAC-Tech
4 replies
17h2m

I really hope we'll look back at this fad of android powered wifi domestic IoT devices one day and laugh about how silly it all was.

Not an IoT hater. I've worked for IoT companies, and there's a lot of very smart embedded engineers doing very cool things in the space. But an old android tablet installed in the wall with a WiFI point? oh dear.

ilaksh
1 replies
15h46m

What do you recommend as an alternative?

LAC-Tech
0 replies
14h58m

basic electronics, mostly

Ancapistani
1 replies
16h58m

To be fair, that particular Android device is still installed and at least marginally useful. How many other Android devices from that era can say that?

lawgimenez
0 replies
16h20m

Also back then, you can fit an Android OS (pre-lollipop) inside a USB and plug it in a TV. It was really cool.

BubbleRings
4 replies
16h52m

I like the part where you flip the neighbor’s power off for a couple seconds. That’ll teach ‘em to get a UPS!

virexene
1 replies
16h45m

that was only the power to the energy measuring device i believe.

wkat4242
0 replies
15h14m

Correct, since its only on a 3A fuse it would have blown as soon as the owner tried to make a coffee, if the house power literally ran through it.

Most likely this is just a current clamp style meter. Most of these kinds of meters are.

laplab
0 replies
16h49m

I felt pretty bad about it, but my curiosity took over :) It was only the power for their Energy Manager though, not the power to the entire apartment!

In any case, I doubt they were actually using this Energy Manager thing anyway. The number one feature listed on websites selling these things is "Earn two code credits under the code for sustainable homes". I assume you do not need to teach people how to use the thing to earn these credits...

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

borissk
0 replies
16h49m

Next step - format all their SSDs to teach them to make backups :)

xyst
3 replies
14h38m

Yet another reminder: I really need to get off my ass and isolate all of the IoT junk connected to my network away from home/work/lab devices.

anotherevan
2 replies
14h19m

Honestly, this is the main reason¹ I just haven't got into IoT much as I love the idea in theory. I don't want an adversarial relationship with the electronics I'm putting in the house, so I just don't.

I want my IoT to work off-line with no talking to the Internet unless I explicitly let it for some reason. I want it to interoperate with other things and not just some shitty app on my phone - I don't carry my phone with me around the house all the time and it's a PITA anyway.

I could go the DIY route and bust out the soldering iron and some ESPHome compatible chips, but that's not my passion and life is too bloody short. And even if I did I'd still have strong reservations doing DIY around the 240V AC mains power.

¹ That, and the first thing I'd automate is light switches², but the regulations around mains power wiring in Australia are pretty stringent and the only AES certified IoT light switches I've seen look like I would have and adversarial relationship with and can only be controlled by a shitty app.

² Automating light bulbs themselves is a sub-optimal solution in most circumstances, in my opinion. Perhaps if I wanted to control the colour, but not for on, off and brightness. If I did that it would just make me feel sad.

BHSPitMonkey
1 replies
13h32m

You can go far using only Zigbee or Z-Wave devices with a Home Assistant server, and then nothing (but the server) has to be networked.

As for switches vs. bulbs, at this point I can't go back to the life I led before picking up a bunch of Hue White Ambiance bulbs and having HA automatically adjust the color temperature throughout the day.

anotherevan
0 replies
13h22m

Yeah colour temperature would be my rationale for smarter bulbs as well.

crummy
3 replies
17h24m

Did you take notes along the way? Usually when I am "exploring" a problem like that it's hard to reproduce my steps later.

qingcharles
0 replies
15h28m

Ah, it's not just me that does this. I also start taking notes from the beginning now, otherwise when I go back to write it up for others I sometimes can't even replicate the starting conditions.

laplab
0 replies
17h20m

Yes! I started taking some notes when I was halfway through, that helped a lot with the thought reconstruction. There is no chance I would find these TCF links organically again

incanus77
0 replies
14h50m

For me, a particular browser window's (many) open tabs are usually a pretty good record.

methou
2 replies
9h5m

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.

Edit: added something details

wkjagt
0 replies
5h17m

I’m curious about the palace in Singapore.

55555
0 replies
8h59m

Please, please write a blog to document the build of your next palace.

ilikehurdles
2 replies
14h49m

“DATE & TIME ARE ALWAYS CORRECT AND NEVER NEED TO BE ADJUSTED” sounds like it’s straight out of a fever dream

mlk
0 replies
10h24m

It would if it had an NTP client running

justinator
0 replies
11h22m

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT.

asylteltine
2 replies
17h28m

Small bit about that Wi-Fi remark. Yes in your case it’s close to the server but Wi-Fi lets you mount the touchscreen anywhere. Wi-Fi completely makes sense here.

archi42
0 replies
16h58m

Absolutely. Try retrofitting this into a multi unit home and "just run a digital data cable up there". With some bad luck, this can easily cost as much as the whole unit.

I don't like getting everything on WiFi, too. OTOH I have ~30 devices on an VLAN isolated IoT WiFi network. This easily saved us a 4 digit expense and a lot of time(!) as opposed to installing new additional wire (redoing all the old ones was bad enough). Plus, I can do dumb stuff like control my office's window blinds individually, which is nice when only one of them has the sun blinding me while using the PC (temporary desk location due to ongoing renovations).

Retr0id
0 replies
17h19m

The equivalent energy monitoring device in my flat uses an RF link (no idea what kind, I haven't investigated further) to talk to its base station. Wireless seems fine, but WiFi itself seems like overkill.

Brajeshwar
2 replies
17h1m

Hey Nikita, that was an excellent read. It felt like a pivotal scene in a movie that would change the course of the succeeding narrative. I envy the ability to write so nicely and clearly, making it enjoyable for most generally technical people and keeping us engaged. I will watch out for more articles.

tome
0 replies
10h42m

Same! This is my favourite of all recent HN posts.

rideontime
0 replies
16h46m

Hi Brajeshwar, that was a nice comment. It convinced me to read the article, and I'm glad I did.

xydac
1 replies
16h12m

this is first time i have read something completely in a long span of time !!

PNWChris
0 replies
11h20m

I agree, I really enjoyed the author’s curiosity and writing style!

orenlindsey
1 replies
3h30m

There were two strings printed with labels “SSID” and “Pwd”. I froze in horror. They wouldn’t dare. It is literally 3 meter distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this complexity…

Socket.IO! Wow, I honestly did not expect that. Client literally needs to receive 5 numbers from the server, Socket.IO seems to be a complete overkill for this usecase.

The client code also looks very complicated for what it does. There are at least 6 RequireJS modules, all loading dynamically through different requests of course. There is Handlebars, Backbone.js, Underscore.js

I just kept getting more incredulous throughout this article. No way someone would put in that much effort for a device like this. The laziest option is usually the most common in software development. I guess in this case, it's not.

worldsayshi
0 replies
3h23m

Laziest option would probably be the option that developer is most familiar with.

ncann
1 replies
15h44m

TCF seems to be closedly tied to Eclipse ecosystem. The Getting Started guide suggests several plugins for Eclipse as the main way to interact with tcf-agent. I tried installing these plugins on a new version of Eclipse and it is absolutely impossible. There are dependency issues everywhere and when you actually try to install the missing dependencies, Eclipse does not let you because they conflict with some other dependencies.

I laughed out loud at this part. Some things never changed I guess.

mnw21cam
0 replies
14m

This is also what happens whenever I try to install anything that uses the package managers for python or perl. For some reason, these two always fail with messages about conflicting, non-existent, or failed-to-compile dependencies. I work in bioinformatics - everything is in python or perl. My life is pain.

living_room_pc
1 replies
6h21m

Now that you have root access. Check for a microphone device or other things that could be utilized for surveillance.

Im always skeptical of IoT devices.

atribecalledqst
0 replies
5h28m

I was thinking about how the future software engineer to move into the house is probably more likely to curse him rather than thank him for making the server MORE vulnerable than it was before, by removing the SSH password.

jenadine
1 replies
6h47m

If you were to develop a device like that "properly", how would you do it? What kind of hardware and what software stack would one use?

konschubert
0 replies
6h37m

Probably an esp32 on both ends. And an eink screen.

The tricky part is passing the networking and auth credentials from the server to the client. But you can marry them during manufacturing.

j1elo
1 replies
15h46m

tcf-agent is [...] probably the second biggest security vulnerability after passwordless root SSH.

I thought that passwordless SSH is actually a good idea in general for servers? Assuming, that is, that the public/private key login mechanism is used as the alternative to passwords.

bombcar
0 replies
15h28m

Passwordless meaning a blank root password allowing login with no credentials- not public/private key.

harry8
1 replies
15h9m
r4indeer
0 replies
12h45m

Only 2 left, probably for a while already. I'd guess that's old stock.

hacker_newz
1 replies
17h8m

Nice write-up, I wish my apartment had this.

Symbiote
0 replies
15h37m

If the live and neutral cables of your electricity supply are seperate and accessible, you can buy a meter that measures power use with a clamp (loop) that fits around the live cable. Perfectly safe, they were often given away by electric companies in Britain in the 2010s to encourage thriftiness.

Here's a zigbee one: https://smarthomescene.com/reviews/tuya-zigbee-single-clamp-...

Here's one with an app: https://aeotec.com/products/aeotec-home-energy-meter/

You'll find many more if you search "clamp energy meter".

geocrasher
1 replies
14h36m

WiFi is not only reasonable but preferable. Because if a cat5 cable is going to be ran, it'll be done by an electrician. And when they get to the end of a spool, they will break out the wire nuts and splice away. I've seen it first hand.

Not even electricians can screw up WiFi :D

neither_color
0 replies
13h55m

It's a little more expensive but it's always worth it to get a low voltage specialist to run your ethernet. To an electrician a conductor is just a conductor no matter how you splice it.

fortran77
1 replies
13h31m

From the article:

I am not an embedded Linux expert, but this does seem like a lot after tinkering with Raspberry Pi Pico and such.

...but of course the Pi Pico doesn't run Linux and doesn't need a lot of memory

lynguist
0 replies
5h29m

Yes, the Pico cannot run an operating system as it has a -M (microcontroller) processor and not an -A (application) processor.

It has no MMU etc etc.

It is built to just run one process in essence with minuscule amounts of RAM.

conradfr
1 replies
6h35m

That was fun.

Are the csv files rotated or can they hypothetically make the device run out of space in n^n years? :)

layer8
0 replies
6h24m

The space was probably calculated to be sufficient until 2038, after which the clock won’t be correct anymore anyway. ;)

borissk
1 replies
16h50m

Curios what was the price the developer paid for these devices.

k1t
0 replies
16h27m

While I doubt they paid the retail price, and the price has probably increased in the 9 years since installation, the current price is £385.00.

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

M6WIQ
1 replies
9h39m

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!

laplab
0 replies
3h51m

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

IlliOnato
1 replies
17h8m

I am curious, what "jira_version" in that listing means. Surely not Jira?.. :-)

SonOfLilit
0 replies
13h50m

Why not? It most likely means "version in the sense of a release version we configured in Jira to attach tickets to"

DougBTX
1 replies
9h28m

Interesting point about not having internet access: these smart meters typically report usage to the energy supplier for billing. I’d go look for a mobile network connection, maybe still up?

cr3ative
0 replies
7h52m

These aren't meters (in that sense) - generally they're reading from CT clamps placed on the tails from your meter.

yashg
0 replies
10h33m

I thought it would a Telescreen. (1984 reference)

smingo
0 replies
9h26m

Putting the WiFi SSID and password on the side of the energy monitor sensor box allowed for this:

The whole thing was quite dissapointing. However, I do have a few Raspberry Pico microcontrollers lying around at home. If I could connect to the WiFi network of the energy manager directly and get the data from the server, I could just extract kW consumption from the API, multiply it by a correct rate and then display it on some Grafana instance.

Love it!

seba_dos1
0 replies
4h42m

I now have access to one of the weirdest Edge Computing platforms imaginable.

If you think that's "weird", I have a bad news for you...

Not that your intuition is bad. It's sensible and fully justified. It's just weird to call common things weird ;)

rwky
0 replies
6h54m

I wonder if the previous tenant removed the fuse to stop the box broadcasting a wifi signal. In an apartment block the 2.4ghz band will already be congested!

rPlayer6554
0 replies
14h27m

This was an extremely well written article. It had me gripped in the story. Thanks for posting!

promiseofbeans
0 replies
7h45m

I relate to this a lot. As part of my job, I'm regularly given IoT devices that do similar tasks, but from different manufacturers and with varying age ranges (new last year with a raspberry pi 4 inside, to something over a decade old with custom firmware on an ancient microcontroller).

I have to figure out how they work, and somehow coerce their data into a standard format before sending it to our server.

Often, they'll have a built-in mechanism for retrieving data programmatically, but it's usually too slow and sends data in large batches, so I end up needing to reverse engineer their socket IO + handlebars web UI for closer to real-time data streaming. It's a janky nightmare, but it's so satisfying once you make it work.

oynqr
0 replies
9h40m

If you actually want to crack a password, use hashcat. Although even md5crypt is comparatively hard to crack.

nurettin
0 replies
13h7m

I loved the final touch where they leave a note in a text file. Feels much like the talos principle.

neither_color
0 replies
14h0m

More out of desperation than anything else, I decided to look at sshd config of the host and finally found the offending line. sshd_config had PermitRootLogin no line included, which is a very sensible security measure as long as you are not providing a full disk access to anyone on the network.

Enjoyed this article because I've wasted countless hours of my own getting into devices I bought or poking around networks I've airBnB'd at. I'm not as smart as the author but I found his whole approach relatable.

neilv
0 replies
15h3m

Even if this device (presumably with known vulnerabilities) isn't directly reachable via the Internet, could the device be bumped off the WiFi and onto an impersonating AP, where the device can be taken over?

The photo on the retail box has a tablet camera hole. Does this particular unit have a camera and mic, placed in a living area?

matthewaveryusa
0 replies
17h2m

You should host your write-up on the device itself in case your domain succumbs to the sands of time

layman51
0 replies
16h40m

I recognize the forum post as being Salesforce Chatter. So it is one of those Experience Cloud sites.

joemaller1
0 replies
4h12m

“hello_stranger.txt” feels like something I would’ve written as a 11 year old pretending to be a mad scientist.

I’m going to start leaving those files on every system I touch. Thank you Nikita.

jacobr
0 replies
8h27m

"The concrete description of what is going on here is spread atom-thin across several websites, all of which expect you to know the terminology. Each of these websites provides you with a tiny piece of the puzzle and you are expected to combine it together on your own."

Oh how I unironically love these types of quests.

guptaneil
0 replies
2h27m

If anyone is interested in having this type of real-time usage data for their own own home, I highly recommend IoTaWatt: https://iotawatt.com

It's a completely local energy monitor that you can install into your home's circuit breaker panel, and then view dashboards or read data via an API from a local web server running on-device. You choose how many sensors you want, but you can monitor your whole home as well as individual circuits.

For example, I track and trigger automations when my various appliances (laundry, dishwasher, microwave, etc) start/stop. It's very cool. Just be warned that it does require some research, basic understanding of electricity, and comfort working with high voltage mains connections if you plan to DIY it but I found it approachable and easy to setup.

What it looks like: https://i.ibb.co/qBVmBD1/IMG-1595.jpg

famicom0
0 replies
13h25m

Probably a long shot, but would anyone happen to know the color scheme used by the author in the snippet of Python code showing an example of tcf-agent? I really like the mix of bold, italics, underline and shading to achieve a distinct syntax highlighting with such a limited color palette.

efitz
0 replies
15h26m

Did you ever fix the cost per kWh?

daviddever23box
0 replies
16h47m

Security through obscurity, I suppose? Seems to be a common thing with UK-based home or energy automation edge devices....

cybrox
0 replies
8h41m

As someone who works in IoT, I very much enjoyed your disbelief.

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.

bouk
0 replies
3h42m

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...

bloqs
0 replies
7h6m

Slid out, not slided :)

belinder
0 replies
16h25m

Cool article! You have a small typo towards the end, coincedence -> coincidence

P5210
0 replies
9h17m

laplab, awesome job and great writeup!

I had a similar experience when moving into my "smart apartment" 9 years ago and finding a wall-mounted Galaxy Tab 3. I went on to develop a one-click root to allow my neighbors to "free" their systems, too:

https://hackaday.io/project/181646-hacking-tabs/logs?sort=ol...

INTPenis
0 replies
8h33m

That was so interesting because around 2015 they built some new apartment buildings in Malmö Sweden and they also included touch screens in every apartment.

Not the same system, but I wonder if that system is as abandoned today as this one was 8 years later.

Affric
0 replies
11h22m

Great article.

Not so sure about the usefulness of these devices without having a battery though.