4 ms·
I worked in a company that provided remote power monitoring. We put a box in your circut breaker panel and monitor your power use. Its kinda neat, but way mor
by acomjean 11y ago
I worked in a company that provided remote power monitoring. We put a box in your circut breaker panel and monitor your power use. Its kinda neat, but way more intrusive than I imagined.
It didn't occur to me how much you can learn until looking at power consumption home page of our demo house when the owner was on vacation (owner = boss). All the circuits are flat.
A manager at the company who installed it too, came hold and told his wife "I see you came home at 3". He knew because he could watch the power come on. We could count loads of laundry done and watch the sun rise from solar panel output. Then there is the awkward conversations when you know the dog walker didn't walk as long as they said they did.
I was glad the company transitioned to monitoring businesses, but I left after a few years for unrelated reasons.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoTrust, but verify. I like the idea of knowing when the teenager actually got home, or how much the dog walker is stiffing me.
- dangerlibrary 11y agoDo you like the idea of service providers being able to monitor those things about you? How about the fact that by providing the data to a third party you've abandoned your expectation of privacy re: when and what you do within your own home?
- marshray 11y agoWhat you don't seem to get is that the default scenarios for IoT are other organizations monitoring you. You're not the one in control of this data.
- hospes 11y agoOnly in this case you are not the one who knows. Your electricity provider is the one who knows when your teenager kids got home and if your dog walker is stiffing you.
- flashman 11y agoThis dad used remote power monitoring to bust his daughter throwing a party at home while she was supposed to be staying with family: http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?p=2381 http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?p=2381
- acomjean 11y agoGreat story. I can totally see that happening. We used the same tech (CT-current transformers), but lots of them in the panel that would radio it out to a base station then up to the internet. https://www.flukso.net/installation https://www.flukso.net/installation circuit breakers are starting to have the measurement technology built it. http://www.carlingtech.com/node/670 http://www.carlingtech.com/node/670
- Nadya 11y agoI want to thank you for making me aware of this. I had never thought of the ability to track me merely by energy usage. That one's "silent" enough to not even have crossed my mind and shy of wasting energy (and money) I don't see a way to "beat the system" here outside of getting off the grid.
- acomjean 11y agoI was a little surprised by it too. The new "smart" power meters that are starting to be installed by power companies deliver hourly power use data to the power company for a variety of reasons. Parts of California US has a moratorium on these smart meters for "health and privacy" reasons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter#California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter#California I though you could write a good mystery that could be solved using a power monitoring system... But alas I am not a writer.
- xkcd-sucks 11y ago'fuzzing' by putting a space heater on a timer, or a big storage battery to smear out the load over time the first option might burn your house down though