Barcamp Auckland is an annual gathering of developers, designers, start-ups and social-media types. It’s a full day event held in an ‘unconference’ like style, where the attendee (see my attendee & interested folks list on Twitter) set the schedule – and people turn up to discuss topics which interest them.
The following are the session notes I took during this years Auckland Barcamp
To celebrate the introduction of the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS*) in New Zealand today (1 July 2010), I thought I’d publish the following article on what I’m doing in terms of residential Power Monitoring.
A few years ago, I was working on what devices would sit in an ‘average’ connected home and, given the sheer volume of ‘things’ – it be came clear that not only would a homeowner need to justify the existence of each device, but also their unseen costs in terms of installation, maintenance and ongoing power usage.
To answer the last of these, I bought a device called a Centameter which, aside from the benefit of being designed in NZ, measured the current power usage via an induction clamp and transmitter which sits in the power meter box and sends the data through to a LCD display.
After a couple of attempts to elicit a response from the manufacturer, I asked an electrical engineering friend of mine to see what information they could pull from the display unit as we wanted to capture and graph this data over time. The short story is, while we could get some information out of the device, the time required to make this meaningful far exceeded what he was able to donate to the project so things were shelved – until now.
Not only are we transmitting in elegant Flash interactivity, we’re also on Twitter – should that be your thing (note, this is currently set to tweet every 15 minutes).
So – there we go, weather data is being captured, next steps (after house wiring) is to get a live weather cam up and running so you too can enjoy our lovely view.
Over the last week I’ve managed to run some power to a nearby cupboard where the La Crosse WS2300 LCD has been sitting and I’ve now got a PC in there gathering the data, and spitting it out to the Weather Page via a very slow WiFi link.
The biggest stinker about this is the external temperature/humidity sensor is not producing data, giving me a flatline of 10.2 degrees C, which I assume can only be a remnant of the last data held when the station was disconnected back in June 2009 in preparation for the house move. So, while there is some data being delivered, it’s not quite 100% – or that interesting due to the lack of the outside temperature.
I’ve raised a ticket with the excellent folk at Scientific Sales where I bought the unit and hopefully, they will be able to suggest a remedy which won’t involve too much expense. Until then, bask in the oh so interesting data of wind direction and speed, as well as the temperature inside the cupboard in which the data logger is stashed.
It’s an old, well-worn saying for sure, but it holds as true today as it did way back whenever the anonymous, cynical, amateur philosopher came up with it.
Recently in New Zealand, there have been an increase in phishing attempts trying to get people to open email attachments which then deploy malware onto the computer, and recruit your PC into a global network of compromised machines.
A few weeks ago, there were a number of emails arriving to various mailboxes I hold claiming to be from DHL or UPS and containing details of a package delivery, over the last few days – this threat has evolved to include messages purporting to be from Amazon and including details of a paid order.
The short version of this post is simply: “Don’t open attachments from people you do not know” but we can also extend this advice to “Treat any attachments or links from people you think you may know with a healthy dose of caution”.
For those who are interested in a little more information:
The biggest risk around phishing attacks is they take advantage of our human nature of curiosity, implied trust of people (especially those we believe we know) and, dare we say it – greed. These ‘social hacks’ are useful in that it’s relatively simple to change the appearance of an email so it looks like it comes from a friend or colleague, or to obscure a link to make it appear that is comes from your bank, or favourite social networking site.
The very nature of how we as humans operate is once we recognise a name we believe we can trust, we instinctively lower our defences to being scammed and are often convinced to click that link, or open that email attachment. The best defence against such attempts is a healthy dose of scepticism, look closely at the link, does it look long and complicated, does it redirect through a web domain that you don’t recognise? Scan your email attachments – and if you are in any doubt, contact your friend/colleague to check on the validity, or visit the website directly rather than clicking on the link within the message – if it is your bank contacting you, you’ll still be able to access the information directly from the bank website, if it is a message from Facebook – you’ll also be able to get those updates direct from the site.
In terms of viruses and malware, we don’t have anything near the same level of protection that we may enjoy on a corporate network – it’s up to us whether we’re at work or home to make the right decisions when dealing with any communications which may expose us, our machines, our data to risk. Email, Instant Messenger links, Social Network links/messages/applications, the list goes on.
The best advice I can offer is:
Keep your operating system and applications updated with the latest patches as they are released
Invest in a good anti-virus/anti-malware program, keep it updated daily – and use it to perform regular full scans on your systems, as well as checking out those suspicious files
Access websites from your browser rather than via emailed links
If you think you may have been compromised, scan your systems, change your passwords and seek help.
Above all, employ a healthy dose of skepticism when dealing with communications that you are not expecting, even when you believe you know the sender – and be careful out there…
So, since we’ve moved into the new place, I’ve been wanting to consolidate my technology somewhat and make things a lot easier to administer. To this end (and forgetting for a moment the lack of structured home cabling – which I’m still working on) I’ve decided to resurrect one of my lower powered (in wattage, not horsepower) machines – and turn it into a Virtual Server from which I will run the multiple hosts which have been sitting on independent hardware until the move.
Things haven’t exactly gone without a hitch, but I’ve learned a lot along the way – which I probably could have learned if I spend more time researching before I spent time doing, but meh. I’m a kinisthetic kinda guy, so – here’s what I’ve learned in my ‘travels’ hopefully it may be of some use to you.
Well, it’s taken a week – but the initial plans (PDF 268K) are now drawn up for the cabling required in the house. The plans are pretty close to the minimum we’ll require to get things up and running again, and only the difficult access areas have received anything over and above what is immediately required.
Because the move has been a little more expensive than initially projected, it looks like the cheapest option will be for me to do the installs myself – of course, without the right tools this may present it’s own set of challenges – but, I’ll endeavor to document the process for your amusement.
I’ll be crawling around this weekend getting some measurements and then it’s off to the interwebs to see where I can get the bits and pieces I’ll need.
So – we’ve now moved in, the boxes are (mostly) unpacked – I’ve even managed to organise the garage enough to fit the HondaBus into it (who knows, maybe being an internal garage with light, heat and power may see the Carputer get installed finally?).
So – with the vitals out of the way (and by vitals, I mean the stuff my Wife and kids need, not what *I* consider vital), it’s time to settle in and get the technology humming (and no – that doesn’t mean the Weather Stationis back up yet )
But (as we found out 30 minutes before the All Blacks test on the first Saturday in the house), that’s not all – the Sky dish is connected, but not to any known cable in the house, the UHF is connected, but orphaned via a hole in the garage wall – and don’t even get me started on the gel crimp frenzy that is the phone cabling… We have 2 working phone ports – and only one of those will connect to the DSL service, of course THAT port in in the boys room, so we’ve currently got an old school ‘phone’ extension cable running from their room through to the home office.
So, in summary – I’m either looking for an installer (or two – surprisingly hard to find via web search without a word of mouth recommendation!) or will be tackling (at the very least) the following work via the good old Kiwi DIY Self Install:
UHF / Sat: Connected and split 4 ways in ceiling space, routed to Lounge, Master Bedroom, Downstairs Rumpus and Office
Phone Patching: Retain Master Bedroom + Shift Boys (working) port to Office for DSL
Network: Basically, all remaining phone ports could be converted to wired network either via re terminating with RJ45 or (where the existing cables are a mess) using existing as a draw wire to pull fresh cat 5. This would give a minimum of:
Lounge x2 (1 for IR)
Master Bed x1
Downstairs Rumpus x1
Office x 4 (min)
The options then are terminating all network cables centrally in the garage and patching from there (fed from 1 or 2 in the office) or pulling a loom into the office.
From what I’ve learned from our previous house, I think the central loom in the garage will suit best as it’s out of the way and allows noisier / hotter equipment to be located away from the living spaces.
Of course, the above is my minimum requirements, I’ve also planned an optimum structure – but me and Visio will need to spend some quality time together before I can post up that plan…
Those of you following my Twitterstream will probably know that I’m on the move from Casa de Rob to a new abode…
So – the last few weeks have been a steady extraction of the technology which is running here, and last nights victim was the Weather station which was showing live weather here. Of course, once we’re all moved into the new house I’ll be reassembling what I can, but there is much negotiation with the Wife before everything can get cabled up… Until then:
It’s winter in Auckland, New Zealand – it’ll either be cold and raining or cold and crisp.
Sorry about the headline, the 2.0 tag is getting waaay too much air time of late – that aside, I was reading an interesting article on some of the technology advances in the realms of health monitoring.
A few years ago I was researching some of the advances within medical monitoring and how the devices could be integrated into a connected home*. At that time we were looking at near field communication devices which would upload via Zigbee or a similar low range, low power technology, as well as a concept toilet in Japan which measures and reports on glucose levels detected in ones urine.
Anyway, with the advent of specifically addressable devices thanks to IPV6, as well as advances in near-field and Personal Area Networking (PAN), the reality may well be closer than we thought.
Some of the more interesting companies making headway in enabling health monitoring are:
Proteus Biomedical who have just released their platform for body monitoring dubbed ‘Rasin’
Proteus ingestible event markers (IEMs) are tiny, digestible sensors…Once activated, the IEM sends an ultra low-power, private, digital signal through the body to a microelectronic receiver that is either a small bandage style skin patch or a tiny device insert under the skin. The receiver date- and time-stamps, decodes, and records information such as the type of drug, the dose, and the place of manufacture, as well as measures and reports physiologic measures such as heart rate, activity, and respiratory rate.
All of the data collected by the Proteus system can be sent wirelessly to the doctor for remote monitoring. The system is currently in clinical development.
Body Media have their Sensewear device which allows “monitoring of calories burned, dietary intake, duration of physical activity and sleep”. It’s USB connected, which is fine, but I’d prefer to see a device that automated the processes for more ‘real-time’ monitoring and feedback possibilities – all in time I guess and the biggest issue will be size and battery life, just like every other mobile device.
The Toumaz device recognises the ‘you must remember to upload your data’ issue, and has created their ‘Sensium’ device with the capability to stream the data to a logging device (within ~5m). This is the kind of thing I’d be looking for, but would want to incorporate into a meshed network within the bounds of a home (or health-club) to make truly useful.
Of course, with my day-job hat on as a Security type person, the biggest concern, given the very personal nature of this data, is how security will be treated. Recent reports attribute [a potential link to] cyber terrorism, with the ability to cause widespread blackouts. Whether that threat is credible or a causative action with the cited 2003 US blackouts is debatable. What isn’t up for debate however is the fact that as more systems which control or influence our lives become network aware, the more this risk profile will inflate. How we deal with this is something which needs to be built into the monitoring protocols from the outset – especially with the potential to link into the online health record repositories being toyed with by big players Google and Microsoft.
Comments?… Fear? Uncertainty? Doubt?
*A ‘connected home’ is what marketers refer to as a ‘future home’ – a term which I really hate as I agree with William Gibson “…the future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed…” (time code 11:55).
Well, it’s taken a week – but the 
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