I’ve been experimenting with my newish solar battery
Represented here is the end of the charge cycle yesterday at about the same time the sun started to set
I’ve been powering the freezer with this 2 kWh battery, and every morning there is ~50% charge left, and so far every day I get it up to 90% (by choice) from solar alone
I can also do a load of laundry or two, and some vacuuming, without being even connected to the grid (if I get the timing right)
Of course this is clear summer weather, so this won’t be the same all year
(This is far from sufficient to power the entire house, it’s just an experiment)
Essentially, 1-2 kWh that aren’t drawn from the grid on a daily basis
#solar
Hi there, I have a little project that I’m not sure how to tackle. I have ideas but the proof of concept would take a long time. Can the Fediverse help?
Here is the problem I’d like to solve:
My cat, Vanille, has a heart condition. She’s fine with regular medication but her continued well-being also involves me knowing when she is unwell and reacting fast. This is done through monitoring how fast she is breathing.
Apparently there is no better way than her RPM (respirations per minute), as funny as this reads…
Of course I can do this the old-fashioned way but she’s a busy cat, she doesn’t stay in place for long, and counting her RPM absolutely requires:
her being deep asleep
me being already in her vicinity
me not waking her up as I prepare the timer on my phone
her not waking up for at least a full minute while I count, occasionally with several recounts
So I have a low success rate, it takes a lot of time and I’d rather spend this time enjoying her company than stressing over her health.
Hence my little project. Can #dyi #electronics help solve this?
My naive idea was to add sensors near her favorite places, perhaps infrared cameras
#DiyCatHealthMonitor
Let's talk SMS 2FA and its shortcomings in the context of an energy crisis (and electronic components shortage)
[TL;DR] It is mostly that our laziness drives networking infrastructure expansion. Alternatives like TOTP and physical keys don't require that infrastructure and are also better at security.
First off, let me just say that SMS 2FA is a piece of tech that is amazingly accessible: practically everyone who knows how to use a phone understands how to read a text they received via SMS. We receive a 6-digit code, it appears as a notification, we copy the code. Job done. Sometimes the application can even read the text without involving the user.
SMS 2FA represents incredible user experience & decent security improvements for little inconvenience.
But.
There are a number of failings and shortcomings. I'll start with the monetary cost for the service provider.
Service providers (think any website or app here) are most likely using a mobile carrier who bills them for their SMS usage, or perhaps they went through the extraordinary step of interfacing with the existing carriers. Either way, there are costs (& energy usage) for their use of the global SMS network. It's not unlike our own individual SMS bill, the more we use it the more we pay, until we just opt in for the unlimited contract (but it's still there).
=> For the smaller services, this is expensive and sometimes prohibitively so. The bill is also dependant on events out of their control: how often their users reset their passwords.
Then there is the number of hops.
The way the SMS network works, any time a text is sent, it goes through a number of intermediaries before reaching its recipient. You could think of it as snail mail going from post office to post office until reaching the recipient's mail box. In the easiest cases, there are probably 4 hops involved in the transfer, and that's assuming the service and the recipient are using the same carrier, are in geographical proximity to one another, are both available at the same time (phone isn't turned off or otherwise indisposed), etc. Geographical distance means going through different routers (electronic infrastructure), possibly using other carriers as gateways when crossing borders and such, etc. Availability means the transfer might need to be reiterated several times until the recipient acknowledges delivery, and also that an automated message goes all the way back from the recipient to the original sender, using much the same infrastructure as the original message.
The issue here is not so much the size of each message. That's tiny. Rather, it's the sheer amount of physical electronic infrastructure we need all over the planet to guarantee delivery of every text message within minutes, sometimes within seconds, because these 2FA codes are time sensitive. They expire fast, often within an hour. We don't want to context switch, any delay makes us lose our train of thought. The login flow must be seamless or the service might lose on the conversion rates. Take your pick.
There are stories about how cell networks used to be overloaded at year's end parties. In years gone by, sometimes SMS would take days to arrive. Well, the infrastructure was improved and it doesn't happen as often.
The issue is also not that each text message involves many cell towers. That's not true. It involves them only at both ends (start and receive) and most of the way is handled by computers connected through the regular internet. Actually, one way for consumers to help cut down on cell tower buildup is by enabling their internet service provider (WiFi) to take over their cell connectivity so that the wired internet is preferred to cell towers.
And suddenly, with routers all over the world, for a text sent to the other side of the planet, merely 4 machines don't quite cut it. The tiny amount of data per text requires numerous energy impulses all over the world, as well as data storage, electrical redundancy, spare machines and various safeties meant to avoid data loss.
That's just for a 6-digit code, and we haven't yet gotten to the parts where it fails the user in miserable ways.
(To be continued)
#shiftproject
Guillaume Rossolini