Author | Lightnews

Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 14d

So what is it that has to change to make it less brittle? As far as I can see the mesh is fundamentally ok but the way it is used isn’t resilient. My hunch is that there need to be a lot more messaging to check that things are working right and also to take corrective actions if they are not.

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Reposted by Peter Miller

Met Office - weather and climate @metoffice.gov.uk · 15d

🧊❄️ “Brutal cold snaps” and a “barrage of snow” - how accurate were these headlines?

We review the most dramatic weather headlines from this week and separate fact from fiction.

Read more 👇

'Brutual' cold snap? 'Barrage of snow'? Met Office weather headline review

As autumn deepens across the UK, weather headlines have once again captured the public’s imagination with dramatic claims of snow barrages, cold snaps, and even the promise of late Autumnal warmth. Bu...

www.metoffice.gov.uk

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 14d

Is this while using matter/ thread or zigbee? And with home assistant or apple or google as the hub?

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Reposted by Peter Miller

Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 18d

Grid scale batteries are changing our electricity system. Excellent new visual story on batteries in FT today shows just how far this technology has evolved.

Fasten your seatbelts, this is just the beginning.

ig.ft.com/mega-batteri...

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 19d

That’s lovely to hear! One of the curious turns of my career was developing an animatronic control system for Jim Henson’s Creature Shop
used on Babe the Pig, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and other films (but that might have been a bit late for your childhood). creatureshop.com/history/

History - Jim Henson's Creature Shop

history For more than half a century, the Jim Henson name has been synonymous with the creation of expressive and enduring characters. Innovation has been a hallmark ever since a teenage Jim Henson ma...

creatureshop.com

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 20d

We were selling SWTPC 6800 computers at that time, and amazingl also sold Microsoft basic… when Microsoft corp was 9 months old!! Later on I worked as a member of the operating system team for the BBC Computer implementing the sound interface. Funny old world!

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 20d

Just like the one France mandated 10 years ago! www.viritopia.com/blog/france-...

France’s Green Roof Mandate: The Future of Bio Construction

Explore the benefits of green roofs and the influence France’s mandate has had on the future of biophilic construction around the globe.

www.viritopia.com

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 20d

So now let’s talk about power consumption. In 1979 the computers we sold possibly used about 200W. My new computer maxes out at 70W for a computer with a million times more computing power, not the 200MW that would have been required.

How extraordinary it all is.

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 20d

And then to consider storage. We sold twin 800Kb floppy disk drives for about £1000. Call it £1 per Kb. The computer I just bought has 1Tb of storage. So that looks like another £1 billion to add to the cost.

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 20d

Oh, and the computers we sold were 8 bit @ 1MHz. The computer I bought today has 14 off 32 bit cores @ >4GHz, which is some 200,000 times faster without even considering the instruction set improvements. Oh, and it also has 20 gpu cores so is probably more like a million times faster.

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 20d

In the late 1970s I worked in a computer shop where we sold 4kb memory cards for £100 (£550 in today’s money). So… if those prices had held, the 24gb of main memory in the computer I bought today would have set me back £3,300,000,000! Exponentials are wild.

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Reposted by Peter Miller

Robert Llewellyn @bobbyllew.bsky.social · 22d

Useful comparison

A graphic showing the enormous improvements since the launch of the original Nissan Leaf 14 years ago the new one goes four times further charges three times faster has two times more power and is 36% cheaper than the original

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · 25d

Isn’t the biggest and best use case for lighter panels for use on those large commercial roofs that aren’t able to take the weight of typical panels?

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 22

Did you get my email? Cambridge also works well for me.

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 20

Apologies. I have just sent you an email,

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 16

Now that’s what I call a red heat pump! I love it when our customers ask us to really stretch the boundaries of what is possible. I think we are going to see a lot more wrapped heat pumps in future!

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Reposted by Peter Miller

Duncan Robinson @duncanrobinson.bsky.social · Sep 14

Shot, chaser

Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

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Reposted by Peter Miller

Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · Sep 14

Just look at what happened with solar investment - it’s astonishing.

Solar has seen the most rapid investment growth, soaring from $142 billion in 2015 to a projected $441 billion this year.

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 13

This lithium AA 2.6Ah 3.6V battery costs £2.60 in volume and has a working life of potentially 20+ years in an iot application www.buyabattery.co.uk/batteries/li...

Wireless Alarm System Battery AA 3.6V Lithium Saft UK

www.buyabattery.co.uk

Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 13

Fantastic. I’ll watch with interest. What i’d love to be able to offer is a room temperature sensor that can run for 10 years on a 2,600mAh battery. I can do the casework, but if you happened to have a micro and the software to make it happen … :)

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 13

Anyway, this is only going to get better over the next couple of years by which we should be getting 10 years operation from a single battery. Until then it might be less.

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 13

Anyway, 25 micro amps in light sleep is respectable as an initial figure. But that depends how much gets added by the higher power states. And if they can’t turn off the rf elements then 85 micro amps seems a bit high.

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 13

I don’t know the thread protocol we enough but I’m expecting it to be possible for the sleepy device to say ‘I’m going to sleep for a minute, I’ll send you a message you when I wake up and then deep sleep, but even if I’m right it might not be possible to operate in that mode for software reasons.

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 13

I see that the base current of the esp32-h2 chip is 7micro amps so that is a good start. But it does have to wake up from time to time! and does also need a wee bit of circuitry around it.

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Peter Miller @petereastern.bsky.social · Sep 13

Looking at batteries, the obvious one to use is a 2,600mAh 3.6v AA battery. To make that last it looks like we ideally need to get average current down below 30micro amps to get a 10 year operational life! Do you think that is possible with thread and matter?

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