To the tune of dan's comments at the end, today's hackernews conversation and blog post about what can be done, cheaply, today with a tiny risc-v bluetooth sensor:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38252566 Somewhat related is "the thing", given to the USA by the soviet union in 1945, an absolutely brilliant device. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) In terms of the discussion above, we have met the enemy, and they is us. On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 1:19 PM dan <danden...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I have a business that does various sensing including AG market as well as > bar/restaurant and produce. We use LoRaWAN because all other techs were far > too costly and/or low performing. I'll comment in-line. > > On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 5:44 AM Dave Taht <dave.t...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> (I am hoping others on this list with real-world AG experience can >> chime in? I enjoy realworld stories about present solutions and pain >> points[2]) >> >> I have often been dubious of the 5g hope to dominate any major >> component of a smart ag architecture except perhaps FWA, (where >> starlink is poised and people also want to run fiber) to give it a >> good run for the money- 5g chips are too big, too hard to power, and >> too complex, and come with a monthly billing model and other >> centralized requirements that make organic evolution and solid support >> in remote environments dicy and expensive. > > > 5G is FAR too costly for this. The AG market and many markets that could > benefit from sensors are far to price conscious. 5G as well as catm and > nb-iot are great if you have a very small number of highly mobile sensors, > but if you need a high number of sensors it's far far far too costly. And > it's very difficult to run private networks so it's essentially stuck in the > hands of major carriers. Just look at the catm/nb-iot market, it's barely > alive. > > lorawan sensors can be extremely cheap, just a few dollars, and run for > months to years on a battery. I've placed lorawan asset trackers in packages > and tracked them across country accurately and cheaply. A $15 sensor's > chirps can be extrapolated into location tracking as well as identification > of impact and temps from the sensor. We currently track a bait (as in > fishing bait) company's cartons in a few hundred mile radius as well as their > coolers and freezers. We get temps, humidity, and pressure and can extract > door opens from the pressure and a trigger we have built on the sensors > (sharp increase is a door close, sharp decrease is a door open). We > triangulate location from gateway locations and wifi beacons much like you > get reasonably accurate locations on your PC w/o GPS using semtek's location > services. > > I have a small number of catm devices, including catm on my victron global > relays and a few GPS sensors which work great, but I only use them because I > need long distance roaming. > > >> >> >> I freely concede that I may be wrong, that with sufficient subsidies, >> we will end up hanging the equivalent of a cellphone off of every >> suitably large piece of gear and ship all the data up to the cloud, >> rather than pre-process locally. Certainly the benefits of gps and >> drones are being shown every day, along with satellite weather and >> other forms of satellite analysis. [1] >> >> But the 5g sensor market? No. Nowadays smart sensors are easily >> constructed out of wifi devices such as these which cost 5 dollars or >> less: >> >> >> https://www.amazon.com/DORHEA-Development-Microcontroller-NodeMCU-32S-ESP-WROOM-32/dp/B086MJGFVV/ref=asc_df_B086MJGFVV/ >> >> And the more meshy LoRA stuff now has much better range (4 miles), at >> low complexity and power also. > > > LoRa isn't actually meshy, you can run some simblance of a mesh on top of > LoRa radios but this is really not necessary. We have lorawan GPS sensors > that have pinged at 110km away in clear line of site. We have refrigerator > lorawan sensors that have been read 2km away in a city at other client's > locations. Lorawan has very cheap gateways that can easily be installed at > client locations for under $100 that can forward to a number of 'national' > services (aws iot, helium, the things network) as well as your own lora stack > such as chirpstack. > > >> >> >> then there are things like amazon sidewalk: >> https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=21328123011 > > Sidewalk is a hybrid not a wireless tech per se, but includes lora (not > lorawan) and is very well distributed. I have a few test kits for this and > have been very very impressed by coverage. > >> >> >> And airtags. > > airtags suck. Slow chirpers, only really useful for tracking with apple's > kit. I wouldn't consider this a player in the sensor market. > >> >> >> [1] On the other hand rigorous analysis of the food we produce has >> recently discovered a marked decline in the percentage of nutritious >> minerals over the past 100 years. Please see: >> >> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09637486.2021.1981831 >> >> How smart is that? > > monocrops I would assume. Plus longer transit times, earlier harvests and > 'truck ripening'. I would imagine flash freezing of produce as well. >> >> >> [2] Massive subsidy and diversion of river resources to the water >> hungry california almond industry during the last 7 years of drought >> led to the cancellation of the salmon fishing season last year. > > Are you coming for my Almond milk?!?! > >> >> >> You should hear some of the invective that I used to hear aimed at >> "the f-ing vegetarians" along the docks I frequent in half moon bay. >> That I used to hear, anyway, The docks are eerily silent, the workers >> at other jobs, the boats not going out for anything except crab and >> squid. >> >> How smart is that? The California water table is a disaster, too. I >> vastly prefer salmon to almonds personally.... >> >> I guess a meta point is easily gathering tactical data is one thing, >> sharing it sanely another, deciding on how to use it strategically, >> another. > > > There are real dangers in collecting and publishing data unfortunately. I > have a few sort of a creepy anecdotes from beta testing sensors at a pizza > place. This is based around 1, 5, 10, 15 minute sensor readings from dragion > temp, humidity, and pressure sensors with triggors on rapid changes to any > reading. > > We were able to predict freezure failure 3 weeks in advance on 15 minute > reads by analysing the condensor pump runtimes. > We were able to identify which freezers were the oldest or last refurbished a > couple of ways. The condensor cycle times compared to the decrease in temps > show how long it takes to cool the box which accurately described the age of > the unit, and the time it took the temp to rise accurately determined the > state of the door seals. between the two we could identify which coolers > were new, which were refurbished, and which were old and needed a refurb. > This was over a number of stores in the chain. > that's not so creepy, but it's data extracted from 15 minute intervals that > didn't directly measure the condesor or doors. > > However, where it gets a bit more creepy is that we were able to extract when > workers went on break. accurately. No door opens, no temp drops, no > changes in pressure meant no workers working, they were out back smoking. We > could identify the smoke breaks PERFECTLY. That means low pressence in the > front of the store and a back door propped open. > > We could also identify the food delivery by changes in the walk-in cooler > pressure, and rise in temps, and very slow drop in temps when freezer was > running. That means a back door propped open. > > We could identify if someone was sitting in the office, or if there were more > that 1 person in the office. pressure, temp, and humidity all altered from > people being in the room and by a predictable amount. > > > This seems pretty begning data and private data that the public wouldnt see, > but that we could extrapolate this very accurately from sensors in the > walk-in and reach in coolers should give a little pause about massive sensor > networks and publicly accessible data. You don't know what you might expose > and what security conserns might pop out from data 'innocently' collected. > Big data is very dangerous. -- :( My old R&D campus is up for sale: https://tinyurl.com/yurtlab Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos _______________________________________________ Starlink mailing list Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
