back to article Smart homes are hackable homes if not equipped with updated, supported tech

Smart homes are increasingly becoming hackable homes, according to consumer research. The report by consumer rights organization Which? paints a grim picture for people who have equipped their residences with gadgets, many from trusted tech names. As with pretty much everything in IT, if you connect a device to the internet, …

  1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Cobblers

    Anything connected to the internet can be cracked, exploited or hacked if you have someone with the know how trying to get in.

  2. RockBurner

    Well.... der.

    In other news: "SKY DISCOVERED TO BE BLUE"

    1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

      I've never seen blue sky that didn't become cloudy ... and when it gets cloudy we normally see a thunderstorm.

      1. heyrick Silver badge

        Evidence right there of the danger of allowing the atmosphere to be hacked.

        Either apply the latest patch or, if there isn't any, get rid of it.

        1. old_n_grey

          "Either apply the latest patch or, if there isn't any, get rid of it."

          I think it's OK, just saw a patch of blue sky ...

        2. ITMA Silver badge
          Devil

          "Evidence right there of the danger of allowing the atmosphere to be hacked."

          So THAT is what they were talking about in Aliens when they harped on about "atmospheric processors"!

          I wonder if they are also vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown LOL

          1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
            Pint

            Six day Rush Job

            Is the OEM* still in business?

            *Original Earth Maker (Magrathean).

    2. ZenaB

      As they say - the "S" in IoT stands for "security"

    3. DS999 Silver badge

      It may be "der" for us

      But the general public doesn't realize this, or think about the consequences if a device is hacked - especially devices that have a camera or microphone.

      I think most people assume that an appliance like an Alexa or "smart fridge" is quite different than a PC or smartphone, when they are actually close cousins.

      1. VoiceOfTruth Silver badge

        Re: It may be "der" for us

        Your post highlights a chasm between some (quite a lot of) people in the tech industries and the 'general public'.

        I feel that we are responsible to a large degree for a lot of the crap which is inflicted on the public at large. How many people here saying 'der' work for companies which don't support old hardware, or even new hardware or software adequately? We see it with mobile phones a lot, why should the smart home things be different?

        1. dajames

          Re: It may be "der" for us

          We see it with mobile phones a lot, why should the smart home things be different?

          Quite.

          We shouldn't see it with phones, but we do, and if we see it with such (relatively) high-end devices then of course we'll also see it at the tat end of the market.

          The solution must be consumer protection laws that require all "smart" tech to be supported for the projected lifetime of the kit (a decade or two?), and for vendors then to have the choice of continuing support for a nominal fee or offering an updated, supported device as a cheap upgrade.

          Other people's insecure devices affect us all, and we should be working to remove them from the ecosystem.

          I'm not sure what one can do when the vendor goes out of trading ...?

    4. Anonymous Coward
    5. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      This is indeed news! (Living in UK)

    6. General Purpose

      Worldwide, at any given moment,

      SKY NOT BLUE

      mostly.

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Anything equipped with the latest tech not hackable now will be next week. Its previous generation won't work because the servers have been turned off. In due course there'll be a new generation and it will have become the previous generation in its turn unless the data that's being slurped pays more than they expect to make from the next generation sales.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

    No. The trouble with IOT devices is that they are SOLD as appliances.

    If "consumers" knew how much effort and risk was involved with them, they probably wouldn't buy them.

    1. Andy The Hat Silver badge

      Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

      No. The trouble with IOT devices is that most are SOLD at all.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

        Fair point, well made.

    2. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

      Lots of my family believe I am paranoid for refusing to put in an Alexa/Google thingy anywhere in my place, I doubt they would care.

      1. Andy Non Silver badge

        Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

        A relative bought us an Alexa thingy as a gift. It was rather embarrassing telling him we didn't want it and can he get his money back for it.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

          "A relative bought us an Alexa thingy as a gift. It was rather embarrassing telling him we didn't want it and can he get his money back for it."

          A gifting faux pas. You should thank them for their kind gift and find a victim to inflict it on without the original giver knowing. The first act shows how gracious you are and the second fulfills a gift giving obligation with it costing you anything.

          1. hayzoos

            Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

            I was in the same circumstance. I accepted it, then returned it with a gift receipt.

            I could not, in good conscience re-gift such a hell-spawn device upon the devil himself.

        2. Blank Reg

          Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

          I've had someone from Google come to my door at least twice to offer me a free Home mini and they seem confused when I say I'm not interested.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

            Our electricity company seem equally confused in relation to allegedly smart meters.

      2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

        Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

        Yeah, I know that feeling - but unfortunately it was either accept it or downgrade WifeV1.0 to ExV1.0

        So I set up the WiFi to isolate it from the rest o the network.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

          Yeah, the answer isn't to expect the device managers to support the device properly, till the end of time, for free. They can't make the out of the box firmware work in the first place.

          Be realistic. The closest thing to an answer is brutally excessive network segmentation. This crap belongs in it's own DMZ (I'd call it the DFZ, or dumpster fire zone). Total network isolation, lifted one IP and port at a time, and only as absolutely as necessary. Then set a single dedicated device like an old tablet as the interface device.

          Since the crap is usually stuck on 2.4g wifi anyway, I just give mine it's own AP and ssid, which usually has it's uplink unplugged so most of the time it's air gapped. YMMV.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

            Extra points if you can find a neighbour's open SID.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

          "Yeah, I know that feeling - but unfortunately it was either accept it or downgrade WifeV1.0 to ExV1.0"

          Offer to balance the transaction by you getting some expensive new power tool that will turn perfectly good wood into fine dust or similar. You may still have to do the isolated WiFi, but there is a chance you get out of self-installing surveillance gear in your own home.

        3. alisonken1
          Joke

          Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

          "... downgrade WifeV1.0 to ExV1.0 ..."

          Some people I know would have said:

          "... promote Wifev1.0 to ExV1.0 ..."

          1. You aint sin me, roit
            Joke

            Re: Promotion

            Only if you get to discontinue support...

    3. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

      No the problem is that they *require* internet connectivity.

      These things need to have local interfaces/APIs only - at that point you then have a simple VPN (something like tailscale) to connect with the devices remotely.

      It's infuriatingly difficult to find stuff that doesn't require a public connection.

      1. Ramis101

        Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

        Even worse than *requiring* an internet connection, they frequently give you zero info about what they will do/is required and all the instructions say is

        Scan this QR code & install the App.

        NO!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

        Yeah, the problem isn't the idea of using tech to automate stuff in your home, it's that the companies that are designing this stuff are making such crap.

        Sorry you seem to be getting hit with more than your share of the collective rage here though. To be fair, if I'd been screwed over by one these shady companies or utilities i'd be steamed up to.

        I caught my old roomates Nest thermostat turning the AC on in the middle of the day when no one was home because the utility company wanted to run the bill up. Turned out to be a "feature" that was advertised as a way to "save" money by letting the power company shut off loads during peak power utilization. Instead they used it to waste power and money by turning ON appliances that has been shut off when the place was unoccupied.

        That said nothing in your setup seems technically offensive. May not be for everybody, but it seems to be doing what you want it to.

        I have four hacked together window fans that after much tinkering now link to the central air so that I can air the house out when the outside temp drops instead of paying to cool off recirculating hot air with the AC. (and yes, a newer central air system would probably support a better fresh air intake among other bells and whistles, but I'm not buying my landlord a new AC system. Rentals suck. The fans are coming with me when I move.)

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

          "I have four hacked together window fans that after much tinkering now link to the central air so that I can air the house out when the outside temp drops instead of paying to cool off recirculating hot air with the AC. "

          Owning your home should be a priority. I fitted semi-passive solar heating panels to my home. They have small fans so aren't completely passive, but close. I have an ongoing project with an Arduino monitoring system to make decisions about when to run the fans by measuring temperature of the panels and a couple of places inside the house. A next step when I have enough modules that there are times when the interior gets too hot is to have a way to capture the heat through a liquid loop that heats some sort of reservoir that can be tapped after the sun goes down. There isn't any reason for my system to be online unless I want it to make choices based on temperature forecasts for the day. It's dry where I live so an evaporative cooler works very well for cooling and is much cheaper to operate than even a heat pump. I was hoping it would be solar powered this summer, but budgets have been tight. It's also going to get a control unit that isn't connected to the internet. Adding actuated vents and fans is something I'm considering since, as you point out, the outside air might be the best way to adjust the temp in the house.

        2. John Robson Silver badge

          Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

          It can make sense for them to run your AC in the afternoon, cool the house down before you get back, to distribute that load. Of course they should also be incentivising that by offering a lower rate for the earlier power usage.

      3. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

        "It's infuriatingly difficult to find stuff that doesn't require a public connection."

        The whole point of the product is to fit that data leak into your home so it can be snooped on. The company isn't looking to make money on the product, but in turning you into their product.

    4. ITMA Silver badge

      Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

      One of the worst examples of the "overuse" of technology.

      Internet connected light switches (aka Hive) - what a massive environmental footprint from all the infrastructure needed to allow someone to switch their lights on and off from their phone instead of getting off their backside to use a mechanical lightswitch.

      And then OVENS!!! Yes there are internet connected OVENS!

      A number of manufacturers selling those - Bosch, AEG, Anova and others.

      Now there is an opportunity for some hacker to give you food poisoning by messing with the cooking paramters or even try and burn your house down.

      And fridges/freezers. How long - if it hasn't happened already - for your fridge/freezer full of food to be spoilt by it being hacked.

      Not to mention the vast majority of these "appliances" require an account on someone else's servers external to your network. The "appliance" then estables a near permanent outbound connection to it allowing potential access into your network.

      It has already happene to domestic "security" appliances:

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44809152

      https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/23/amazon-ring-camera-hack-lawsuit-threats

      They are even finding their way into businesses via "the back door".

    5. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."

      "If "consumers" knew how much effort and risk was involved with them, they probably wouldn't buy them."

      Math and science are hard. Technology is a huge mystery that only people from Terminus are able to understand.

      People will still buy these things as they solve all of the problems that eat away at our souls on a daily basis (never enumerated). The loss of support is just the indicator that it's time to buy a new fridge, TV or car. How would we know that we are slowing down the global economy by not purchasing enough new stuff if we aren't being told? Think of the vast waste management industry that would grind to a halt with all of those people, our friends and neighbors, out of work with no way to feed their children if we don't bin our old stuff and buy shiny new often enough.

      I know I'm doing my part to wreck the New World Order. I've been re-learning how to use the sewing machine. I expect the men in suits and concealed radios will be wanting a chat before too long.

  5. heyrick Silver badge

    Apart from permitting somebody to remain seated on their arse, what actually benefit so these so-called smart devices bring?

    My door is controlled by an odd shaped piece of metal. It even works in a power cut. It is hackable, but not remotely.

    My lightswitch doesn't fail when connectivity drops out. It's been working reliably since before I was born.

    My car starts with another odd shaped piece of metal (and no stupid "button"). It doesn't care whether there are clouds present, or not.

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      For many people those control devices aren't accessible.

      Of course there is also the ability to monitor my home, and to reduce energy use.

      One of the things I have done is build a smart heating system. I now only heat the rooms that need heating at any given time, and one room which was *never* warm enough previously is now easily heated.

      Part of the reason that room was never warm was that the hall thermostat was a long way away - and the room only ever got the dregs of the hot water from the boiler - now when it calls for heat it's often the *only* radiator which is doing so, so it gets all the heat it needs.

      I also have logs of the temperatures in each room - which means I can predict when I need to add heat to each room. There is one room where I now know that the radiator basically never turns on - it gets enough heat from the room below it almost all the time.

      1. Stork Silver badge

        Most homes in Denmark decades ago had a much simpler system: a thermostat on each radiator, end off. I first time encountered a central thermostat in the UK and wondered how that would play with the radiator mounted ones.

        The prevalence of the system just may have something to do with Danfoss and Grundfos.

        1. NoOnions

          Well, all my UK radiators have their own control knob (from minimum freeze protection up to six). Same at my parent's place. There is the main thermostat in the hallway but you can restrict the water flow per room on each radiator. Hive do posh, remote controlled, ones now, but they cost way to much to justify in my small house.

          Since I'm tight, my main temp is never set at more than 18 and if we are cold we put an extra layer on!

          1. John Robson Silver badge

            18? Yeah, I don’t warm the house that much. Office gets to ~16 in winter.

          2. Richard Pennington 1

            Update

            Hive will support their kit only up to 2025. After that you're in the cold.

        2. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

          They work well as long as the radiators nearest the thermostat are on and you don't place the main thermostat in a stupid place, otherwise the boiler will pump water which never make it into a radiator.

          1. ITMA Silver badge

            I think what you are referring to is this...

            Generally speaking the radiators in the room containing the main system (or zone) control thermostat should NOT have thermostatic valves. Otherwise the thermostatic valves could shut off the radiators before the room ever reaches the temperature set on the thermostat. Result is the thermostat constantly "calls for heat". wasting a lot of gas.

            Plus if all your radiators have thermostatic valves you should have a by-pass in the system so there is a return path for the wather during pump over-run.

        3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          "a thermostat on each radiator, end off. I first time encountered a central thermostat in the UK and wondered how that would play with the radiator mounted ones"

          We have radiator thermostats but also a central programmable thermostat/timer. It allows the heating to be cut back at certain times of day to override the radiator stats. As it's not networked it cuts out the IoT crap.

      2. Headley_Grange Silver badge

        Sounds like a good setup, but none of the devices you use need access to the internet to do what you're doing with them do they? Unless you need to control/monitor it when you're away from home, your heating could be managed with devices on your LAN which are blocked from all web access.

        The problem is that the plug-and-play consumer devices (i.e. stuff that my mum could make work) all require web access. For example, it's easy to set up some home security cameras if you buy them from one of the big snooper companies cos the app does it all, but to set up your own cameras, server, monitoring, remote storage, etc. is a whole nother thing - which is why I've got two cameras in the loft and "Get those cameras working" has been hovering near the top of my To-Do list for a year or so.

        1. John Robson Silver badge

          Correct - it’s all LAN only, but with Tailscale that means I can access on my way back from spending a week at the out laws and get the heating on so we can arrive and go to bed in comfort.

      3. Ramis101

        Two things. TRV's Thermostatic Radiator Valves

        and correct balancing of your radiators will do that for you.

        No IOT required. lower your heating bill without increasing your electricity bill

        If you have a cold room, your rad's aren't properly balanced.

        1. John Robson Silver badge
          Boffin

          Always a smart alec who knows better than the person who runs the system - there are some systems which will not balance in a reasonable way.

          Whoever installed the heating pipework in this house didn't bother to look at the routes the pipes take, so the radiator in the extension has so much pipe leading to it that it simply never got fed hot water, because the rest of the house has *much* shorter pipes, and therefore better flow rates. I also suspect that some of the pipework laid under concrete is either entirely made up of elbow joints, a drastically reduced diameter pipe, or it was crushed during installation.

          Additionally this room is an extension, it has three outside walls, as well as an external roof and floor. I have insulated the roof cavity and the walls are filled cavity, but it's *always* going to be the coldest room in the house.

          I'm sure I could have carefully cranked the flow rate down on every other radiator in the house so that none of them got any water either, but that still wouldn't have stopped the main thermostat (the one which tells the boiler that the house in general needs heat) turning the whole system off whilst this room is still cold.

          As it is I spent ~£10-15 per radiator on a wax motor valve controller (~2W when the radiator is on, all of which is wasted as heat), a tasmota capable mains relay (well under 1W each at idle, ~1W when active) and a DS18B20 sensor. I also got a relay (and extra sensor) for the boiler itself.

          Those all talk to home assistant (other home automation platforms exist) which runs in a VM on a server I run anyway (a raspberry pi would be a good low power option if you didn't have a server running anyway) and now if the cold room needs heat (which is only at specified time periods) then the valve is opened and the boiler is triggered a couple of minutes later. Since all the other radiator valves are closed (not quite true, there are a couple that are still on dumb stats, and two towel rails which provide an emergency bypass to prevent the boiler pumping into a closed system) almost all the heat is sent to the one room that needs it.

          I have tailscale running on home assistant, so I can still use the mobile app to deal with the system when away from home - no IOT, just smart home technology.

          If I have a power cut then . oh the boiler will stop working anyway, never mind.

          So how much extra power does all this take?

          All of the relays are idle in the "normal" state, it's only when calling for heat that they go "active".

          So that's <1W per rad when idle, going to ~3W when I am calling for heat in that room (and that is "wasted" as heat into a room I am heating, so not a complete waste).

          Going for a pessimistic average of 1W continuously for a year is just shy of 9kWh, or less than £2 even with the current cost of energy.

          If I had to run a Pi as well then we could add 4W to that to make a total of 10W (£18/year) for the house.

          But I now also have the ability to vary the target temperature of each room according to the time of day. So I don't need to heat the bedrooms when there is noone in them, and I don't need to heat the lounge overnight. That saves more than a few quid in gas very quickly indeed.

        2. Martin an gof Silver badge

          Two things - balancing is absolutely a great idea, but whether or not it is (properly) possible really depends on what kind of cowboy fitted the rads in the first place.

          Secondly, my experience with TRVs - the traditional wax-capsule, sit on the flow pipe sort - doesn't fill me with confidence, and they actually make the job of balancing - even when they are working 'properly' and not stuck open or measuring the heat of the warmest part of the room (surely the very worst place to put a 'thermostat' is up against a radiator!) - much harder.

          I'm in the process of building a heating control system similar to the OP's, using Arduinos, but I am fortunate that my starting point is a new, well-insulated house with a heating system installed by me. Radiators and underfloor heating all runs from manifolds which means that each one has a separate valve in a central location, so I can control eight radiators from a single Arduino. The manifolds have flow-control valves (what is termed a 'lockshield' on a normal radiator and is used to balance the system by controlling the flow through each radiafor) which actually has a flow rate indicating function so you can see the results of tweaking, and one of the best innovations, all the pumps are electronically controlled and vary their speed according to demand. In theory then, each radiator gets the flow it needs both when all radiators are 'calling' and when only one is on.

          M.

      4. iron Silver badge

        Current devices on in my home:

        Computer & monitors which I'm working on

        NAS which stores files I'm working on

        Router & Hub

        Fridge

        Freezer

        Alarm Clock in bedroom

        Please tell me how your IoT devices (which I presumably consume power themselves) are going to help me reduce energy use.

        As for heating, well it's May so the heating isn't on. If it were then I have individual thermostats on the radiators and I can tell if the room is warm enough by standing in it. No need for logs.

        1. John Robson Silver badge

          Quite easily - the majority of my energy usage (other than the car) is heating (food and house). Anything I can do to reduce that usage, even at the cost of a few watts of electricity, is a massive win.

        2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
          Unhappy

          "As for heating, well it's May so the heating isn't on."

          It's now June and the heating is still needed here.

      5. heyrick Silver badge

        "Of course there is also the ability to monitor my home, and to reduce energy use."

        So, you're using little electric gadgets to try to reduce your electricity use? Perhaps less tech would be the answer?

        That being said, all of this sort of functionality should be quite happy working within the confines of your LAN. The only thing that has a justifiable need to talk to the outside is a smart meter for reporting consumption. Though for obvious reasons any smart meter that's worth a damn won't be spewing its guts over a domestic network connection.

        The weakness, and the reason for the hackability, is that so many of these devices are tethered to the mothership for absolutely no reason other than blatant data fetishism by the manufacturer. And that's what is expected of us. Devices are increasingly designed to need the mothership. To fail in its absence.

        "I also have logs of the temperatures in each room"

        Wow. I live in an old farmhouse with stone walls. Gets pretty cold in the winter, but I got used to that at boarding school and an insane desire to keep the dormitory windows open in the middle of winter. So, heated blanket and a hot chocolate and I'm good. ;)

        Accordingly, my yearly electricity bill is less than some people I know pay for a single month in the winter.

        1. John Robson Silver badge

          It *is* all LAN/VPN only.

          Knowing that a room is cold doesn’t help, knowing how much heating it takes allows me to schedule the heating so that I don’t have to wear gloves to type, and so that I’m not heating it when I’m. It working.

          The energy reduction is actually mostly gas, not electricity. Though it wouldn’t take much to help there either. The total power consumption is single digits of watts, a pittance against running a fridge (and they are generally advancing in leaps and bounds of efficiency).

          1. Martin an gof Silver badge

            The total power consumption is single digits of watts, a pittance against running a fridge

            I think this is something that cannot be stressed enough. An elderly relative recently asked me - scared about the impact of the last price rise on their electricity bill - whether turning off the "flashing lights behind the telly" would be worthwhile. Given that the flashing lights are the WiFi access point, and they rely on an iPad for certain communications, no. Absolutely not.

            People are being bullied into unplugging phone chargers, leaning down behind tellies to switch them off at the plug, switching microwave ovens off at the wall etc., when such use - particularly with modern appliances which use so little power in "standby" that a typical domestic plug-in meter cannot measure it - is a teeny tiny fraction of use.

            Heck, watching five minutes less telly in a day (even if the TV is put in standby) saves enough power to run the WiFi access point for an hour or more, and my relative has a habit of leaving the telly on "teletext" with the cricket score updating in the background.

            We have solar hot water tubes, but with a large family we are still using - at this time of year - somewhere around 15 - 20kWh of gas to heat water, mainly for baths and showers, each day. I am convinced I could reduce this use, because some of it is down to having to have enough hot water for those who take morning showers before the panels have warmed up. If the electronics I add uses 50W in total (likely a lot more than it will), it will use 1.2kWh over 24h. Given that the panels have a peak output of about 3.2kW - let's call it 2.4kW typically - if the system can allow just 30 minutes of additional solar heating a day, I've broken even.

            Actually, come to think of it probably not in cash terms, as the 1.2kWh for the electronics is electricity, while the boiler runs on gas which is about a quarter the price, so it'd have to be two hours. Hmmm... not quite so easy, but not at all impossible in the summer I reckon.

            M.

            1. MachDiamond Silver badge

              "We have solar hot water tubes, but with a large family we are still using - at this time of year - somewhere around 15 - 20kWh of gas to heat water, mainly for baths and showers, each day."

              It might be worth a look at thermal batteries to see if they make sense for your situation. Solar hot water tubes can be really good, but if their output is wasted for most of the day, what's the point in having them. If you can save the heat and use it later, you might save a bunch of gas.

              I have a project to build a thermal battery to use for hot water. I'm still looking to source a few parts second hand to keep the cost down and I'll want to delete the current storage water heater and get the tankless unit installed. I plan to feed the tankless from the thermal battery that will be tamed with a mixer valve since it will be bloody hot at times. The thermal battery will be fed from a solar PV system as a dump load when I'm not using the full production. It's a cheaper way to go than an electrical battery and I really like hot water when I shower and wash dishes.

              1. Martin an gof Silver badge

                The thing that people have (very recently) started calling a "thermal battery" was formerly known as a "thermal store". Instead of using tubes or plates to heat water in a normal hot water cylinder, from which the water is used directly in the taps - meaning you have to limit it to 60C or so to avoid scald risks - a cylinder is heated to anything up to 95C, meaning more energy is stored in the same volume of water. Water for taps is taken out either via a mixing/blending valve or via a heat exchanger.

                We already have such a cylinder. It has a capacity of 370l and 100mm of foam insulation, and although I've set an upper limit when the solar is running of (without going to check) 85C, I've yet to see the thing much over 65C except when I let the boiler take it there, and I've never seen the solar system shut down because of over temperature.

                Our cylinder has a coil for solar at the bottom, a coil for the boiler higher up, two immersion heaters (at about ½ and ¾ height) and a direct connection for the future use of (say) a log burner back boiler. It has a third coil to take heat out for the radiators & underfloor heating. The water in the cylinder is not used directly in the taps or in the heating circuits and because it is not pressurised (mains pressure cylinders have to be installed by a registered plumber whereas ours has a header tank so is at atmospheric pressure only) it was a fairly easy DIY installation.

                The mains cold water only goes through the heat exchanger, which is set to 50C (it's an active system with a variable-speed pump and theoretically capable of transferring 70kW) which reduces the risk of deposits from "hard" water, not that that's an issue around here as our water is very "soft".

                But still, if a shower uses (say) 5l/min of hot water and six people each take a ten minute shower (which is optimistic in this house!), that's 300l of hot water which equates to something like 230l of the water in the cylinder (300l × 50C ÷ 65C), if the cylinder has reached 65C throughout.

                Or to put it another way, 300l of water has been raised from 10C (ish) to 50C, which takes about 38kWh of energy (300l × 4.186J/l/C × 30C ÷ 1hr - I think that's right), so if only 15kWh has come from the boiler, 22kWh must have come from the tubes (which are rated as 3.2kWp), which isn't bad going really.

                Sunny Friday's gas consumption was about 17½kWh, rainy Sunday (also cooked Sunday lunch) was 43kWh, just as an example.

                Our cylinder came from these people by the way, bespoke to fit the space we had. Very helpful and not as expensive as you might think.

                M.

                1. This post has been deleted by its author

                2. Martin an gof Silver badge

                  Actually, that doesn't look quite right. My brain obviously isn't working tonight...

                  M.

        2. Screwed

          My smart meter (for electricity and gas) is close to useless.

          I came down this morning at about 08:00 to find I am going to go over daily budget for both electricity and gas. My gas usage so far today being (in money terms) £0.00 and my budget for both fuels (which I set to see the effect it had) is £1. Now (18:13) gas says £0.04 and still "Predicted over budget".

          My electricity usage was about £0.66 at the same time and, after doing some cooking (oven for bread, and a little hob usage), that rose to £0.96 and says "Over budget".

          If I want to investigate further than the very dumb unit provides, I have to connect to the supplier's systems. Afraid I can't see why the smart meter remote can't feed my computer as well as the supplier's systems.

          1. ITMA Silver badge

            Have you seen this?

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G32NYQpvy8Q

            I have always been and remain of the view that so-called "smart meters" are of no value what-so-ever to consumers. From a consumer's POV they are nothing but a con which we (in the UK) are paying (via taxes) to have installed and on the verge of being forced to install them.

            They tell you nothing you could not learn by reading your own meter regularly.

            1. John Robson Silver badge

              "They tell you nothing you could not learn by reading your own meter regularly."

              Except of course that they can tell you what you can't possibly learn - because you can't read the meter every 15 minutes through the day and night.

              You can install a pulse reader, but that's just another smart meter.

              1. ITMA Silver badge

                Not when the "reading gadget" doesn't work because your meter is 40m away from your home in an electrical services cupboard down one flight of stairs in a block of flats.

                Besides how hard is to figure out that some lights (particularly if LED) use very little power, but if you turn the kettle on or an electric cooker you use a hell of lot more.

                The "big ticket" items for energy consumption are things that heat - be it space, water or food. You don't need a smart meter or know the consumption every 15 minutes to figure that out.

                Knowing electricity usage every 15 minutes day and night is only of real practical value to the electricity supplier when wanting to introduce "peak demand pricing".

                To the average home user is of very little value.

                1. John Robson Silver badge

                  No - it's a good way to check whether there is unexpected load, and to allow you to consider shifting that load (which is the whole point of demand based pricing).

                  We have had demand based pricing for a very long time - it's called Economy 7 (E10 also exists, but is less common).

                  The fact that we can now do much more dynamic demand based pricing is a good thing, because it's possible to encourage people to move some of their load to a time of lower demand.

                  And being able to see constant usage - or those regular high spikes from your old, inefficient, fridge - does inform people.

                  Do you know what the baseload is in your house? Can't tell that without regularly reading that meter.

                  Having installed a pulse reader have I massively changed how I use power in the house? No, but I have made changes. And that's the whole point... small changes made by tens of millions of households have a big impact on the grid.

                  Overnight electrical demand is still about 10GW below daytime demand, so the more we can encourage people to shift use into the small hours the better, and that means demand based pricing.

                  1. ITMA Silver badge

                    Nope, I disagree.

                    The whole point of more granular "demand based pricing" to is to stuff the consumer when they use the most power at times they may well not be able to do too much about it - like drastically shift meal times - and when people's lives are (generally) scheduled around work/school times.

                    Economy 7 was more about to trying get money for the grid generation capacity they couldn't just shut down at night when demand was low, rather than just "dump" it (electrically speaking). Hence the rise of "storage heaters".

                    The baseload of my place - yes easy. And I have all electric heating/water. It is called "knowing what is switched on all the time". I don't need a so-called "smart meter" to tell me that.

                    1. John Robson Silver badge

                      You can't "dump" electrical energy, it has to go somewhere, and making it cheaper when it's under utilised has multiple benefits.

                      Your lack of imagination doesn't make accurate power readings irrelevant.

                      1. ITMA Silver badge

                        I think this guy sums it up quite succinctly:

                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3LqQLXdz9I

                        As for "dumping" electricty - yes you can. They are called "dummy loads".

                        https://utilityweek.co.uk/concerns-raised-over-deliberate-energy-waste-for-flexibility/

                        There you go!

                        "Concerns have been raised over the deliberate wasting of energy to provide flexibility after load banks – devices for creating dummy loads to test power supplies such as backup generators – were accepted into an ad hoc service to increase demand on the power grid. The load banks were entered into the Optional Downward Flexibility Management service introduced by National Grid Electricity System Operator as an emergency measure to deal with low demand on the power grid over the summer of 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic."

      6. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

        One of the things I have done is build a smart heating system.

        Out of interest, what system have you used, and how hard was it to do ?

        I'm looking to do something similar myself - if I can ever get it near the top of an ever expanding to-do list. But when I look around I see systems that are closed and proprietary (and expensive); and ones that are more open but need a heck of a lot of work to put together.

        1. John Robson Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          I am using Home Assistant, which controls Sonoff relays flashed with Tasmota.

          The Sonoff Basic R2 (IIRC) relays have DS18B20 one wire thermometers installed onto the OTA pins (they were the easiest access to GPIO), and they have a wax motor valve actuator (they come with a variety of names, make sure you get normally closed, not normally open) attached to the output.

          I did wrap the DS18B20 in heatshrink, and poked them out of the side of the relay so that they were more exposed to the air in the room.

          The final relay is a Sonoff Mini R1 and that's installed tucked inside the boiler, with the relay replacing the hall thermostat inputs (this was the bit that took the longest - figuring out the wiring of the boiler and replacing the hall stat with the relay - I really needed to be confident on that one)

          Home Assistant then has a few tricks I use:

          - Schedules for all the rooms (so the kids bedroom is allowed to cool down whilst they're at school, but warms up in time for play or bed)

          - The boiler relay is triggered via an virtual switch in HA which turns on 2 minutes after any of the radiators is turned on (gives the wax motor time to open) and turns off when the last radiator turns off. This was probably the hardest thing to program in, and the HassIO forums etc were really helpful.

          This has no mothership other than your own HA installation.

          1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

            Ah, sounds good. I think it's the Tasmota piece I'd not seen before.

            1. John Robson Silver badge

              Again - other open source options exist, but Tasmota works for me.

              Basically the requirement is to get something that can be reflashed at home...

              I am considering shelley based widgets for a public building project that I have in mind.

              They have a couple of key advantages for that application:

              - They can run on 24V DC, which is what the heating control system already uses.

              - They have electrically isolated GPIO for increased safety (more important when I was looking at 240v control)

              - They have a "local API" mode which means I won't have to flash and maintain them (I can hand them off to someone else).

              They cost a bit more, particularly with the isolation "puck" which sits on them, but it's worth it for simplicity in that case.

              1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

                Thanks again, worth knowing.

                My long term plan is all hardwired, but SWMBO seems to have a thing about me hacking the walls to bits !

                I've fitted a thermal store, and the heating has a modulating pump so having the pump "deadheaded" while a valve opens is no problem - I have thermal-hydraulic (wax capsule) zone valves given the need to get the system at least vaguely usable pending getting "perfection" running :D

                I was planning a completely custom job with a lot of Arduinos, but perhaps (given constraints on my time) that's not the right direction :(

                1. John Robson Silver badge

                  That sounds like an underfloor system?

                  You can probably get away with just making smart thermostats and using the existing wiring centre to control the pump and valves. All the stats usually do is act as a switch to tell the wiring centre that "this zone wants heat".

          2. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

            One thing worth looking at for a person of your skillset (if you don't have it already) is a small ground mounted solar PV. If you have somewhere south facing especially. An 800W first system on the site can be installed without any paperwork at all (you are in the UK?), you don't even need to notify your supplier. Fitting yourself saves an awful lot of the usual cost. You just need to install a fused spur in your ring main and controller with 2 current coils at the fuse board. I use Enphase gear which wants to phone the mothership but obviously it's up to you. Mine is on my guest WiFi so can't reach anything else even if it did get hacked. When I have time I'll finish setting up per panel local logging & then disconnect, I'm already logging system production and whole house load.

            Mine is perfectly south facing but shaded from ~14:00, the payback is looking like about 8 years on £1k investment with the current electricity prices. It's a very rare day indeed that it generates nothing and averaged 1.2kWh/day in 2021. It's not about going 'off grid' or powering anything in particular, it simply reduces the cost of all those always on base loads.

            Fun little learning project.

            1. John Robson Silver badge

              I'd like to put a few kW on the roof - directly above the "cold" room is a nice south facing slope - I had always assumed it would be shaded by next door, but this winter managed to observe it more closely, and it's not.

            2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

              Fitting yourself saves an awful lot of the usual cost. You just need to install a fused spur in your ring main and ...

              Just for the sake of anyone coming along and seeing this, there is more to it than that if it's to be safe.

              Any embedded generation should be on its own circuit and must not share an RCD with anything. The reason for this is that some RCDs can fail to operate correctly when certain types of load are connected, and the presence of the solar inverter can effectively prevent an RCD from protecting you (and your loved ones). Also, having the inverter connected to (in this case, a socket circuit) means that if the MCB or RCD trips (or is turned off for maintenance), then you are reliant on the inverter "doing the right thing" and not trying to power the circuit while someone might be working on it. There should be double pole isolation that can be locked off between the inverter and the rest of the system.

              No problem with DIY (I'll probably do that myself at some point), but there's more to it than just hooking it all up and seeing if it works - if you want it to be safe.

          3. ITMA Silver badge

            Have you any idea what the thermal mass of your building is?

            Depending on its construction, it can actually use less energy to raise the building to the desired (reasonable!) temperature and then keep it there 24 hours a day rather than have your heating go on an off all the time.

            Particularly in older buildings, you can find the central heating comes on late afternoon/early evening and then sits there blasting out heat which gets absorbed by the fabric of the building while the rooms remain "chilly". By the time they get up to a reasonable temperature, the heating goes off again.

            The fabric of the building then cools down again without necessarily having much (postive) impact on the room temperatures

            This is then repeated when it comes on in the morning.

            It goes off again and the same thing...

            You don't need a "smart" heating system for that. Just some knowledge of the construction of your home, and the ability and willingness to try some experiments and read your meter(s).

            1. John Robson Silver badge

              Heating energy required is to compensate for heat loss.

              Heat loss is proportional to the temperature gradient between indoors and outdoors.

              So letting the room cool down will therefore result in lower heat loss than keeping it warm.

              The energy to heat it up is slightly less than the energy to keep it at temperature- but it is all needed in one hit. That may affect the efficiency of your heating system, but the energy required is lower to not heat a room than it is to keep it at temperature.

              I let the cold room drop from ~15 degrees above external to ~10degrees, so that’s a 33% saving.

              1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

                Yeah, the physics is sound. However you have to take into effect the human factors.

                "From observation", when a woman* enters a cold room (or a room that is not at the desired temperature), her reaction is to whack the thermostat up to full as though it's an on-off switch. Less extreme, is that if the room is "a bit chilly", it tends to get a bit over-heated to compensate compared to if it was already warm.

                So there's a large dose of "it depends". For a space that's not used for long periods, turning off(down) the heating will save energy. But for some combinations of construction, heating system, and occupancy patterns, the tendency to turn things up if it's not already hot can negate any savings made.

                There's a similar human factors issue with UFH. By having a warm floor, feet feel warm and so the whole room can be kept a little cooler than it would need to be with (e.g.) radiators. So of course, new builds are (from observation round here) built with a cold unheated slab of concrete on the ground floor.

                * Not all women, and some men do it, but from having had to deal with this in an office environment for a few years, it's a reasonable generalisation. In one office they had a 14kW air-con unit. I'd set it all up for them, including the timer. But the first time anyone was a bit cold on a (especially Monday) morning, it would get turned up to 30˚ even though it makes no difference to the rate at which it puts out heat. Then by mid morning they realise it's toasty and it would get turned off. Come mind afternoon, it would be too hot (the reason for putting the A/C in in the first place) and it would get turned back on and set to 18˚. After a while it would be too cols so it would get turned off. So the next morning, it's not been on, the office is cold, so it gets set to 30 again. I never did manage to educate some members of staff how a thermostat works :(

                1. John Robson Silver badge

                  Hence the importance of knowing when to turn on the heat to allow it to be warm when you start using the room.

                  The key is of course education - there is no better heater than a jumper, and since our radiators are now "obviously" on or off, there is much less inclination to overset the desired temperature.

                  That office could do with a set of dummy controls (for the dummys to use)

                  1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

                    Alas, I found in the office environment that certain people were not educable. They were supposedly intelligent people, capable of doing their jobs (mostly finance, accounts, and payroll in that bit of the office) - but could I educate them on the principle of "a thermostat" ? Could I **** !

                    And yes, I really did consider dummy controls. These days I'd knock up something with an interface so they could adjust the temperature, and it would give them long enough to walk away before resetting itself - that would be fun :D Oh yes, and collate stats so I could correlate amount of controls fiddling with number of complaints - not that I'd ever, ever copy any of the BOFH's methods ;-)

                    1. ITMA Silver badge

                      Thermostat!!!!

                      Try educating them with the REALLY difficult bit - heaters with thermostats AND TIMERS!!!!

                      Teaching them to turn the thermostat down instead of switching the entire heater off at the wall is next to bloody impossible.

                      Then you end up with a building full of heaters coming on at silly times times like 1:15am because when they do turn them back on all the timers are out. And then the "clever people" complain that the heating isn't working properly.... Jeezzz

                    2. ITMA Silver badge
                      Devil

                      re And yes, I really did consider dummy controls.

                      So you haven't explored "high voltage" controls then?

                2. MachDiamond Silver badge

                  "I never did manage to educate some members of staff how a thermostat works :("

                  I had a roommate like that. They'd get home first and whack the thermostat to full until I'd get home and have to turn it to a reasonable temp. They never got the concept of just turning it on to a comfortable temp as they had some belief that turning it all the way up would heat the house up faster (stands to reason). The thermostat was on the wall outside my office and I eventually poked a hole through and installed a thermostat they didn't know about with an energy saving temp set on it. Turning on the thermostat in the hall just connected the circuit so the hidden one would do its thing. The roomy never twigged and we both saved money.

            2. MachDiamond Silver badge

              "Depending on its construction, it can actually use less energy to raise the building to the desired (reasonable!) temperature and then keep it there 24 hours a day rather than have your heating go on an off all the time."

              It is also possible that you'd set the temperature lower if you held it steady than if you come home to a cold house and run the heat until you feel comfortable. Most of my heating right now is dependent on how sunny it is. Where is live is often sunny so not too bad in the winter with my solar heating system. In the summer I can use a swamp cooler and I'll leave that running continuously on the lowest setting during the hottest weeks of the year so the fabric of the house doesn't heat up to the point where I'm not going to be able to cool down enough by bedtime to be comfortable. I do have electric heat in my bathroom that I'll use in winter. I'm not Bear Grills.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > what actually benefit so these so-called smart devices bring?

      You just have to understand what "smart" means. Special MARketing Tricks. It is just a sales method to sell the latest shiny thing to people. This item lasts for three years. Then you sell another latest shiny thing. It is all about the SALEs. Gotta get more Sales. Don't care about customer.

      People like us with old cars and speakers are really not popular with these Sales people as they need to make their Percentage.

      Smart is so the Salesman has a gimmick to promote, not for the making the customer happy.

      Also that same Salesman loves this Which report and now they have another reason to tell you to upgrade.

    3. Andy Non Silver badge
      FAIL

      "what actually benefit so these so-called smart devices bring?"

      We ended up having a so called smart meter installed as it was getting too difficult for me to get on my hands and knees on the floor and climb halfway into the cupboard to read the old meters. It hasn't worked since it was installed. The display only shows gas usage not electricity. I've reported the fault to Shell (our energy provider) on four occasions now and they've done nothing. So I've turned off the display unit and tossed it into a drawer with other defunct electronic kit. So much for smart meters.

      1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
        Flame

        To be fair the media are on about turning off "vampire" devices, my one has a sodding battery in it (Why?).

        If I had the choice when moving here I would have had the oldest metres possible, but previous owner had pre-paid metres and I didn't spot they were pre-paid until I moved in and suddenly realised I should have took a closer look (Fun trying to setup a gas card and leccy key! :middle finger to how stupid it is to get them).

        1. heyrick Silver badge

          Don't you pay a horrific surcharge on key meters?

          1. Richard 12 Silver badge

            Yes

            Because forcing the poorest to pay the most is...

          2. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

            My biggest issue was getting the flaming key and card in the first place, went to 10 different places before realising the corner shop around the corner was listed. Of course they had them.

            Got that metre replaced after Covid meant an engineer could replace it.

      2. heyrick Silver badge

        I have a smart meter. Given that ErDF/Enedis is basically a state owned monopoly, people don't get a choice - the only person who can legally refuse is the town Mayor as for some reason the meters are the responsibility of the town; but most didn't because they were often able to wangle in some extra work. Where I live, the horrid old strung up bare conductors from the fifties were to be replaced by modern sheathed cables and within the middle of the town they agreed to bury the whole lot underground and remove the concrete poles.

        It reports its consumption every night at 23h58. My mother used to tell me because there would be a blast of noise over Radio4 LW for about fifteen seconds.

        I don't know whether or not it is accurate, nothing to compare against. That being said, we take it on trust that a spinning disc meter from 1968 (very sadly taken away and destroyed - I did ask if I could keep it) was accurate.

        One thing that is useful is that it provides a report on a little screen of the current consumption, measured in VA rather than W. But anyway... Using that I've been able to track down some parasitic devices such as the printer when "off" and the old PC when "off"; to get my typical background consumption down to about 65VA. Half of that is the ADSL box, the other half is the Pi/Vonets WiFi and a couple of other things.

        I suspect that seeing a number as a VA reading is easier to work with than trying to time the spinning disc. That being said, I never really paid that much attention to vampire devices, but since the price of a unit of electricity has just gone up by a third (so much for the 4% price cap), it's useful to look around to see if there can be any savings by unplugging lesser used things. The PC, for instance, seemed to be taking around 8VA when "off". If I only tend to use it for a few hours every other weekend (or less), those 8VAs per hour will add up.

        "The display only shows gas usage not electricity."

        I don't have a fancy display, only the little LCD on the meter itself. To have a nice display, you need to authorise Enedis to collect data at regular intervals rather than just once a day. I'm not okay with that.

        In common with most French intelligent meters, there's a TIC terminal (some weirdo kind of serial port) so maybe some day if I can be bothered I might hook an ESP 8266 to it.

        1. Richard 12 Silver badge

          VA... that's nasty

          VA is not a power measurement, it's current flow and only loosely related to actual real power supplied.

          Every electronic device in your home has a suppression capacitor across the input to prevent them from interfering with each other and the radio. Those capacitors draw a little current, but consume zero power.

          VA includes some unknown percentage of those capacitors. The exact proportion depends on the specifics of how it does the measurement.

          1. Headley_Grange Silver badge

            Re: VA... that's CIVIL

            VA and W both measure power. With AC systems there might be a difference in phase between the voltage and the current due, as you say, to reactive elements in the circuit like capacitors and inductors - called the power factor. The average power is the dot product of the voltage and current and is measured in W or kW.

            VA will give you a theoretical maximum average power and for most homes the power factor will be better than .9. Consumer devices that have significant reactive loads usually come with power factor correction built in.

            1. Richard 12 Silver badge

              Re: VA... that's CIVIL

              No, it absolutely isn't the same.

              VA does not measure power consumed. It measures current - which tells you about the power lost in transformers and conductors, but not the power actually delivered.

              Well, approximately. Depending on exactly how you measure the current to come up with the VA figure.

              Your assumptions are also a decade or two out of date.

              Many consumer electronics have power factors around 0.6 or less. The "big loads" like conventional/fan ovens are near enough unity, but microwaves, fridges, low-energy lighting, TVs, computers etc most definitely aren't.

      3. Martin an gof Silver badge

        Our remote display - smart meters were a non-optional replacement for dumb meters when we had the incoming electricity and gas moved as part of our rebuild - went for a couple of months without being able to show historic gas records - it just suddenly stopped one day. It would show "today's" consumption right up until about 2350 or so, then it would show zero. And paging back through previous days would show zero for all of them. The historic total (gas + elec) appeared to be correct - it was a different number to the electric-only historic detail - but that, coupled with the fact that all historic readings seemed to go haywire between 2350 and about 0100, meant I couldn't rely on it at all.

        We had a (planned) power cut, and since then it's been ok with historic data, though it still shows odd readings between 2350ish and 0100.

        Mum and dad would benefit from a smart meter as their current one is buried in the back of the cupboard where they keep the cat food and they report usage by phone monthly, but no mobile signal so pretty pointless really - it would be even more difficult to read as the remote display (if it worked at all) doesn't seem to show the number on the front of the meter, and while their existing meter, though awkward to access, has big high-contrast digits, easy to read with a torch, the "meter" parts of smart meters seem to have difficult-to-see-even-in-daylight reflective LCD displays with multiple button pushes required to get the reading you need.

        Leave them as they are, I say.

        M.

  6. jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid Silver badge

    Wrong headline?

    Surely the headline should be "Smart homes are hackable homes if equipped with the latest tech"?

    I get the point about needing updates but it's the latest tech that is causing this problem, not solving it.

    1. ITMA Silver badge

      Re: Wrong headline?

      I would disagree.

      The problem isn't about using or not using the latest tech. It is about using "appropriate" tech for the job.

      Far too much over complicated tech is thrown at problems which just do NOT need it.

      Why? Because, to put it simply, it sells more product.... ££££££

  7. Headley_Grange Silver badge

    One problem is that IoT stuff is designed to be always connected - even if it doesn't need to be. I had a WiFi puck that I bought to play music from Mac to HiFi over the LAN. If I blocked it from web access with my firewall it wouldn't work. I understand it's important to keep stuff updated, but I'm happy to manage that manually rather than just leave stuff permanently connected. Only my Mac and phone get unfettered* access.

    There need to be standards for these things and also education/warnings. I've just bought a DAB radio and the first 2 pages of the manual are full of safety warnings like:

    "Unplug the unit from the mains socket during a lightning storm."

    "If you spill any liquid into the unit, it can cause serious damage. Switch it off at the mains immediately. Withdraw the mains plug and consult your dealer."

    "Make sure the unit is not resting on top of the mains cable, as the weight of the unit may damage the mains cable and create a safety hazard."

    "If the mains cable is damaged it must be replaced by the manufacturer, its service agent, or similarly qualified persons in order to avoid a hazard."

    If IoT kit came with similar alarmist warnings like "This unit should only be connected to the internet by a suitably qualified IT engineer or you risk having your bank account emptied" then maybe people would be more circumspect.

    * Their access is a bit fettered.

  8. xyz123 Silver badge

    Please remember this is Centrica/british gas that has been caught THOUSANDS of times ripping off the elderly.

    In trading standards cases, new boilers were fitted, a single wire was disconnected and British gas called.

    because the engineer was on commission they'd tell the elderly resident (actor/actress IRL) they needed a brand new boiler as the current one was dangerous.

    Not just one area, but this has happened all over the UK, indicating corruption from on high.

    Who would trust them with home security?

  9. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Alternatives

    "You might end up with your data unexpectedly siphoned or be an unwitting part of the next big botnet"

    Or you might even find your home stripped of its contents becuase someone found out how to circumvent your 'connected' front door lock.

    1. Steve Foster
      Pirate

      Re: Alternatives

      And then your insurer refuses to pay out because there's no evidence of "forced entry".

  10. 1752

    if you connect a device to the internet

    Now I will say I have no smart home thingys so might be missing something, but in my old school mind 'if you connect a device to the internet' means give a public IP. Am I missing something? Do these devices somehow manage to make themselves accesbile via the internet themselves? So is this UPnP of something? Again never felt the need for UPnP and would diable it without thinking further.

    1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

      Re: if you connect a device to the internet

      It's ... complicated.

      Part of the problem is that they typically build connections out to some vendor provided service, and often that service include reverse tunnelling so that using the bug ridden app on your phone, you can connect to the device in your home. Of course, if you can reverse-tunnel into your home LAN, then there's scope for someone else to - and you have to accept at face value the promises from the vendor that everything is secure (yeah right).

      Then yes, there is stuff that will use uPNP where someone has been daft enough not to turn it off - then it's directly exposed without even that vendor provided layer to try and protect it.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My elderly neighbours have a fancy IoT thermostat installed that was supposed to save them money on their gas bill. One day last winter their internet connection went down for several hours and it was apparently impossible for them to turn their heating on. I suppose in that respect it did actually save them some money, just not in the way they envisaged.

  12. Pete 2 Silver badge

    keep it at home

    > if you connect a device to the internet

    ... then you have lost control.

    However, if you can run everything off a personal hub, without the need for "cloud" services then not only do you free yourself from the forced upgrades, programmed obsolescence and security requirements imposed by third parties, but your latency will be lower, broadband outages can be laughed at, price increases and changes to Ts & Cs ignored and your system becomes truly your own.

    And when there is one that is designed properly and robustly it could stay operational for decades.

  13. teebie

    "Smart homes are hackable homes if not equipped with the latest tech"

    upgrading to the latest tech may, at best, upgrade smart homes to not-yet-hackable homes.

  14. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    "People forget IoT gadgets aren't dumb appliances"

    Eh.. Most people haven't got a clue. So there's nothing to forget.

    This is all on the manufacturers, and not on "people". Or do you expect granny to be an IT expert?

  15. tiggity Silver badge

    A shame

    There is no legal obligation for IOT tat makers to ensure security and keep patches available for the potential lifespan of a product i.e. decades, not a couple of years as they are not marketed as a short lifetime / disposable item (& the prices are high enough people would expect to use them for a long time).

    .. and if they cannot be patched (e.g. due to poor design) then free replacement with a secure device of equivalent functionality.

    I would never get an IoT control system for boiler etc., but if they do they should fail gracefully when the internet / target server is down - was not a fan of the no network = no heating story earlier in the thread.

    .. But I'm not the target market for IoT tat, I have a simple battery powered thermostat unit talking to the boiler & the * to 6 valves on a few radiators where no need for the rooms to get too warm as no point (e.g. kitchen, if its cold when I go in there to prep food, chuck on an extra layer, doing some oven or hob or grill cooking soon warms it up & extra layer removed, or if its non cooked food then I'm only in there the short time it takes to make a salad, sandwich or whatever)

  16. wimton@yahoo.com
    Coat

    Lifetime update

    I had a TomTom GPS that promised lifetime update. Unfortunately, "life" is defined by TomTom as "the period that we decide to provide updates".

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like