Originally published at: Ikea has a $12 smart outlet that tracks power use - Boing Boing
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Just the sort of thing which wants (‘insists upon’?) a ssssschematic breakdown, analysis, and criticism from youtuber Big Clive. (…gained so much circuitry design understanding watching his curious, sometimes ‘naughty’, vids)
he’s done a lot of Ikea electronic devices, (ok mostly Småhagel), just not this one.
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Funny you should mention a gaming PC. I bought a new one last month (4080 + 7950, IYKYK), mounted under my desk, replacing my 2016 one.
It has a 800W PSU.
It gets toasty down there! Even though I keep the rest of my living room at a cool 72F, I frequently felt a bit too warm while gaming. I’d consider an external cooling loop like a friend did, but it’s too far away from external openings. It’s funny that I’d even consider it. My first computer didn’t even have a heatsink on the CPU!
I’ve been wondering about its instantaneous power consumption. With all the other sensors on the motherboard, it’s funny that the PSU doesn’t export any kind of metric! Oh well, a $12 extra dongle will do the trick.
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Who is Ingvar?
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Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA. The first two letters of the company name are his initials.
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I have 3080 Ti 850W PSU tower sitting beside my left knee. I have the GPU power capped at 50% because it gets too hot to sit next to otherwise.
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Kinda related, is there a list of good smart meter thingies rated?
I’ve had a few*.
One random Lidl smart plug was great, about 2 years back the app stopped working and the plug is now just literal unusable e-waste
Another is some TCP smart plugs** and smart light bulbs, these are still going great after many years.
My newest is a set of three open-source smart plugs. Cost a little more but can run fully locally. LocalBytes, planning to use these in the future.
*Usage being i work nearly nightshifts (3-4AM starts) having lights come on as part of your alarm is incredibly usefull.
**one example here being my 3D-printer, i can leave it off normally, but turn it on and start prints remotely.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like you need the Dirigera hub ($70) if you want to use the energy monitoring feature, as well as if you want to control the switch via Alexa, Google or Siri.
If you don’t want to buy additional equipment, I’d recommend something like the TP-Link Tapo Smart Plug. They make several models with energy monitoring, no hub required. (And also less expensive than the Ikea version.)
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Since it has an app and ‘hub’ integration it would probably also merit some humorless scrutiny from someone with a solid working knowledge of IDA Pro and a jaundiced view of human nature.
A Big Clive analysis would certainly tell you a lot about whether it has been cost-optimized into the realm of reckless negligence; but would be much less likely to uncover who it talks to, how carefully, and what about; and whether it keeps things strictly need-to-know or whether it’s a tiny plastic data-viking (or just has the security model you get from the low-bidder ODM).
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Since IKEA is from a GDPR country I’m pretty sure it doesn’t send data to anyone who doesn’t need to see it.[1] And if it does, you have to agree to it.
I doubt they use different software in different markets ↩︎
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I’d hope so; but I’d definitely be in a verifying rather than trusting mood when it comes to an entity with an ownership structure as…esoteric…as IKEA; along with the fact that it would be pretty trivial to have a device behave differently according to the market it is sold in(and this is hardly hypothetical: it’s pretty routine for different markets to get things like different default localizations or different power management defaults to meet local requirements; and there’s even more room for versatility if some of the behavior can be determined dynamically based on the location of the customer whose account is signing into the app or geolocation of the IP the device is phoning home from; rather than all defined at firmware flash time).
I’d assume that IKEA isn’t dodging GDPR requirements any harder than it is dodging taxes; but that needn’t imply much for a non-EU customer; and might well imply only a carefully crafted shadow of what it appears to even for an EU one.
(edit: If I had to guess; I’d be raising an eyebrow at “Ikano Insight” the closely-linked-but-legally-distinct-and-non-EU outfit that offers all sorts of interesting data-driven products and services; but I’m sure that any actual structure is markedly more complex than I give it credit for.)
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In this case, the devices are physically different anyway, to correspond with different countries’ mains sockets- there are at least two different European versions of Inspelning.
And it doesn’t seem to be sold in all territories as yet- it’s not listed for Germany, Italy and the UK, for instance.
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“One moment please…”
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The tiny plastic shot glasses full of Jagermeister and various other scary liquors what live in various drawers of his big plastic parts chest!
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On Amazon, you can buy a 4-pack of Tapo (TP-Link) Matter-compatible smart plugs for $20 — $5 a pop.
These are great smart plugs which also monitor power use. I’ve been using them for years, going back to when they were about $30 each, under TP-Link’s other brand, Kasa. None has ever failed. I standardized much of my smart home on Kasa/Tapo devices, rather than having to deal with multiple apps. I have 15 at the moment. Echo compatibility is good too.
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