C++ programming pioneer hacks off-grid, DIY, smart home | Hacker News Reader

C++ programming pioneer hacks off-grid, DIY, smart home

faircompanies.com

88 pointsyason30 comments

Reminds me a bit of Paul Lutus http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1681247

Automated homes seem to be like video phones: common in science-fiction, we now have them, but they (curiously) aren't used that much.

Don't know about you, but while I knew video phones existed a long time back, almost all of my calls with my parents recently have been over Facetime, now that there's a simple, intuitive way for us to use it (I bought them an iPad). Automated homes may just be a technology waiting to be designed right, not just solved. After all, home is our retreat from...well, anywhere, really. Design matters if you're going to be encountering it all your life.

Smart and automated homes are closely related to my research so I'll chime in on this. Even though the technology exists to do lots of cool things no one has built a modular system that you can mix and match pieces to.

Right now each "smart" feature would be completely separate from the rest so you can't amortize the cost of each one. So if you want a home security system, an automatic door and window locker, and an item tracking system you will need to pay for and install three separate systems. Since the utility of some of those systems just isn't that great people only install the system that has the highest economic benefit -- the home security system. Everything else costs too much for too little benefit.

Video chat has much better adoption for close relationships with people that don't live near by. Family moving away, long distance dating etc. Overall communication is a lot more nuanced than most people think. Just consider text messages.

What science fiction in 1920 thought people would hold phones that let them call other people and instead chose to write the message down and then send it. Yet, often people find text messages far more useful than a phone call.

"C++ programming pioneer"? I'd never heard of him before. From the headline I thought they were talking about Bjarne or somebody like that.

And 10,000 lines is not a lot. What's so special about this guy's C++ code?

Sorry to be negative, but the article sounds full of hype.

The 10,000 lines of code are for controlling the systems in his house.

I would guess he wrote a lot more in his career.

Look at the pictures of the house (cf. comment by topbanana), the house is beautiful, just a pleasure to look at the clean minimalism.

This goes in the same direction than this house: http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm Corresponding HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619511

Some pics of his house: http://www.flickr.com/photos/faircompanies/sets/721576286741...

Burning wood isn't particularly "smart"

Why ?

Unless he has high-tech stoves, it is pretty polluting. Smoke contains many toxic chemicals.

http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/is-burning-wood-f...

Hardly anything wrong with them as far as I can tell, provided you don't have neighbours. I would suspect that all the wood people burn in North America as fuel is greatly offset by all the forest fires people in North America put out. Large-scale adoption of course is not a bright idea, but that's not what this guy is doing.

(And it is carbon neutral, so if you're going to burn something, better wood than fossil fuels from that standpoint.)

<pedantic>Your still burning fossil fuels to get the wood chopped and into your house.</pedantic>

Granted, if your burning something for heat it's the best option. But, with that much passive solar and the fact he is living in California he could probably get by using more insulation and basically never need to use a wood stove. I mean just look at all those single pane windows.

> (And it is carbon neutral, so if you're going to burn something, better wood than fossil fuels from that standpoint.)

It is carbon neutral only if you plant a tree. Which you can do anyway.

Burning gas or oil, which have a better co2/kwh ratio and planting a tree is better than burning a tree and planting a new one.

It's carbon neutral in the sense that the CO2 it puts in the air was taken out of the air a decade ago, not millions of years ago.

>Which you can do anyway.

Buying wood funds planting trees. Buying gas and oil do not.

> It's carbon neutral in the sense that the CO2 it puts in the air was taken out of the air a decade ago, not millions of years ago.

That doesn't matter at all.

> Buying wood funds planting trees. Buying gas and oil do not.

Buying wood to burn it also increases the price, reducing the use of wood for better things.

The described Pollution only exists if don't know how to start and run a wood stove. (like running it low on oxygen & overloaded with wood). Most people who own such a stove know how to operate it right, for the simple reason that it saves money (less material burned) and work (less ash produced). If you run an mis-adjusted oil-burner with a dirty nozzle you get (at least) the same level of pollution.

and he wired it for pure DC lighting (which makes sense with solar, but Amelang also likes how “peaceful” DC lighting feels).

Congratulations are due to him for his resourceful unreasonableness but this sounds a little tinfoil-hat to me.

In what manner? I can't say I have an opinion about the way DC lighting looks, but if it made for easier work with the solar power of an already custom-beyond-reason job, why not?

He says it "feels" different. I think it's very unlikely that people can perceive AC power cycles.

It probably does feel different. To him. Please don't blame people for their feelings or force them to over-analyze or rationalize them. We're all human. It would be different if he was writing a scientific paper on the subject, of course.

Is he not referring to the flicker that AC lighting has which some people can see (at least out of the corner of their eye)

Anecdotal data point: I can see it. Not when looking directly at a light but on my peripheral vision it is very noticeable at times. I'm pretty sure lots of people are able to perceive it but do not mind.

NB: I'm in Europe and the AC is 50Hz.

Same here, flickering goes from noticeable to disturbing.

I'm also far too sensitive about this kind of details, solarization of plasma panels, dithering of 6bit lcd..

I don't know about "feels", unless he has some serious synesthesia issues, but it's far from unheard of to be able to see it.

Speaking from personal experience, I have two data points to contribute. I have been able to see a flicker quite clearly from my peripheral vision coming from an LED christmas light fixture. I remember this clearly as it was so distracting that I had to reposition my body during the conversation to face away from it entirely. In another instance, it was noticeably irritating the first few minutes I ever sat in front of a television in Europe (being used to the higher refresh rate in the US).

You can "feel" AC - not the power but the sounds that it creates inside devices. There is a resident "hum" from most mains AC devices, particularly energy bulbs, linear tranformers, CRTs, switch mode power supplies, heating, appliances etc.

If you're all DC with LED lighting etc, there is no 50/60Hz hum any more.

You genuinely don't notice it until it's not there any more.

This is not true.

Try the following experiment. Find a mercury-vapor street light or other mercury vapor light. Holding your eyes straight ahead, quickly move your head to one side or the other. You will actually see the flicker. If you can find one, you can do the same experiment with a drive-in theater from a distance of, say, a mile. However, that is a much lower rate--24 frames a second.

I think the same effect can be observed with sodium lamps.

Florescent lighting is worse. While it also goes on and off 120 times a second when being fed with 60-cycle AC, there are often sub-harmonics that give amplitude changes at a lower, more easily perceived frequency.

So it is not unreasonable that one can observe AC power cycles, even if only occasionally.

Most AC-DC converters are switching power supplies that switch on and off at very frequency (ie. 10kHz). When you have 2 switching supplies close together they can introduce some interesting harmonics, especially if they aren't shielded well.

Likely, he switched out incadescents for some other lighting type and if he was using flourescents you can definitely hear it.

Listen to a house during a blackout. Nothing to hear.

Put into context, the initial drive to go off grid and build something like this was due to his employer bringing in fluorescent lighting and not permitting employees to use their own lights. He quit his job over this. So clearly lighting is a big deal to him and I wouldn't doubt that this environment feels much more peaceful than a cubicle with fluorescent lights. He also claims that he can see flicker in fluorescents as well as incandescents.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com