In sev­eral pre­vi­ous posts I wrote about my quest for the right source for­mat to stream video to my Sony BRAVIA TV (build in 2009). The last week-end I finally found some­thing which sat­is­fies me.

What I found was serviio, a free UPnP-AV (DLNA) server. It is writ­ten in java and runs on Win­dows, Linux and FreeBSD (it is not listed on the web­site, but we have an not-so-up-to-date ver­sion in the ports tree). If nec­es­sary it transcodes the input to an appro­pri­ate for­mat for the DLNA ren­derer (in my case the TV).

I tested it with my slow Net­book, so that I was able to see with which input for­mat it will just remux the input con­tainer to a MPEG trans­port stream, and which input for­mat would be really re-encoded to a for­mat the TV understands.

The bot­tom line of the tests is, that I just need to use a sup­ported con­tainer (like MKV or MP4 or AVI) with H.264-encoded video (e.g. encoded by x264) and AC3 audio.

The TV is able to chose between sev­eral audio streams, but I have not tested if serviio is able to serve files with mul­ti­ple audio streams (my wife has a dif­fer­ent mother lan­guage than me, so it is inter­est­ing for us to have mul­ti­ple audio streams for a movie), and I do not know if DLNA sup­ports some­thing like this.

Now I just have to replace minidlna (which only works good with my TV for MP3s and Pic­tures) with serviio on my FreeBSD file server and we can for­get about the disk-juggling.

In Ger­many you need to install an intel­li­gent elec­tric­ity meter if you make larger changes to the elec­tric­ity instal­la­tion in your house (or if you build a new one). At first this sounds inter­est­ing. If you look closer, you need to decide if you want to laugh or to cry.

Such an intel­li­gent elec­tric­ity meter is able to dis­play the cur­rent power con­sump­tion in a dig­i­tal dis­play (if the power con­sump­tion stays the same, you can test with this how much power a spe­cific device needs). It is also able to attribute the power con­sump­tion to dif­fer­ent times of the day. An optional fea­ture (here in Ger­many) is the pos­si­bil­ity to trans­fer cap­tured data to the power com­pany. It is not required that the home-owner is able to see all or even any data from an intel­li­gent elec­tric­ity meter.

The promises are, that with such a device peo­ple could pay less money by using the wash­ing machine or the dish washer or sim­i­lar devices dur­ing times when not much peo­ple want to use energy.

So far so good, but…

• My wash­ing machine or dish washer are about 1 – 3 years old. We did not buy the cheap­est ones, but they do not offer to start the wash­ing upon input from an exter­nal sig­nal or just by acti­vat­ing the power (if they lose power, the cho­sen wash­ing pro­gram is reset to the default pro­gram). Am I sup­posed to buy a new one?
• The power con­sump­tion of all the nec­es­sary infra­struc­ture (dig­i­tal stuff in the elec­tric­ity meter, net­work con­nec­tion to the power com­pany) is not zero, and it is the owner who has to pay for this.
• When every­one is wash­ing when not much peo­ple want to use energy, a lot of peo­ple want to use energy in such moments. It may still help a bit the power com­pa­nies because they do not have to gen­er­ate power (and have expenses because of this) which is not used, but I doubt the con­sumer will get a big reduc­tion then.
• The dura­tion of such power-surplus times with a reduced price may not last dur­ing the com­plete time a wash­ing machine needs. It may be even the case that a high-price time slot may get acti­vated shortly after (if this is done by (mali­cious) intent or not is not even rel­e­vant, as the con­sumer can not do some­thing about it as he is prob­a­bly sleep­ing when this hap­pens in the night).
• The power com­pany may be able to get a detailed trace of what hap­pens in a house (the own­ers are get­ting up at 11am, only take a shower every two weeks, have prob­a­bly a big plasma TV which runs all the day, …).
• I doubt the device is free of secu­rity holes or pro­tected enough against eaves­drop­ping (with all the pro­fil­ing impli­ca­tions, or pos­si­bil­i­ties to manip­u­late the data (pos­i­tively or neg­a­tively) directly in the device before trans­mis­sion to the power company).
• I do not think the most intel­li­gent and consumer-friendly devices will come with enough sta­tis­tics or access-possibilities to really sat­isfy the consumers.

More inter­est­ing would other things which could help cut costs. For exam­ple small low-power net­worked sen­sors which detect if a window/door is open, the tem­per­a­ture in a room, the out­side tem­per­a­ture, the sun­light inten­sity and so on. Together with some actu­a­tors like for exam­ple to close the win­dow, close the shut­ter, change the heat­ing, turn off lamps and so on, it would pro­vide much more imme­di­ate ben­e­fit. In a new build­ing, the net­work could be wired, but in an old build­ing the sen­sors need to be wire­less and battery-powered.

A pos­si­ble solu­tion could be done via blue­tooth v3 in a mesh net­work (yes, if it is not open source, I would also be scep­ti­cal if the com­pany which pro­duces this has enough knowl­edge to make it secure), polled by a cen­tral sta­tion which could put the sen­sors in silent standby to reduce the amount of radio pol­lu­tion and increase bat­tery life­time. If some of the sen­sors and actu­a­tors are con­nected (e.g. room tem­per­a­ture and heat­ing actu­a­tor plus a clock), you could even let it run in autonomous mode (time based heat­ing to a spe­cific tem­per­a­ture) and only need to con­nect to it if there is a spe­cific need. Such a sit­u­a­tion could be that the win­dow sen­sor detects an open win­dow, so the heat­ing can be turned off. Or maybe the sun­light inten­sity sen­sor detects (or the base sta­tion esti­mates) an intensity-rise of the sun­light, so the heat­ing could be reduced in advance.

Some­thing like this would give imme­di­ate ben­e­fit (in com­fort) to those who install it, and in a long-term view it would/could cut the costs down a bit.

I am aware of some wire­less sensors/actuators, but they are rel­a­tively expen­sive, the radio pol­lu­tion (and type) is unknown to me, and the pro­to­col is not open, so I do not know if it is secure and how to improve things I do not like.

Any­one with enough hard­ware knowl­edge and open source/hardware spirit out there to pro­duce a mod­u­lar base for sensors/actuators (blue­tooth + I/O for sensros/actuators/pc-connection + controler)?

My wife used a hair dryer this morn­ing. Nor­mally this is noth­ing worth to blog about, but after a night with not so much sleep (my child is get­ting sev­eral new teeth at once and I took care about it this night) the sound of the hair dryer was a bit annoy­ing, even if I was already prepar­ing me to go to work too.

At this point I sud­denly noticed, that I can not remem­ber to have seen a com­mer­cial of a hair dryer where a low noise sound pres­sure level is one of the impor­tant fea­tures. I also can not remem­ber that some­one things that this shall be changed. This is strange.

There is a lot of move­ment to make cars more silent. There is a lot of move­ment to limit the sound pres­sure level of portable music play­ers (those where the music is con­sumed the most with head­phones). There are rules about the sound pres­sure level at work. There are com­mer­cials which focus on the lack of loud noise from the dish­washer or the wash­ing machine, but I can not remem­ber to have seen putting the noise level of a hair dryer, a mixer, a vac­uum or some­thing sim­i­lar as a major fea­ture against a com­pe­ti­tion into a commercial.

When we are a bit late to go to work, my wife is some­times using the air con­di­tion­ing of the car as a hair dryer (we drive together, so no dan­ger on the road), and this is pro­duc­ing enough air­flow to dry the hairs while still not being as loud as a hair dryer. Yes, the air­flow gen­er­ates some noise which you can not pre­vent, and the fans are more far away from the ear than it is the case with a hair dryer (and it is not a low-class car), but if I look at the noise level of quiet fans in a PC, I am sure that it is pos­si­ble to cut the noise pres­sure level of a hair dryer. No high-frequent noise from the motor of the fan and a blade and case design which pro­vides a good air­flow while reduc­ing airflow-noise is possible.

As a hair dryer is a device which is not far away from ears, I am sur­prised that there is not more inter­est (at least in var­i­ous tech­ni­cal standards-compliance def­i­n­i­tions and tests required by the gov­ern­ment) in this. Spe­cially kids seem to agree that it is too loud.

Sim­i­lar for a vacuum.

And while we are at it, my mother is known to bake good cakes, she is bak­ing at least one cake per week and if there is some fes­tiv­ity (fam­ily, friends, neigh­bors) she is even bak­ing 5 – 6 cakes in a week. As such she is not using a cheap mixer, she is using a qual­ity prod­uct with a sta­ble stand. Still, this device is mak­ing a lot of noise. A part of the noise is gen­er­ated by the motor (high fre­quency, depends upon the speed of the mixer) and if you really want to speak about some­thing, you bet­ter go out of the kitchen.

I know, devices with a reduced noise level a more expen­sive to cre­ate and build, but I can not really believe that nobody would we will­ing to spend money for such a device. So, if you know a mar­ket­ing per­son of a man­u­fac­turer of such devices, please have a talk about a nice “our prod­uct is bet­ter than the one of the com­pe­ti­tion because it is more silent”-campaign with him/her.

Unfor­tu­nately you can not chose…

So, I am now on the sofa, cov­ered a lot (a flu, I even have no voice any­more; before I left work a female coworker told that her hus­band would prob­a­bly be happy if this would hap­pen to her…  ) and med­ica­tion and water are not far away on the table.

The good thing with the cur­rent tech­nol­ogy is, that you can still be a lit­tle bit pro­duc­tive (depend­ing on the illness).

As you can read this, it means I have my net­book with me, so that I can take care about some sim­ple things.

Yes­ter­day I had the chance to see an Android phone (the Ger­man G2) in action. Part of the demon­stra­tion was the scan­ning of a bar­code and the dis­play of what it is and how much it costs in var­i­ous shops.

Based upon this I had an idea. I added it to my ideas page, see there for more info. In short: scan some prod­uct and get sim­i­lar no-name prod­ucts (if it is a branded one), or the branded prod­uct this is based upon (if it is a no-name product).