Got myself some energy monitoring Zigbee plugs and made an interesting discovery

[tofuwabohu@slrpnk.net]

How, if it's not exposed to the internet? Burglars?

[sunzu2@thebrainbin.org]

Do you really trust your consumer grade router and firewall on the desktop?

[darkassassin07@lemmy.ca]

A fridge can create a fairly low overall temp, but with something like a PC generating a ton of heat inside, it can't keep up. The fridge just can't move the heat fast enough and becomes an insulated box trapping the heat instead.

[tofuwabohu@slrpnk.net]

Against random internet noise? Yes, absolutely

[dogma11@lemmy.world]

Hard drives, especially spinning discs, and RAM are probably the biggest factor at idle.
I dropped my servers' idle draw from 220w to 180w by dropping it's RAM and replacing some older drives.

[sunzu2@thebrainbin.org]

What about something more spooky?

[ryedaft@sh.itjust.works]

Both are full so it reduces the amount of cold air that can escape when you open them.

[sreudianflip@sh.itjust.works]

OK but what if you have a lava lamp that is synced to the moods of a sarcastic and greedy AI?

Security is about to get really weird. It used to be the Internet of Things we had to worry about, but now we have Things of Internet.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

Yep, it's awesome. We got it for $300 to supplement the smaller chest freezer, and it's been an absolute godsend.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

Yeah, anything Zigbee needs a hub of some sort that interfaces with the server. Zigbee is a mesh-lioe network of its own - it doesn't use wifi or Bluetooth or anything.

I bought Nabu Casa's Connect ZBT-1 dongle; it's like $35 and plugs directly into the HA server. Super simple to configure as well, since HAOS detects it automatically. Plus, the smart plugs act as routers, so as long as the devices can see each other all the way to the dongle on the server, you shouldn't need anything else.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

Yeah... I know.

[cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de]

Is your GPU reducing the VRAM frequency when it's idle?

If the vertical timing is different between the monitors, the VRAM will have to run at maximum speed all the time and that can add 20 watts or more to your idle power consumption.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

The PC was drawing ~90W. All solid state, no spinning rust. Lots of fans though, since it's air-cooled. Not entirely sure what was causing the draw, but it's definitely something I want to investigate at some point.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

No idea, honestly, it's just the default settings. I haven't really had any time to tinker and optimize it to my liking for a while.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

Very cool! However, my house is a rental, so any monitoring equipment has to be somewhat non-invasive.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

No idea. I would imagine it does, but that's something I'll need to check.

[darkassassin07@lemmy.ca]

I'm in a rental too. It's non-invasive; just gotta pop the panel cover off, clip the transformers over the wires without disconnecting them, and put the cover back. It can all be removed just as easily.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

I use Kasm for remote access, I believe that has a WOL component as well. I haven't set it up as such, but I plan to later on.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

Definitely gonna check that out.

[lka1988@sh.itjust.works]

Laptops are pretty good at that I run a few 7th and 8th gen 35W mini PCs in my server cluster (i7-7700T/i7-8700T), so hopefully that helps.