[HN Gopher] Ethan Zuckerman: To the future occupants of my offic...
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Ethan Zuckerman: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT
Media Lab
Author : app4soft
Score : 104 points
Date : 2020-08-15 20:47 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ethanzuckerman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ethanzuckerman.com)
| Animats wrote:
| It's very MIT.
|
| It's also an illustration of what went wrong with the "internet
| of things" concept. Sensors are easy today. Actuators are hard.
| Most "IoT" things can't _do_ much.
|
| Try to buy a home power window. They exist. They're an exotic
| luxury home item. Even controllable home HVAC dampers are rare.
| It makes good sense to have a system where windows, fans,
| dampers, heaters, and compressors are all coordinated to maximize
| comfort at minimum cost, automatically. Will NeXT sell you that?
| No. It takes too much installation.
|
| You might see that at a well run convention hotel. They have to
| keep customers happy, yet many of their big rooms are empty much
| of the time. So they'll have CO, CO2, temperature, humidity, and
| motion sensors tied to a control system that senses what the room
| needs for the current people load.
|
| There's real IoT, but it's under commercial building automation.
| zxcmx wrote:
| I see a comparison between "CNC retrofit" and "CNC from the
| factory" machines. What are buildings after all but big
| machines around us.
|
| CNC retrofits (even when successful) tend to be never ending
| projects. This is partly because the kind of person who
| retrofits a machine is seldom satisfied with it.
|
| But also one tends to end up replacing the whole machine over
| time - the motion and way the machine gets used is different.
| The "wear cycle" is accelerated and new machine properties
| become important. Retrofits also are much more challenging to
| support than factory-supplied systems and tend to
| "frankenstein" very quickly.
|
| IOT windows might start making real sense as an aspect of a
| _whole building_ design where they can be fit for purpose,
| designed for expected wear and usage and work harmoniously with
| other building systems.
|
| A truly native IOT window will involve the frame, the glass,
| the opener, maybe the shades -- and the rest of the building.
| We probably also need somewhat standardised "window sockets"
| around the frames, with standards for power and data
| connections to make installation, replacement and upgrade
| practical.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Yup. True home automation is something that changes your life,
| not gadgets for rich people. I will call true home automation
| for example when I can throw the trash into a hatch at my same
| floor in a bag with RFID tag so that it will send it down and
| sort out it for recycle. I recall when I was less than 10 (mid
| '70s) my grandparents having those hatches (minus electronics
| of course) in their building. They would leave the bag there
| and it would drop to a container in the basement that the
| litter van would retrieve later. Of course it was long before
| recycling legislation so with new laws it had to be ditched and
| people would have again to bring their trash bags to the bins,
| which weren't that close. So why the system can't be
| repurposed, and introduced where necessary, to be recycle
| friendly? That's what I would call modern home automation, not
| stuff like reading a sensor and opening a window, which could
| have been done 10 years ago with an Arduino, 20 years ago with
| any uC and X10 already did in the '70s.
| axaxs wrote:
| For some reason this reminds me. My old house, built in the
| 40s, had a mysterious small hatch in the closet floor across
| from the bathroom.
|
| One day I opened it and it was just a cutout of the floor,
| directly over the washing machine in the basement below. I'm
| not sure if that's lazy or genius, but it doesn't get much
| easier than that I guess.
| skybrian wrote:
| It seems like avoiding a walk to dispose of garbage isn't all
| that far removed from "gadgets for rich people?"
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Wayback URL:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200815220615/http://www.ethanz...
| caiobegotti wrote:
| Kind of tangential because it also involves the MIT and lots of
| crazy funny sentimental stories like this one about working and
| studying there:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightwork:_A_History_of_Hacks_...
| saeranv wrote:
| Awesome post. Who was the cranky researcher who developed the
| climate-controlled window system with the Linux box and python
| scripts? I want to do the same thing.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Same, but it seems overkill. I'm in an old office where the
| only openable window is consumed by a window A/C unit.
|
| I want to put a 120mm fan in a small opening next to it that'll
| turn on when it's more than 3C cooler outside, and more than
| 24C inside.
|
| Seems like an Arduino would do it.
| saeranv wrote:
| Yeah that's a good way to do it. I think there are a couple
| of additional ideas that might be worth exploring:
|
| - Comfort is a function of multiple factors, not just the dry
| bulb temperature difference. It includes occupant metabolism,
| insulation from clothing, radiant heat exchange, air speed,
| and humidity. This is trivial to solve in the case of a
| single-person office (just give them control of the window),
| but more complex once you have multiple occupants with
| different needs, who are in different locations in the
| office. I wonder if there's value in using reinforcement
| learning to customize natural ventilation to optimize the
| comfort of multiple occupants.
|
| - Predicting the temperature the next day, and using a fan to
| draw in cold night time air into your HVAC ducts when a hot
| morning/afternoon is expected. This way you can have a
| reservoir off cool air you can access the next day.
|
| - Once you have multiple rooms, and a tall building, there's
| multiple effects that are worth attempting to coordinate. For
| example you could coordinate the ventilation of the building
| air with the stack effect and wind-driven air through the
| windows, or coordinate the cross-ventilation horizontally
| through multiple rooms. This would not just modulate
| temperatures, but also satisfy indoor air quality needs
| traditionally achieved through the HVAC.
|
| Typically a lot of fine-tuning of natural ventilation isn't
| done because the actual energy/comfort impact for one of
| these ideas is small relative to complexity of building the
| system, and the large uncertainty associated with the
| dynamics of airflow. But my general hypothesis is that with
| the integration of cheap prediction or RL methods, we can
| reduce that uncertainty unlock the advantage of a long-tail
| approach.
| squarefoot wrote:
| It could be much simpler. If I understood the problem, a
| differential amplifier (any opamp would do) wired to the temp
| sensors would output a voltage proportional to the difference
| between the two temperatures, plus adjustment. This voltage
| then can be used to drive a pwm generator wired to a h-bridge
| that drives a reversible fan that would pump air with speed
| and direction depending on the difference between two
| temperatures, so that it could be used both ways too warm up
| or cool down. The same could also be done the digital way by
| using for example an uber cheapo ATTiny85 small board wired
| to the sensors, plus the fan and its driver, then doing all
| in software. That little critter has just the right amount of
| ports for the job and then some.
|
| Not checked on paper (especially the first) but on principle
| both should work and also would be extremely cheap.
| bbarnett wrote:
| So when it is 21C outside, and 24+C inside is close enough.
|
| Two analog temp switches will be far more reliable, easier,
| and adjustable.
|
| (I get the fun with an Arduino, but it is hard to beat
| century old tech)
| mkeeter wrote:
| Sounds like something coming out of the Responsive Environments
| group (https://resenv.media.mit.edu/).
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| There's something so beautiful about a place so dysfunctional
| that you can't even replace standard office equipment; I know it
| was alluded to in the article, but in case anyone forgot, the MIT
| Media Lab played a part in Jeffery Epstein and he often leveraged
| it for good PR https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/business/mit-
| media-lab-je...
| PNWChris wrote:
| Some quick additional info, since I wasn't familiar with all
| the context. I am glad I looked deeper, I am ashamed to admit I
| assumed some wrongdoing given he had resigned!
|
| Wikipedia notes that he "...resigned from his position[19] as
| director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, in protest of the
| Media Lab's involvement with Epstein."[0]
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Zuckerman#Career
| nkurz wrote:
| Here's Ethan's own explanation of why he left:
| http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2019/08/20/on-me-and-
| the-...
|
| He's landed on his feet very well. He has a temporary
| position at Columbia this fall, and then will be starting a
| tenured job at UMass Amherst next year.
| m0zg wrote:
| Peltier element is just about the worst solution for anything.
| The angel wings girl wasn't experiencing much "cooling" for sure.
| Form over function, I suppose - consumer market seems to prefer
| that, but as an EE I immediately know shit's not going to work,
| which robs me of appreciation of the "form".
|
| And I'd prefer a mechnaized window, myself.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Whenever I read stuff about this I get a sense of immense
| jealousy. MIT certainly has its issues but man, I'd love to be at
| a place where people exhibit so much joy and interest in
| creation. I've met my share of cool people but it truly does feel
| like MIT has this unique environment of technical skill and
| creativity.
| nangz wrote:
| Remember when MIT media Lab gave a civil disobedience award to
| bethann mclaughlin for some nebulous #metoo bs who since
| disgraced herself by LARPing as a fake Native American academic
| who died of covid?
| https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/twitter-account-emba...
|
| Remember when they chased Aaron Swartz to commit suicide and
| never gave him a civil disobedience award?
|
| Remember their extremely close links to Jeffrey Epstein?
|
| Sorry but MIT media Lab is absolute trash and an embarrassment to
| the MIT name.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Paradoxically, publishing this blog post will no doubt result in
| the window knob being fixed and a new "no unauthorized
| modifications to HVAC" policy being out in place.
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(page generated 2020-08-15 23:00 UTC)