Comments for The Diary

Comment on British Gas EnergySmart Energy Meter teardown by art103

art103 — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:25:00 +0000

I’ve been trying to reverse engineer the data sent over the air, with some success.
Hooking up to the SPI bus reveals a lot of activity. I believe it is used to update the LCD, communicate with the radio receiver and transfer non-volatile data to/from the Flash chip.
This can be narrowed down to a useful packet of 5 bytes every 2 seconds read from the receiver by watching the nFFS pin on the Si4322.
I have only captured 0.5, 1.09, 1.28 and 4.3KW packets so far, but the data looks simple enough.
In pseudo code, something along the lines of:
unsigned char packet[5];
int power_avg = 10 * ((packet[2] & 0x0F) + 1) * packet[3];

It looks like the first 20 bits are some sort of ID, possibly to do with pairing?
The last 8-bits may be a peak value during the 2 seconds, or may be additional accuracy that need considering in the above calculation.
e.g.:
int power_peak = 10 * ((packet[2] & 0x0F) + 1) * packet[4];

Comment on My Dad’s Total Knee Replacement by TGG1804

TGG1804 — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:17:00 +0000

I asked if I could have my thyroid half they removed and got told the same

Comment on Where has my Egg VISA card gone? by Renegadesi

Renegadesi — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:35:00 +0000

The revised barclaycard has no link to the egg card at all. They closed the egg card and moved the balance to Barclays

Comment on ZX Spectrum +3 with DivIDE CF board and RGB cable by A BBC Micro with an MMC Card… and some bad components

A BBC Micro with an MMC Card… and some bad components — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:24:00 +0000

[...] a BBC Micro MMC adapter arrived in the post. Compared to the masses of electronics required to interface CF cards to my ZX Spectrum, the BBC MMC board is very very simple, with most of the hard work being done inside the BBC. They [...]

Comment on All Day Breakfast – IN A TIN by James

James — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:32:44 +0000

Just you wait… I found All Day Breakfast – in a BOX in Morrison’s. I’ll eat it tomorrow and report back.

… if I’m able to. If not, there’ll be a fun blog post from A&E instead

Comment on All Day Breakfast – IN A TIN by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:38:00 +0000

You will eat anything.

Comment on The effects of wind on ADSL connections by Psycho Rob

Psycho Rob — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:07:00 +0000

Yeah my method of coping is laughing, unfortunately this can cause problems when they think I’m laughing at them

Comment on The effects of wind on ADSL connections by Piku

Piku — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 21:56:00 +0000

Amy used to work in a callcentre, she used to get the irate shouting routine from her customers too. It’s a shame you’re not allowed to shout back and tell them to f-off

Comment on The effects of wind on ADSL connections by Psycho Rob

Psycho Rob — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 21:39:00 +0000

Nice photos and graphs Being in the exciting world of temporary employment, I find myself working in an ISPs call centre :O It is amazing that any of this stuff actually works but then when it doesn’t work it’s amazing what people will do to get it working again (including but not limited to shouting at me)

Comment on Pylobactell 13C Urea test by Piku

Piku — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:50:00 +0000

Yeah it’s in a tablet containing carbon-13 treated (or whatever the word is) urea.