Smart meters

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 07:18:58 on Wed, 11 Mar 2015, john james remarked:

That's been answered already.

[Jethro_uk]

The photos the police are so proud of showing, demonstrate *seriously* amateur setups - I appreciate the nature of free market capitalism would drive down costs to the bare minimum, but it seems silly to use rented premises as expendable ...

A decent sized industrial unit could be easily setup for continuous growing. Cannabis tends to take 12 weeks from seed to flower, so a fresh crop a week is easily possible. You'd need 2 areas - one for vegging, one for flowering (different light cycles). Smell is no problem, with decent carbon filters. And any comings and goings would be lost in the noise of a busy estate.

Given the latter, it's hard to fight the feeling that this really is what's happening. With the odd comedy "farm" thrown to the police to keep them happy ... or as part of a deal the Mr. Bigs have done with their local force. ("We won't bust you, if you can give us a cannabis farm to raid once in a while"). The number of times police raid these farms and find no-one there (why didn't they wait until someone *was* there ?) suggests this is at least a possibility.

[whisky-dave]

But they are, or are you saying it's best to buy the house, that's be a lot of money up front, far more than rent.

Don;t yuo have to rent such units they don;t come free do they ?

Quite a bit of work involved and space for such a yield.

smell is a problem.

Implies lots of people all with noses and posiabbly competitors.

Why would someone be there, you'd only be there on the odd occasion, and it 's just as likely you'd know when the police were there or likely to be the re.

Of course making it legal would solve most of the problems that they say ex ists with cannabis.

[Peter Johnson]

But bypassing the meter doesn't seem to be the reason that those who are caught are caught, if you get my drift. The three Vietnamese who were caught next door to me were caught because I received a call from the police, who had been called by a concerned estate agent, the house was rented, looked out of the window and said 'There's a car there now'. (The meter had been bypassed by digging a hole in the concrete garage floor.)

[Jethro_uk]

Well if you're going to help the police by putting up signs :)

As I have said elsewhere, these supposed "cannabis farms" are so shonky, it's hard to escape the impression they were *meant* to be found ....

However, there is another class of person who goes to all the effort to conceal their activities (the most obvious being using a ****ing carbon filter), and then wonder why they get busted because they bypassed the meter.

I'm no expert, but I suspect there are very few long term electricity thieves, unless there's some weird network issue which makes meter readings suspect.

[Jethro_uk]

As I said, decent carbon filter - could stand next to a grow and not know. Of course this could be happening already, and the "competitors" are being eliminated by the police ....

The setups I've seen are pretty high maintenance. Growing in soil has the advantage of buffering in case of mistakes (hydroponics is much less forgiving) which allows unskilled manual labour, rather than more skilled workers. However, the setup should be checked every 24 hours or so. So when the police "find" (as in trip over) a cannabis farm, it should be quit straightforward to have some sort of surveillance, to try and catch a person, and work your way up the chain.

That's for a different forum :)

[whisky-dave]

Makes you wonder why they don;t use them doesn't it, if they really are tha t good.

And any comings and goings would be lost in

I doubt that not for the price anyway.

That would be a shrewd move by some but they'd have to know who was growing and where as I said noses.

I doubt it is or needs to be, anyway the larger farms tend to have people n earby as lookouts or live nearby.

To time consuming and they usualy only get 'workers' and teh groweers are u sually at the top of their chain anyway, that's how they make those very hi ghly quoted 'street prices'

How can you say that, this is a DIY forum isn't it ;-)

Did you see that channel 4 or BBC 4 program last week about the effects of skunk and hash.

[Capitol]

In your dreams. Separating out a repetitive signal from white noise takes a PLL circuit and a lot of processing. An asynchronous signal in white noise is not possible to detect.

[john james]

Not even possible with two TVs running at the same time.

No.

It's quite easy to separate different appliances with different characteristics like say a microwave oven and a toaster, but impossible with two TVs both being used to watch different broadcasts at the same time and be able to work out which programs they are both watching from the backlight current.

[john james]

No it has not.

[alan_m]

The penalty charges may not appear on any bill. The companies just take them by DD as individual items and the only way you may know is by carefully checking your bank statement.

[alan_m]

+1

These install yourself usage meters can be good for a couple of weeks to see what is actually costing you money but once you realise the fridge and freezer need to be on 24/7/365 and what your normal daytime and night time readings are it is just used as a background checker. I tend to check my power meter (situated in my main living room) just before I retire for the night to make sure that nothing that normally should be switched off has been left on.

[alan_m]

I've just had a email from BG suggesting the benefits I get by staying with them.

[quote] We?re the only energy supplier that gives you Nectar points. If you stay with us, you?ll carry on getting them. [/quote]

Worth less than £10 per annum.

[quote] You can save up to £120 with EnergySmart** ? track the energy you use and get more accurate bills with our free online service. [/quote]

This is the mythical "up to" saving you get when you install a usage meter so that you can see in real time the electric consumption. It's NOT a lower tariff. It made minimal difference to my electricity consumption ad zero to my gas consumption.

[quote] When you pay by Direct Debit, you pay less than customers paying by cash, cheque or card. [/quote]

Which appears to be the same benefit that I can get with any other supplier.

BG = £10 worth of Nectar Points

Other supplier(s) = £245 saving. Waiting a few weeks to change gave me a better deal. It's almost if other suppliers were aware that many BG customer deals came to an end in February and temporally priced their deals more expensively to catch BG customers switching at the earliest opertunity.

[alan_m]

And, previously they emailed me asking me to call them about arranging an appointment to install a smart meter AND informed me that after this had been done the nectar points for providing monthly meter readings would stop. So no benefit at all.

[Tim Watts]

Indeed - woopie dooo.

You'll probably save several times that by 10 minutes on a comparision site to find someone with cheaper units :)

[Jethro_uk]

Why bother ? You don't think there were any real facts in it do you ? The quality of the debate was summed up on PM, when a scientist was discussing latest research, and some gobshite woman just shouted "You're wrong" all the time.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at

16:41:02 on Wed, 11 Mar 2015, Capitol remarked:

That's the functionality which is digitised into the DSP.

Which can be done centrally.

As it happens, the noise isn't very white.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 06:12:16 on Thu, 12 Mar 2015, john james remarked:

Yes it has. The only programmes being looked for are those transmitted live on TV. Unless future versions use something akin to the "name this tune (from a fragment)" apps.

[Capitol]

The signal you are looking for is well below the white noise level and part of it.

You've obviously never done it, it is not possible. When you have succeeded, then I'll come and admire your efforts, but then I don't think my immortality is going to last long enough for this to happen!

[john james]

It's still not possible to work out the individual backlight currents on the two separate TVs both showing different programs from the total house current.

It is possible with just one TV but not with two.