Fifteen years ago now in Dec 2010 I made a post on my now defunct blog about ALPR and I updated it for a few years. My experiences with LE along side my technical skillset had me 'finding' things. I wont post the entire blog entry text since it is too long for this format but I did include some relevant entries to the point of how long this has really been occurring. Links are very old so YMMV.
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Dec 1 2010 Automated License Plate Readers - ALPR
So tonight someone we will call the "suspect" robbed a liquor store with a shotgun and the Delaware State Police were in action with ALPR technology. It was stated by a witness that the "suspect" was seen getting into a late 90's model civic or small hatchback so thus the ALPR call. At the same time troopers were going door to door in the area checking on the well fair of residence in the area. Aside from a helicopter, K9 tracking, and what was at least 15 law enforcement officers from various local jurisdictions setup in a layered perimeter around the area the suspect evaded. I have included a mp3 segment of the Automatic License Plate Recognition vehicle convo and a swf clip showing a trooper setup at an exterior perimeter point.
Interestingly enough it is often times a foundational change in one's 'normal' that inspires something 'new'.
In this case that 'new' is energy efficient software down to the individual lines of code and what their energy cost is on certain hardware. Academics are publishing about it in niche corners of the web and some entrepreneurs are doing it but of course none of this is cool now so we remain a mockery for our objectives. In time this too will become a real thing as many now are just beginning to feel the ever rising costs of energy which is only just starting to increase from decisions made years ago. The worst is yet to come as seen and heard directly from every single expert that has testified in the last years before the Energy and Commerce committee however only the outside-the-boxers among us watch such educational content to better prepare for tomorrow.
Electricity powers our world and nearly all take it for granted, time too will change this thinking.
Nailed it, mic drop >>> "reflects the financial illiteracy culture"
However for every Ying there is also a Yang so I too am interested in any factual data based replies or guidance please. And no, I am not looking to short REITs.
Some family members that owned in Florida for a decade sold a few years back after their costs began to balloon while other family members are still looking to move there in the coming years. Some can see what is unfolding, most cannot, yet all will pay given the systems current implementation.
I am smiling so big even those reading this can likely see it.
As the global energy issues continue to rapidly unfold in both availability and costs more and more in time will be questioning that "thing" that nearly all take for granted absolute. A resource that is critical to modern life yet cannot be seen and therefore our vision driven species yields little concern for something that has always been readily available for one's entire life. When something is neglected and treated as infinite it is only a matter of time before such conflicts will ensue as a result of holistic mismanagement of an unseen resource that is very highly impacted by business 101 rules, supply and demand.
Glad to know of yet another that is cognizant of their code energy consumption. What most will balk at, some will even laugh, but this is just one's ignorance in lack of respect of time as those business principles take further grasp on reality of the situation where our technology progress has led us.
In my former life as an electrician I ran circuits that became the roads for those electrons to physically travel on. After becoming a software engineer I then logically controlled those same electrons from the circuits I pulled to power those devices. Many more in the future will be thinking both physically and logically about their own electron usage as the costs continue to rise given the undeniable reliance many still have on centralized power grid version 1 design per Morgan and Tesla.
This post poked a bear of a memory that nearly ate me alive long ago.
I had an exponential socket growth issue in the late 1990s being the architect and maintainer of a little known ecommerce company that was powering a good portion of the domestic U.S. This volume problem I had equated to drinking from a fire hose that cannot be turned off yet the hose had to somehow be upgraded in motion to handle even more volume. I was young then and greatly inexperienced to truly comprehend the task I had to solve for and as the volume grew ever so slightly daily so too did the response times grow by milliseconds on transactions that few could see but all internally could understand what it meant over time. We managed to acquire the latest multi SMP hardware from Compaq but even this did not solve for the challenges of the increasing volume. I did solve the issue and it involved my third complete rewrite of the entire software stack into what is now recognized as microservices and durable message queueing. Those past choices, to this day, continue to stand the test of time.
I enjoy reading others' complaints about payments and only after the correct person gets frustrated enough, shunning the buyout greed, will a feasible domestic solution manifest.
Having written all the code and founded my own "Payment Processor" twice in the last few decades, this is an interesting space that demands subject matter expertise 24/7/365. Having lived through many global events of all kinds, that the general public never saw since being in payments at the inception of the internet, I learned things not possible today. I recall vividly those that laughed at me in the 90's when responding to inquiries about what I did for a living. After stating that I was building a payment server for the internet all balked stating no one would pay for anything online and then PayPal became our client followed by many other well known brands. Is anyone still paying online?
I came to comment the same thing but in reading the verbiage your context does not match my use of the term "AC".
I would offer that instead of monitoring the reactive egress of the devices purpose, thermal deltas, that one instead monitors the proactive ingress of what it needs to function to produce those thermal deltas, Alternating Current. If the devices native monitoring does not offer taps for voltage and amperage consumption then adding this before each device should be considered, certainly in data centers as some here have direct experience with HVAC failures and remaining on site for days to keep the uptime up. As a typical energy consuming device ages one can derive and relate many reactive events over time from proactive energy monitoring and in doing so one is certain to learn something new.
BAS systems usually include a current transformer or current switch around one of the ‘hot’ conductors feeding the piece of equipment to let you know if it is using electricity (or not), aka “status”.
Edit: the user you were replying to was using AC as an abbreviation for air conditioner, not alternating current.
I have been following this for many years now because immediately to my North along the very water source that provides our area our lives critical liquid is the originating source of PFAs for the planet - W.L.Gore. Our water was lab certified tested in April 2025 and we came in at a whopping 70 parts per trillion, yes 70 ppt! I made a ten minute presentation based on my data and findings in May 2025 before the town and the board was very reluctant to believe my findings yet my persistence has prevailed in my attempt to bring this issue to the forefront of all other local issues. On Wednesday of this week in the public hearing my town board requested the presence of InfraMark which handles our local resource facilities under contract and they very somberly presented what I already knew and have been getting others to act upon. InfraMark disclosed that the town will be forced to clean all the water source wells along with the sewer plants handling of PFAs however as with any government, even MORESO now, they do not have the money. I educated myself and acquired and installed all the needed solutions to remove my own home and family's PFA exposure. I retested in May 2025 and we now have <1 ppt PFA/PFOS in our water and I share that anyone waiting for their government to act to clean their water will likely be dead, naturally or otherwise, before it happens because of the size and costs of such municipal systems. No one cares more about you than you.
Your sixth sense is accurate @TimTheTinker however it goes beyond just home for your awareness. This opportunity I see is below Oxide and targets any SMB that has data ownership and security for their business over time as an objective(+ many more). I am currently engaged in discussions with several niche businesses about building modular and extensible software specific to their industry needs of which the current industry software, written by non industry experts, doesn't support. Many business owners which contact me are disgusted in being fee'd to death so the opportunity to cut out those middlemen is massive and growing. Maybe this is your sixth sense tingle?
Yes, that absolutely jives with my sense. Targeting SMBs initially (since they'd have quantified cost savings involved), then expanding to home users in general after the product launches.
Ideally, an off-the-shelf machine (maybe from a few select hardware vendors/partners) with a very straightforward setup process, or an optional pre-installation.
I see data integrity as a key risk to address, though. Maybe something with a built-in Li-Ion battery (kept at 50% charge for longevity) that can keep running and safely shutdown in the event of a power blip, and an easy way to sync to rotating backups (i.e. plug in an external HDD once a week, or sync directly to another machine across the internet, no cloud in the middle). But IMO for most SMB-size work, RAIDs are overrated in the era of SSDs and modern filesystems.
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Dec 1 2010 Automated License Plate Readers - ALPR So tonight someone we will call the "suspect" robbed a liquor store with a shotgun and the Delaware State Police were in action with ALPR technology. It was stated by a witness that the "suspect" was seen getting into a late 90's model civic or small hatchback so thus the ALPR call. At the same time troopers were going door to door in the area checking on the well fair of residence in the area. Aside from a helicopter, K9 tracking, and what was at least 15 law enforcement officers from various local jurisdictions setup in a layered perimeter around the area the suspect evaded. I have included a mp3 segment of the Automatic License Plate Recognition vehicle convo and a swf clip showing a trooper setup at an exterior perimeter point.
UPDATE: 08/07/2011 Finally the word is out as they only had it for years. Link with video http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110807/NEWS02/108070...
UPDATE2: 12/02/2011 National general news on ALPR http://www.privacylives.com/washington-post-eyes-turn-to-lic...
UPDATE3: 12/08/2011 Have enough bank? - then you can even buy it http://www.avigilon.com/products/licenseplaterecognition/
UPDATE4: 07/31/2012 Getting some more press http://www.aclu.org/automatic-license-plate-readers-threat-a... Are they watching you? http://www.aclu.org/maps/automatic-license-plate-readers-are...
UPDATE5: 07/16/2012 Tracking you illegally? http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57594179/aclu-warns-of-m...
UPDATE6: 04/07/2015 Gone and done it - Even with all the Ed Snowden press now they are going national with ALPR. https://cdt.org/blog/government-keeps-its-eyes-on-the-road-w...