Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month’s roundup of technological trends investigates the worrying problems of lithium
battery fires, ponders whether (and how) to upgrade to Windows 11 and spells out the things
What3Words can do for you.
A
ccording to the 16th century
can text a ‘FindMe’ link
to an incoming caller
which will generate the
caller’s What3Words location. Businesses can use
What3Words to help with
logistics or the navigation
of company vehicles. It
is also finding its way
into vehicles, with Subaru
USA, DPD Parcels UK and
Jaguar Land Rover adding
What3Words to supplement navigation systems.
Across India, street names
are often duplicated, addresses can be confusing,
and roadsides and many What3Words uses easily digestible words to describe
rural areas don’t have ad- any location on the planet. London’s Tower Bridge is
dresses at all. So Indian described here in the desktop version.
optimised for voice, making it the ideal
vehicle maker Mahindra announced
last month it is integrating What3Words location system for the voice-enabled
with Amazon’s Alexa in its all-new solutions of the future. We can expect
to see more voice recognition and Alexa
Scorpio-N SUV.
integration in due course. It has been
Multi-language integration
made available in 51 languages.
To make a start with What3Words, an
app is available for mobile use that will A word or three about logins
generate the three-word string, but it can The use of three whole words is
also be used offline with GPS, which will also suggested as a way of managing
provide the three-word location with- personal passwords. It’s becoming
out reference to a map (see the guide increasingly pointless to use random
at: https://youtu.be/_JBwRxjCq-k). If character strings like 3hroY7h0#_67,
you have no mobile phone signal, you which is a login that can’t be rememwill need another means (radio, lan- bered and will probably end up written
dline) to communicate on a Post-It note somewhere. A nonthose three words in sensical passphrase could be created
order to summon any by stringing three words together, such
services. The website as poachedeggssalt22. At least
https://what3words. they are more human-friendly and
com enables desktop usable, and no more likely to be hacked
users to zoom in to any than any other combination of characaddress on a map and ters. Britain’s National Cyber Security
the three words will be Centre (NCSC) explains the rationale of
displayed. Both map using three random words this way, at:
and satellite layers are https://bit.ly/pe-sep22-ncsc
However, the use of biometrics and
available, and a typical
house might cover ten two-factor authentication (2FA) is
or twelve squares, so increasingly replacing the need for
you can almost pinpoint passwords altogether. In China, facial
your living room using snapshots are increasingly used as a
What3Words. Looking means of payment verification: Faahead, the company cial-Recognition Payment (FRP) or ‘Scan
also states that it’s the the face to pay’ systems can look up your
Way to go: Indian vehicle maker Mahindra is incorporating
only addressing system picture on their database and complete
What3words with Alexa into its new Scorpio-N SUV.
proverb, ‘Three may keep a
secret, if two of them are away’.
However, the use of three words is
central to the idea behind Londonbased What3Words, a geolocation
service that enables users to pinpoint an
address by using three easily digestible
words. The firm has divided the globe
into a grid of 3-metre squares, which
they decided was the resolution needed
to enable an area the size of an entrance
or a car parking space to be pinpointed
accurately. To map the entire planet
(seas, oceans, lakes and all) would
need 57 trillion addresses, which they
calculated could be described using
combinations of three words. The use
of three words also gave them seven
trillion addresses to spare, as two
words would only have been enough
for 1.6 billion squares. The system is
future-proof, because even if buildings
or addresses change over time, the
same three words will always describe
that same geographical location on
the globe.
Many safety benefits come with using
What3Words, as the system makes it
easy to describe one’s precise location
in an emergency. In the UK, 80% of
emergency services can now recognise
What3Word phrases and it is catching
on overseas, including with the Canadian police. In some cases, services
12
Practical Electronics | September | 2022
Before (above/right) and after (below)
a BIOS update, which ‘enabled’ an
onboard TPM2.0 module, allowing a
Windows 11 upgrade.
a transaction within 10 seconds. (The
Nielsen Norman Group published a
case study of FRP two years ago at:
https://bit.ly/pe-sep22-frp)
Managing logins
As a regular web user, I’ve relied on
Roboform for many years to manage
several hundred web logins. Roboform
Everywhere for Windows, Mac and
mobile is cloud-based and it wakes
up to autofill web browser logins with
ease; plus, it stores ‘Safe Notes’ securely as well. Roboform uses an optional
master password and is Windows Hello
compatible, which calls for a PIN, fingerprint or webcam scan. (For desktop
PC users, USB fingerprint readers that
are Windows Hello compatible cost
£20-25 on eBay.) Roboform Everywhere
starts at $17.90 a year and a free version is worth trying. Readers can visit
Roboform.com for more information.
Windows 11: Check your TPM
Regular Net Work readers may recall
my piece in September 2021 about the
then-forthcoming version of Windows
Practical Electronics | September | 2022
11 and its minimum system requirements. One obstacle to upgrading older
PCs from Windows 10 can be the lack
of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM),
which is a hard-wired chip-level cryptographic device that W11 uses to
enhance data security. Whether you
can upgrade to Windows 11 depends
on whether your motherboard supports
a TPM 2.0 module. You can check
for W11 compatibility by typing ‘PC
Health Check’ into the W10 search bar
and running the app. True to form, my
home-brew Asus W10 PC claimed it
did not meet the upgrade requirements
as TPM2.0 was not supported. Yet my
Asus motherboard had what the makers
term ‘Secure Boot’, meaning it should
be upgradeable to Windows 11. The
first port of call was the BIOS settings
to see if something like Secure Boot
needed enabling there: no joy. A BIOS
update was then suggested, which a
seasoned PC user can handle (ensuring you have older BIOS files on disk
should you need to revert back to them).
I duly updated the BIOS, and – lo! –
TPM2.0 suddenly appeared, as shown
in my PC’s Device Manager settings.
This can kick-start the well-oiled
Windows Update routine before you
can even blink, but it raises the question of whether you actually want to
upgrade. Will existing software run on
Windows 11? For example, I wrote previously how Epson software for a V600
flatbed scanner was not fully compatible with W11, and Epson’s dust removal
imaging technology – one of the reasons people buy that scanner – would
be lost (see Net Work, April 2022). The
web is alive with complaints of W11
incompatibility. Some legacy software
may also be difficult or messy to re-install, even if it works at all. So, for now,
readers, I’ve reverted back to the older
BIOS: I’m happy to sail along with a
PC that stubbornly refuses to upgrade
to Windows 11. A lot of useful info is
at the Asus Windows 11 FAQ: https://
bit.ly/pe-sep22-asus (it will also help
users of other brands).
One born every minute
At about the same time, I also applied the ‘three words’ idea to one
of my POP3 mail accounts. I then
hit another annoyance: my PC kept
sounding a notification (the Windows
‘Balloon’ sound), every minute, on the
minute. It would not be silenced! I tried
everything under the sun to locate the
cause of this annoying beep. Maybe it
was caused by my BIOS downgrade?
Or anti-virus software?
Running Process Monitor (see https://
bit.ly/pe-sep22-pmon) showed Windows’ inner workings in real-time
(no clue there), and Windows’ builtin Event Viewer displayed Windows
logs and error messages (ditto). I almost
tore the PC apart looking for the cause,
before silencing the sound by turning
audio off altogether. This madness
went on for a day or two, before I realised that, strangely, the POP3 mail
that I previewed on a tablet or smartphone did not appear on my regular PC.
Then the truth dawned – I had failed
to update my PC’s Mailwasher POP3
settings for the new three-word login,
so Mailwasher was trying to fetch mail
every minute in the background before
sounding the alert because the POP3
logins were wrong! Software makers
Firetrust Limited have offered to add
a visual warning of errors into a future
release of Mailwasher.
Spontaneous com-bus-tion
Following my item on exploding
electric buses that go into volcanic meltdown due to battery failures,
my thanks go to regular long-time PE
reader Godfrey Manning, who writes:
‘The Paris exploding bus (Net Work,
13
A crash-damaged Tesla EV ignited three weeks later after arriving at a California
scrapyard. (Sacramento Met. Fire/ Facebook)
July 2022) isn’t the only example of a
vehicle spontaneously combusting. One
did this standing outside the garage in
Potters Bar (Hertfordshire, England)
a few weeks ago. The uncontainable
blaze then caught several other buses
nearby. The lack of injuries was only
down to luck, not science. A long
while ago, a battery in an emergency
locator beacon caught fire in an aircraft
remotely parked and empty at Heathrow Airport, London. Good thing it
wasn’t in the air.
‘It seems to me that we’re too ready
to rush new technology from lab to
production. It’s well known in engineering (and pharmaceuticals too)
that unwanted effects become apparent when production quantities are in
service, phenomena that were unlikely
to manifest at the small-scale testing
stage. We need to stop implementing
techniques just because we can and
should slow down and consider what’s
really beneficial and even then, start
with small-scale trials.’
Harking back to my 1970s school
days, one day my Nuffield ‘O’ Level
chemistry teacher was expounding the
properties of the alkali metals group
of elements, the family that includes
lithium (Li), sodium (Na) and potassium (K). Glass-fronted cabinets lined
the ‘chemmy lab’ and they stored a vast
array of glass jars containing samples
of most elements and chemical compounds for your scribe to study. Small
lumps of alkali metals were stored in
individual jars, submerged under oil,
to prevent contact with air or moisture.
One of my erstwhile chums decided
to smuggle a small lump (potassium,
I think) out of class, to ‘have fun with
14
it’ at playtime. Afterwards, he tried
flushing the piece of potassium down
a school toilet: the resulting explosive reaction demonstrated how alkali
metals and water really didn’t get on
well together!
While not wanting to be accused of
scaremongering, it’s worth knowing
how the rapid uptake of large-scale
rechargeable lithium batteries is creating a whole new raft of risks and
challenges, especially for those faced
with tackling problems when battery
technology goes wrong. I must admit
I’m starting to look at lithium batteries with a more wary eye.
a bund wall around it and filled it with
water to let the car cool off. The tactic
ultimately reduced the total amount of
water needed, estimated at 4,500 gallons (17,000 litres), and it limited the
runoff of contaminated water as well.
Tesla battery fires aren’t exactly new:
a year ago a news report claimed that
a new Tesla Model S caught fire just
a few days after delivery. The driver
struggled to get out of the car (the doors
wouldn’t open) and he had to force his
way out through the door to escape. The
fire needed ‘copious amounts of water’
for over two hours before it was finally extinguished. The CNBC news clip
is at: https://youtu.be/t2adVW6bTkQ
In May this year, a Tesla owner in
Vancouver had to break out of his car,
again by kicking the windows out, when
the car suddenly stopped working and
smoke filled the cabin. A report is at:
https://youtu.be/dQxm6n7SdvE
YouTube is full of electric vehicles
burning out: in the five-minute video at
https://youtu.be/Le6KNI9YsH0 showing an EV charging bay, at 0:30 seconds
the sound of escaping gas (presumably
from the battery pack gassing) escalates
before fire breaks out. Note the intense
blowtorch effect on several sides, which
ultimately destroyed three vehicles.
Scary e-scooter meltdowns
The risks of lithium battery failure
also apply to lesser forms of transport. British Customs authorities have
long confiscated imported e-scooters
that have fake safety certification or
non-compliant batteries or chargers.
In January, an e-scooter, stored in the
Hot wheels
I found footage of the incident Godfrey highlighted on YouTube (see:
https://youtu.be/peT72jWHXfM).
These intense battery fires seem to
start spontaneously, and large-scale
fires seem to be virtually impossible
to deal with, other than by letting
them burn themselves out. In June,
a written-off Tesla electric car that
had been stored in a Californian
scrapyard for three weeks was suddenly engulfed by fire. The local
Sacramento fire crew extinguished
the body shell but residual heat in
the wreckage kept re-igniting gasses
that were escaping from the car’s
battery pack. The fire raged even
when the car was turned onto its
side and drenched with water directly; the vast amount of water
running off also risked polluting the
land. ‘It took a significant amount
of time, water and thinking outside
the box to extinguish,’ said the fire
chief. Eventually firefighters built
An e-scooter battery ignited without warning
while stored in a community area of an
apartment block in Essex. (Essex County Fire
& Rescue)
Practical Electronics | September | 2022
communal area of a block of flats in
Harlow, Essex, suddenly caught fire.
A passer-by took it safely outside, but
the outcome could have been much
worse if the e-scooter had been indoors: that’s exactly what happened
later on in June when a fire on the
12th floor of a block of flats in Shepherd’s Bush, London, broke out and
wrecked the apartment. An e-scooter
had overheated and caught fire while
being charged. Eight fire engines and
60 crew attended: there were no casualties, but the incident focused minds
as it was less than a mile away from
the Grenfell Tower block that was engulfed in 2017 when cladding caught
fire, and 72 residents lost their lives.
In the Shepherd’s Bush fire, a new
system called ‘999EYE’ was used
that enabled callers to live-stream
video straight to the Fire Brigade’s
999 control centre (999 being the UK
equivalent of 911). 999EYE was developed by Capita and West Midlands
Fire Service and it sends a link to the
caller’s smartphone which starts the
camera (think, having a video consultation with your GP). The streaming
video helped firefighters to assess the
risks that might be involved – see:
https://youtu.be/8E-DVij0km8
In Singapore, a resident had a very
lucky escape when his e-scooter suddenly exploded like a Roman candle
while charging. The video – shown
here: https://youtu.be/7u_6jCVK6Us
– is shocking. The same happened
to a UK e-scooter owner, see: https://
youtu.be/UqH2CJBRWP4 (language/
NSFW). Finally, an ordinary lithium
battery is shown erupting at: https://
youtu.be/nFgXFIa8luY (skip to 4 mins
40 seconds – but do watch to the end).
It should be emphasised that these are
extreme cases, but it’s worth knowing
how to recognise some early warning
signs. At consumer level, lithium batteries appear in everything from earbuds to
laptops and vacuum cleaners to power
drills. In some failure modes, they can
short internally (a ‘soft short circuit’)
that can be undetectable from outside.
It’s also not uncommon to see small
Li-ion batteries that have swollen in
size, due to gassing as the battery starts
to age. A Chinese ‘compatible’ digicam
battery swelled suddenly and jammed
itself in the author’s camera, as did a
smartphone battery, and an old 18V 4Ah
battery on the workbench was found to
have swollen and cracked overnight,
causing me to wonder whether it would
short out internally and maybe ignite;
not what I want in a workshop full of
flammable materials (and a car). After
seeing those videos, I
shall scrap it immediately. You might want
to buy a fire blanket
and extinguisher, just
in case!
Larger batteries may
incorporate internal
strapping and vents to
help overcome swelling, but in extreme
cases any damage or
pressure that builds
up may puncture the
separators of the cells Electrogenic is offering a kit to convert a Land Rover Defender
and create a chemical to all electric use. An electric motor is bolted to the Land
short circuit, risking Rover’s existing clutch bell housing, which means the vehicle
thermal runaway and can keep all its gears, providing up to 90kW and 235Nm of
torque. The battery holds 52kWh and is mounted under the
an intense fire. Swolbonnet, with a claimed on-road range of 100 miles.
len lithium batteries
tie-up will accelerate the commercial
of any shape or size are best isolated
uptake of HyperloopTT by customisand disposed of via a recycling scheme.
ing Hitachi’s proven high-speed rail
Judging by all those YouTube videos,
logic systems rather than creating new
the first signs of battery failure are a
standards from scratch.
burning smell, smouldering fumes or
Owners of Land Rover Defenders
excess heat coming from a device, poscould benefit from a new drop-in kit
sibly showing signs of melting plastic.
made by Electrogenic that converts
Remove it to the open air immediatethese rugged 4x4 diesel workhorses
ly and remember that the sound of gas
to electric power. The conversion kit,
escaping is likely a prelude to a potenaimed mainly at the agricultural sector
tially very serious battery explosion
and landowners, has been in developwhich can happen with no warning.
ment and extensively tested over the
Because of the fire risk, lithium batpast 18 months. This very interesting
teries have become a major headache
company also specialises in converting
for the airline industry. Hence there
old classic cars to EVs. More details at:
are severe restrictions on what batterhttps://bit.ly/pe-sep22-lrda
ies and equipment air passengers can
Rolls-Royce has shortlisted a number
‘carry on’ and what can be checked
of locations around the UK where major
into the aircraft hold. For visitors to
parts of its new Small Modular Reactors
the US, FAA advice for travellers is at:
(SMRs) could be fabricated, including
https://bit.ly/pe-sep22-haz while UK
at Grimsby and nearby Stallingborough
travellers and visitors can check the
in north-east Lincolnshire. Other sites
CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) rules at:
in Wales and northern England are also
https://bit.ly/pe-sep22-caa
being considered. New headquarters in
Other news roundup
Manchester have also been announced
For some battery applications, Shefby Rolls-Royce. It is still early days,
field-based Faradion may eventually
with design proposals yet to be signed
offer an alternative to lithium power
off before new SMR plants go onstream
sources. Their sodium-ion batteries are
at the end of the decade.
an emerging technology that promises
The SMR race is on: Poland’s stateto be safer than lithium cells and offer
owned energy supplier Enea recently
a higher energy density, and, since
signed an agreement with US SMR dethey can safely be discharged to 0V,
veloper Last Energy (Net Work, June
they can be transported more easily
2022) to co-operate on the deployment
with no risk of thermal runaway. Soof SMRs, while American SMR producer
dium-ion batteries might prove ideal
NuScale is gearing up to produce and
for static storage, back-up power uses
deliver its ‘VOYGR’ SMR scalable 77MW
or small mobility applications such
modules (Net Work, February 2022).
as e-scooters. There is some outline
A final reminder that you’ll find this
information at: www.faradion.co.uk
month’s hyperlinks ready-made for you
Mentioned last month, Hyperloop
on the Net Work blog page at PE’s webTransportation Technologies has partsite, at: www.electronpublishing.com
nered with Hitachi Rail to develop a
That’s all from Net Work this time,
digital signalling and traffic managesee you next month!
ment system that will enhance the
The author can be reached at:
physical safety requirements for Hyalan<at>epemag.net
perloopTT capsules. It is hoped the
Practical Electronics | September | 2022
15
Battery early warning signs
