Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month we ‘Reflect’ on backup software and ICT hardware that promised much but failed
to deliver. Plus, how Alexa has become a money-sink for Amazon, and there’s a round-up of
space and energy news too.
L
ooking back over many years’
worth of Net Work columns, I’ve
come to recognise that many
new technological developments turn
out to be little more than pie-in-thesky vapourware that don’t work as
advertised. The consumer ICT sector is
littered with under-developed or halffinished products and software that
land users with the job of fault finding
or debugging them, often hindered by
frustrating customer support, before
the product gets discontinued anyway.
Backing up
Back when cloud backups did not exist,
probably the most awful IT hardware
the author ever invested in were the
Iomega Zip and Ditto Max drives; removable media devices that ran on a
PC’s parallel port. The term ‘Click of
Death’ was coined to describe failing
Zip disks or drives that were about
to shred your precious data (see:
www.grc.com/tip/codfaq1.htm). I found
the Ditto Max tape drive was similarly undependable and generally awful
to work with. Then a promising new
digital tape backup system called Onstream, invented by Philips, offered
slick USB tape drives with 30GB cartridges and superb ‘Echo’ software that
made it easy to restore earlier file versions with a single click. It worked like
a dream, until the tape drives started to
crash without warning. I got through
three or four such drives before ditching that idea too, and Onstream then
went bust.
Today, I run the excellent, but quite
involved Macrium Reflect backup software, backing up files onto a Synology
RAID-style NAS (network-attached
storage), a long-time favourite. This
software ‘zips’ files together into one
large special-format file that is written to the backup drive. In the event
of a total crash, though, the Macrium
software would have to be reinstalled
from scratch before you could restore
backup data – you do keep those serial
numbers and logins safe, don’t you? A
free version of Reflect 8 for home use
is available from www.macrium.com
and is definitely worth a try.
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For many everyday users, a cloud
drive will host data files for peace of
mind, and these days users are spoilt
for choice. Major big names like Microsoft, Google, Synology and Dropbox
offer cloud storage, and some peripheral makers like Asus and Huawei
will bundle some online storage too.
Amazon, however, is dumping its
Amazon Drive cloud storage this year,
and focusing on Amazon Photos instead – see: https://bit.ly/pe-feb23-nw2
At a minimum you could back up
essential files on a removable or slave
drive – but rather than relying on a
cheap and flaky memory stick that
might get zapped with static, today
my choice would be a reputable USB
3.0 solid state disk such as a Samsung T5 or T7. I do in fact still take a
‘last gasp’ air-gapped backup from my
NAS onto SSDs periodically. This also
helps safeguard against the possibility of ransomware. It is also possible
to back up the NAS to the cloud, but
it is a costly and extremely slow process. During some quiet downtime
it’s worth checking out some storage
options and how to back up your essential files from a PC, smartphone,
tablet or laptop to the cloud.
The Dash for cash
Some ideas probably fail not because
the engineering was lacking but because
project managers misread the market to
begin with. Back in Net Work, July 2014
I described the Amazon Dash Wand, a
new handheld Wi-Fi device that would
scan the barcodes of produce and add
them to your Amazon shopping cart, or
its built-in Alexa voice assistant would
do the same on demand, making shopping effortless. The Amazon Dash Wand
was shut down in 2020, three years
after its launch, and Amazon made the
scanning devices fit only for electrical
recycling. The Dash Wand was a sign,
though, of Amazon’s early determination
to integrate Alexa into the domestic supermarket shopping routine.
Then there were Amazon Dash
buttons (Net Work, July 2015), pre-programmed stick-on buttons that added
a product (eg, laundry powder) to
your Amazon shopping cart with a
single button press. Millions of these
$5 gizmos were circulated but the Dash
button never caught on and they were
discontinued in 2019. The system also
received criticism for not providing
pricing information beforehand. The
idea was never going to sit well with
consumers who scribble out a shopping
list and trundle to the supermarket,
where non-foods could be quite a bit
cheaper than Amazon.
Other instantly forgettable ideas covered before in Net Work include the
Amazon Echo Look, an Alexa-powered camera device that took snapshots
of you and offered fashion tips (see
https://youtu.be/9X_fP4pPWPw). The
$200 device was destined for the recycle
Amazon is keen as mustard to get into home grocery ordering. They have partnered with
the Morrisons retail chain.
Practical Electronics | February | 2023
bin in 2020. As for the Amazon Astro
Robot or ‘Alexa on wheels’ (Net Work,
December 2021), and the 2020 Ring
drone-powered security camera, well,
let’s not go there.
In the UK, Amazon has dipped its
toes into bricks-and-mortar stores
that offer a selected range of produce.
Their ‘Just Walk Out’ shops were the
first outside the US to use sophisticated scanning techniques and AI to
track movements and charge a customer’s shopping cart automatically
without them needing to check out
the traditional way. According to
trade magazine The Grocer, Amazon
has 19 Just Walk Out stores, mostly
around London, but its ambition to
expand to some 260 stores has since
been shelved, reportedly because sales
had fallen below expectations. The
Grocer states something that shoppers
knew anyway in today’s straitened
times: ‘[Amazon] is having to work
within an environment where price
is increasingly more of a priority for
consumers than convenience.’
There’s nothing that an e-commerce
business wants more than to turn its
customers into a steady conveyor belt
of repeat business. Products with a
‘Buy Now’ or ‘Dash’ button should
generate sales with just one click, but
shoppers peel off if there’s ‘friction’
when purchasing something. Amazon
shoppers can ‘Subscribe and Save’ on
many lines, another customer lockin that saves customers the effort of
doing anything at all: toilet rolls or
washing powder will now turn up automatically, though you can of course
unsubscribe again at any time – if you
remember, which vendors hope you
won’t. But consumers are increasingly
ditching convenience and shopping
around for the best price instead, one
more reason why Dash stick-on buttons didn’t really work well.
Last year’s Black Friday shopping
frenzy revealed how Amazon’s retail
prices are all over the place, especially when independent third-party
‘Marketplace’ sellers are involved. A
dehumidifier, listed at £169 dropped
to £149 (bargain!) then rose to £189.
A certain electric consumable was
changing hands at anything from £40
to £65, while the Epson V600 flatbed
scanner that I’ve mentioned in the
past trades at anything from £285 to
£399. By being prudent with pricing
I saved over £100 on recent purchases, which is not to be sneezed at.
Even small everyday items can cost
nearly twice as much on Amazon as
they would on eBay, for example. The
differences can be substantial and
where price is a key factor, it’s never
Practical Electronics | February | 2023
been easier to shop around. As usual,
I recommend the Camelizer plug-in
(www.camelcamelcamel.com) to trigger Amazon price drop alerts.
Supermarket sweep
UCAM 247 IP Camera I mentioned in
Net Work, December 2015 has pulled
its smartphone app functionality after
losing their P2P networking service.
Support has also gone, but at least the
camera feed is still accessible via a web
page login. Some overseas homeowners
used half a dozen cameras to monitor
their property and are now struggling
to access them, but trying ONVIF-compatible software instead might patch
the problem. Belkin slashed its WeMo
smart camera range and cloud service in 2021, thereby ‘bricking’ the
cloud-functionality of these cameras.
Obsolete technology was blamed, and
a new range based on the latest ‘Matter’
protocol is rumoured to be in the pipeline, with Apple HomeKit users being
the first to benefit.
Apart from running their own Just
Walk Out stores, Amazon is trying to
grab a slice of the supermarket trade
and has linked with Morrisons, one
of the UK’s major retail operators.
Indeed, Amazon is offering me £15
off my first three Morrisons shopping
orders. I see Morrisons vans delivering
to local addresses every day, a service
that clearly works well for those who
prefer home deliveries.
With all this activity going on,
it’s come as a surprise to learn that
Amazon’s Alexa-based hardware is
proving something of a lame duck
after all. Alexa has failed to turn us Other news
into the committed regular shoppers By the time you read this, we will
that Amazon craves, and their smart know if the first space launch from
speaker and display hardware, sold UK soil has been successful. A spelargely at cost price, has not attract- cially-adapted 747 – the Cosmic Girl
ed a level of trade to make the Alexa – operated by Richard Branson’s Virgin
channel viable. Most people simply Orbit space business was set to take
use the gadgets for trivial, non-mon- a LauncherOne carrier rocket aloft in
ey-making interactions with Amazon’s mid-December. An RAF pilot will fly
assistant, or for setting reminders or the jet from Cornwall Spaceport in
checking the time, searching online, south-west England and release the
or displaying photos. It’s reported LauncherOne, which will then conthat last year, Amazon’s Alexa voice tinue its journey into orbit to deploy
assistant unit was set to lose an as- its payload of ‘SmallSats’. Onboard is
tonishing $10bn, and its development the new ‘DOVER’ pathfinder research
staff were facing a sizeable cut of satellite co-funded by the European
Space Agency. It will provide data
some 10,000 personnel.
Unlike Google’s smart devices, from space, for use on the ground to
though, Amazon promises to keep obtain an accurate position or time –
its hardware running for at least four the buzzword being PNT (Position,
years once discontinued from sale, Navigation and Timing), an alternaso there is hopefully life in Alexa tive to the US GPS-based satellite
yet. One popular range of
smart devices that is in terminal decline is marketed in
Britain by Hive. All cameras
and security devices are destined for the chop as Hive,
owned by Centrica (the name
behind British Gas), has decided to focus its energies on
‘going green’ instead. Hive
hasn’t exactly been upfront
with this news, but more
details are buried at: www.
hivehome.com/product-news
Hive is not the first supplier to abandon its users
this way. Philips dropped its
first version of its Hue bulbs
(with the round Hue Bridge
hubs), by pulling the plug on
Dr Emma Jones, Business Director UK of satellite
cloud connectivity in 2020, manufacturer RHEA Group, in Spaceport Cornwall’s
which meant no more Alexa clean room, overseeing the integration of RHEA’s
or Google Assistant support DOVER satellite with the aircraft dispenser system.
unless you upgraded to a new Pictured bottom left: this powerful ‘SmallSat’
hub (the square one). The measures a miniscule 30 x 10 x 10cm.
13
Next stop Mars: The Orion capsule looks back at the Earth and the Moon after
surpassing the maximum distance of any other spacecraft built for humans. Orion met
its scheduled splashdown, and returned to Earth on 11 December. (Image: NASA)
navigation system. The first launch
had been running late due to licensing issues with the UK’s Civil Aviation
Authority, but more satellite-launching flights are due from the UK next
year, with at least two more spaceports expected to open for business
in Britain as well.
NASA’s ambitious Artemis 25-day
moonshot mission continues after a
successful launch of the SLS (Space
Launch System) on 16 November.
The Orion capsule orbited the Moon
before heading deeper into space as
the next stage of its mission, the furthest any such spacecraft has ever
flown. Orion continued in retrograde
orbit around the Moon and then returned to Earth and splashed down in
the Pacific Ocean. Longer term ambitions include returning humans to the
Moon and ultimately to Mars.
Returning to 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication), my thanks go to reader
Alan Pickwick who writes: ‘I always
enjoy your section in Practical Electronics. I thought you could include a
small piece warning users to set their
phones NOT to show PIN codes from
text messages on their lock screen.
Microsatellite operator Swarm Technologies
is now offering an asset tracker that works
in conjunction with a Swarm data plan to
track assets located anywhere in the world.
14
See the BBC article at: https://bit.ly/
pe-feb23-nw1 about this audacious
form of theft which circumvents 2FA
and allows a thief to access stolen accounts. Regards Alan C Pickwick.’
I tried my Android phone with a
PayPal purchase needing 2FA and the
PIN number displayed on my locked
screen! I found the lock screen notification settings and changed it to
‘Show but hide contents’. The BBC
article gives tips for iPhone and Android users. Thanks for the tip, Alan.
An alternative search engine to
Google has arrived in the shape of
ad-free Neeva, a company founded in
2019 by former Google ad executive
Sridhar Ramaswamy. In a blind test,
nine out of ten preferred Neeva, they
claim, and their subscription-based
model is based on the idea that users
will be willing to pay for a private,
ad-free search engine that has no corporate influence over search results.
A free service is available that provides 50 ad-free searches a month or
unlimited paid-for packages cost just
under £45 a year or £5.49 a month in
the UK. Try it out at: www.neeva.com
Microsatellite Internet-of-Things
operator Swarm Technologies has
launched an Asset Tracker that they
claim provides an end-to-end solution for tracking equipment, vehicles,
and other remote assets. The Swarm
Asset Tracker functions anywhere
in the world using Swarm’s satellite
network, and the transmitters have a
40+ day rechargeable battery. Swarm
reckons it’s ideally suited for remote
locations that lack terrestrial network
coverage. The trackers are currently
on offer at $99 and a Swarm data plan
is also needed, from $5 a month – see:
https://swarm.space/store
What is claimed to be Europe’s largest capacity storage battery has now
been energised in England by Harmony Energy. The site, near Hull, is
home to a massive 196MWh capacity battery built using Tesla Megapack
technology. It is located adjacent to
National Grid’s Creyke Beck substation, which also connects phases ‘A’
and ‘B’ of the world’s largest offshore
wind farm, Dogger Bank, which is set
to go live in Summer 2023. Battery
energy storage systems (BESS) act as
a reservoir to buffer against periods of
intermittent energy production, and
in an impressive achievement, completion of the project was brought
forward to meet looming winter demands for electricity.
Shell has closed its handful of hydrogen filling stations in the UK, the
electric mobility portal site Electrive
reports, saying that the ‘prototype
tech had reached its end of life’. In
practice, there simply weren’t enough
hydrogen fuel cell cars around, and the
sites could not accommodate future
A new Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) claims to have the largest capacity of its
type in Europe. The new 196MWh utility – seen here under construction – uses Tesla
technology and helps to buffer Britain’s energy supplies.
Practical Electronics | February | 2023
An all-new hydrogen-fuelled truck has been developed by
Hydrogen Vehicle Systems and is set to launch in 2025.
technologies either. Shell reportedly
wants to re-focus on gassing hydrogen-fuelled trucks instead, leaving just
11 public refuelling stations open compared to 57,000 EV charging points.
Meantime, Glasgow-based start-up
HVS (Hydrogen Vehicle Systems) has
showcased a fully functional hydrogen-electric powertrain which will
be used on its 40-tonne Articulated Tractor (truck cab) unit. HVS is
first to market with its state-of-the-art
powertrain and will build its vehicles in the UK, with its first HGV set
to go on sale in 2025. For details, see:
www.hvs.co.uk
Previous Net Work columns have
covered the risks of Li-ion battery fires
in some depth. In November, 43 people
were hurt, some very seriously, when
an electric scooter battery caught fire
on the 20th floor of a New York tower
block (https://youtu.be/q7zNtozubmI).
Some landlords now ban e-bikes and
scooters from being taken indoors due
to the fire risk. Warnings have also
been issued to steer well clear of cheap
electric scooters or dodgy chargers,
with Zurich Insurance seeing claims
for lithium battery fires tripling over
Scottish-based EV builder Munro has launched its MK_1 allterrain 4x4 EV and hopes to start deliveries in 2023.
three years, mostly caused by defective batteries, incorrect chargers
or items being left on charge for too
long, they say. Third-party batteries
which can be bought cheaply online
are also to blame.
Ionetic, a UK-based startup that
specialises in electric vehicle (EV)
battery pack technology, has launched
its state-of-the-art EV battery pack
design platform which can cut development costs and turnaround time for
EV manufacturers. Ionetic strives to
overcome the design and implementation hurdles facing lower-volume
niche manufacturers. Their new software-based platform can boost energy
density by 30% and increase utilisation of pack volume by up to 120%,
compared to existing off-the-shelf
solutions. It can also design a battery
pack in a matter of days and reduce
implementation costs by over 90%
for auto industry OEMs. IONETIC
plans to open its first UK-based battery manufacturing facility this year,
which will make IONETIC the only
UK-based developer offering a turnkey battery solution. More details at:
https://ionetic.uk
Scottish vehicle builder Munro has
released details of its new electric 4x4,
the MK_1, which has an all-terrain
ability and an all-electric powertrain,
making it a candidate for sectors including construction, agriculture,
mining, forestry, mountain rescue,
remote infrastructure maintenance and
leisure. The fearsome-looking ruggedised vehicle has a 220kW motor, a
high ground clearance and can carry
five and tow 3.5 tonnes. Sales should
start in the US in 2023. More information is at: www.munro-ev.com/mk1
Plans for a new lithium refinery in
England have been given the green
light. The UK’s first large-scale refinery
is aimed at supplying raw material for
EV batteries and rechargeables, and
will greatly reduce dependence on
Chinese-sourced materials. The plant
in Teesside will take about three years
to complete. You can read more at:
https://teesvalleylithium.co.uk
That’s all for this month – see you
in the next issue for more Net Work.
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
Terrington
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Practical Electronics | February | 2023
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