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Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month, Google is ousted by Amazon (at home, anyway) and we try some typical smart
light bulbs, testing out Alexa’s ‘skill’ in controlling them. The latest energy labelling bands for LED
bulbs are also explained.
T
he search engine giant
Google has attracted its fair share
of criticism and ire over the years,
morphing from a search index with the
motto ‘Don’t be evil’ into an advertising
broker that tries to monetise every
corner of our online lives. Armed with
your valuable profile data, advertisers
can target web visitors with ‘relevant’
commercials. The Internet Advertising
Bureau (IAB) pre-dates Google and is the
self-help trade body that helps online
media to comply with the EU’s fearsome
General Data Protection Regulations
(GDPR). Many big brand names are IAB
members, and Internet marketing is big
business: in the early days of online
advertising, UK commerce spent a mere
£8m in the whole of 1997, compared
with £12.5bn (yes, billion) in the first
six months of 2022 alone, says the IAB.
Some very sophisticated techniques
are used to profile a web user when
they hop from one web page or social
media post to another. Cookies are central to this, and some benign cookies are
necessary anyway to enable a website
or shopping cart to function properly. We tend to shrug off such creepy
and silent monitoring when we visit,
say, a furniture website, only to then
see banner ads for the same furniture
popping up after we jump to another website. Tellingly, Google’s legacy
‘Urchin Web Analytics Software support’ page admitted that, ‘In attempting
to identify and track unique visitors
and sessions [this way], we are basically going against the nature of the
web, which is anonymous interaction.’ (If ever you see ‘?UTM_blah=...’
in a lengthy URL, it stands for ‘Urchin
Tracking Module’ – it’s Google’s tracking system hard at work.)
Duck!
With online privacy concerns in mind,
British TV viewers recently saw an
ad campaign by DuckDuckGo (see:
https://youtu.be/QWpPyYlZXNI), an
alternative privacy app that claims
to offer snoop-free web browsing and
email protection. DuckDuckGo is at
pains to remind web users how Google
is ‘watching them’ and so their desktop
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browser extension uses a private search
engine to eliminate a user’s web surfing trails, or you can search the web
directly at: www.duckduckgo.com
However, Google Search reigns supreme, with Microsoft’s Bing still a
distant runner up, at least as far as
breadth and accuracy of search results are concerned. There are some
Google functions that users would
probably struggle to live without:
Google Street View gives an insight
into the contemporary street scene,
and it can wind the clock back over
a decade or more, so we can see our
landscape changing over the years.
Google Maps is the author’s desktop
go-to guide for finding addresses and
planning journeys, and many use the
free app for in-car navigation.
Looking at Planet Earth
translate foreign text such as instruction manuals or packaging, or read text
out loud. I can use the mobile app to
translate foreign signs that appear onscreen, and desktop Google Chrome
can search by image as well.
Despite bringing us these positive
benefits, Google can be a source of
irritation and it increasingly seems
like it’s grown too big to care. Google
Maps, for example, does not recognise the common English habit of
giving a house a name as well as a
number, or sometimes just a name.
There are countless British homes
called Dunroamin or Yew Tree Cottage for example. In my case, one
day a map pin suddenly appeared on
Google Maps over someone else’s location in town, wrongly labelled with
my house name! It was nearly impossible to change Google Maps’ error as
their mindless ‘Suggest an Edit’ form
did not accommodate English house
names. Suspecting a case of identity
theft, I seriously considered engaging a solicitor. After drawing a blank,
eventually I logged into my Gmail account for a change, before going over
to Google Maps and using the ‘Suggest
an Edit’ link yet again. This time I got
an automated email acknowledging
receipt and promising a follow-up,
but that never happened. However,
the erroneous map pin silently disappeared a few days later, though an
online login still shows my complaint
as ‘pending’ – many months later.
More than 98% of the planet has now
been mapped by Google, including
(surprisingly) Russia though, (unsurprisingly), not China. Germany all but
banned Street View outside Berlin and
regional capitals on privacy grounds
(see the blog at: https://tinyurl.com/
2j2275he). Surfing around on Street
View can be quite engrossing and it
offers a taste of different worlds and
cultures, whether in Britain or Bangkok. There is also no disputing the
educational and informative value of
Google Earth, which offers a 3D satellite-eye view of our place in the world:
https://earth.google.com
Another handy
app is Google Lens
(see June 2022,
Net Work), which
will try to match
images on a phone
or tablet camera,
or a photo gallery.
Once the mobile app
is installed, a Google
Lens icon appears in
the Google search
bar for easy access,
and it’s great for
identifying flowers,
plants, bugs, artwork
and more. It can also DuckDuckGo offers private web searching without any snooping.
Practical Electronics | January | 2023
Service discontinued
Google’s idea of handling complaints
follows an established pattern. Regular readers might recall problems
with my Google Home Hub (now, Nest
Hub), an LCD smart speaker that for no
reason suddenly stopped responding.
Others blamed Google for a software
or system update that had ‘bricked’
their Home Hub. It looks like Google
forum staffers were feeding complaints
through to the support team who
raised a ticket number before going
silent on the matter. I received several
such support ticket IDs but never got
an answer. My perfectly satisfactory
2–3-year-old LCD smart speaker was
nearly worthless by then, and eventually I had no choice but to scrap the
device. Google’s press office failed to
answer when I raised this with them,
and more persistent tech writers than
me also tried and failed.
Other Google services that are falling by the wayside include their
Stadia cloud gaming platform, which
never found traction and is closing in
January 2023, with users receiving refunds. The ‘Killed by Google’ website
(https://killedbygoogle.com) has 275
entries listing the history of every discontinued Google project. Some useful
services such as Google Cloud Print,
which was embedded into some Wi-Fi
printers, are sorely missed, but others
were clearly never going anywhere,
including the instant messaging service Google Hangouts which is being
dropped this month.
I then went further by dumping
my Google smart speakers in favour
of 5-inch and 8-inch Amazon LCD
Echo Show displays that were being
heavily discounted in price. These
cheaper first-generation devices work
perfectly well, and will prove ideal
for many everyday users, especially
if they are used by Amazon Prime
subscribers. While Google states that
Google Home services are ‘subject to
change without notice or obligation’,
Amazon promises to deliver updates
for at least four years after the devices
are removed from sale. I now enjoy
seeing my gallery of thousands of
Amazon Photos streaming to my Echo
Show LCD screens: the 5-inch model
is ideal for bedside or desktop use.
Amazon Photo storage is unlimited
for Prime users, but I bought extra
storage at 100GB for $19.99 a year to
carry more video files, making 105GB
available in total.
It’s not all good news for Amazon
customers: Amazon Prime is now
pushing Amazon Music subscriptions
for an extra £8.99 a month after hobbling this enjoyable and rewarding
Practical Electronics | January | 2023
First-generation Amazon Echo Show smart displays have a lower-spec camera but will
be perfectly fine for everyday users. Check Amazon for special offers.
streaming music service. Otherwise,
song choices are now ‘shuffled’ with
‘similar music’ and you can only skip
so many ‘duff’ songs per hour. Amazon’s Alexa isn’t entirely a match for
Google Search either, but even though
some users dislike the idea of smart
speakers eavesdropping on us, I’m
happy to try Amazon ‘skills’ to control some smart devices by voice, as I
describe next.
LED to believe
Last month, I introduced TP-Link’s Tapo
smart devices, which is an entry-level
range of smart Wi-Fi sockets, bulbs and
a few handy-looking peripherals. They
are easy enough to configure using the
Tapo app on a tablet or phone, and
would be an ideal starting point for
anyone wanting to harness smart devices without spending a fortune. Note
that they are not interchangeable with
TP-Link’s Kasa smart device range,
which needs the Kasa app instead.
As well as the Tapo P110 energy-saving smart socket featured last month,
I’ve been trying out some Tapo smart
LED bulbs. The Tapo L510B has a UKstyle bayonet cap (B22) base and is
The Tapo L510B smart light bulb is dimmable and equivalent to a 60W light bulb.
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a YouTube video at: https://youtu.be/
DgIsn0Zac3o – try not to laugh, or cry!
Additionally, the Tapo smart socket
(see last month) is working well, powering up a smart TV, but I wouldn’t use
it to switch a heavy mains load like
an electric heater or any current-hungry white goods.
Alexa, good night
The Tapo smart bulb can be controlled
via the Tapo app or by using Alexa or
Google Assistant.
dimmable, with a rating of 9W. The
smart bulb is self-contained so, unlike
some systems, it does not need a separate hub. A colour-changing LED bulb
is also available (Tapo L530B). In my
test set-up, several Tapo smart bulbs are
used in light fittings between a duo of
whole-home mesh hubs, so Wi-Fi coverage should not be a problem.
After a short delay the Tapo app
found the new bulbs without too much
fuss. The app allows these bulbs to be
dimmed on demand, and there is a
useful 7-day time switch and ‘Away’
mode, to give a burglar-deterrent effect
during allotted hours. A timer switches the bulb on or off after a delay of up
to 24 hours. I named each bulb – eg,
‘standard lamp’ and ‘reading lamp’ –
in the app and they were then grouped
together to unify their control. It all
looked promising – on paper anyway.
Early on, I hit one or two frustrating setbacks, with either or both bulbs
sometimes becoming ‘unreachable’ and
not responding. Occasionally, they fell
off the network and rebooting them
didn’t always work either, so once or
twice they were re-installed or factory-reset (a process of turning them on
and off repeatedly). This is nothing like
as bad as the totally crazy factory-reset
routines for ‘C by GE Bulbs’ shown in
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Then it occurred to me that the
Amazon Echo Show devices could
also voice-control the Tapo devices by
installing the Tapo ‘skill’. This is easily
achieved by telling Alexa to install it,
or I could set it up via the Alexa app
instead. In theory, automated routines
(so far untested by me) can be set up
such as ‘Good night,’ which could turn
everything off, and the Tapo app offers
‘Sunrise’ routines that use a smart bulb
to simulate sunrise.
Testing this new regime over the last
few weeks revealed some practical limitations though, highlighting that all
is not ideal in the smart-device world.
Sometimes a Tapo bulb responds immediately, but occasionally there’s a
disconcerting delay before a lamp finally
switches on a few tens of seconds later,
if at all. The Tapo app may also flag up
an ‘Unreachable’ warning symbol on
either one of the bulbs. The app and the
smart bulbs seem to get out of sync, at
least for a short time, leaving me with
no idea whether the smart device is actually on or off until the system catches
up with itself again. There are so many
variables at play that it’s been impossible to fine-tune the system to improve
reliability any further.
The Tapo range has some handy
smart devices, including 1-gang and
2-gang light switches (S210/ S220)
to control room lighting, but only a
practical test at home would prove
how well they worked for you. A
stick-on smart contact sensor (T110,
£15) monitors doors, windows, fridge
doors, filing or medicine cabinets or
even the mailbox. It can push messages or activate a smart bulb (see:
https://bit.ly/pe-jan23-tapo). It also
requires the separate Tapo Hub H100
(approx £30), a small plug-in chime
unit with the form factor of a wireless
doorbell. Their smart PIR sensor (T100,
£28) detects movement, and a handy,
multipurpose stick-on smart button
(S200B, £15) might make a doorbell,
lighting controller or an alarm-call
for the elderly, for example. These
peripherals also need the Tapo Hub
H100. Tapo Wi-Fi cameras and LED
lighting strips are also sold.
In summary, I guess budget-price systems like these are alright as far as they
go. My own domestic set-up works well
An ‘F’ rating for a 9W LED lamp isn’t as
bad as it looks. Higher-efficiency light
sources are under development. Users
scan the QR codes for more data.
enough most of the time, and the benefits
largely outweigh any drawbacks. Hopefully it will settle down in due course,
but I sometimes find Alexa stubbornly disobedient when the system isn’t
responding as expected. Before taking
the plunge, the best port of call is the
Tapo website which details all these
devices and how they work together.
So to learn more, visit: www.tapo.com
EPREL Showers
As every European consumer knows,
many electrical products carry an EU
energy label indicating its energy efficiency, based on a 25-year-old system
that was intended to inform/influence
our buying habits. Appliances were
originally rated A to G, then A+++ to
G to accommodate more energy-efficient units, but so many products
ended up jostling in those top ‘A’ tiers
that makers had no incentive to evolve
any further: they couldn’t improve on
A+++. The system therefore reverted
in 2021 to show ratings of A-G again,
with energy bands ‘telescoped out’ to
allow consumers to distinguish between different models more easily.
The European Commission explains
that the new scale has been designed
so that very few products will initially be able to achieve the top ‘A’ and
‘B’ ratings at all. This will allow room
for waves of more efficient products
to arrive and work their way up the
scale. Currently, the most energy efficient products will typically be labelled
as ‘C’ or ‘D’, but simple market forces
should encourage progressive makers
to reach ‘A’ and ‘B’ in due course.
Some new elements have also appeared on the revised energy labels,
including a QR code that links to an
EU product database called EPREL
Practical Electronics | January | 2023
(European Product Registry for Energy
Labelling) where consumers can find
out more details. Many more products,
including car tyres, water heaters and
solid fuel boilers are indexed there too.
The public face of the database is still
in Beta, but the go-to address for future
reference is: https://eprel.ec.europa.eu
Of the two QR codes printed on my
Tapo smart bulb energy label, one clicks
through to TP-Link’s website while the
EU label jumps to the EPREL database
showing full technical data (and you’ll
feel sorry you asked).
I noticed how a stock 42W halogen
bulb was rated ‘D’ on the old scale, yet
my Tapo LED bulbs were rated ‘F’. The
market for what the EU now calls ‘light
sources’ (bulbs, LEDs, modules and so
on) has changed due to the urgent need
to raise efficiency and conserve energy.
Since the A-G thresholds were revised,
the current generation of LED bulbs
have been demoted down the scale.
The Tapo consumes 9kWh/1000 hours
(9W in old money) and, as LED bulb
energy ratings are based on lumens/
watt (lm/W), it outputs 806lm at 9W
(ie, 90lm/W): hence its paltry ‘F’ energy
rating which sounds a lot worse than it
actually is. For interest, a tungsten filament bulb emits about 12-14 lm/W and
wastes over 95% of energy consumed
as heat, so my halogen bulb would now
be ‘G’ rated. Future LED bulbs will need
to be two or three-times more efficient
than today’s models if they to reach
the new ‘A’ rating (210 lm/W) – Philips
has already nearly achieved this with
prototype ‘TLED’ light tubes. Readers
can expect the energy efficiency of LED
bulbs to climb steadily in coming years
as they aim for that ‘A’ rating.
And finally
The ITER nuclear fusion plant under
construction in France (see last month)
has received the first of six ‘poloidal
field coils’ destined for the tokomak.
The ITER nuclear fusion site in France continues to take shape. – this view looks inside
the 30m-deep tokomak pit (Photo: © ITER Organization)
The 200-tonne ‘pancakes’ have taken
ten years to develop and are manufactured in Russia. One of three magnetic
systems, the coils will be positioned
horizontally outside of the ITER vacuum
vessel to shape the plasma and contribute to its stability by ‘pinching’ it away
from the walls, says ITER. Many more
components and coils made for ITER
by international manufacturers have
already been safely delivered to the
massive site, which continues to come
together ready for ‘first plasma’ in 2025.
There’s more at www.ITER.org and readers might enjoy ITER’s new video at:
https://youtu.be/f9nW01PBOOQ
Recently, my Samsung Smart TV
suddenly refused to connect to the Internet, citing ‘No network connection’.
I ripped everything apart, including
changing Ethernet cables and swapping Ethernet ports on a nearby access
point, but it made no difference and
the stubborn problem dragged on for
weeks. I feared that the Ethernet port
on my TV must have failed, but the TV
still connected to the network-attached
storage on my LAN, so some parts of
the network were working properly. It
looked like a DNS look-up problem, perhaps with my ISP, so after much hair
pulling, I eventually found a solution:
I changed the DNS address nailed into
the TV’s network settings by choosing
‘Manual’ instead of ‘Automatic’ and
entering 8.8.8.8 instead. The TV immediately sprang into life! This DNS
IP is a Google public DNS address
(see https://bit.ly/pe-jan23-dns for an
explanation); others worth trying include 8.8.4.4. or Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1.
The latter one is suggested by my own
ISP, so I configured those in my router,
and now all is well. If you suspect
DNS problems, try those IP addresses instead.
That’s all for this month – I’ll sign off
by wishing all readers a Happy Christmas and look forward to you joining
me next month for more Net Work.
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
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