That device looks pretty good It's a bit of a shame, if a lack of a mention in the manual is a sign, that it doesn't seem to support IPv6 for a product released recently
That's definitely unfortunate, didn't even think about that! Unfortunately I don't have IPv6 here (I'll get around to it one day!) so can't test it to see if it will pick up a v6 address automatically but hopefully it's the sort of thing they could add with a firmware update.
A very close competitor in terms of pricing, features, and various form factors is Digital Loggers aka DLI. They are a US company so prices and availability are best in the US.
Just wondering if this might be used to control a pair of pinsetters in a Bowling alley as all the units are usually off until someone checks in at reception for a game of bowling
Yoooo, this is such an incredible product! And also a very detailed video - as always. I noticed on their website they offer a rackmount for a 2 PowerPDU 4C next to each other in the same U, I wonder if they have any plans to release an 8x unit with higher power capacity, that would be the dream.
@Cameron Gray Did you have any contact with them, to hint as to whether your suggestions about being able to phase each switch turning on etc, could be a simple software/firmware update? Did you wireshark it out of interest to see if it tries to make any outbound comms you were not expecting?
Thanks! I looked at this webinar when I was first researching this and it shows a table which appears to list a couple of greyed out models that I suspect are in development including the PowerPDU 8QS: th-cam.com/video/_C1iZtbdZHU/w-d-xo.html which looks like an 8 port model but doesn't seem to have Lua support. As for my suggestions - just because I didn't make it hugely clear in the video, it does seem to phase the power on by default which is good, it just doesn't seem to have a way to let you configure it (although you could implement it through a Lua script). I haven't spoken to them in particular about it as I tend to avoid talking to a company in a way that could hint towards the contents of the review before publishing although it does seem like the sort of thing that could be solved through a firmware update. They've been great with me over email so I suspect they'd be happy to help. As for wireshark, I haven't but that's a great idea, I'll need to try it at some point.
The crazy idea is to use it with a Baratza Encore coffee grinder. This excellent grinder does not have a timer to doze coffee, unfortunately. But with this device, you can dose your coffee and even have preset like v60 pour-over, siphon, Chemex. So here you have automation for a coffee shop.
This is pretty cool, and thanks for doing this video! I can see that there may be uses for this by some businesses here in Singapore! Notably, with factories and public venues! For example, imagine being able to not only view surveillance cameras, but be able to control power to fixtures and/or other equipment, from the management office! (there'd be a firewall in place to prevent it from being accessed outside the corporate network). This also reminds me of how, while most owners of public locations here just get KDK* industrial ceiling fans installed and (usually) leave the wall controller set to the highest speed, some companies instead choose to install remote-controlled models, usually because they look nicer in a particular area, but here's the problem: For some odd reason, Panasonic decided to have the fans default to medium speed when they're switched on at a light switch, instead of remembering the last setting like Haiku ceiling fans seem to do (though I never tried one of those myself), which can be a problem for public locations, and I don't think they offer a remote management solutions to allow the settings to be controlled externally. With this, since their ceiling fan models that they sell here seem to have motors are non-reversible, I had been imagining bypassing the original control circuitry, and using a device like what you showed with some custom software to allow the speeds to be changed remotely, or I could stick with my original idea of a wall-mounted device pretending to be the original remote control but would probably waste energy, or just rewire the original control board to swap the medium and high speeds (depending on model). *and/or Panasonic, but they're basically the same but with some styling changes, as both KDK and Panasonic are owned by the same parent company. The latter is the main brand, while the former is their brand for electric fans and related products. Another one is that in factories, equipment could be shut down at the end of the business day and on public holidays, and started back up at the start of the day! It could also help prevent third-shift manufacturing. At least, those are some use cases I imagined. (39:03) Turns out, Home Assistant does support NetIO, and they provide a Lua script to allow the server it's running on to listen for state changes! www.home-assistant.io/integrations/netio/ While not mentioned on the page itself as of this comment, it's using NetIO's official Python interface, which hooks into their JSON interface!
That's neat. The zero current switching would definitely increase the life of the relays. When they're breaking high current they arc, which destroys the contacts over time. If they're switching at the zero crossing when there's no current flowing, the relays don't have to break anything and won't ever arc
That is quite cool. Would be nice if they moved into the rackmount market, would be nice to have that flexibility without selling a kidney to buy an APC .
It's just iTerm2 on Mac, the menus can be enabled under Preferences -> Profiles -> Session -> Status bar enabled. Then I'm using zsh as a shell with ohmyzsh and powerline fonts.
It's just iTerm2 on Mac, the graphs can be enabled under Preferences -> Profiles -> Session -> Status bar enabled. Then I'm using zsh as a shell with ohmyzsh and powerline fonts.
Very interesting unit and I can see it's benefits but the last place I would use this is in IT... I understand it would be down to the end user and use case, and really, the device is only as good as the scripts you create, but having one of these boxes straight up pull the power on any machine that a static script decides needs power cycling is a poor mans fix (graceful reboot, anyone?). Save the £250+ and investigate the server dammit!
It really comes down to how you'd be using it, sure, you wouldn't use something like this to hard reboot a server because a service on it is acting up, you'd just fix the service, however there's still many scenarios where a remote reboot capable PDU can be useful. I wouldn't necessarily use the Lua scripting to automatically reboot things but it's extremely common in practice to have the ability to manually remotely power cycle something if a server were to say totally lock up to the extent where it is not possible to remotely connect in. Other examples could be for networking equipment such as switches and routers that have the common configuration method of configuration commands applying instantly but then needing to be separately "saved" so they persist on reboot - if you were to accidentally issue a command that locks you out of the device (misconfiguring a VLAN, IP, static route or firewall rule for example), being able to simply remotely power cycle it and get back to a known working state can be a lifesaver. I've had times where being able to remotely reboot a device like this has saved me a 100 mile round trip to get myself in front of the hardware! The time I could see the watchdog timer style functionality being useful would be for say, a small office that has a single internet connection and router, having a device like this to automatically reboot the router if the internet connection goes down for a sustained period could be useful as an absolute last resort before a person has to go on site to fix it. If the only connection is down, it won't be possible to remotely connect in to diagnose the issue. Now obviously you ideally should avoid devices randomly crashing wherever possible but let's face it, these things still happen! In a business environment, £250 (or even £500-£1000 for the ones you'd use in a datacenter environment) for a PDU you'll have for many years can easily pay for itself when you factor in the cost of paying someone to travel to the equipment including any expenses and potentially taking them away from other work that they could be doing.
It's up now! th-cam.com/video/5nHVHY_2cJg/w-d-xo.html. Was initially editing them into one video then kept watching the duration creep well beyond an hour and thought "nah, I need to split these!"
They target totally different markets. That Broadlink device looks like a basic smart plug, just with 4 outlets and doesn't seem to support current monitoring or wired networking. It's probably okay to switch devices in a home but doesn't look suitable for use in any sort of business environment which is what NETIO targets. In a business environment, it is often worth paying more to get something from a company that you can contact for support and get firmware updates from, especially for something like this that you could be deploying in large quantities over multiple sites. This is why I compared the pricing to PDUs from brands such as APC and Austin Hughes rather than to cheap smart plugs. I also can't seem to see how you could connect any sort of earthed plug to that Broadlink unless it's an Australian plug which rules it out for a huge number of devices. Functionality wise, I can't see any sort of MQTT support on the Broadlink itself, just a TCP API that people seem to have reverse engineered to provide external software that can bridge it to MQTT which means you're now dealing with external software. At this point, in a business, it can often work out cheaper overall to simply pay more for a device that supports everything natively over paying someone to set up and maintain bridging between the devices or to deal with bugs when you can't get support from the manufacturer.
@@camerongray1515 The Broadlink device actually has sockets for China, and that country uses 3 different plug types, including upside-down type I, which you're referring to, and besides that, type A without holes on the prongs, and type C. I think it was intended to be sold only in China, but lots of online stores export it, like they do with the Xiaomi trailing sockets which too are only offered in China. In both cases, they're consumer products and not intended for business use, so they're really designed to connect to their own mobile apps which manage them.
I just leave all the ad settings set to default which includes TH-cam placing midroll ads. TH-cam changed ad settings across the whole site to include midrolls back in June/July last year so it's not something I've explicitly done. The TH-cam algorithm is extremely unpredictable so I don't want to risk changing things such as removing midrolls and it negatively impacting how much reach my videos are given by TH-cam or the revenue I end up receiving.
Love the versatility, very nice!
That device looks pretty good
It's a bit of a shame, if a lack of a mention in the manual is a sign, that it doesn't seem to support IPv6 for a product released recently
That's definitely unfortunate, didn't even think about that! Unfortunately I don't have IPv6 here (I'll get around to it one day!) so can't test it to see if it will pick up a v6 address automatically but hopefully it's the sort of thing they could add with a firmware update.
A very close competitor in terms of pricing, features, and various form factors is Digital Loggers aka DLI. They are a US company so prices and availability are best in the US.
Just wondering if this might be used to control a pair of pinsetters in a Bowling alley as all the units are usually off until someone checks in at reception for a game of bowling
I don't see why it wouldn't work for that assuming the pinsetters have a standard plug that goes into the wall and aren't hardwired into the mains.
I love it! So many uses I think BigClive would love one, Dave Jones too!
Yoooo, this is such an incredible product! And also a very detailed video - as always.
I noticed on their website they offer a rackmount for a 2 PowerPDU 4C next to each other in the same U, I wonder if they have any plans to release an 8x unit with higher power capacity, that would be the dream.
@Cameron Gray Did you have any contact with them, to hint as to whether your suggestions about being able to phase each switch turning on etc, could be a simple software/firmware update?
Did you wireshark it out of interest to see if it tries to make any outbound comms you were not expecting?
Thanks! I looked at this webinar when I was first researching this and it shows a table which appears to list a couple of greyed out models that I suspect are in development including the PowerPDU 8QS: th-cam.com/video/_C1iZtbdZHU/w-d-xo.html which looks like an 8 port model but doesn't seem to have Lua support. As for my suggestions - just because I didn't make it hugely clear in the video, it does seem to phase the power on by default which is good, it just doesn't seem to have a way to let you configure it (although you could implement it through a Lua script). I haven't spoken to them in particular about it as I tend to avoid talking to a company in a way that could hint towards the contents of the review before publishing although it does seem like the sort of thing that could be solved through a firmware update. They've been great with me over email so I suspect they'd be happy to help. As for wireshark, I haven't but that's a great idea, I'll need to try it at some point.
The crazy idea is to use it with a Baratza Encore coffee grinder. This excellent grinder does not have a timer to doze coffee, unfortunately. But with this device, you can dose your coffee and even have preset like v60 pour-over, siphon, Chemex.
So here you have automation for a coffee shop.
This is pretty cool, and thanks for doing this video! I can see that there may be uses for this by some businesses here in Singapore! Notably, with factories and public venues!
For example, imagine being able to not only view surveillance cameras, but be able to control power to fixtures and/or other equipment, from the management office! (there'd be a firewall in place to prevent it from being accessed outside the corporate network).
This also reminds me of how, while most owners of public locations here just get KDK* industrial ceiling fans installed and (usually) leave the wall controller set to the highest speed, some companies instead choose to install remote-controlled models, usually because they look nicer in a particular area, but here's the problem: For some odd reason, Panasonic decided to have the fans default to medium speed when they're switched on at a light switch, instead of remembering the last setting like Haiku ceiling fans seem to do (though I never tried one of those myself), which can be a problem for public locations, and I don't think they offer a remote management solutions to allow the settings to be controlled externally. With this, since their ceiling fan models that they sell here seem to have motors are non-reversible, I had been imagining bypassing the original control circuitry, and using a device like what you showed with some custom software to allow the speeds to be changed remotely, or I could stick with my original idea of a wall-mounted device pretending to be the original remote control but would probably waste energy, or just rewire the original control board to swap the medium and high speeds (depending on model).
*and/or Panasonic, but they're basically the same but with some styling changes, as both KDK and Panasonic are owned by the same parent company. The latter is the main brand, while the former is their brand for electric fans and related products.
Another one is that in factories, equipment could be shut down at the end of the business day and on public holidays, and started back up at the start of the day! It could also help prevent third-shift manufacturing.
At least, those are some use cases I imagined.
(39:03) Turns out, Home Assistant does support NetIO, and they provide a Lua script to allow the server it's running on to listen for state changes!
www.home-assistant.io/integrations/netio/
While not mentioned on the page itself as of this comment, it's using NetIO's official Python interface, which hooks into their JSON interface!
That's neat. The zero current switching would definitely increase the life of the relays. When they're breaking high current they arc, which destroys the contacts over time. If they're switching at the zero crossing when there's no current flowing, the relays don't have to break anything and won't ever arc
one network port into each of two connected switches with loop detection enabled would give you failover...
Very interesting bit of kit, now what can I use this for :-)
That is quite cool. Would be nice if they moved into the rackmount market, would be nice to have that flexibility without selling a kidney to buy an APC .
To be fair, they have rackmount add-ons sold separately.
Which terminal emulator are you using on the laptop - are those mini graphs?
It's just iTerm2 on Mac, the menus can be enabled under Preferences -> Profiles -> Session -> Status bar enabled. Then I'm using zsh as a shell with ohmyzsh and powerline fonts.
What an awesome little box of tricks. It's a pity you can't plug it into itself to get remote reboots!
What's the widget you are running in the top of your terminals ?
It's just iTerm2 on Mac, the graphs can be enabled under Preferences -> Profiles -> Session -> Status bar enabled. Then I'm using zsh as a shell with ohmyzsh and powerline fonts.
Ahoj! Awesome piece of equipment!!
Would be nice to have Tailscale installed on it.
I'm pretty sure you can power off/on/reboot APC PDU outlets by poking SNMP at them.
Very interesting unit and I can see it's benefits but the last place I would use this is in IT... I understand it would be down to the end user and use case, and really, the device is only as good as the scripts you create, but having one of these boxes straight up pull the power on any machine that a static script decides needs power cycling is a poor mans fix (graceful reboot, anyone?). Save the £250+ and investigate the server dammit!
It really comes down to how you'd be using it, sure, you wouldn't use something like this to hard reboot a server because a service on it is acting up, you'd just fix the service, however there's still many scenarios where a remote reboot capable PDU can be useful. I wouldn't necessarily use the Lua scripting to automatically reboot things but it's extremely common in practice to have the ability to manually remotely power cycle something if a server were to say totally lock up to the extent where it is not possible to remotely connect in. Other examples could be for networking equipment such as switches and routers that have the common configuration method of configuration commands applying instantly but then needing to be separately "saved" so they persist on reboot - if you were to accidentally issue a command that locks you out of the device (misconfiguring a VLAN, IP, static route or firewall rule for example), being able to simply remotely power cycle it and get back to a known working state can be a lifesaver. I've had times where being able to remotely reboot a device like this has saved me a 100 mile round trip to get myself in front of the hardware!
The time I could see the watchdog timer style functionality being useful would be for say, a small office that has a single internet connection and router, having a device like this to automatically reboot the router if the internet connection goes down for a sustained period could be useful as an absolute last resort before a person has to go on site to fix it. If the only connection is down, it won't be possible to remotely connect in to diagnose the issue. Now obviously you ideally should avoid devices randomly crashing wherever possible but let's face it, these things still happen!
In a business environment, £250 (or even £500-£1000 for the ones you'd use in a datacenter environment) for a PDU you'll have for many years can easily pay for itself when you factor in the cost of paying someone to travel to the equipment including any expenses and potentially taking them away from other work that they could be doing.
No teardown?
Edit: Helps to watch the entire video lol
It's up now! th-cam.com/video/5nHVHY_2cJg/w-d-xo.html. Was initially editing them into one video then kept watching the duration creep well beyond an hour and thought "nah, I need to split these!"
Too much money. It's should be around 180 ish :/
Sorry, but what a cash grab. BroadLink MP1 is literally 12 times cheaper. Supported by MQTT too.
They target totally different markets. That Broadlink device looks like a basic smart plug, just with 4 outlets and doesn't seem to support current monitoring or wired networking. It's probably okay to switch devices in a home but doesn't look suitable for use in any sort of business environment which is what NETIO targets. In a business environment, it is often worth paying more to get something from a company that you can contact for support and get firmware updates from, especially for something like this that you could be deploying in large quantities over multiple sites. This is why I compared the pricing to PDUs from brands such as APC and Austin Hughes rather than to cheap smart plugs. I also can't seem to see how you could connect any sort of earthed plug to that Broadlink unless it's an Australian plug which rules it out for a huge number of devices. Functionality wise, I can't see any sort of MQTT support on the Broadlink itself, just a TCP API that people seem to have reverse engineered to provide external software that can bridge it to MQTT which means you're now dealing with external software. At this point, in a business, it can often work out cheaper overall to simply pay more for a device that supports everything natively over paying someone to set up and maintain bridging between the devices or to deal with bugs when you can't get support from the manufacturer.
@@camerongray1515 The Broadlink device actually has sockets for China, and that country uses 3 different plug types, including upside-down type I, which you're referring to, and besides that, type A without holes on the prongs, and type C. I think it was intended to be sold only in China, but lots of online stores export it, like they do with the Xiaomi trailing sockets which too are only offered in China. In both cases, they're consumer products and not intended for business use, so they're really designed to connect to their own mobile apps which manage them.
The amount of ads that I got on this video made it unwatchable.
I just leave all the ad settings set to default which includes TH-cam placing midroll ads. TH-cam changed ad settings across the whole site to include midrolls back in June/July last year so it's not something I've explicitly done. The TH-cam algorithm is extremely unpredictable so I don't want to risk changing things such as removing midrolls and it negatively impacting how much reach my videos are given by TH-cam or the revenue I end up receiving.
this is good for crypto miners! cheap PLC !