kfh 

I had a chat with one of the ladies on the manufacturers stands at Elex in Coventry about their new AFDD, I passed comment that I had looked at some of the battery Energy Storage owners groups on Facebook and I saw quite a few posts along the lines of “I flashed the Battery Management System with a firmware update, now the batteries won’t take a charge, what can I do?” and I do wonder what could happen if people start trying to “update” the firmware in a consumer unit full of AFDD.

The lady laughed when I said  I do hope that that the firmware their AFDDs is basically sealed for life and can’t be fiddled with.

the difference there though is that's DIY, if the firmware is managed by another party and installed as such, the liability falls with them. 

far more likely if the software as a service types get their way,  that the consumer unit of the future will be free but you sort of rent the software, and have to pay a subscription to keep using it or it switches off at year end until you do so. A small group of long haired individuals will write aftermarket utilities that allow you to run some sort of openCU program license free, that allows a few models that it has been tested on to work really well, but in most cases just causes the lights to pulse at a disturbing frequency. 

More seriously, and amusingly, I bumped into a rather downhearted looking chap at the roadside today with a laptop and on closer investigation  a really long lead trailing right through a hedge into the  carpark behind . On saying hi, apparently he was re-configuring a charge point, I know not which model, but at the moment the charger cannot get a  decent mobile phone signal. Apparently  it needs an always-on 4G mobile data service to operate at all,  without that cannot load its firmware update, and is therefore at the moment is so much dead metal. And this is apparently a newish one from an outfit still in business that can afford to pay for folk to sit at the roadside with laptops and data cards.

I wonder how folk will charge their cars if the mobile phone network is offline or  attacked ?

Oh, brave new world.

Give me Fusewire, give me Sunshine,

as Morcombe and Wise used to sing - or maybe not..

Mike.

far more likely if the software as a service types get their way,  that the consumer unit of the future will be free but you sort of rent the software, and have to pay a subscription to keep using it or it switches off at year end until you do so. A small group of long haired individuals will write aftermarket utilities that allow you to run some sort of openCU program license free, that allows a few models that it has been tested on to work really well, but in most cases just causes the lights to pulse at a disturbing frequency. 

More seriously, and amusingly, I bumped into a rather downhearted looking chap at the roadside today with a laptop and on closer investigation  a really long lead trailing right through a hedge into the  carpark behind . On saying hi, apparently he was re-configuring a charge point, I know not which model, but at the moment the charger cannot get a  decent mobile phone signal. Apparently  it needs an always-on 4G mobile data service to operate at all,  without that cannot load its firmware update, and is therefore at the moment is so much dead metal. And this is apparently a newish one from an outfit still in business that can afford to pay for folk to sit at the roadside with laptops and data cards.

I wonder how folk will charge their cars if the mobile phone network is offline or  attacked ?

Oh, brave new world.

Give me Fusewire, give me Sunshine,

as Morcombe and Wise used to sing - or maybe not..

Mike.

As a long haired individual I can say I probably can't write such a utility...lol