Net Work May 2024

Our monthly column of trends and news tries out an environment monitor and more Tapo smart sensors, there’s news of forthcoming (expensive!) electric cars from Lotus, a roundup of current Moon-shot missions and more besides.

^ This 6-in-1 environmental monitor is designed for domestic users and offers a digital readout of six factors.  Readings shown when located in a busy kitchen.

Last month the author tried out the Chinese online vendor Temu for the first time, after finally succumbing to an introductory offer of a heavily-discounted Bluetooth thermal label printer. Initial impressions of the service were encouraging and it wasn’t too long before more Temu orders were on the way! Apart from handy little doo-dads and knick-knacks, it wasn’t long before I found enough of interest to fill a couple more orders though.

This included a 6-in-1 environment monitor that is widely advertised online, which displays Formaldehyde (HCHO), PM2.5 and PM10 (2.5 and 10 micron particulate matter), TVOC (total volatile organic compounds) as well as CO and CO₂ levels. The unit is self-contained, powered by a rechargeable battery and data is displayed on a colour LED. Although I didn’t have high expectations of it, and a minority of reviews had been unfavourable, I decided it was worth a try at the offer price of £21 (£35-40 elsewhere) and one duly arrived on my doorstep a week or so later.

If nothing else, it’s interesting to try sampling the air for pollutants in domestic situations, and when testing the monitor I did sometimes notice large changes in, say, the kitchen when various cooking appliances were in full swing. I also noted PM2.5 and PM10 readings that were broadly within the targets for particulate matter published by the UK Government at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/air-quality-statistics/concentrations-of-particulate-matter-pm10-and-pm25.

Testing Tapo

As regular readers will recall, I’ve been testing out some entry-level smart devices marketed by TP-Link under the Tapo brand. Since writing last month’s column I’ve tried a Tapo Smart Button (S200B) which enables manual control of Tapo smart devices, either by a single or double tap, or by turning the button instead. The wobbly plastic button is just over 40mm diameter and contains a 3V coin cell, and set-up is handled by following the instruction in the app, which was straightforward enough. I had mixed results when using the button to control other compatible Tapo devices, or perform an action like sounding a chime on the plug-in hub.  To round off my feature on the Tapo range, I also tried the ‘Smart Water Leak Sensor’ (T300), which is another low-cost device that requires the Tapo H100 hub. Overall the budget Tapo range is aimed at domestic entry-level users, and the app is very user-friendly but set-up was sometimes a case of ‘getting there in the end’. These smart sensors are available from the usual online sources, remembering that a smart hub H100 or H200 is also required. You can read more in this month’s Net Work article.

Lotus blossoms

The development of EVs in China is so intense that it’s becoming impossible to keep up with trends. Waiting in the wings are yet more Chinese-made cars carrying British brands including MG and Lotus. The latter was famed for its British-made sports cars: remember Tesla’s first Roadster electric car was based on a Lotus Elise way back in 2006, and Elon Musk launched ‘Starman’ into space in 2018, where the car is still flying through space at 8,000 mph (see https://www.whereisroadster.com/)

^ The new Chinese-backed Lotus Eletre EV is a snip at £90,000 – £150,000.

Now owned by China’s Geely, Lotus is preparing to unleash an entirely new range of electric vehicles in the UK and Europe. From the outside the new Lotus Eletre ‘hyper SUV’ (£90,000 -£150,000) looks indistinguishable from many other Chinese electric or hybrid cars, it seems to me, while the new Emeya is a four door GT sports car claiming to be one of the fastest electric GTs in the world, doing 0-62mph in under 2.8 seconds. The Lotus web site is enough to make anyone dizzy, but you can see more of their new electric and petrol cars at lotuscars.com

^ The Smart brand is best known for its quirky little petrol cars and the new Smart #1 is a compact SUV for the EV market.

^ The Smart #1 interior has a flat panel dominating the dashboard.

Geely has also partnered with Mercedes-Benz to produce premium EVs under the ‘Smart’ brand. Distinctive little petrol-powered ‘Smart’ cars have carved their own niche on Britain’s roads, and a new electric “Smart #1” compact SUV has now launched as a premium vehicle costing £36,000 on the road. Like every other electric vehicle, the Smart #1 dashboard is dominated by a touchscreen.

Not everyone is enamoured with the idea of tapping away at a touchscreen to control their vehicle, and there are increasing concerns about the problems of drivers’ attention being distracted by the need to navigate through a touchscreen menu rather than simply reaching out to press a button or turn a knob. Euro NCAP has finally recognised that confusing and complicated touchscreens can cause drivers to take their eyes off the road for too long so, if car makers want to earn a 5-star rating, then from 2026 some key functions will have to be controlled by classic switches and knobs instead. Interestingly, Mazda Cars eschews altogether the use of large touchscreens and retains ordinary knobs and switches instead, an idea that may appeal to many motorists seeking to upgrade without tussling with touch controls.

EV drivers currently face plenty more practical problems, including punitive insurance costs and difficulties waiting for spares or costly repairs while Chinese EV brands get to grips with selling into the UK market. An excellent piece in Auto Express highlights these problems, with a BYD Seal proving almost uninsurable, they found, while GWM Ora was heavily criticised for a lack of spares. The picture is one of Chinese EV makers desperately scrambling to ramp up after-sales service and support, and the article is worth a read at https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-insurance/362519/exclusive-some-chinese-cars-almost-uninsurable-parts-and-repair-support

Hard cheese

This month I summarised the current status and outcomes of the latest moonshot missions carried out from a number of countries.  I mentioned that the Ingenuity helicopter that NASA’s Perseverance rover launched on Mars (reported three years back in Net Work, May 2021), has finally run its course. The hovering vehicle managed an astonishing 72 flights on the dusty red planet, far more than was ever intended.  NASA’s superb website contains a wealth of resources related to their Mars missions – be sure to take a look at https://mars.nasa.gov

Rejected scripts

^ An insight produced by NoScript showing some of the scripts running behind the scenes on a busy news web site. (Courtesy of reader David Hicklin.)

My thanks to regular reader David Hicklin who writes: “Having just read Net Work, March issue and especially the bit ‘Bad news days’, have you ever seen how many scripts run on a news site that come from third party websites?  I use Firefox and one of my best friends is the add-on ‘NoScript’ and it has an absolute fit at the number of third party scripts that run on these sites. I’m attaching a sample from a local news site which is a typical example. I think these are a far bigger issue than cookies, and let’s not start about web sites that give you the options to set the cookie settings, maybe 75+ of them, one setting for each external partner!”

I mostly use Firefox too, and previously I’ve tried the Ghostery extension to flag up trackers and block ads etc, but I had problems with my browser being slowed right down. I noted more than 100+ running on some web pages. You can install NoScript as David suggested from https://noscript.net and Ghostery is still available from https://www.ghostery.com.

The Amazon Warrior – book piracy shock!

Amazon remains a key go-to site to purchase pretty much anything under the sun (they just delivered two coffee mugs as I type this), but one emerging issue is the problem of book piracy, as I recently discovered. It appears that some niche reference books, including my own Basic Soldering Guide, were stolen in their entirety and re-published using entirely bogus pseudonyms. In my case, more than a dozen books on soldering suddenly popped up on sale, all of the same size, style and contents (mine) but with different cover images and authors’ names. Once I notified Amazon they removed them from sale within 30 minutes.

I saw similar things going on with a programming book title: exactly the same size book, but with a different cover and author. I estimate there are probaly 100+ pirated titles on subjects such as R programming,  Lithium batteries and more besides. I suspect AI is being used to re-write e-books and produce generative text for descriptions and re-submit them for publication.

So next time you’re searching Amazon for books, watch out for similar-looking niche titles or book covers on Amazon – these may well be scammers trying to cash in by stealing legitimate work.

^ All these 15 [cropped photo] pirated Basic Soldering Guide books were spotted on Amazon by the author before being removed from sale. The same ruse is currently affecting other book titles that are being re-copied and ripped off by copyright infringers. Look for the distinctive style of cover (same size) and  highly convincing AI-generative text in descriptions and book titles.

That’s all for this Net Work roundup – there’s plenty more to read in this month’s magazine column, so see you next month!