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Heata trial hosts

meritez

ULTIMATE Member

Heata, which began as an innovation project with British Gas, is a UK company that connects a server to your hot water cylinder and provides hot water to the house master for free up to 4.8 kWh per day, and at least 2.5 kWh as per contractual obligations.
 
I find this approach interesting, but I'm not 100% sure why it's cheaper for them to deploy a small server this way than to just put it inside a modern data centre. Seems like a lot of work, with potential caveats, for little gain. I'd be fascinated to see their internal workings.
 
Interesting idea. But suppose someone does something dodgy on that server, using your broadband. Is the company also going to pay for any and all lawsuits? doesn't say. One would certainly hope so. I've seen a similar idea with a bitcoin radiator although I don't know if such devices still exist there certainly was a heater that would mine cryptocurrency and give you the heat as a byproduct.

As for Mark's comment about why not a DC, one can only assume they've run the numbers and worked out this is cheaper? I once asked the DC that I work at how much it would cost to co-locate my own 1U server there and they wanted close to £300 +vat a month with a 1Gbit dedicated port (unmetered) and 10A of power. I would presume they've figured this device can be cheaper than this.

But as we all know, all computing eventually turns to heat. 4.8kWh of heat will most likely not heat a water tank of 280L (the size we have) from cold to anywhere near 60C. But they're calling it a "baseload" which is fine I guess. Our solar diverter can put that much or more of heat into the tank, and if it's already at 30-40C then it will usually bring it up to temp. If it's stone cold then no.

Not something i'd go for myself, but interesting nonetheless. Oh and I forgot, most residential ISPs will not like this idea at all. You'll be running a service which might be against T&Cs.
 
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I like the contractual 2.5kWh too, that's what 70p worth? hah.
 
It's a research project that is interested in whether something is possible or not, I think the economic argument for it will come after the team know whether it's viable or not at a technical level, though I would guess the cost of paying only domestic electricity rates to run hundreds or low thousands of nodes comes out lower than the power and space costs in datacentre spaces especially if you're wanting say 10a per rack unit.

On the point of using your internet connection unauthorised, the trial is intended to run batch processing workloads and upload the results/retrieve new jobs overnight. Households don't have access to the data on the system, and the users renting the capacity don't get an endpoint that they can connect to remotely to then launch DDoS attacks posing as you.
 
JPM. Problem is they don't tell you what those workloads are. Might I ask how you know what a user will have access to and won't? Because none of that is mentioned on the site. I would assume you're correct though, they're not going to risk letting the home user have access to whatever it's doing. But the fact that it's a black box connected to your home internet is troubling enough. But lets assume they run some kind of cloud service, and let users run VMs, and it's on your home network, who's responsible? Am I going to be able to say to my ISP no sir wasn't me, I don't know what that black box does?

Too risky for me. If I gave someone access to my WiFi and they used it to send threatening messages over the internet, I can only assume I'm responsible as I'm the one with my name on the contract for the internet connection. I would assume it's a similar deal here but i'm just thinking out loud again. If the company involved agrees to indemnify you against any and all legal areas for what that server does, then it's a mute point. Providing of course the ISP also agrees.
 
I like the contractual 2.5kWh too, that's what 70p worth? hah.
Worth noting that they cover the electricity costs, but I think they say on the website that the server typically uses about 4.8kWh per day or something.
 
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JPM. Problem is they don't tell you what those workloads are. Might I ask how you know what a user will have access to and won't? Because none of that is mentioned on the site. I would assume you're correct though, they're not going to risk letting the home user have access to whatever it's doing. But the fact that it's a black box connected to your home internet is troubling enough. But lets assume they run some kind of cloud service, and let users run VMs, and it's on your home network, who's responsible? Am I going to be able to say to my ISP no sir wasn't me, I don't know what that black box does?

Too risky for me. If I gave someone access to my WiFi and they used it to send threatening messages over the internet, I can only assume I'm responsible as I'm the one with my name on the contract for the internet connection. I would assume it's a similar deal here but i'm just thinking out loud again. If the company involved agrees to indemnify you against any and all legal areas for what that server does, then it's a mute point. Providing of course the ISP also agrees.

Details of what workloads can run are here - https://www.heata.co/compute. It's all batch processing, users don't get a VM they can connect to. Ok so you have to trust the company running the service and manufacturing the device, but that's the same risk assessment you'd have to perform for any other device you connect to your network.

The FAQ also mentions that "in production" the devices will have their own cellular or fibre connection, so they won't sit on the householders' own network.
 
Details of what workloads can run are here - https://www.heata.co/compute. It's all batch processing, users don't get a VM they can connect to. Ok so you have to trust the company running the service and manufacturing the device, but that's the same risk assessment you'd have to perform for any other device you connect to your network.

The FAQ also mentions that "in production" the devices will have their own cellular or fibre connection, so they won't sit on the householders' own network.
That's good, didn't catch that bit. But about the cellular stuff, it states in the FAQ it will use your broadband

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It says they plan to use cellular in the future. I'm assuming this is like folding@home type stuff. Send a complex thing to the unit to do, let it do the computation, then send the result. But it also in your link talks about k8s which means running some docker container on the server, but doesn't say what. You can make a container do anything.

Might I ask, legit question, are you in any way connected to them ?
 
There does seem to be a difference in the FAQs presented to trial applicants and the FAQ shown to compute users, if I get accepted onto the trial I will packet capture the unit to see what it's up to - I am currently the wrong side of London for them to be interested. Not affiliated with the company in any other way.
 
There does seem to be a difference in the FAQs presented to trial applicants and the FAQ shown to compute users, if I get accepted onto the trial I will packet capture the unit to see what it's up to - I am currently the wrong side of London for them to be interested. Not affiliated with the company in any other way.
Will be interested to see your results, I hope you post here and let us know how it goes.
 
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