Electricity is expensive. Grocery stores work on extremely thin margins with stock that literally turns rotten. These are physical devices that need maintenance. Their failure is often catastrophic. Grocery store workers are not equipped to fix an HVAC system. Someone needs to monitor for preventative maintenance.

I can't understand the mindset that would treat this as a trivial problem. What's sad is your confidence in giving this situation a 5 second take and declaring the whole thing stupid. Yes, security was clearly an issue, but saying that monitoring of critical infrastructure is sad is bizarre.

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prmoustache an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Monitoring doesn't have to leave a way to enter the system automatically.

Alerts can be sent, and HVAC operators could have a process where they open a support ticket to get temporary access during scheduled windows by store managers.

I remember setting this up years ago for an hospital. Some third party suppliers could obtain RDP access to some VDI who could only accept a limited number of ips but they had to open a ticket and give a reason to get access. It wasn't a 365/24/7. Monitoring could still be sent any time.

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AngryData 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Remote monitoring by itself is not a problem, but remote control is and has no benefits. You can't change the temperature of or defrost a freezer without removing everything from it, and if you can remove everything from it someone is already there the change the settings. And it takes extra work to enable remote controlling of a refrigerator system over just providing temperature readings.

And it still isn't going to save electricity. The only thing it can do is warn of a failure and tell you that you got like 20 minutes to start moving food before it has to be trashed for exceeding safe food handling temperatures.

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esikich 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean, say you have 30 grocery stores, are you saying you shouldn't be able to build templates to deploy? You gonna have a guy drive all over the place updating schedules 24/7?

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watermelon0 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Why would you need to dynamically change the temperature?

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esikich 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Because the things you have in the fridge change. The opening and closing of the doors change. The actual equipment changes. Store hours change. Holidays happen. Sports games happen. Weather happens.

To be honest, a grocery store is one of the most dynamic systems I can think of.

Edit: A bang-bang thermostat is not an appropriate solution for a grocery store.

	▲	forgotusername6 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's called a thermostat and doesn't require remote control. The frozen food needs to be at the correct temperature all the time, regardless of external factors.

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ninalanyon 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> workers are not equipped to fix an HVAC system.

But they are perfectly capable of checking the temperature. After all the fridges and freezers are restocked multiple times a day so even if one failed it wouldn't have time to get warm before someone should notice.

Ad there are other ways of monitoring such as having an audible or visual alarm.

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esikich 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you think grocery stores are 24/7? How often do you think these checks happen? Do you think it's the best way for those employees to spend their time? How often would these checks need to be performed to show statistical significance? Do you have reason to believe these things have never been thought about by people who run grocery stores? What are the labor requirements in a grocery store to run effectively?

	▲	watwut 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		These checks do not need to happen 24 times a day. It is in fact perfectly acceptable for the workers to check it in the morning. I swear to god HN is inventing issues that dont exist to defend overengineered solutions. Also, offline fridges are completely normal.

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hmartin 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wish I could upvote this comment more

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gz5 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

good points and all the more reason to monitor in reliable, safe manner?