What it is all for
The boxes from step two, opened: what each one does for the flat, and what a household would rent instead. Step three of three. As of 2026-09-20.
Illustration, generated. Every other picture in these three steps is a photo of the real thing. The clouds name the kind of service each outpost stands in for.
| The flat wants | What does it | Box | Rented instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lights, heating, air | Knows whether anyone is home; decides about lights, lock, air conditioning, vacuum. | Smart home | A cloud and an app per maker |
| Who is at the door | Looks at the camera pictures and says “person”. The storage box keeps the video. | Camera watcher | A camera subscription |
| Photos, music, files | Photo library, music and file sync. | on the storage box | A photo, music and file cloud |
| Films | Film library, streamed to the TV. | Films | A streaming subscription |
| Websites | This site and a few others, behind one front door. | Websites | Web hosting |
| Wi-Fi | Manages the Wi-Fi access point. | Wi-Fi control | The provider’s router |
| Passwords | Every password the machines use. A job gets a key that expires within minutes. | Password vault | — |
| Copies | Almost every box copied nightly; the copies are re-read to check they are intact. | Backups | A backup subscription |
| Watching | Graphs and alarms: is it up, is a disk filling. | Monitoring | — |
| Changing | Checks configuration changes and runs the jobs that apply them. | Change workers | — |
| Power cuts | Shows what the battery is doing. The computers shut themselves down cleanly before it is empty. | Battery watch | — |
The first five rows are what a household wants. The other six exist to keep the first five running.
The work that comes with it
- Photos and music. The copies are ours to look after.
- Smart home. It works with the internet down; the updates are ours.
- Websites. The front door is ours to look after: two firewalls, so one can fail.
- Cameras. Recordings stay in the flat; so does the disk bill.
- The network. Every change has to be written down and checked first.
For the real program names and the reason each one is here, see What runs, and why.