Home Camp

Home Camp news round up

• The 21st Century Living Project (a collaboration between the Universities of Surrey and Plymouth, Homebase, the Eden Project and Acona) has come up with some interesting results for home energy efficiency geeks. Given £500 to spend on environmental improvements, 80% of households took at least 1 energy saving measure. Information and incentives – it’s what works chaps.
• Although we know that chargers aren’t really the problem, it’s still nice to see some innovation that stops them vamping it up in your home. Hopefully this means we can all stop talking about the evils of phone chargers, and start worrying about the things that really matter.
• Nice video here on the internet of things as explained by fellow Home Camper @andysc – including a lovely metaphor which describes connecting up data as like growing a central nervous system for the planet.
• Loving this blow by blow walk through of the online dashboard for the Powerhouse Dynamics EMonitor. A circuit by circuit home energy monitoring system available in America for a hefty wack of dollar. What’s nice about it is the variety of visualizations which break down each of the energy guzzlers in the home. Apart from facilitating stalking your kids late night food habits, there’s no doubt that this could have some very nifty applications once you got your appliances talking to each other along the lines of the internet of things as explained above.
• PassivSystems home energy manager is certainly ticking the Economist’s boxes. The real appeal here is the clever automation which learns your habits and means you don’t have to remain switched on to your energy use all the time in order to optimize it. This fella will do it all for you.
• A further boost announced in the US to fund innovation in green infrastructure will focus on grid solutions, new transmission technologies and more energy-efficient air conditioners.
• Here at Home Camp we tend to get excited by the possibilities opened up by smart meters and the smart grid. But it seems smart meters aren’t flicking everyone’s switch and so the Smart Grid Coalition has been formed to find ways to communicate the benefits to consumers. I’m kind of surprised this didn’t occur to them before the backlash started to build – it’s fairly obvious that not everyone is going to be keen on change. To be really successful the Smart Grid Coalition should try and get some community groups into their team, otherwise they risk an ‘us vs. them’ situation and they won’t ever really get what people’s concerns actually are.
• Over on the Greenmonk blog it seems as if any European anti smart grid groups may not have so much to worry about – @tomraftery has his finger on the button when he says the problem is that the incentives just aren’t there for utilities to push forward the creation of smart grids.
• Here in Britain, the smart grid seems to be on course. The mainstream media has picked up on British Gas’s plans to get ahead of the game on mass installment of smart meters. More like a download of the press release than an analysis of whether this is a good idea or not, there are a few nuggets here on what looks likely to be the first big, fat smart meter roll out to 1m homes in the UK.
• Interested to hear that the team behind Tendril Vision studied behaviour economics as part of their approach to designing a new smart meter. But did they get it right? The Tendril Vision presents information on energy use in a continuous real time display, which its makers compare to a clock in style and function. But I can’t help thinking that you only ever look at a clock if you want to know the time. How will this device attract the attention of people who aren’t that interested by their energy use? I’m inclined to agree that it’s unlikely to work unless the device can actually provide real time pricing information and even then, in terms of behaviour change, you need to put the information where the eyeballs are already looking to get real results.
• Microsoft Hohm is now available to third party device makers.
• RS components are to become the exclusive global distributor for the Arduino, ever popular with the Home Camp community (via @stuartpoulton)
• The Google PowerMeter API is now available for all to publicly use who have a smart meter device. There’s been a lot of interest and some initial confusion around how to do this in the Home Camp Google Groups but @Riotgibbon has now cracked it and blogged it. We look forward to hearing more from him about how it works once the data starts coming through
• And finally, if you haven’t already, we seriously recommend that anyone interested in Home Camp check out @mikethebee’s fantastic weekly podcasts which comprehensively update on the latest news on a more regular basis.

April 5, 2010 at 10:43 am ohrworm 1 comment

Home Camp news roundup

• A little bit of research here to remind you, in case you’d forgotten, that smart meters are BIG, and they’re only going to get bigger. If you like your reading long, dry and sub-divided then this is a helluva one stop shop for the latest on where smart meters are at.
• Excuse me while I just wipe the drool off my chin, you can now check out what Intel *might* look like when it’s released to the grabbing hordes.
• Interesting perspective on why Google’s PowerMeter is one of the shorter kids in the class. Still, slow-growth could be beneficial to working through the niggly little problems that usually come about with mass implementation.
• Looks like the Aztech device will feature big in the US’s smart meter picture. Having read the brief article, I was expecting something a bit more whizzy than this. It was never going to be long before the smart meter boom resulted in the god, the bad, and the, well, a bit boring.
• At the other end of the design spectrum, DIY Kyoto are hosting a competition to re-create the oh so sexy must-have-if-you-have-cash-to-flash Wattson. Deadline is 12th March. Get scribbling.
• Watch out, your kids will soon all be smarty pants with the introduction of smart meters to all schools in the latest Government “carbon cutting” initiative.
• Well, hello there, the latest BlueLine PowerCost monitor seems like a smart little fella – liking the appliance tab and predictive feature!
• And another new kid on the block over in the USA, even though it’s still in beta the WattVision is already winning over followers. I like the fact that it skips the display part to go straight to your computer web browser or smart phone. Who needs extra clunk after all?
• Coffee and chocolates, wine and cigarettes, roses and empty wallets, as if we needed Valentines day to remind us that the best things come in pairs. Well, it looks like the first outing of a pairing I’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. GEO’s Duet, the loved up coupling of gas and electricity monitoring, is being advertised to buy here.
• The next step on the path to Google Energy has been taken. Beware and don’t say we didn’t warn you.
• How do you visualise energy consumption? For some people even the length of time it takes to say home energy monitoring is enough to switch them off, so we should be paying attention to these cool ideas on how to make it just that bit more eye-catching.
• Did you make it down to HackSpace for a look at how arduino fits into the home automation world? Well if you did, I hope you said “cheese”.
• And just for kicks, check this out if you’ve made it to the end of the round up this month.

February 23, 2010 at 4:39 pm ohrworm 1 comment

Home Camp news round up

Wow, you take your eye off the ball for a couple of weeks and the news just goes and snowballs (UK residents – no pun intended). So here’s the latest round up for anyone who, like me, is only just waking up to 2010 half way through January…

• Over at the Guardian, Adam Vaughan has been finding PowerMeter easy to use if a bit of a shock to the system. Admittedly, seeing your electricity consumption on iGoogle at 8am on a cold winter morning might not be best way to start the day. But I’m with Adam on the big question – how can we start to share this data socially?
• Europe has plans for a super grid linking renewable power supplies which could weather proof our future energy supply.
• Over in the US and Canada, Oracle Utilities are touting for clients. A new report, ‘Testing the Water’, highlights consumer demand for more sophisticated information about their water use and water conservation. Smart meters could have a role to play here although utilities companies are unsurprisingly moving slowly due to concerns about the costs of implementation.
• @andypiper tell’s us that Intel have been showcasing a glitzy Atom-powered home monitor system. I’ve got to say, from just a glance at the screen shots, I want one. Judging from the slavering comments on this page, everyone else pretty much agrees. Shame it’s all still in the dream sphere.
• Grassroots home energy monitoring of the kind we HomeCampers love – Say hello to the Picowatt, a Wi-Fi enabled smart plug developed by Tenrehte Technologies that can provide just the same amount of consumption crunching love as you’d get from your smart meter
• Meanwhile, UK start-up PassivSystems have launched their home automation system at CES Unveiled. By learning from your regular behaviour, PassivEnergy will automatically control your energy consumption so that it is more efficient, cheaper & carbon cutting.
• The latest step on the path to Google world domination was taken with the announcement of Google Energy. Good Google says this is to help meet their corporate carbon reduction goals. But over on the other shoulder, Scary Google may be hatching evil plans to move into utilities, despite denials to the contrary. Anyone feeling complacent about Google’s increasingly godlike powers over our digital lives should read @benjaminellis’s blog about a week without Google.
• And finally, if you haven’t already spotted it, check out the below blog post about the HomeCamp meetup tonight at the Windmill near Old Street.

January 20, 2010 at 1:01 pm ohrworm 1 comment

Impromptu Homecamp Meetup Wed 20th January

There has been quite a lot of discussion on the Homecamp Google Group and at the Christmas Party about a regular meetup in London.  So Ken from Onzo suggested we meet on Wednesday to get the ball rolling and to plan for future Homecamp events and meetups – both regular micro events and the not so regular bigger Homecamp events proper.

So Wednesday 20th January at the Windmill Pub in Epworth Street, London, UK.  3 or 4 minutes from Old Street Tube station (Northern Line) and free WIFI.  About 6.30 / 7pm till 8pm?  Ideas on this time please folks.

Here is a google map of the location

If you are thinking of coming along, please leave a comment on this blog.

January 16, 2010 at 3:20 pm yellowpark 16 comments

The Home Camp Christmas Party 17 Dec 09

With Christmas just around the corner, we decided to have a party for the HomeCamp community.  All hardware hackers and homecampers are welcome to come along.

Signup at Eventbrite

Where?

Held at the Horse and Groom pub, 28 Curtain Road, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3NZ

3pm – midnight

Nearest tube: Liverpool Street – Map

The Christmas Lights Hack Competition

We’re running a competition for the best Christmas lights hack.  So bring along your prototypes with a chance to win prizes from tinker.it and Current Cost.

Our Sponsors

The Home Camp Christmas Party sponsors are Redmonk, Rabbit MQ, Current Cost and Onzo.  We have a free bar until the budget runs out, so arrive early for free beer!

December 8, 2009 at 1:39 pm yellowpark Leave a comment

The week in news…

What with the UK government officially announcing their smart meter plans and Beijing having a (first?) smart grid conference, it’s been a busy week in the news for home energy monitoring. The main focuses have been on the costs of mass implementation, how much more the tech will innovate and the need to educate consumers for any degree of success.

• Living in the USA? Clean tech jobs and big investment are coming to a state near you.
• The government outlines their thinking on smart meters for every home by 2020 – includes £6m earmarked to help suppliers develop smart technology – not quite on the level of the US investment, but a start. The question most often raised is how smart are the government being in their introduction of smart tech? Notably…
• While I’m never a fan of the Daily Fail, it’s interesting to see what the backlash against smart meters is going to look like. Cost to the consumer is the major concern. Is the government’s reliance on competition between energy suppliers to drive down costs passed on to consumers enough?
• A nation of power stations? A fair proportion of energy production is going to go local over the next ten years. Smart meters should include a measurement of power fed back into the grid in order to maximise their usefulness.
• Why China is going to implement the smart grid quicker than India. A more in depth analysis of the Beijing smart grid conference can be found here – particularly interesting to hear the view of wind power as clean energy but dirty technology.
• This comment on a recent survey of US and Canadian consumers shows there’s agreement across the pond that the mass roll out of smart meters won’t work without accompanying consumer education. So how best to facilitate that?

December 6, 2009 at 4:58 pm ohrworm Leave a comment

Interesting things knocking about on the web this week…

• Ark Continuity’s new SQ17 server farm uses more than a third less energy than a typical data centre. If  the number of servers is expected to increase globally from 13m in 2008 to 122m by 2020, this is going to become ever more relevant.
• 26-36% of energy use is behavioural – The New Scientist takes a look at how technology can persuade people to change their ways or why home energy monitors should look like cats
• The giants of IT (Cisco, Google et al.) weigh in on the energy monitoring world and water monitors – the next step? Something for HomeCamp 3 perhaps?
• This is an interesting analysis of Microsoft Hohm Vs Google PowerMeter. Google has already put in place easier usability but Microsoft display more of an interest in encouraging behaviour change.
• and finally @mikethebee has set up a HomeCamp news section on Google for up to the minute info on what’s happening in home energy monitoring. Thanks Mike!

November 17, 2009 at 4:35 pm ohrworm Leave a comment

Home Camp 3 and other things…

Yes, Home Camp 3 – the rise of the monitoring devices – is upon us. It being part 3, we thought we’d take the not particularly logical step of having 3 options on dates - 21 Nov, 28 Nov, 5 Dec -  and we’d like to know which one suits all you lovely Home Camp folk the best.

Tweet your preference to @ohrworm, reply in the comments here or let us know on the Google Group. Whatever does it for you, just make sure you let us know if you want to come any play…

Interesting stuff on the web this week:

• Obama pledges $3.4 billion investment to galvanise the transition to a smart energy grid.
• Google PowerMeter arrives in the UK with a new utility partnership, first:utility, and a new device partnership, AlertMe. The AlertMe device looks nice and easy to use but does come with a sneaky £3/month subscription fee for hosting the data.
• An exciting new partnership between Fat Spaniel technologies and Tendril Networks will result in solar powered houses automatically managing electricity usage in response to the sun’s intensity.
• Sacramento Municipal Utility Department’s Communications Director, Elizabeth Brinton, envisages that the smart grid will enable utilities companies to offer tailor made customer packages to consumers.
• Over on the GreenMonk blog @tomraftery has got his energy chat hat on – check out his take on how utilities companies can use smart meters to generate alternative revenue streams. I’m betting the Spanish version would have involved many more exclamation marks!!!
• And if you haven’t already, check out @edent’s blog about his experiences setting up and using the HummEnergy Duet.
   

November 3, 2009 at 10:36 am ohrworm 2 comments

Home energy monitoring is a hit at BarCampLondon7

Thanks to @adamcohenrose for letting us upload his notes from the home energy monitoring talks at BarCampLondon7. Check out his blog here: http://adamcohenrose.blogspot.com/

Saturday, 24 October 2009 BarCampLondon7: Energy Efficiency & Usage Monitoring

Nigel Crawley

• digital meter — LED flashes fast or slow depending on how much electricity you use
• can pick that up with an arduino with wifi and then make available as EEML
• EEML (eeml.org) — XML for electricity cost
  • can humm output eeml?
• can then input into Pachube
• can then do visualization like this:
• lilypad arduino — can sew into clothes
  • can include a vibra-ball
• can recognise individual devices by whole home electricity usage
  • fridge, kettle, toaster, electric oven
• Tom Raftery — greenmonk.net
  • devices using too much electricity — an organisation will offer to replace it and tell you the savings
  • Camden, New Jersey: government offers subsidies on lower energy appliances
• visualisations:
  • one for schools that showed a polar bear running out of iceberg
  • DisplayLink have done a blog post on energy visualisation

Gbenga Kogbe

• the UK will run out of energy by 2014… we must save
• comparing with your neighbours
• mancini project — plug by plug usage
• there was some effort in the Zigbee standard — all appliances would publish their usage to a standard hub
• energyhive provided reduced price meters
  • research that came out showed that by the end of the trial, loads of meters were in the drawer and not used
  • several 1000 homes included in trial
• putting information online and sharing it is much more effective than a little meter in the corner
• in some places, there are dynamic tariffs
  • would like to tell dishwasher to wash when it’s cheap
  • not in the UK…
  • energy providers buy at realtime, but sell at flat rate
• Dale Lane: energy costs vary between 2p and £3 a unit!!
  • it’s in their interest to get us to use it at the right times
• base electricity is provided by nuclear power
• peak is provided by hydro
• DynamicDemand.co.uk: figure out national supply by checking frequency
  • brownouts caused by frequency going too low
  • looking at making fridges turn themselves off when the frequency is lower
  • if all fridges did this, then peaks would be made less
  • see also caniturniton.com
• in California they have battery farms (since the 80s)
• solar panels are less efficient in the heat…
  • they get powered by light, not heat
• bike generators:
  • bikes available for free — have generators
  • when they are parked, they provide their power for the local buses

October 28, 2009 at 8:05 pm ohrworm Leave a comment

Some interesting stuff knocking about on the web…

…from a week or so ago.

• Microsoft positions itself as the platform that can integrate smart energy tech with SERA.
• Germany takes a giant leap into the energy revolution with, among other grand plans, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology’s E-Energy scheme. Billed as “intelligent networking of energy generation, distribution and consumption”, 6 projects are being piloted which place the empowered consumer at the heart of the energy marketplace. You can check out the full E-Energy story here (PDF alert!).
• Google PowerMeter get the energy detectives on the case with the TED 5,000 partnership.  Thanks @divydovy for flagging that one up.
• The Guardian gets excited about a new smart meter from Intelligent Sustainable Energy. Any Oxford Home Campers had a sneak peek at this one?
• And it looks like the Home Camp concept has caught on over the pond. The premier conference eh? I guess that makes us the protopremier unconference.

October 27, 2009 at 11:46 pm ohrworm Leave a comment

Energy Camp 3 UK: The Autumn Edition

Me and Chris are getting the homecamp pitch. We have some evil plans afoot. How about October 24th?

September 18, 2009 at 1:33 pm monkchips 6 comments

The Patron Saint of Energy Geeks: A Guest Post

We all love IBM’s Andy Stanford Clark, the seed around which the HomeCamp community initially crystallised, so we’re very happy to have him posting here.

I gave a talk at HomeCamp’08, telling everyone about my home automation system, energy monitoring, and of course my electronic mousetraps. I thought it was time for an update. More recently I’ve linked my automated home up to Twitter, so I get an ambient, background, sense of what’s happening at home, and home much power we’re using.
Like for example, every five pounds worth of electricity each month I get a twitter message. When the phone rings, I get a direct message from twitter to my phone as an SMS, telling me who called, so I can decided whether to call them back.

This recently picked up quite a lot of media attention, and my house appeared on the BBC News – here’s Rory Cellan-Jones’ blog about it -  Things That Tweet and here’s the news piece that went out on BBC and a few other places round the world.

Richard MacManus recently wrote in ReadWriteWeb about the “Internet of Things“, the House that Twitters, and the IBM vision of a Smarter Planet, that is Instrumented, Interconnected and Intelligent. That’s what it’s all about, and that’s why HomeCamp, and the great community around it, are so important.

And of course, as we move outwards from the home, into the Smart energy grid, we have to work out how to integrate micro-generation capabilities – wind and solar at people’s houses, and manage the recharging of hybrid and electric vehicles. Having everything fitted with sensors, talking to the internet, and applying significant compute power to make sense of that sea of data, becomes increasingly essential to running the system efficiently. This is described in an article in the Guardian recently.

photo credit Benjamin Ellis.

September 18, 2009 at 1:32 pm monkchips Leave a comment

Adventures in Home Energy Monitoring or “How I Became the Energy Enforcer”

a guest post by homecamper and Quest Software guy Joe Baguley.

It all started one drunken night a few years ago with my neighbours in the garden (as do most life-changing events I’m assured). It appeared that they were all paying an awful lot less for their electricity than me which I found confusing as we lived in similar houses.

Electrisave

After some investigation I discovered the Electrisave (since rebranded as the OWL). £45 later and I had fitted the clamp ammeter to my main feed into the house and was going round the house switching things on and off to see how much they cost. Hours of endless fun, no seriously!

I quickly worked out that my house idled at about 3.4p/hr unless the fridge/freezer was cycling when it hit 5.5p/hr. This small nugget alone dramatically changed household behaviour. Everyone was trained that as we went to sleep, or before we left the house, to check the meter. If it was more than 5.5p/hr then something was on that shouldn’t be and was switched on. Already my bills started to drop by about £10-£15/month.

Then one night I am sitting by the TV, with the meter in front of me (I became sadly obsessed) when it jumped up by 30p/hr to my amazement, something that I thought only the fridge or kettle could do for me, but neither was on. Some investigative work led me to the immersion heater (no gas water heating) and further playing showed me that the cams were worn on the mechanical timer and the thing was never turning off. One new electronic timer later and my bill dropped by a further £30/month and suddenly I was paying less than my neighbours. They were now borrowing my meter to wonder around their homes discovering savings.

Within less than 2 months the unit paid for itself.

Wattson

Ever on the lookout for new gadgets I discovered Wattson and purchased one of their first devices. This did much the same as my Electrisave, but this time allowed me to capture and graph the data using their rather cumbersome app. Now I had usage graphs and could track trends, associating activities with expense. Now I was really starting to annoy my family.

I played with that for a long time, now further rewiring both my study and TV ‘complex’ to ensure that I could switch as much off as possible ‘at the wall’ when I could, leaving only ‘essential services’ powered on 24/7 (Sky+, Cable Modem, NAS drive etc.)

The only problem with the Wattson was that though it glowed pretty colours, the display would show you your ‘estimated bill for the year’ based on current usage, so the thing fluctuated from £350-£4000 as stuff went on and off, but was to abstracted from reality to be useful to drive behaviour with the family compared to the cost/hour of the previous solution.

I was however generally happy with the Wattson, but felt that I needed more info…

GEO

So, along came an Eco show at the Earl’s Court and the discovery of Green Energy Options and their home monitoring plans. They included not only monitoring to an individual device level, but were also looking at my other big and untrackable expense – gas.

So, I begged to get on their beta trial, even though I was well outside their trial area (East Anglia) and through some stroke of luck I was accepted.

I opted for the top of the line unit, the Trio+ at £250 (discounted for the trial) because that was the one that gave me detailed reporting to a device level and included gas.

So a couple of weeks later 2 chaps showed up in my house, placed clamp ammeters about everywhere possible in my consumer unit (fuse box) and installed individual appliance monitors on everything I thought appropriate in the house (washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, kettle, TV etc.)

The best piece of it all was that the data was all collected onto an EeePC running MySQL, Apache and their own Flash interface which is beautiful and well thought out. More importantly as it is a webserver I can view my house (and turn things on and off) from ‘anywhere’ after opening port 80 on my router and doing the redirect. Here are some sample screenshots:

The number of screens and ways you can view the data are fantastic.

The gas monitoring I am assured will be coming in the next couple of months, but for now the electricity detail is great. The fact it measures cost over time as opposed to one fixed point means you can learn a LOT:

• I now know my dishwasher costs 16p/cycle, compared to my washing machine at 7p, and that running it on the thermonuclear remove the spot-welded lasagne from the dish mode only takes it to 17p. Best suggestion I have had yet is to get all plastic plates and cutlery and wash them in the washing machine. Instead we don’t put the dishwasher on part-full anymore.
• My kettle was costing us near on 50p/week, whereas my new ‘on demand’ model costs us about 6p/week
• The oven is no longer left on for 30-40 mins to ‘warm up’, neither is the kettle left for 20 mins to ‘warm up’. These things get hot very quickly nowadays.
• Taking into account both the cost of food and energy used in cooking it, the chip shop is wallet friendly in some cases…
• My ‘little 3kW pool heater’ we use in the summer for our 10’ pool costs about £9/day to run – kids now cope with it a little colder than 33C…
• My 40” Sony LCD TV costs hardly anything to run (60-70p/week) – fabulous
• The over 1500W of GU10 spotlights downstairs are killing us, and we are trying to find acceptable either CFL or LED replacements, none found yet but some are on their way to me this week to try.
• Laptop power supplies left plugged in are a BAD thing.
• My wife hates it when I am travelling and phone her up to complain about the amount of TV she has been watching instead of doing the housework…
• My kids know that I can turn their TV off from anywhere in the world…

My next big step? – gas monitoring when they fit it. I will finally be able to answer the question this winter as to whether leaving the heating on all the time on a thermostat or turning it off at night and then reheating the house in the morning is best.

Footnote: What drove me to do all this was not only a fascination with tech, but more importantly a fascination with not wasting money. Not saving the planet – saving cash. In my experience cash beats morality every time…

September 18, 2009 at 12:45 pm monkchips 20 comments