Because it’s also coming with a service that can hopefully detect what devices are on based on the current consumption. Interestingly, that sounds like they plan on open sourcing it as well.
I backed it so when it actually ships, I can report back if anybody is interested.
Please do ... currently I have worked on the [b]Automation[/b] phase in my house.
Next I want to work on the [b]Monitor[/b] phase and I like the Wifi Interface to power monitoring.
agree, i have seen this on other places already, it looks promising … but its not super clear what else on hardware is required in order to get it Metering properly.
there are allready a lot of z-wave devices that have built-in energymeasuring. and there is this plugin for energymeasuring and react on changes. what benefit does this system have over that ?
The only other whole home sensing device I know of is the Aeon Labs one. Hardware wise, I expect it should be pretty similar to that. The more interesting thing to me about this project is the software that goes with it, which claims to detect what’s on in the house by their power usage. I expect it to not be perfect, and I expect it will be better at detecting large appliances than small things like single lights.
To me, this feels like it could be a cost effective and generic way to sense some events from my AC, washer, dishwasher, fridge and dryer, but we will see.
mmm really… i wonder how it’s going to detect my power-saving stuff in the house. the pc has powersaving and wattage measured in the range of 60-495 Watts… samsung tv that uses 32-90 Watts… cofffeemachine 2-1512 Watts… washingmachine 5-1400 Watts… yamaha stereo 3-1258 Watts… switched powersupplies for phone etc… etc… all measured with a real powermeter (fluke proffesional series) i seriously doubt this product can distinguise all this and tell me exacltly what is ON and what is in powersaving mode
I know that for example www.bidgely.com also is able to “recognize” devices, e.g. an refrigerator seems to have a kind of a pattern of using power. I am not sure how accurate this is.
I have been using Bidgley with a Rainforest Eagle for about 6 months.
It does not really recognise the appliance but the user setup his account with the appliance list. However, they do a lot of research and appliance monitoring to establish usage patterns and their estimate against our house have been pretty close to date.
Same here. If you have a zigbee-based smart electric meter from your utility (like a lot of folks in CA and TX), this combo works great and the VERA plug-in for the Rainforest Eagle works without a hitch…
Bidgley stores your usage data nicely in the cloud, but at least for me, I still have a lot (35-40%) of “Other” usage where it can’t ID what is using the electricity…
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