Hey New Yorkers, did you get a chance to check out last week's
Greener Gadgets conference? If not, you missed out on some killer eco gadgetry and discussion, including a panel on electronics recycling from our own Editor-in-chief, Joshua Topolsky. As the dust settled on the main event, the
design competition, Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone's Tweet-a-watt walked away with top honors. The service, which automatically updates Twitter with your power usage, beat out a coin-operated electrical piggy bank dubbed the Power Hog, a decidedly un-electronic indoor drying rack, and a hand-powered portable laundry machine, the Laundry Pod. Congratulations to all who won and participant; hit up the read link for a full list of the finalists.
[Via
MAKE]
posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:03PM
Hell yeah, Joshtops! Way to be
and since Joshtops is talking about electronics recycling, anyone in the Philadelphia region who needs such a service just visit www.eleminc.com !
that sort of piggy bank is cool, does it automatically generate money!!! lol
Seriously? An energy monitor that expends energy to tweet your usage to the net? Why not just look right on the device? Is there a market of people concerned that their house is maliciously choosing to spend unauthorized energy while they're at work?
Yes the rich and incredibly stupid. It's a status symbol. It's so you can tweet to your friends at how much greener you are than them, while at the same time wasting more energy than them.
I said to myself, "someone will make the asinine 'contrarian' point that this uses energy, so these people are hypocrites, etc." And I was right. Look, the assumption is that these devices will be more important for enforcing awareness and inviting social correction for energy consumption than the (tiny, assuming regular Internet usage anyway) increase in power expended by the Tweets. You might disagree. But I just find the knee-jerk "someone is trying to be conscious of energy usage, I have to find a way to deride them" thing so tiring and predictable.
@Freddie:
Oh look - the inventor!
The point is not to be 'that guy' or deride your brilliant invention, or your friend's invention, or whatever. The point is that the very nature of the device undermines its purpose (ever heard of the Law of Noncontradiction?). If the device makes you more aware of your energy usage so you can change your habits, then fine. But posting it on the internet for people who (a) don't care or (b) can't react to the information and change your energy usage on behalf of your wasteful self even if they wanted to - meanwhile using a LOT of energy in the process, is perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
By the way, I actually own energy monitors to help control my usage, so no I'm not against conservation.
hiya - i am one of the co-developers, i’ll explain what it does and why we did it.
1. we choose twitter to explain in one sentence what it does “twitter your power usage” - people immediately know that it’s an internet connected power meter and the data is published, the smart folks know it’s using the API and as they read the article and source code - it uses google app engine and can publish to anything.
if you’re going to reduce, you need to measure - that’s what this does.
2. we released this project to the public domain so no one could patent the idea - in the next few years you’ll see almost “everything” report its usage. we wanted to put this out there so others can take our work and run with it.
3. we did win the design competition, but take a look at the other entries, we made a real device that works and others are making these and also making businesses around the idea already - we also donated the prize money to “engineers without borders”.
4. the power meters don’t suck power out in any significant way and you don’t even need a “base computer” to use all these - we used a modded router, so overall if we use these to just reduce a tiny amount of power (we have) it’s worth it for “years”.
Many electric companies have tool lending libraries with Wattage meters that are far more powerful than even your twittering Kill-a-Watt. Some even stipulate that you must use the tools to lower your energy usage if you want to borrow them. Some have free classes on not only how to use these tools but also how to apply their results to your particular situation.
AAARGH f****ing stupid planet. How can a device that saves ABSOLUTELY no energy, rather yet, expends more of it, win the Greener Gadget 2009?! WTH is wrong with those people?
Out of all the concepts and ideas that were to be discussed at this conference I cant believe this thing won..... Even if this thing wasnt just a concept and was actually tangibly there the rack dryer was way more innovative as far as real world usage and impact (even if it looks like something Ikea had put out).
Sounds like the "inventors" were under the judges table really "presenting" their product...
@Freddie: As Jim said, the concept is fundamentally flawed in its self-contradiction. Cynical judgements aside, that's a hard fact to not notice. There are smarter, more responsible ways to monitor energy use and spread awareness.
I want all my friends to know that I use the MOST energy.
F.U. Environment!
Seriously,
All of my friends would know when I'm torrenting... which is all the time. Not to mention that I'm all in favor of ghosting power usage.
-TC
I always wanted a device that takes my daily power usage and plops it right onto the web for all my friends to view.
Just the other day I thought about this girl from school that I used to be into, but never really did anything about. I figured that the next best thing would be look up how much power she utilizes day to day.
Great Invention A++++++
Gold!
vagina
Then this product is just for you.. wouldn't the shortened name for the "Tweet-a-Watt" be Twa... oh never mind
Sweet. Now me and all my twitter followers can have competitions to see who can consume the most power in a given amount of time.
Tweet-a-watt?
So how much will one of these twats run?
You KNOW they wanted to call it twatt.
@jim great to hear you also have a power monitoring system. we use twitter because its a very simple messaging system. by having daily messages, im reminded as to what my power usage is. if i had to check the devices (some of which are behind desks, in other rooms etc) all the time, i wouldnt learn about long term trends & would eventually forget to check them all
a lot of people seem to be really obsessed with the twitter part, when that was 5% of the project. the 95% part was wireless monitoring, database storage and long term trends graphing
but, its easier to snark than to spend some time understanding the project, i suppose :(
@ PT, LadyAda,
I suppose that my objection is in the presentation of the device. Obviously, I think personal energy monitoring is a great thing, and it's high time that there is capability to transmit the data to an information system for the purposes of tracking, trending, analysis, etc. On these points, much kudos.
However, it's the presentation of the device as "cool" because it can TW33TZ UR NRGIES 2 UR P33PS!!! - that crawls all over me. It tries to take advantage of something that all the kiddies and Congressmen are "doing these days" by use of a marketing mechanism that just happens to undermines its very purpose.
Again, to put my entire opinion in context: I like the product and what it does as far as allowing remote tracking/trending that can result in meaningful impacts to personal energy usage, I just don't like the "hip" oxymoronic marketing. Keep on truckin'.
Hah, for years there's been promise (never delivered) of a kill-a-watt with serial output - nice to see someone get the data out with just a handful of SparkFun parts and some code :-) And it looks like you still have use of the display and averaging features of the original units. (Using this on A/C and heaters, and graphing the data alongside a temperature logger would be Interesting... hook the receiver to a SheevaPlug and you'd have a *very* low-profile whole-house EKG...)
Good ideas, check out http://www.biggreensmile.com/ for more energy saving items
It is sad to see how something so simple can bring out the most negative crap.
If read and think for a simple second you could see the value of this device. While I do not use twitter, I can see where this is going. Just as the co-creator says, you have to measure before you can reduce and that the logical progression of this greener fad is to have everything reporting it usage.
Right now my electric company is providing a "free" digital thermostat for the house. The only hook is that they retain the right to adjust your thermostat for you during peak usage and to keep you in line with the recommended usage standards. Sounds to me like they are already doing, on a small limited scale, what this twitt-a-watt is doing.
Is it just me or is Engadget going the opposite way of its audience with this green bullsh*t?
Oh THERE it is! ..."a panel on electronics recycling from our own Editor-in-chief, Joshua Topolsky." So JoshTops is the one who replaced my Joystiq Xbox link with Autoblog Green. Pathetic.
Nobody gives two shites about your silly green agenda. Go peddle it down on Haight and Ashbury, commies.
next you'll see "my son's pc has a 2 watt TDP proc" bumper sticker. as much as i like the idea of remotely monitoring power consumption, it's just gonna become the new "in" thing for "sensitive" college kids to brag about, along with how many deathcab albums they have
How many of you wait for hot water to arrive at sinks and showers? That waiting is spent with lights on, yes? Quicker hot water reduces on-time of lights. RedyTemp is greenest when used in the single-cycle on demand hot water readiness. Using a wireless sensor that a user waves their hand in front of makes a pump rush hot water to the user. Less hot water waiting = less water down the drain, less energy wasted with lights on, more time for users to spend doing what they want instead of waiting. Pump energy is less than $0.64 cents per month per kill-O-watt data.