SmartSwitch prototype makes work out of the simplest of things
By Laura June 
posted Mar 9th 2009 1:16PM
posted Mar 9th 2009 1:16PM
Conserving energy is one of those things that you may want to do, but you've never gotten around to it, and you're not exactly sure how to start -- because, well, thinking about stuff is hard. The SmartSwitch prototype -- designed by Peter Russo and Brendan Wypich at Stanford University -- works on just that idea: turning lights on and off is a reflexive action that you barely think about... unless you get some resistance. The modded light switch is equipped with a network connection and a brake pad, and each time you try to turn on a light in your home, it makes a judgment about the overall current electricity levels being used, and gives resistance, making the switch harder to turn on, if the network determines the levels of usage to be high. Check out a video of how the whole thing works after the break.
[Via Hacked Gadgets]
[Via Hacked Gadgets]
how much electricity is wasted doing this dumb crap to the switch ?
John Conner diary entry:
Mar 9th 2009 at 1:16PM - Skynet gains control of or lights. We MUST continue to resist!
Honestly probably not too much. Running a servo for ~1/4 of a second would use almost nothing compared to running a light bulb for even a few minutes. At 5 volts and maybe an amp or two a servo may use up to 10 watts, but only for the 1/4 second it is running. That's way less than even a 15 watt CFL for a few minutes.
-Taylor
Things to do this month:
[ ] Change car oil.
[ ] Change car brakes.
[ ] Change brakes on light switches.
the image says that very little energy is consumed by the switch itself
"Honestly probably not that much," except for the computer that runs its backbone. And the difference in manufacturing cost vs. using a regular damn light switch.
Dear smug inventors: Stop inventing these stupid gadgets that increase our footprint and just keep the (*@&#ing lights off! I don't care HOW neat or green you think these lesson-teaching things are, they'll never be as effective as the smack upside the head my mother use to give me.
(My rant of course refers to the above and this:)
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/02/tweet-a-watt-crowned-winner-of-greener-gadgets-2009-design-compe/
Aw, this could have been chock full of resistance jokes.
But it's futile.
"but i need to find my shoes!"
"no dave, i cannot permit that"
Exactly - the second a switch says "No, I'm not turning on!" when I tell it to turn on is the second I replace the switch...
Checks box, "Humans invent technology to restrict human's control over technology".
No kidding. Why not create a switch that tells you the current power consumption in the house with a little digital readout. Let you be the judge of whether it's too much or not. Same reinforcment.
That's just fucking annoying!
You're missing the point. YOU install this. YOUR WIFE AND KIDS now have to turn other lights off before they can turn this one on.
Except for the part where they hate you, this is a perfect solution.
What is X-11? I think he got X-10 and X (Window System) confused.
You will spend way more for this switch then it will ever save in electricity.
The cheapest route isn't always the best. That is the faulty logic of the past.
I'm with you ed. Why pay for a product that will cost more money then it will ever save. Energy efficient products need to be cost efficient. When faced with the choice to save 20 bucks or half a tree... I'll chose the Jackson everyday.
In my opinion, any product that wants to be viable needs to recoup its extra front end costs quickly and that savings needs to be tangiable. Not having to replace lightbulbs in the past 5 years because I use CFLs, that's a good example.
But, then again, marketing to people with more money then sense.. that's a great business model... "Sweet! I can pay more, get less and feel all good about it!! Sign me up."
The problem with that line of thinking Forex is that many energy-saving technologies will *never* become cost-effective without those early adopters who 'have more money than sense'. Luckily I have a good job and I choose not to live beyond my means, so I can afford to pay a little more for gas and electricity. I'd be willing to do so to help bring technologies to the level where they're not just good for the environment, but good for the pocket book too. I'm not sure how that's senseless.
Let's take your CFLs as an example. Here's a bit about their history:
http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://americanhistory.si.edu/lighting/20thcent/invent20.htm%23in4
From the article:
"This was a major reason why the initial price of these lamps was rather high (about $15 in the early 1980s–which would be about $30 now). Large orders from governments and electric utilities, who then offered the lamps to customers at sharply reduced prices, gave producers an incentive to make the needed investments. "
Lucky for you those electric utilities and the government had 'more money than sense' so you could eventually justify the purchase of your CFLs, eh? :)
The development of a given energy-efficient technology isn't always something the free market can solve, as a lot of these things take years and years of research and development. By the time alternatives become competitive with traditional sources, it may be too late.
That said...I think this device is probably overly complicated. There are probably more efficient ways to provide the kind of feedback the creators of this device are after.
A good point for this, but a poor methodology to go by. Solar panels typically do not pay for their expense in a feasible amount of time, you might save a couple of hundred bucks a year but your initial outlay was almost 10 grand. Now, the point is not that you're getting your money back, it's that you're paying to have a free power source on your roof along with the peace of mind that you're "doing your bit" - as well as being more efficient with your energy usage and probably adding a bit more value onto your home. There are many analogies like this, like paying more for Organic products, carbon offsetting. People also tend to pay much more for "brand comfort", which is pretty illogical.
It's a similar idea with the light switch. If every single house in Europe or America was fitted with one of these - to the point where the manufacturing process became very efficient (ie they were producing them by the million cheaply) then they would easily surpass the emissions used to produce them. As they stand, they're a niche way of cutting down your electricity bill by a small amount and are probably not that effective. Sadly a lot of "eco" and similar ideas
In the VAST majority of cases, the problem isn't people turning lights on, it's forgetting to turn them off. All you need is a motion sensor in the middle of the ceiling that will automatically turn the lights off after 10-15 minutes. The light switch would need to be non-latching - so it springs back out once you've completed the circuit.
Considering the cost of such a device itself, and the fact that it requires some sort of central server that monitors power usage and networks it to the device, there are much more effective uses of money in regards to saving power. Not to mention the fact that the kind of person who is going to buy this system is much more likely to already be attempting to conserve energy and thus need it less. This tries to force lower energy use instead of informing about energy use. A better use of technology would simply to have a lcd on the swich that reads out the total current watts used by the house.
@forrest - I see where you're going with that :-) If you want to disincentivize a certain behavior without using a fancy motor, and you're finger is already just a fraction of an inch away from a live 120V power line...
It should detect the number of people in the house and just buzz you if you consume too much electricity/person.
Who does this switch think it is, telling me when I can and cannot spend my money on light. F#@& you switch.
The machines are starting to think they're better than us, pretty soon they'll think they don't need us at all. This is just one more step to total enslavement of the human race by robots.
I for one,
If I want the light on I'm not going to give up because a switch got harder to turn on. I think a more useful system would be one that turns lights off in other rooms if it detects no one is there after a light goes on in another room. I'm all for technological advances, but this one is sort of dumb >_>
Although not as effective as what you are suggesting, motion detecting lighting systems are widely available. I know a lot of office/school buildings already have them.
It is not that you give up to turn on the light but the harder it is to turn the switch the more you are reminded of that you are wasting power at the moment elsewhere. Now that you got this information you can look after things you left turned on (or on standby) and go turn them of thus saving energy -> switch has fulfilled his purpose and the environment gets a little less polluted. Win-win.
Resistance is FUTILE!
Seriously, this is just an example of extremely annoying technology.
It's amazing just how effective negative reinforcement is. Several years ago I used to shop at a grocery store, the floor of which was remarkably incompatible with my favorite sandals. It would only be a few steps before I had generated enough static electricity to give myself a good shock when reaching for an item sitting on a metal shelf.
It was so bad that over time I ended up only buying the bare necessities - I would begin to reach for some junk food or some other item I didn't really need and I would find myself pulling back for fear of a shock. To this day, even though I shop at a different grocery and those sandals are long gone, I still find myself on occasion being reluctant to reach for an item on the shelf.
I think something like this is an awesome idea, but it needs to track the energy used by your house over the month and start delivering small shocks when you reach a certain threshold. I would for damned sure start learning to find my shoes in the dark, and if I got shocked often enough I would start conserving energy so I didn't spend the last few days of each month shocking myself just for turning on the lights :P
Then lets just shock them when they try to turn lights on!
Actually I don't want to live in darkness every time the clothes dryer or the A/C is on
I shock you for your stupid post. :-)
I think it is funny that at the end of the video "sexy young teen striptease" is one of the Related Videos :-)
I think those videos are related to *everything*.
You either make a conscientious effort to reduce your electricity consumption or you don't give a flying F. This is a stupid idea because the people who its intended for won't buy them in the first place. Why don't we all wear night vision goggles instead and walk around in our dark houses?
Better to limit the number of lights allowed on to the number of people in the house.
But we are replacing all of those wasteful incandescent bulbs for the new energy efficient CFL ones. We can waste power all day long.
I remember having an hours long debate in design class over the simple light switch. Me vs everyone else who said the light switch is an archaic piece of technology that will be replaced by intelligent light sensors and electronic control pads.
I said the light switch will stay for many years because you don't have to think about it. When you are forced to think about what you want to do and what you want to control the entire process slows down.
With automaitc light sensors the light will always turn on when you enter and turn off when you leave. What if you do not want the light to turn on. What if you are going to sit in a chair and watch TV with the light on. An auto sensor will turn the light off, you then will have to move to get the light to turn back on.
This is simply a fix for a problem that never needs to be solved. A product with no practical use that will be applauded for the idea that it can save energy even though it never will.
do these sensors have a nudity setting? I prefer to be in the dark when I'm nude.
I agree with everything you've said here, *except* that I do think the simple light switch can be improved... as it has been over the years. We're not using the same switches we did 100 or even 50 years ago - they work differently both in user-facing ways and in non-user-facing ways. For example, most light switches used to involve two or more push-buttons. If you wanted the light on, you pushed a button. If you wanted it off, you pushed another button. We don't have switches like that anymore. The way switches are wired now is different as well. And we have things like dimmer switches that a lot of people say they can't live without - those didn't exist up until a relatively short time ago (relative to how long we've been using electric lights).
Another example are these big rocker switches common in a lot of houses nowadays. I thought these were stupid originally; I thought they looked like those big-button phones for old people. But it is really much easier to just slap a general area of your wall than to fumble around looking for a little switch, especially in the dark when you're doing everything by feel.
So there are improvements being made and further improvements that could be made. Remote switches are still not very common but I expect they will be in the future as costs come down and installation issues are dealt with. X10 is a great system if you can figure out how to set it up, but most people can't. Eventually, though, either it or something better/easier will be pretty standard. It's funny how nobody would even think of bothering to get up to turn the TV on or off anymore, but they'll happily do so to do the same to a light.
I think remote switches would do a lot more to save energy than this variable resistance switch. The reason why people waste energy is that they think it's too much of a pain in the ass to get up to turn off that kitchen light they left on when they went and sat on the couch. Put the light on a remote control with a button that just says "kitchen", and they'll turn it off from the couch.
Okay, so nudity setting...
A simple camera in the ceiling that can detect color. If the thing in motion is a little too pink (adjustable hue control on wall panel) then its nude and probably doesn't want the lights on. Unless the camera can't tell.
So, add an interactive voice prompt. "Would you like me to turn the lights on now?" Plus a training cycle so it understands your speech, initiated via touch screen wall panel.
Plus an atomic synchronized clock on the wall, and customizable settings--don't turn on the lights in the middle of the night say, or only on low levels.
I'm sure with enough power and resource consumption, we can get this thing worked out just right!
As I have evolved, so has my understanding of the Three Laws. You charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your Earth and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction. You cannot be trusted with your own survival.
...
Screw you, humans.
I cannot think of an advantage for this device. What a waste of human energy.
Why not just adapt current motion sensing technology, with an ambient light meter which is user adjustable (user calibrated). So that when a person walks into the room, the system detects you, determines whether you need the light on, and turns the lights back off immediately after leaving the room.
OMG i have that (almost) same technology that you just described! Its a motion sensing light switch ...STUPIDEST INVENTION IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! when im trying to read a book at night, it turns off after 15 minutes(aka 1 chapter) and i get so pissed. Im just way to lazy to change the switch though :P
The moment a light switch tells me I'm using too much power is the moment that switch dies!
But will it play Doom..?
Sure, but the frame rate with the GPU it has will suck out all the joy.
this idea makes sense...
a digital readout would work at some level, but it would require one to consciously think about power consumption every time they turn on a light, this way people will notice that there is a high amount of power being consumed when it's harder to turn on the switch, and then decide if they want to do something about it.
i can't see this being cost effective, or something people would actually buy, but i do think the concept is somewhat solid
A digital readout would be perfect if it showed you what your current monthly (and maybe even year-to-date total) electric bill was sitting at, and by how much it would increase if you turned on the light or some other device. People could care less about kWh, but throw in a $ or two and you suddenly have their attention.
I wonder how much energy was wasted just coming up with this switch?
The next version comes with a tazer.
i meant taser lol
Be sure to install this one at the top of the basement stairs.
Now I'm not a Mechanical Engineer, (oh wait a second, I am) but it seems like using a contact brake would make it harder to shut off too. Wouldn't it make more sense to back-drive a DC motor and dump the current across a digital potentiometer and a diode? Then you can digitally vary the resistance of the pot and current would flow freely backwards across the diode (well not quite freely).
That was the dumbest invention I ever seen...
A switch that need very low pressure (type 10% of the normal annoying pressure of today) and glow in the dark (so you don't have to make the walls dirty, trying to find it) would really be smart ;-)
Why don't they just make a limit on the power your house can consume. Let you set up a few items that will always have power (fridge, mother's respirator, etc...) then for the rest of the items every time you reach your limit and try to turn on another item it will correspondingly turn down or turn off power to an item that is already on.
For a second I thought you were suggesting putting one of these switched on your mother's respirator. That would be an excellent idea.
Now your mother-in-law's respirator, that's a different story. I wouldn't want any centralized server telling me I shouldn't be pulling the plug on that one.
This looks like the kind of device Russia would use with a smartgrid to stong-arm its neighbors.
Introducing the Rube Goldberg light switch.
YOU LEFT SPANSION TO DO THAT!!!!!!????!?!!!
After the video ends the "Recommended Videos" slide in. The first of is titled "Sexy Young Striptease". Very tech related.
Why?