It's pretty much set in silicon -- in the future,
you will monitor your home power consumption, and perhaps even enjoy doing so. Futuristic
touchscreen panels and free
monitoring software abound, each designed to reward you with a warm, fuzzy Captain Planet feeling and a reduced energy bill when you finally turn off that blasted light. Thing is, unless you've got a
home automation system, you won't know which switch to flip. Intel wants to change that with a new wireless sensor that can identify each individual appliance in your house by their unique electrical signal, just by plugging into a single outlet in your house. The reportedly low-cost sensor works by simply recognizing voltage drop patterns when devices are turned on and off, and doesn't require special appliances to function; Intel demonstrated it on a standard toaster, microwave and fridge in Beijing this week. Demonstrate your supreme demand for this "why didn't I think of that" idea by directing traffic to our source link -- you can jump to 20:10 to see the sensor in action.
Update: Come to think of it, that looks just like a wireless version of
Marvell's SheevaPlug.
posted April 15th 2010 8:27AM
More of these power moniters
@Misunderstood 90s Kid Really? I wasn't sure what this was.
@Misunderstood 90s Kid
It looks like your average wall wart with an antenna to me.
If only there where some kind of eletrical conductor nearby, then we could send data over wires insted of needing antennas at all of our outlets.
@Misunderstood 90s Kid
http://abstract.cs.washington.edu/~shwetak/
This has and was already done by researchers at UW. Intel probably collaborated with them to build the commercial product. If you read into it, this research is an excellent application of simple principles.
@Misunderstood 90s Kid. You underestimate the power of this power consumption sensor
@caryjanderson
Yup you are correct except this was Shwetak Patel's PhD dissertation while he was a Georgia Tech (so it is probably licensed from Gatech and not UW). But Patel is now a UW professor and collaborates with Intel Research Seattle - BTW UW has done research in measuring water usage from a single point so if you see Intel using that then you know it was UW :-)
@caryjanderson @naashak
You folks are correct. We have been doing this for 3 years now, but no we do not collaborate with Intel on this.
We have progressed our sensing technology quite a bit. We will soon post our new research and videos. Stay tuned, it will be exciting :)
@sidhantgupta
Always good to have your stuff featured on Engadget :-)
@Lord Vader
Are you sure you are not overestimating its power
@JoeRodricks You dont need one at each outlet, it reads the power levels of your entire power system in house from one unit, where ever it is located. If im reading that correctly.
Here comes the future, That product is huge and ugly though...needs a better looking design.
@abedinthehouse
Hey, at least the top outlet is not covered!
@abedinthehouse plug it in an outlet in the basement? And imo its not bigger than most power supplys..
The design really doesn't matter to me.
@Kaboof
Exactly, you just plug it in somewhere you dont see it.. it's wireless for a reason.
What happens if I turn off this swi
@Oli D
you make a lame joke apparently
An intermediate solution. In the future, a better approach would be to integrate this into the house's central panel where it can detect each appliance/device by a waveform identifier the appliance/device sends out every so often. Today's dumb wiring systems are OK for mere distribution of power, but very much in need of a makeover seeing as how they haven't changed much in about 100 years.
Am I the only one who saw this and thought it was just a Pogoplug with the label removed??
Measuring power usage of normal devices will be a lot harder than measuring usage of these high-draw devices they tested with.
The lights in the kitchen used to dim when the microwave went on, it doesn't dim when I turn on the hand mixer.
"Intel's experimental sensor analyzes appliance power consumption from single outlet" Fail!!!
Power is the rate at which energy is "consumed" with respect to time. so power cant be consumed. energy is.
in fact, the picture says "Compute Detailed Home (Energy) Consumption from Only One or Two Sensors"
@telder
What is your point ?.. I think most people understood what the device was doing.
@telder just so you know, the word 'power' is loosely used to describe quantity of electricity these days. Yes, it's being abused, but the general populous accepts it as it stands, so take your high-school physics class nonsense somewhere else.
looks like they're basing it off of a sheevaplug (plugcomputer) development kit. (http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-22-sheevaplug-dev-kit-us.aspx)
i wonder what they've added other than a wireless sensor. i have one of the sheevaplugs and i wouldnt mind running this code
@hypn0toad
Does that mean Intel are using ARM processors ?.
I think the additional hardware to do the measurements is probably not that complicated (The software probably is). Throw in a zigbee transmitter and you're done!
This device is ingenious, to the point that it sounds too good to be true!
Does anybody else think it's funny that they're using a plug computer for this (or at least the mock up). You'd think they'd use something that at least uses an intel chip...
That's really cool. I'm excited for the day when we all have better insight into how much power our devices use, and we have real-time readouts of current electricity rates. Shifting demand off-peak will help optimize our use of the infrastructure.
So basically they use the same technology that's found in CPUs (measuring signals by unique clock signature) to measure specific devices and the quantity of electricity used? This IS one of those 'why didn't i think of that' type of ordeals.
I thought power plants kick out a certain amount of power no matter what you do, so if you do not use it, its wasted...
This is like broadband throttling for electricity, make you feel bad and cut down so they do not have to invest in upgrades when they hit the ceiling.
@xanavi electricity producers & consumers have to be matched; that power has to go somewhere. So there are base load, and peaker plants. But no, it's not like the power is there whether you use it or not. While turning on your Wii may not send the utility company scrambling, in the aggregate, yes, they react changes in usage.
stupid...
just get all the people who keep their home theaters, PS3s, 360s on 24 hours a day, or keep their AC at 72 when they are out of the house to do the right thing.