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Why Intel Wants To Network Your Clothes Dryer
An anonymous reader writes "Intel has shown off a working prototype of a small box that, among other things, can monitor your clothes dryer to see how much it's contributing to your power bill. The Intelligent Home Energy Management proof-of-concept device is a small box with an 11.56-inch OLED touchscreen that is designed to act as an electronic dashboard for monitoring energy use in the home. By equipping devices like home entertainment systems and clothes dryers with wireless networked power adapters, the system can actually report back the power draw for a particular power point. Leave the house, and it can make sure power-draining devices like that plasma TV are turned off. It is unlikely the device will enter production (there are apparently only four in existence), however this story about the box shows something we can expect to see in the home of tomorrow. Ultimately, it's not only about saving money, but also reducing load on the electricity grid by removing needless power use."
They want to see your underwear, that's why.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
These will only become common if the government mandates it. I do not believe that the average end user will get enough benefit out of a device like this for them to be interested in putting the effort and money out to deploy and use these.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This'll be a great idea if it can be built so cheaply that the money I save from using it is greater than the money I'd save by not buying it.
Not sure I see that happening all that soon.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
...they come up with a way to detect that monster that keeps eating my fucking socks. I'm sick and tired of wearing mismatching socks! DAMMIT, FIND THAT BASTARD!!!
Living With a Nerd
You could do that with a sticker right now. Do you need a sticker?
Assume for a second that they are going to start selling these systems tomorrow. What would their cost be? $100? $300? $500?
Now, how much would you stand to save per year in reduced energy use from a device like this monitoring and potentially powering off unused devices? $50? $100?
I'm already pretty good at keeping things off when I'm not using them so I'm skeptical that a device like this is going to save me any money after you figure in the cost of the device and the ironic cost of powering the device.
In theory a device like this sounds good but the very people who are worried about their energy use (and would purchase a device like this) are probably the people who least need it.
I don't see the appeal. It looks like it's over-engineering a solution to something that can be done with common sense.
Then again, I love tech and gadgets and I guess most of that is an over-engineered solution to something or another.
The only reason I would care about this is if I realized I left something *dangerous* on before I left for work and could turn it off remotely. I don't use a curling iron, but I know for some that would be a big deal. A stove / oven / toaster oven / etc would be dangerous as well, and while I never left one on before leaving the house I know that's a concern for some. Though I imagine only electric stoves and ovens would apply unless there was a way to electronically turn off the gas reliably.
As for the power draw, I would just care enough about it to know in the beginning "how much does X" use via one of those little gadgets you can temporarily plug between the device and outlet. Then decide for myself if I should monitor how much I use device X.
Personally, I'm in the mind-set of "turn if off when not in use."
- Not watching or listening to the TV, turn it off.
- Not in that room across the house, turn off the main light.
I shouldn't need a device to remind me.
So the Government (or the egacorporation acting on the govt's behalf) can turn off your appliance, and only let you use it during certain predetermined times. i.e. Rationing of electricity usage.
Yeah I know..... you think I'm a nutter for saying that, but then again I've studied government history. If they CAN do a thing, they will do that thing. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I've been waiting for all the foreboding 1984-esque posts here but so far not too many. Frankly I'm glad to see some optimism here for this. People fail to realize how the whole system works. It's not like a battery that gives instant power at a certain capacity. The power companies have to be able to predict usage to a fairly accurate degree. To the best of my knowledge any power produced above what is needed isn't stored anywhere and thus is wasted. If we could optimize the grid in a way that made it more predictable and easier to lower the load on then there'd be less overall waste.
I know a way we could save at least 15% of energy usage in the USA right now:
mandate that all appliances (DVD players, TV's, etc) had an actual, PHYSICAL POWER SWITCH rather than being electrical vampires.
There's no reason every fucking device on the planet has to have a goddamn clock, and much less that it needs to eat more than 2 watts 24/7 just to wait for a power-on signal from some lazy fatass who can't stand up and walk 8 feet from the couch to turn it on.
ZigBee, which, as the article states is the key to this system, is a protocol that runs over a wireless mesh network. I use XNet ZB modules for my tinkering.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I work in the AMI/ Smart Grid field and I am just finishing up a study on HAN devices for a municipality. This is the way to go, with a ZigBee enabled device to communicate with power monitoring adapters that all of your electrical loads plug into. If it also supported an internet LAN connection back up to the utility AMI MMS (meter management system) it could incorporate the latest billing rate information and any data collected from the AMI meter outside the house.
There are some solutions out there that are closed-proprietary but I believe that a standards-based solution is the right way to go. HAN needs to get to the point where you can go into your local home improvement store and buy devices that can associate to a central device. Right now the price-point is too high at around $100 a device and it can cost $300-$400 to equip a home with a IHD (in home dislay), programmable thermostat and a communications gateway.
I hope that Intel can apply pressure to the marketplace so this technology can become ubiquitous.
Tisha Hayes
much less that it needs to eat more than 2 watts 24/7 just to wait for a power-on signal from some lazy fatass who can't stand up and walk 8 feet from the couch to turn it on.
That can be achieved with less than 0.1W. It's close enough to 0 for me. Mandate that instead of mandating physical switches.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Here in the UK we're seeing a lot of devices that you place around the incoming electricity feed (via a loop you put around the cable) that has a wireless transmitter to a LCD display of current overall power usage (and some historical stats). They're quite cool, some can be connected to your PC, like the CurrentCost Envi. The idea is you can see how much power those hungry devices use as you see the meter spike up when you turn them on.
The government has set a policy for monitoring meters, and the electricity companies (and Sky TV for some reason) are offering subsidised units (I got mine cheap off ebay from someone who had one of these).
You can get these things in the US and Australia/NZ too, and even Google is getting involved as these things will upload to Google Powermeter.
So, adding a wireless usage transmitter to every plug sounds expensive (but cool) but it wouldn't provide that much more information than you can get currently. However, the CurrentCost devices talk to each other (and you can set up multiple meters) so if their comms protocol was a standard (it might be, they advertise it as C2), then additional transmitters could fit into an existing power-usage network without fuss.
and Google collect its MAC.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The "vampire power" thing is a bit overrated, actually. It's worth having standards for new appliances limiting their offline current draw, but the amount of energy savings to be had doesn't come anywhere near 15% of our electricity use. Not even close. Home electronics themselves only use 7ish percent of our total electricity. See here
To the GP: yes that's the idea of the smart grid.
And in general it is pretty pathetic that Zigbee or X25 or even out-of-band ethernet or RS232 power strips and power meters continue to be products that are only sold at a premium to professional IT/ISP departments or home automation boutiques. The meters and the power switches themselves are all dirt cheap, and the network interfaces are also really cheap to add. I mean, look at the price of 5-port ethernet switches and tr to tell yourself adding a port or radio to a deivice like this is going to be "prohibitively expensive". It just does not make sense.
But these have always been products that cannot sell on the shelf at Home Depot. The best you can get is a dedicated lightswitch/lamp pair that uses a proprietary "protocol." As sad as that is, it's "progress" compared to several years ago when even that was not available.
Anyway, I suppose I'm going to have to watch a slow motion trainwreck of companies trying to proprietizesmart grid initiatives in the coming decades. Sigh.
Someone had to do it.
I seem to get extra socks out of my dryer. They must be yours. Gimme your address and I'll send them to you.
Sure, it sounds good to be able to monitor...however, I'm afraid that it might become mandated that everyone would have to have a monitoring device, and the govt gets to tell you when you can do what, and what temp your house can be, etc.
With the feds (and some states) poking their noses into private citizens' lives more and more...I see this as one more thing coming. Hell, sounds like one hell of a rider to attach to the cap and trade bills going through right now.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
mandate that all appliances (DVD players, TV's, etc) had an actual, PHYSICAL POWER SWITCH rather than being electrical vampires [sciencedaily.com].
There's no reason every fucking device on the planet has to have a goddamn clock, and much less that it needs to eat more than 2 watts 24/7 just to wait for a power-on signal from some lazy fatass who can't stand up and walk 8 feet from the couch to turn it on.
Horse shit horse shit horse shit horse shit.
Buy a Kill-A-Watt
Measure the actual power consumption of your devices in standby mode
Find that they're all immeasurably close to 0
I have a wide variety of chargers, adapters, power strips, surge protectors, AV gear, gaming systems, etc. None of them draw so much as a single watt of power when in standby mode.
The claims that I need to buy a smart power strip to shut off my array of chargers, or that governments need to mandate that devices come with GREEN FEATURE #246187 is utter horse shit.
You claim at least 15%.
Show me the fucking numbers, measured from appliances in your house. I've measured my shit, and I know these claims are lies.
You want to ACTUALLY conserve energy use?
Fix your insulation. The vast majority of homes in the US and the world have shitty, shitty insulation.
Beyond that, yes, I want every device to have a physical power switch. Why? Because I like having physical control over my shit.
The "vampire power" thing is a bit overrated, actually.
No, it isn't.
Switching power supplies, like good quality cell phone chargers and laptop power supplies generally use almost no power when they're not under load. At least, the ones in my house don't. I know this because...
I installed a Brultech ECM-1240 on my house's breaker panel. It has current taps around the main feed, and several other house circuits, like the kitchen outlets, furnace (which also works as my a/c blower in the summer), etc. It sends the data over IP to a low power PC (6W, thanks to a low power CPU and SSD) which stores it in a database and generates graphs you can view in a web browser (unfortunately using a Flash applet).
The software was, to put it mildly, complicated to set up. Seriously. It's not quite a finished product, and it has a few gotchas that prevent it from working until you figure out the mindset of the person who hacked it together. Once it's working, it's pretty neat though.
So, what did I find?
The powered subwoofer in the living room uses 10W when it's in "Standby" mode. It's now wired to a relay connected to my receiver's switched outlet, so it's never on unless the receiver is also on.
The PS3 wakes itself up at all times of the night - oh, you think it's off, but it's nowhere near off. It'll wake up for whatever nefarious reason whenever the hell it wants to and then it stays on until you turn it off again - all the time using about 150W continuously. I wanted to watch Bluray movies, not heat the room all night, thanks. I turn off it's power switch (on the rear of the unit) after I shut it down now.
The Apple TV uses 30W all the time - ok, this is Apple's fault, I think. There's no power switch, and I don't think there's even an option to shut it down. I just unplug it, which is inconvenient since we use the Airtunes function a lot.
I've even found some things that aren't really vampire power, but are what I call bugs and inefficiencies:
The color laser printer upstairs decided one day that sleep mode means "run all your motors and keep the fuser warm for no apparent reason." Averaging about 350W continuously (we don't use the upstairs of the house much, so it went unnoticed until I came home and saw the power usage chart. Reset the printer and all is well so far.
The basement dehumidifier was going through defrost cycles very frequently. You could see them as a sawtooth on top of the main power use graph. I took the machine apart, washed the coils and replaced some insulation that had fallen off one of the refrigerant lines. Power use dropped by about 50W and the defrost cycles happen much further apart.
Anyhow, I guess my main point is that your house is probably full of power wasting appliances, but unless you know what's going on, you'll never find them. Except the laser printer - I heard that one when I went into the room it's in.
You don't need anything as complicated as my setup, just something that will record the power usage (or even just current) coming in on your main power feed. It's really helpful though to know when things are going wrong.
Looking at the graph, I can see big things like the house a/c, the garage door opener, etc., but also small things - in the winter I could see the 8W used by the furnace's gas valve as it cycled the burners on and off, and I can see the 3W from the solenoid valve in the fridge when someone gets a glass of water from the dispenser on the fridge door.
Putting moderation advice in your