Benjamin Ellis

Monkey Power

Ok, powermonkey actually. You see it’s become a bit of a standing joke: I call back to base at the end of the day and say “hello, need to update you. Can’t talk for long, battery is flat.”

Sometimes my Nokia N95 battery seems to last forever, other times it just dies – it depends on coverage, what Gravity is doing, and if I’ve been using WiFi. Similarly my iPod touch can last days or suddenly die. NEED POWER. Or rather, I need portable power. Continue Reading…

AppleTV Gestural Interface

Apple release and update to the AppleTV today, and also a new version of the Remote application for the iPod touch and the iPhone, which let’s you remotely control the AppleTV. It is a nice implementation of a gestures based interface, a very simple one, but a nice glimpse of a much better way to interact with technology:

There is also a two finger gesture, for “replay” – but I thought I’d keep that one out of the video .

Saving on Standby Power

I’ve been out buying gadgets to save on standby power. The exciting one mentioned in the video is this fellow:

It is a Standby Saver Energy Saving Unit – as seen on Dragon’s Den, apparently. As explained in the video, it shuts of the power to all of the sockets when the computer powers down. There is a version for for AV equipment too, which works off of the infrared remote control, and apparently one for use with games consoles in the works.

There was an alternative which I looked at, the Intellipanel – Desktop version, but it was a fair bit more expensive, and had things like a telephone line filter that I didn’t need.

The other device mention in the video doesn’t seem to be on-line, other than in the Maplin shop: Remote Powered Extension lead. If your plugs are more spread out, the Bye Bye Standby Energy Saving Kit might be a better alternative.

It turns out that the standby saver has a little button to turn the computer back on, which turns out to be a bonus. The PC it is wired too is tucked away under the desk, so the standby saver button acts as a remote power switch, on the desk itself and right by the keyboard. That saves reaching under the desk to switch the PC on.

The RF remote powered extension seems to be doing sterling service so far too.

Going without a Digital SLR.

Of all the Canon Spring Collection I played with the other week (see A Camera for Extreme Photography!), the one camera people keep asking me about, and that I keep coming back to is the Canon PowerShot SX200 IS.

One of the secrets to getting good at photography is to carry your camera everywhere, and that’s pretty much what I do. However, there are times where lugging around my trusty red rucksack with a full Digital SLR, a couple of lenses and a flash, just isn’t practical.

Then there’s the impact of whipping out a full sized SLR camera with a big lens. Seriously, last week at an event I pulled out my camera to take a picture of the speaker (I’d asked his permission before he started talking). I would probably have caused less disruption if I had drawn out a firearm and waved it about whilst shooting at the ceiling. Some people are nervous of cameras, and REALLY nervous of BIG cameras. Sometimes, small is good.

So, back to that Canon PowerShot SX200 IS. I ignored it at first, even though it was shiny-new-not-even-available-in-the-shops-yet. I was distracted by the small, sexy IXUS 100 IS - there was even a red one, what did you expect me to do?

Then I picked up the Powershot. I looked at the screen, which felt strangely like looking through the view finder of my DSLR. It is big, clear and fast. Then I fiddled with the very familiar dial on top and set it to Aperture priority mode. Ooo… Nice… Then I took a couple of shots. Ooo… Really nice.

It has got a 12 X optical zoom (equivalent to a 28-336 mm lens on a full frame camera, which is about the range I carry in the lens set with me when I’m using my DSLR). The sensor is 12 Megapixel with ISO up to 1600, and Canon’s DIGIC 4 chipset handling the image processing.

You can put the Powershot into auto mode and use it as a (very clever) point and click – it has face detection and scene detection with really good image stability – or you can twist the dial and go all Tv/Av/M and make like you have your DSLR with you, tweaking the settings to your heart’s content. The aperture is wide for a compact camera, so you can even get shall depth of field for arty portrait shots.

Here’s the clincher for me: it supports 720p HD Movie recording, complete with an HDMI output ready to plug into an HD screen. Something my current DSLR won’t do! This thing is ideal as a complement to my full bodied DSLR when I want something I can just slip in to my pocket. Very neat. It is also a nice step up for someone moving from the point and click world towards a full on digital SLR. I’ll be recommending it to a few folks.

Try the VisualDNA shop Beta:

CurrentCost Graphs – Monitoring Home Power

It might not look like it, but that is a wondrous thing. It represents the next step in home hacking with the current cost meter. It is a lead which connects the current cost meter to the serial port on a lower power PC that runs a simple Perl script that records our power usage. The PC runs a script that captures the information from the current cost meter (current power used, in Watts, and temperature in ‘C) and build pretty graphs that are then published on a local web server.

Here are some of the useful resources I used to get it done:

• This original post from jibble.org: making graphs using the current cost device.
• Crouching Badger’s experiences with the USB version of the cable with links to a simple perl script.

The Jibble post got me started, although not being a PERL programmer or RRD user meant some of the “easy to make” changes weren’t actually that “easy to make”. Having learnt RRD a bit more, I’m impressed with it – great for performance monitoring of all sorts of thigns. It will take something more to move me to PERL as a programming language – PHP is as non-visual as I’m going to get. Some other pointers that helped (and give you an idea what it is all about):

• Dale Lane has done a fair bit – it was good to meet him at HomeCamp (I like Dale’s daily electricity bill too – I’ve build something similar, but taking the Kilowatt hours figure from the Current Cost Meter).
• Likewise Nicholas O’Leary has a series of posts.
• There is also a Google code repository.
• Ben Smithurst’s posts were also very helpful – a full script that updates rrd and an sqlite database too.

A slight warning: the commonly used PERL script fails when the temperature goes bellow 10′C though (since the current cost prints a leading space then, which causes the perl string matching clause to barf) – keep your current cost warm or fix up the script .

I have been amazed at the power of measuring usage in changing behaviours. Measuring really is the first step to managing. Even more excitingly, I have noticed that my gas meter is readable (via a magnetic or optical sensor) so I should be able to track that too soon – as if I’m not driving the family crazy already. Here’s a day of our electricity use (with min, max and average power):

Matterbox

It’s nice to get a surprise, and it is also nice to get something you’ve been waiting for. The Matter Box that arrived through the post yesterday was a bit of both. I got an email saying it would be with me, then one saying it would be delayed.

Oh the suspense! Well managed communications though – a general note: if you are going to be late with something, let people know. Much better than letting people down. Well done Matter.

The general idea behind Matter Box is best explained by Matter themselves:

Matter is a new and innovative way for companies to talk to people by giving you real, physical stuff – things to hold in your hands, keep in your drawer, or give to your friends.

In a digital age, we want to bring companies and people together around real, physical things

I like the sentiment. As much as I am a massive on-line advocate, real physical stuff trumps the on-line world anytime. 

It isn’t easy to show in a picture, so let me list what was in the box:

• Cadbury Cranberry & Granola Bar
• BBC Audio Comedy sampler
• Original Source Orange Oil & Ginger hair and body wash
• LOVEFiLM DVD cleaning cloth and a month’s movies
• O2 sim card pack
• Pimm’s, Baileys, Bell’s & Gordon’s winter drinks pack - recipes and ‘roaring fire’ DVD
• Sampler of ‘Let Battle Commence’ by Conn Iggulden / Harper Collins.

Messing with Flock

I’ve started using Flock for my ’social browsing’ – it integrates nicely with many of the services I use (Wordpress, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook). This labeled screen shot from the Flock folks gives an idea of what it can do – and this post was edited and posted via Flock too…

Tags: flock