All that studying over the last couple of years has made me a bit slow on the home hacking front, so when our central heating pump went a bit feral, I grabbed the opportunity unleash my inner geek, and build some intelligence into the central heating system,to drop its energy consumption.
The house already has thermostatic valves (TRVs) on all the radiators, which is great from an efficiency point of view, but the water pump wassn’t joining in the game. It just merrily pumps water around the system at the same pace, regardless of there being one radiator in action or 20. Sure, it is carefully calibrated to get the right flow rates, but as soon as one of the TRVs opens of closes, it is off. Merrily burning its way through 40 Watts (or 95 watts at full speed) of electricity for as long as the thermostat says the temperature is wrong in the hall. Naughty pump!
The little fellow in that picture has served us faithfully for over a decade, but last time I knocked the speed down (because it was being a bit noisy late at night), it said enough was enough and locked itself on full speed, and started to howl like a banshee. I’d read a bit about smart pumps before hand, and knew that Grundfos had drop in replacements for most of their models. The smart pumps essentially monitor the load on the system (through back pressure) and adjust their speed accordingly – Grundfos call is AUTOADAPT, and their Alpha2 model caught my eye – yes, I did read the product data sheet for a hot water pump :).
They also seem to control their onset and shut down speed, so you don’t get that nasty “thunk” noise so customary with central heating systems. Replacement doesn’t require any skills above the normal plumbing ones, it is literally a drop in replacement. The Alpha2 has a natty little display on the front, which shows how much power the pump is consuming – there isn’t a monitoring output, but as it is LED based in a dark place, it would be fairly straight forward to set up an optical monitor for each digital to give an ‘off’,10 watts reading. Yes, it uses less than 10 watts most of the time!
That’s the new unit in-situ. Most of the time it ticks over at about 9 watts, sometimes dropping down to 6, and very occasionally going up to 20 or so. It should cover it’s cost in power savings over the next couple of years, and the reduction in noise (and not being woken up by the heating coming on in the morning at silly-o-clock), is worth the price alone anyway. The house gets warm just as fast, if not faster, I get more sleep, a smaller electricity bill, and I can’t remember the last time I heard any noise coming from the central heating.
Very simple Home Hack – big win :)
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Bit of a tech tragedy at the weekend – and a bit of an embarrassing one. My trusty Nokia n8 was sitting on my desk, peacefully minding it’s own business, when a 25Kg studio monitor fell off of the wall and landed on it.
To the n8′s credit, there wasn’t a scratch on it, and it seemed to still be working fine… But when I switched it on the next day, it was clear that the screen had taken the brunt of the non-accoustic ballistic attack!
I’m always bemused by people being bemused by me having an n8. Why that and not something else? The top 8 reasons it has been my handset of choice:
1) Amazing coverage (the sheer joy of making calls while iPhone users battle with voice mail and standing on tip toes to make a phone call…
2) Great Twitter client – Gravity is still the most powerful twitter client I’ve used. Easy to upload photos (see point 8), and manage lists and following across the dozen or so Twitter accounts I help to look after.
3) Skype – great over wifi, Skype keeps me in touch when I’m on the road. And it integrates wonderfully.
4) FM transmitter – hop in the car and listen to my tunes, without battling with wires. Benjamin FM ;).
5) Battery life – my experience with Android and iOS handsets has consisted mainly of desperately hopping from one power socket to another from 4 hours into the day. With the n8 I go on trips overseas and don’t even need to take a power lead. Win!
6) USB master socket – plugging in a memory stick or a USB keyboard is much more straight forward than pairing bluetooth keyboards and ejecting memory cards. It’s a surprisingly neat feature.
7) HDMI output – yes, I know lots of handsets have this now, but the n8 was my first experience of quite how useful this is – even in the business world, were I seem to be doing most presentations via an HDMI equipped large screen these days.
8) The camera – you must have heard how good the camera is by now? :)
So there you go. I’m missing the n8 :(. What next? I’m not sure. I had a bit of a soft spot for the lemonade green n8 I saw at the launch. The e7 looks like an interesting variation (I have a bit of a fetish for built in keyboards – like the n900). And, of course, the n9 has been announced… Tough choices!
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…
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 ;).
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.
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.
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.
– 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 
too, which works off of the infrared remote control, and apparently one for use with games consoles in the works.
, but it was a fair bit more expensive, and had things like a telephone line filter that I didn’t need.
might be a better alternative.
