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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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…
That “end of summer” vibe has started to kick in. The air is getting colder, and I sense autumn around the corner. That means digging out some warmer clothes and retire some of the thinner summer wear. As I looked at my clothes, in their cupboards and drawers, I realised I have always stored them the same way. My productivity neurons got me wondering… Is there a better way? Time for Twitter:
A little while later, and I’ve got a sea of interesting suggestions. Of course some just start at the basics…
Well, it is a start I guess. I do remember struggling as a teenager, with my mother trying to teach me a simple two category system, as practised by Rita, Robert et al.:
Some take a more technical approach…
Sorting by type, then by colour seems reasonably popular too.
Even if it doesn’t always go according to plan…
I like the idea of “chromatic sorting” – it sounds suitably geeky. The idea was just plain weird to others though…
You could even go multi-dimensional with the organisation.
I like Meriem’s use of two dimensional space, sadly my storage is strickly 1D – tall and narrow. You could just subvert the whole need to sort, with a lifestyle choice…
But sorting by some category seems to be the norm! Sorting by use is another popular theme, which is how Josie tackles her non-super-hero outfits:
Or by taking a seasonal approach:
That’s a big pile in the middle. Seasonality has its own challenges…
I think I’m going to go for storing “off season” clothes separately, then sorting by type and – yes – by colour. We’ll see how it goes.
Finally, there are those who are left cold by the whole idea of the topic…
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.
Ah, the wild things that happen via Twitter… Only on Twitter could a few tweets turn into an international ”cooktweetoff” as people from both sides of the Atlantic joined in a mission to prepare the ultimate summer pudding – all under the hash tag #summerpudding, of course.
I think the trouble started with @Andyqsmith, @Maggiephilbin and @NickiePhilbin. I couldn’t begin to cover all of the details, but safe to say several days later there were summer puddings all over the place, and Maggie Philbin was battling with traffic as she navigated her way across the UK, taking the technology to celebrity chef Anton Edelman, at Great Hallingbury Manor, so that he could pass his expert eyes over the submissions. He was suitably bemused:
No smells via Twitter, sadly, but here are photograph slide shows of each entry, together with Anton’s comments on each submission. I’ve saved the winners until the end…
Canine tease (see the photos) @maggiephilbin ” Good shape and presentation” said Anton:
@flapjack50 ” This a little pale but had tremendous shape, well done”:
My personal favourite :) @Caalie ”Loved sense of family and friends enjoying food and that is what cooking is all about”:
With video too:
And the ‘tip out’ – stop the film says Caalie!:
And enjoying the results with the wonderful @solobasssteve and @lobelia and @tapps – who flew in all the way from the US especially (oh, ok, she did come over for some other things, but Caalie’s pudding was the main reason, really):
HomeCamp 2 went from Wiki to reality on Saturday the 25th – A room full of people from diverse backgrounds sharing ideas on how to automate homes, monitor and reduce energy consumption and do the occasionally whacky thing like using a string of ducks that light up to monitor a virtual worlds.
Rather than trying to write up exhaustive notes, I’ll give some pointers to resources and I will link to the speakers talks as they blog them – please feel free to add links in to the comments. First, a big thank you to the sponsors, the event couldn’t have happened without them, and it just so happens that they are cool companies worth checking out too: CurrentCost, Greenmonk, Pachube , ReactionGrid and Onzo.
HomeCamp2 showed real progress since the last homecamp. I found that really encouraging, as one of the challenges I’ve seen with the way barcamp format events are run is that they end up thrashing over the same issues. The HomeCamp crowd were pushing the boundaries further, and arguments had matured and discussions deepened since the last event.
Martin, of CurrentCost, talked about an exciting little device from the currentcost stable that has a switch sensor and some analogue inputs, which it transmits to the CurrentCost meter. Short translation: The HomeCamp community can get to work using CurrentCost to monitor gas and water consumption. That’s very exciting, well, it is for me. For those on oil rather than gas, it could also be used with an oil tank sensor. As someone once said, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Well, current cost is giving a way to measure household energy consumption. Still more to do, but progress. I’m enjoying the graphs from CurrentCost at home.
There will be new software coming down the pipe, the model is that the main LCD won’t have to be plugged in all the time. It only uses about 7 Watts, so I’m not too concerned about that, but it is a good idea. There are now over half a million Current Cost units in the wild, which is great news!
Joe Baguley, active in the BCS energy monitoring group, talked about his journey in home energy monitoring. He started using the Watson, but didn’t like it. Then he discovered Green Energy Options. It is a pretty comprehensive solution, which puts clamps on every fuse in the consumer unit, meaning that it monitors every loop in the house. It also has remote units that allow remote switch on/off of appliances. There will also be a touch screen as a control point, and the software looked very sophisticated, including profiling energy use patterns. Drop Joe a note and I’m sure he’ll tell you more about the Trio unit.
The next session focussed on gas usage. Ken, chief electrical engineer at Onzo, talked about the history of gas meters and AMR, circa 1999 – and the 7 rules of gas meter logging. First rule of gas meter logging, no-one talks about gas meter logging. ;) – More seriously, there are number of challenges. It is, rightly, a tightly controlled industry and there are obvious safety issues with electrical things near gas meters. You aren’t even meant to have wires passing near gas pipes, let alone connected to them. Many gas meters are very old, and there is huge variation in meters. One of the gas meters down the road at Sandhurst academy is apparently date stamped 1922. Gas data is also privacy concern, since you can tell people’s life style from their gas consumption – e.g. when they are in and out, on holiday, etc.. – so it is best anonymized.
As Paul Tanner pointed out, unattended continious monitoring is essential. Plotting gas usage against outside temperature is a great way to assess the effectiveness of insulation and efficiency measures, but smart meters probably won’t be in full force until 2015. Some more modern meters do have sensor outputs, but there doesn’t seem to be an approved way to tap in to them. The gas companies need to step up to the plate and support the home monitoring industry. Gas is expensive, we use lots of it, and it is a finite resource. Are you out there gas folks? We want your help!
It was good to meet Mike / @Mikethebee – someone I’ve followed on Twitter for a long time, likewise good to meet @ribot. He lead a good discusion on water usage. Water meters are tricky, because not everyone has them (cue heated debate) and they location makes them tricky to connect to. Mike talked about using metering to check for leaks, drips etc… as well as monitoring usage. Optical monitors (for both water and gas) can take some tweaking, as Usman / @Pachube pointed out, but you can get them working.
Steve Lamb has a post about the morning: “Homecamp is all about using tech to reduce energy consumption“ As a side note, a couple of people talked about moving to using DC, so that they can use a wind turbine and battery, without inverters, to power their computers. I’d been thinking along those lines too, but didn’t catch their names to get in touch.
Discussions after lunch focussed on Energy and there was even some virtual world to real world interaction, thanks to ReactionGrid and people were joining from the US via video stream too (we had people from Belgium and Switzerland in the room).
Jamie Andrews, formerly of thecarbonaccount fame and now at AMEE (a neutral aggregation platform – enabling data portability), who are behind the magic in the act on Co2 campaign, talked about methods of building profiles for a domestic building energy usage. There are three main information sources:
Estimated energy performance – via SAP or RDSAP
Behaviour Surveys
Empirical Data
Having more data means that refined methodologies can be built. Better methodologies means better policies. AMEE are active in some interesting areas:
Demand response – Remember not all electricity is equal.
Carbon intensity awareness – How’s your kettle? (usually a power hungry little monster)
Geographical models – Facilitating local grids and community co-ops.
Bart, from Flukso, talked about some interesting things they are up to. Although at the early stages, they have converted a Fonera 220 wireless router into a power monitoring device. One to watch.
Usman, of Pachube (pronounced “ptach bay” ) has built an amazing community and set of resources. Pachube takes all sorts of geo-coded data and then allows it to be shared, manipulated and graphed.
Tom Raftery joined via Skype video to give his Electricity 2.0 (which I first heard James / @Monkchips give in the US last year) – Tom’s slides, at least the version from eTech, are here. Some meaty ideas for the future of electricity.
The talk on The Web of Things was a great bit of future-that-is-happening now, thinking about the impact of more and more ‘net connected devices. From iPhones to Nabaztag and Chumby’s (a gadget I’d not heard of – slap me with a wet fish!)
I spoke about “A nudge and a wink – changing behaviours with software” – I’ll do a write up and post over at the Redcatco blog in the next few days.
All in all a great day, wonderful people and lots to mull over. I’m looking forward to Homecamp 3 already!
If I haven’t mentioned someone by name, I’m sure they are in my photos somewhere:
– 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.
