Gadgets | Diogo Gomes Blog

Posts Tagged Gadgets

Two years ago I had a first experience with a device that enabled me to monitor my power consumption habits per equipment. It was very educational and enabled me to switch off and remove some less efficient equipments which were basically vampire equipments. Unfortunantely the device can only monitor one equipment at a time and has no interface through which to get data out.

Leaping two years time, I’ve recently received a contact from ISA to became one of their beta testers for their iMeter product. In no time I received an iMeter Kit such as the one on the image.

The Kit comes with a clamp which needs to be installed in your house power distribution unit (after your energy meter) and a transmitter that has an internal battery.

The clamp and the transmitter were very easy to setup since my power distribution unit had plenty of space. In the event that I might need to check the transmitter, I decided to keep it on the outside of the power distribution unit although it is still protected by the unit’s front cover.

The supplied kit has two other devices: a display unit which can be used to measure energy consumption in almost realtime (~6sec) and an iMeterBox which connects to the internet and to ISA’s enerbook.pt website where a log of my power consumption is stored in periods of 1 hour averages. Both the display and the iMeterBox are very easy to setup as they automagically detect the transmitter via RF (Zigbee?) and start displaying/publishing my power consumption (this actually leaves me with some doubts related to security and privacy of the system) and the iMeterBox that is connected to my home router uses dhcp (I’ve not seen any way of configuring a fixed IP address in the equipment, although it has an admin webpage). The website needs nothing more than a user registration (username/password) and the S/N of the iMeterbox to associate to the enerbook.pt account (multiple iMeterbox’s can be associated to a given account).

The website is very friendly and to my surprise produces graphs using JS and Canvas (no flash there!). It can be used to monitor daily, monthly and yearly consumptions as well as to compare any two days, months or years. This is actually one of the points that in my view needs improvements, since it is very inflexible the configuration of time periods to visually monitor (e.g. most obvious time period to monitor is a week). Good thing is that you can export to XLS format and do your own data processing.

In the period of one week I’ve detect several devices in my house which were power vampires (namely an oven that consumed 60W and ZON HD+DVR which accounted for extra 70W). By switching off these devices completely I’ve been able to reduce my standby power usage (period of time where I’m not at home or asleep) by 20%. This value clearly show’s the potential of this equipment in terms of power saving.

In summary: the iMeter is a great product, but still has plenty of room for improvement.

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Arduino – Network Remote Control

March 30, 2010 English

Although my Phd in Electrotechnics, I’m mostly a Software Engineer. Trying to put things straight, I’ve picked up a personal project with a bit more hardware

The idea is to build something resembling this or this without leaving my pocket empty, and in the time between build something with my bare-hands.

So today I set things in motion by visiting InMotion in it’s office in Oporto where I met Filipe Valpereiro. There I picked up an Arduino Duemilanove and an Ethernet Shield to go with. Tomorrow I hope to drop by the local electronics shop to pickup a photodiode and an IR LED. That should account for all the hardware I need in this project.

After that I will need to learn a bit about the IR encodings used by the remote controllers in the household (TV + Home Theater + STB). Luckily I’ve an oscilloscope lying around from the days my father did real electronics, which should come in hand to debug everything.

As soon as I get something working I’ll post it here.

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iRobot Roomba 555

March 16, 2010 English

Having a kid is lots of fun, but also the most time consuming task one can have. Lately house chores were starting to create a backlog, since obviously kid would come first

That said, the family decided it was time to get some help, and we rushed to buy a Robot Vacuum Cleaner in order to get an “extra hand”. Some of you might say it was an impulse buy, and you are probably right… but the truth is: it is already paying off.

I bought the Roomba 555, which can only be found in Europe but is equivalent to the 560 model. I bought this model instead of the cheaper 520 model because I wanted the possibility to schedule the Roomba to operate while we are off at work.

After an initial overnight battery charge we were set to give the Roomba chore: while me and my wife where handling meals (our’s and daughter’s) the Roomba was set out to vacuum the other rooms.

I must say that expectations weren’t either very high nor low… I knew it wouldn’t clean all spots but I did expect it to clean well those it could reach. My furniture disposition was slightly changed in order to make sure the Roomba didn’t miss as many spots (basically made room for the Roomba to reach every corner by displacing furniture a few centimeters).

The results were pretty good, although not as powerful as a common vacuum cleaner the Roomba was able to pickup all the dust in the floor (both wooden and tile floors which included rugs in both environments).

So far my only disappointment with the Roomba is that it fills up too quickly. Fortunately its quite easy to remove the dirt from the Roomba (same can’t be said of the hairs that get stuck in the brushes of the Roomba), and since there is no bag it is an economic task to clear the contents of the bin often.

Overall I think it is a great investment in your personal/family time.

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Blog Sale

March 15, 2009 Português

Estava aqui numas arrumações de primavera (sim que este calor não engana ninguém) e resolvi fazer uma americanisse chamada “garage sale”.

Como a minha garagem fica numa cave e poucas pessoas passam por lá, optei por um “blog sale”.

A lista de itens está disponivel na continuação deste artigo no meu blog.

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Apple TV price

November 4, 2008 English

Would someone please explain to me the rational (because I believe there is one) behind the fact that the Apple TV is the ONLY product in Apple Store whose price in euros in actually higher (50%) then in dollar albeit the weak dollar ?