Wattvision: The Smart Energy Sensor | Hacker News Reader

Wattvision: The Smart Energy Sensor

kickstarter.com

93 pointssavrajsingh66 comments

I'm in.

I have a 1st-gen Wattvision. I used it for approximately 3 days before forgetting about it and eventually disconnecting it, and for perhaps a total of 35 minutes, and I'm pretty confident it paid for itself easily despite my lackadaisical usage.

I've been wondering what these people were up to for the past couple years, and I'm glad they're doing a next rev. This is a great product.

If you did not use it over a longer time, how did it pay for itself? Did you shut off some major power consumers in your household after you look at it once?

Yep.

I really wanted one of these when they first came out, however, the arrogance of having locked down hardware really irked me...

iirc you had to pay something like $5/month after spending $250 for the sensor just to have access to the data! After spending $250 for it, I would have like to be able to write my own script to read the data off the device and not rely on their web service.... not having open access really turned me off...

This one is much cheaper : http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-Monitor/dp/... and it occasionally can be had for a simple $25... sure it'd take some hacking to get the data to the computer, but avoids the insulting monthly fee!

On the Kickstarter FAQs, they mention that there won't be any recurring fees for Kickstarter backers.

100W increments isn't really fine-grained enough to isolate lots of small devices (presumably why the B&D is cheap).

Comments like this are part of why we have "Fear of Money":

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377054

It is one thing to say "Wattvision costs too much for me; I think they should lower or restructure the price".

It is another thing to say "the way this startup has structured their pricing is insulting to me".

The fact that you were easily able to come up with a market substitute for this offering just underscores how silly the idea of being "insulted" by pricing is.

Things cost what they cost, not what we think they should cost. As a general rule, we HN'ers suck at thinking about what things should cost.

Charging for a service is fine, but I agree that it is legitimately insulting to charge for use of a consumer-owned device.

That said, what wattvision lists in its FAQ is extremely fair. Using data from the last three months is free, so if you want to do your own processing you can easily download from there even if the device is difficult to directly access.

We have no monthly fees for typical home use and anyone buying through the kickstarter. And you can download everything in 15-second intervals to CSV or via our real-time API at any time.

You're welcome to try that other device. You'll find, among other things, that:

1) the +/-100 watts of resolution, updated every 30 seconds, at best, will yield a cumbersome user experience. Turn on five 20 watt bulbs and then the data will jump 30 seconds after you turn on the fifth bulb. Wattvision: +/- 2 watts, and 3x faster updates.

2) You need to buy another piece of hardware, and figure out what software you want to use, and then tie this all together, if you want to look at the data online or your computer. It's a cumbersome user experience, not counting the need to change batteries rather often on the sensor (Wattvision is a set-and-forget system).

We're building the best user experience for this scenario. Thanks for your feedback, perspectives, and kind words.

Giving kickstarter donators special treatment doesn't really change anything. Why don't you just charge for access to the web UI/feeds/etc, but still leave the hardware open and usable independently for those inclined and able to set up their own software? You certainly wouldn't lose many subscriptions to it.

As others have said, the resolution on the B&D is not that great. But if you are really up for some tinkering, you could build something reasonably cheaply with better resolution with A/C current sensors and an Arduino, like this guy:

http://www.flashsense.com/?cat=3

This is great. Recently I noticed that Seattle doubles the cost of your electricity when you exceed a certain threshold. (http://www.seattle.gov/light/accounts/rates/docs/2012/Jan/20...)

With the API I'm going to write a little script to monitor usage and send me a prowl alert when we're close to the limit. Fun stuff!

Edit: I was considering adding PV panels to my roof. If my meter runs in reverse during the day, will WattVision still work?

Hate to be a downer but there are a lot of products in this exact same space (several of which started 3/4 years ago and have since died.)

Alertme is probably one of the slickest (https://www.alertme.com/try_the_demo) and there are many others that just provide a nerd-happy line graph like this and even more with just the price/day calculation, but the problem they've all found is that after at most a month, people become disinterested.

I'd like to see some innovation in how you can keep this relevant and interesting to the continual user.

Thanks for the feedback, and yes, we're working on keeping users engaged. Most of the competitors you reference require you to go inside of your breaker box (require an electrician) to set up in the United States, among other shortcomings.

Ah that explains what I perceived was a very over-engineered way of measuring the current. I've used several of the clip on readers myself in the UK - trivial install - and in fact several British electric providers have sent out their own current usage displays to customers.

Then again I haven't seen any popular usage of NLM (several apps were trying when I last looked) that can determine how much an individual appliance is costing really simply, i.e. the hairdryer cost $3.12 to run this month. That info could be really compelling and could spin out more ideas but doing this non-intrusive load monitoring sounds rather difficult with your data collection method.

http://www.clipsal.com/ecomind

have to pay a sparky to clip the wireless monitor on. but if i'm going to be coughing up $250 for hardware, getting a sparky out for 30min is not my barrier to entry.

Sparky? Is that slang for an electrician? Is there any reason you can't do it yourself?

yup, manual says "The installation must be carried out by a licensed electrical tradesperson."

http://updates.clipsal.com/ClipsalOnline/Files/Brochures/W00...

and looking at my meter box... i'm to scared to touch that thing.

In my opinion, the "next big thing" in home energy usage is device-level monitoring. The ability to look at your realtime -energy-usage, and say, "Oh, it looks like my fridge is using this much energy, and my A/C is using that much..."

There are a couple companies that are starting to offer this. Bidgely - http://bidgely.com/ - (which is compatible with Wattvision's hardware) on the residential side of things, and Verdigris - http://www.verdigristech.com/ - on the commercial side.

We arrived to a similar conclusion as part of our work on this problem at PolarMeter. I do however think that the digitization of an old-school analog meter is a very smart move that will bridge the gap until everybody has a PG&E-style meter.

This company in my opinion has the best mix of cost, convenience and monitoring granularity out of all the ones I found: http://www.powerhousedynamics.com/residential-energy-efficie...

I just posted the retrospective for our attempt at this very problem. Maybe our research can be of help to the folks at WattVision: http://www.kurilin.net/lessons-learned-the-rise-and-fall-of-...

I posted a link to the Tweet-a-Watt which is exactly this. If you don't need computerized monitoring, you can just buy a plain Kill-a-Watt at your local hardware store for $20. I use it on my AC and find it quite helpful.

Actually - the two companies I linked are exciting because they can do device-level monitoring with just a single monitoring device at the meter.

Both companies do a horrible job of explaining this on their website, but one of my coworkers went to a presentation they were both at the other week.

Basically, they have a database of unique waveforms(?) (I'm an electrical illiterate, so I may be saying something quite stupid) for individual devices and appliances. So, for example, when you plug in MacBook Air to recharge it, they know the unique profile of the effect that device will have on your home or office's power consumption, so they can separate it from your overall power draw.

Which means that the software, using a single measurement point, can break down your home or office's entire energy consumption by individual device / appliance in realtime.

Which to me, seems a bit mind-blowing. But like I said, both companies do a horrible job of explaining this on their websites.

That sounds really awesome. Now to find the cheapest hardware to get me on there.

Another product that obviously doesn't need to be Internet-connected to function but is (presumably to create a recurring revenue model for the manufacturer). A $250.00 retail price is too much, to me, to risk on a device that will be relegated to the junk heap once the back-end "cloud service" disappears after the manufacturer fails.

This is a totally fair concern, but if your alternative is "not having any kind of fine-grained monitoring of power at all", know that you are very likely throwing money away; it does not take a lot of renegade appliances (or, in my case, renegade incandescent bulbs) to offset the cost of the sensor.

I have bought very few things that had such a clear ROI so quickly after I set them up.

I second the ROI comment. The Queensland Govt ran a scheme here for a while called Climate Smart http://www.climatesmarthome.com The meter cost $50 and was one of those clip on passive devices. Ended up identifying about $300/qtr of wasted power for me. I had faulty Kitchen appliances and an incorrectly wired hot water system.

Since we're talking very explicitly about costs and savings: about how much did it cost to identify the hot water system problem and get it rewired correctly?

That last sentence tipped me off to the real matter at hand. I think the problem is that you can't appreciate the ROI of the product until you've experienced/received the ROI of the product. And in truth, it isn't an easy choice - the most likely way for me to save money on electricity would be to change my habits. If it were easy, then I could do it without this $250 device. If I wanted to change, then I would just do it. This thing would guilt or otherwise convince me to change myself, which is typically not an easy or pleasant thing.

I'm writing as someone who could afford the $250 device (and would probably benefit from it, given the quantity of electronics in my home), but I'm just not convinced enough to take the plunge. What it would take for me is seeing one in action and laying hands on the device or talking in detail to a friend about their outcomes with the device. But right now, it all just seems like a pipe dream, and I can spend less than $250 on a pipe dream.

Savings for us had absolutely zero to do with habits, unless stuff like incandescent bulbs are a habit.

So you didn't know you had incandescent bulbs until you used the wattvision, or whatever, or you didn't realise they used more power, or you didn't realise leaving them on used more power???

There were a couple of things plugged in in my house that were chewing up huge amounts of electricity. Very large incandescent bulbs in our bathrooms were one of them.

Wouldn't it have took you less time to check the wattage of each bulb on the house than having to buy, receive, install and run this meter?

No? The whole point of the meter is that it won't occur to you what things to look at. The entire value proposition is spotting those things for you.

If you're the kind of person who memorizes the wattage of everything you plug into your house, then yes, this might not be money well spent. It was for me.

Maybe get a killawatt instead? Tons of fun running around your house plugging stuff into it, but of course you can only measure the stuff you can plug into it. Also, as a renter, it's something I can actually use. Surprised nobody's mentioned it yet, they're fairly popular as the low tech version of this.

I find the API to be the most interesting part of this project. When you can plug this data into NILM[1] algorithms, you can then calculate the cost of running an appliance in your house and check online for less expensive alternatives.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonintrusive_load_monitoring

I was about to post a "they're doing it wrong" comment, suggesting just this sort of thing. Interesting that the idea of applying vector network analysis to household power monitoring is so old that the patent has expired.

Using an optical sensor to monitor a spinning-wheel meter is just goofy, and so, for that matter, is the direct connection to the AC mains in the patent. All of the information they need can be sensed magnetically, by proximity to the house's power feed.

You mean like this, http://salestores.com/tenma727218c.html?gclid=CLqlss7l5bECFW...

Something like that, yes. Combine that concept with the notion of the SWR bridge, and there's no reason you couldn't do vector analysis, rather than just scalar sensing.

Why not build what you describe, clamp it around the main feed to the house and have it join the wifi network, it can pubsub the data anywhere at that point.

This would be an order of magnitude better than just reading the meter.

Yeah, I think we'll see the power companies doing that themselves before too long, if they aren't already.

Your presuming that there is exposed access to the cable feeding the main panel, that is often not the case. I have no problem opening a mains panel or otherwise mucking around to get an inductive clamp on such a cable, but I don't think you can make the assumption about their target market. Their solution may seem 'clunky' from a technical standpoint, but it has one very important thing going for it: anyone can do it, without risk and without a knowledge of electricity, all they need is a conventional meter.

Counterpoint: the fact that they need an outlet to power the thing is bad, now the 'common Joe/Jane' doesn't need to mess with the electrical stuff but instead they need to drill a hole through the wall, near the meter, to get a wire to the sensor. I don't like the idea that the user to has a drill a hole near the mains entrance to their home, that can result in bad things.

The manufacturer should make a commitment to open source all the code necessary for the community to get it working locally on a LAN without any of that cloudy goodness. Why?

(1) As other posters have pointed out, there's no guarantee that they won't go out of business or drop support in the future. If open drivers are available, it's all good.

(2) As I've long said in relation to nVidia's dragging their feet on releasing open-source graphics drivers: IF YOU'RE A HARDWARE COMPANY, THERE'S NO REASON NOT TO OPEN-SOURCE YOUR SOFTWARE. If you're a company like MSFT and software is all you sell, obviously you can't open-source your products, because then why would anyone ever pay you anything? OTOH for a hardware maker, THE SOFTWARE IS USELESS WITHOUT THE HARDWARE. If this is even marginally popular, people will hack on the software, and the better the open software gets, the easier it is to sell hardware. Essentially the community is giving away their development resources for free.

(3) The above may not apply if they're selling the HW at cost or even a loss, expecting to make it up on subscriptions. That's simply a pricing/marketing problem: Merely increase the unit price until selling the HW is profitable, and include a code for a free year or two of the online service. Or give progressive discounts for people who sign up for quarter/half/one/two/three/five years when they buy, to encourage purchases.

(4) I hate it when my personal information's floating around out there in the cloud. Electricity usage data could be useful for burglars or stalkers to see what times nobody's home during the day, when you turn out the lights at night, if you might be on vacation because no appliances have run for days...I really hope the data feed uses SSL.

iPhone and Android support

I'm curious why a small kickstarter would want to build specific apps for each device. Is this critical day one stuff for small startups like this and is there a real customer need for an app in a marketplace? Instead of just building a simple HTML5 site that'd work on all modern devices and browsers, that is.

The 1st gen Wattvision already has a web interface.

We are couple of graduate students who implemented an end-to-end IPv6 social telemetry platform as a lab project last semester. We have a meter that is connected to the lab's coffee machine and refrigerator. The web interface [1] can plots the energy usage of these devices. We decided to make the data public to help evangelize the importance of being able to live monitor the energy usage of one's appliances. In fact, we encourage you to go check out the website and you'll see a live plot with spikes whenever we brew coffee!

We also implemented an Android application that complements the user interface, and plan to expand this project further by installing more meters.

Details on the project are available at [2]

[1] http://www.wattsapp.net/

[2] http://www.wattsapp.net/about.html

Awesome dead comment:

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The Wattvision doesn't appear to be anything new.

I had a CurrentCost Envi unit (that read with non-intrusive clamps over the leads in the breaker box) that did much the same thing, and would output its data over serial. Tied in with Google Power Meter and so forth.

Then, my utility installed the new "Smart Meters", and a few months after that they offered me a countertop unit that talks to the meter using ZigBee and gives me real-time usage information (and historical graphs, etc). For free.

Using the data I get from this, along with a Nest smart "learning thermostat" I installed last year, has reduced my "height of summer" electric bills to around $140/month from almost $300/month a few years ago.

I've still got the CurrentCost Envi setup, along with "web bridge" unit (Ethernet interface) if anybody in Houston wants one. Trade me a 12-pack of Mt. Dew for it or something...

Whose Smart meter did you get? Also, did you have any access via ZigBee (beyond your IHD?)

in the UK your electricity company will happily send you a currentcost device that plugs into your PC for free, and it even speaks a very simply protocol using serial over USB...

Why is a YC- and angel-funded startup doing the Kickstarter dance?

http://www.wattvision.com/info/about

Optimistically: Promotion, Pessimistically: Money-grubbing

I worked for a company that made a product similar to this and I'm not convinced they work as a consumer product.

Our customers would plug the device in and then use it for maybe two weeks and then forget about it.

The reality is, for most people there isn't much you can tell them. "Have shorter showers, turn off appliances at the wall, and buy new whiteware with a higher EnergyStar rating". In fact, I ended up increasing my power usage as I realised how little I was saving by turning appliances off.

This reminds me of the crazy movement now that is against smartmeters. I really do not understand people sometimes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/science/earth/31meters.htm...

http://stopsmartmeters.org/

I'd love a smartmeter as long as I get access to the data myself for free and no-one else but the power company.

hahaha, smart meters are bad because they have switching mode power supplies. Man am I fucked.

A big one, I figure? People don't understand radiation. The smartmeter uses a wireless communication protocol much like WiFi, but people are still flipping out about it.

Heck, just reading the articles about the switching mode power supplies- which every digital device today has- they declare with fright that the smps can emit frequencies up to 50,000 hz! Oh no! That's nearly an order of magnitude lower frequency than AM Radio broadcasts! It must be deadly!

Just sent this message via Kickstarter to the Wattvision people:

This is pretty awesome.

I know it's unrelated, but something that would be REALLY awesome is something like this that worked for water usage.

I manage several properties and a running toilet left unfixed for a few weeks can easily rack up $500, $1000, or more in costs.

If I could put a device on my water meters for each property which would alert me immediately when the usage increased by a certain amount, that would ABSOLUTELY be worth paying for - especially as the price of water has gone up so much.

(I read an article about 6 months ago about some communities in the southern U.S. where the residents are literally being priced out of being able to afford running water.)

PLEASE consider working on this. Right now, the only way a landlord will know about a leaking faucet or toilet is 1) if the tenant lets her/him know (fat chance, it's nothing urgent to them, if they even notice it, or 2) after they water bill has skyrocketed in a month - and then it's way too late :(

thank you, Anthony

These guys are in my backyard and are featured in a great documentary on sustainability which focuses on the Sourland mountains in NJ (http://www.sourlands.com/).

those solutions already exist even as open source

http://volkszaehler.org/

If any Wattvision customers are here, or if the team is looking at this, I'm curious...what kinds of changes in behavior have you noticed?

I ask because my electrical consumption is relatively constant. I come home, turn on the TV, make dinner, surf the internet, pass out. I've noticed that its tough to influence my bill in any direction, except from when the weather changes from hot to cold and vice versa. But those are changes I'm conscious of and fully expect to be paying more during the extremes.

I understand the global implications of energy usage. But being from an old factory town I wonder if on a local scale now that the factories are all gone there is less energy consumption. I see the energy companies changing to all of the smart grid tech and I wonder if there would ever be a need to change the grid to support more power. Seems like everyone is into less power consumption, but if you do weld or have a garden its tough to keep power bills low. thats my two cents.

I've got a "TED" which appears to have similar functionality.

http://www.theenergydetective.com

The main obstacle to usage is making sure you don't kill yourself during installation. Not sure why there would be any recurring fees (other than to scare you into donating early!) ... are you going to charge me to put my own data into a bar chart? (ahh ... that's why)

I really like the idea, but I feel weird about just giving them access to my usage data. Are there any solutions out there that don't involve cloud storage or monthly fees?

I'll store my own data, thank you very much.

From the linked page:

>now I receive credits on my bills //

I thought the device just told you how much power your devices were drawing. How does knowing that allow you to get a credit on your bill?

At least where I live, we pay an estimated value every month, and then when they come to check the numbers on the meter, they either add a surcharge or a credit to the next bill. So if we lowered our power draw thanks to the device, we'd get a credit after the next reading.

That said, I don't know if the person your quoted is in the same situation or not.

Alternatively: http://www.ladyada.net/make/tweetawatt/

> Find energy-draining devices, including faulty appliances.

How do this work?

Maybe like this?

http://bidgely.com/technology-peek

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