The energy demand of computers—including PCs, peripherals, and corporate data centers—produced about 830 million tons of CO2 in 2007, according to a report by the the Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI), a group of technology firms interested in the potential impact of information and communication technologies on climate change. But they can also help us save […]
On 4 July 2008 we held at LESO-PB the first of (hopefully) a series of meetings for people interested in home/building automation. The idea is to give people of widely different backgrounds a venue, time and opportunity to share, discuss and explore new ideas. It was my pleasure to facilitate this meeting and although I […]
Let’s face it: us geeks do have a tendency to accept computer interfaces barely more user-friendly than, say, a shell. And that’s all right for me; it doesn’t really matter to me that Emacs maps C-w, M-w and C-y to cut, copy and paste instead of the more familiar C-x, C-c and C-v. But if […]
Lesson learned today: always monitor a machine you intend to let run without interruptions for a long time. And that includes home automation hardware. I have described elsewhere the steps to install Debian on an embedded PC. I’m still working on this project and intend to soon install the open-source Misterhouse software on it. But […]
The Guardian carries an interesting story about yet another alternative to ZigBee: Ultra-low Power Bluetooth. ZigBee has been touted since 2003 as a low-power, low-bandwidth wireless protocol ideally suited to home automation applications. But as the article makes clear, “we aren’t all drawing our curtains and turning on the lights with the touch of a […]
At long last I’ve pasted together the videos taken during by PhD defense. Here they are, raw and unedited. 1/8 2/8 3/8 4/8 5/8 6/8 7/8 8/8
The CM11A X10 controller (or its various incarnations, such as the CM12CH model for Switzerland), made by X10 Pro, is one of the most ubiquitous (and cheapest) X10 controllers available. If you want to write a program that will talk to this interface you will definitely need to know not only its communication protocol but […]
Ubiquitous home automation will never become a reality unless cheap embedded PCs are available to be the “brains” of the home. Some time ago I came across a company called Soekris Engineering who make relatively cheap embedded PCs, like the one shown below. This little guy packs a 20Gb CompactFlash harddisk, 128 Mb RAM, and […]
Wattwatt is a user-contributed website related to the efficiency of electrical energy in all its forms. It’s a place to read blog entries, share ideas, and more generally participate in a growing community of energy-conscious people. I got this link through Make magazine‘s blog.
If you can measure it you can control it, and that is also true of your energy consumption. Two energy-monitoring devices have recently been brought to my attention that are not only easy to use, but also to install. The first one is the OWL, and consists of a wireless clip you put around your […]