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The winner looks like a MAKE project, woo! -
The EnerJar took top prize of the design competition—both a favorite of the judges and the crowd at the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City. The EnerJar is an easy-to-build, DIY device that accurately measures the power draw of electrical appliances. Sitting between any wall outlet and the appliance (think blowdryer versus laptop), the EnerJar helps users gain an understanding of power draw, investing them in the knowlege, and leading them to reduce their electricity use.Greener gadgets design competition results - [via] Link & the gallery!
There are already many commercially available products that are designed for this specific purpose.
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I was thinking the same thing, jkr. I have a kill-a-watt device I use for this purpose in my house, so this hardly seems new.
Call me when there is a replacement power outlet that has an LED that shows this, and it only costs pennies more than a standard power outlet.
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Greener gadget ? Looks like another device designed to remain constantly powered on to me ... sorry for the rant.
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Boo hiss. Where's your maker spirit? What's more fun - going out and buying a Kill-A-Watt or making your own.
One immediate use I see for this is hacking it into a power strip for a small form factor and being able to see how much energy one appliance or your entire computer setup or home theater is using.
How about extending it to save the data onto a memory card or send the data back to your PC for analysis?
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Pretty lame. Few of the products seemed particularly green. Still, that gravity powered clock was cute.
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I'll be impressed when it's an inductive model that can just clamp around a power cord. :)
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Scott K...
That is how one of the commercial ones I took apart actually work. Most of them Use induction. Fluke sells power meters that work on the same principle.
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