The Hunting Dynasty
Efficient by nature, elegent by design.Archive for Computing
A no-pipe problem: Wattson
Sherlock Holmes famously said of a rather challenging situation: It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.
Well, we’ve found a no-pipe solution to the challenge of finding a home energy use monitor that looks rather lovely: the Wattson from DIY Kyoto.
What these three clever clogs have made is a display device (pictured above), a sensor clip and a transmitter. The sensor clip attaches to your mains electricity cable. The transmitter sends information to the sensor – which is totally portable.
You see your energy use in a variety of ways: numerically in Watts or cold (or warm?) hard cash, and in the colour of the light it emitts. When the light glow blue, you’re using less electricity than normal, purple is average, and red when you’re over-consuming.
I think this quote perfectly sums up how powerful real-time displays of energy use can be…
“This night Pelle couldn’t sleep, so I went to his room and found him watching Wattson. Even if Pelle only is 7 years old, he could see a connection between the “Earth hour” he had heard about on the news, and the numbers and colors on Wattson. He just said he wanted Wattson to change color to blue before he could sleep… “
Jonas, Sweden
Definitely efficient by nature, and elegant by design.
Ear’s the thing…
Can you hear green? Well, you can now, with Trevor ‘wind-up’ Baylis’ Eco Media Player. It’s about £170. The only bills after that are in the form of calories – one minute of charge via the wind-up handle gives 40 mins of audio play.
“My original windup radio … was 16 years ago … many electronic devices … were inconceivable when I created my radio. Now we … combine the best … modern ideas with … freedom and energy efficiency …”
Trevor Baylis OBE
16 years since the wind-up radio! I know! And what a wonderful piece of low-impact technology. Did we get one 16 years ago? And if not, how much battery usage would we have saved since? Scary…
Included: up to 8GB of memory, mini USB connector with which it can be charged via your PC or Mac, slot for a mini-SD memory card and sockets for headphones and line-in. Plus FM radio, a music player in all the usual formats, video, a voice recorder, a self-styled ebook reader and a startlingly bright torch. (It even has a tourch…).
The Key(board) to the future?
Hacoa make a kit-form wooden keyboard. The kits come in maple or walnut, and include a USB keyboard base, a wooden plank with the beginnings of keys hard-carved into it, connectors for attaching the finished keys to the keyboard base, a saw, sandpaper and other tools.
This feels a little like green washing to me. But even if it is, if people buy this instead of (as opposed to as well as) a plastic keyboard, that’s less for the land fill right? Plus walnut on your finger tips as you type… get back to your Earth roots.
Join The Hunting Dynasty in search of the cool (the climate) products – All those in favour say ‘Aye’ (or comment… it amounts to the same thing).
