Cheap Smart Plugs with Energy Monitoring

Deal: $24 for 4 smart plugs with energy monitoring. That's less than $6 per plug!

(You have to add them to your cart to see the discounted price.)

Connector Help

Anyone know what connector is this ? pic.twitter.com/ufboqurUDH

— Razvan Fatu (M0HZH) (@YO9IRF) April 1, 2019

Picture Frame Phone Charger

It's pricey at over $55, but I really like the idea of this picture frame with a builtin wireless charger for your smart phone. It also keeps the phone upright so you can see notifications easily. I could see myself with one at the desk in my office and another one on the end table beside by chair in our family room.

Smart Circuit Breakers

But no Alexa support yet...

Leviton’s new smart Load Center brings app control to your circuit breakers https://t.co/sHZWRiJ1sy

— donthorp (@donthorp) February 21, 2019

Creating More Work

I enjoy my smart home things and keep adding to the list. I'm not sure they save me time, but I love the convenience of them - especially the voice control for muting the TV while my hands are wet from washing dishes or telling the HVAC unit to turn the air on while I'm in the middle of working out.

The only downside is I keep coming up with new problems to solve - some of which didn't exist prior to buying all these smart devices. For example, I don't have a good place for my Eufy Genie (Amazon Echo Dot clone) in my bathroom. I don't have a spot to put it and we don't have enough plugs to power it.

The solution... $40 to get this outlet shelf and an outlet with USB ports.

Eufy Smart Bulb

So, I'm all in on the Alexa/Google enabled home as you can tell. I'm enjoying playing with the various plugs, switches, etc. I even got one of the Eufy Smart Bulbs ($12) for Christmas despite my uncertainty about the benefit of going the smart bulb route.

It works just fine from the app or using Alexa voice-control, but:

1. Bulbs eventually go bad.
2. There is no button on it, so I can't turn it on if the internet is down.

Still, $12 isn't a lot for a little experimentation.

Anker PowerHouse

Anyone got one of these Anker PowerHouse? Thoughts? Alternatives?

kW and kVA

I'm all about educational tools today:

It's easy to understand the difference between kW and kVA pic.twitter.com/gMhWx9fPr1

— Pierre-Yves Maunier (@pymaunier) December 12, 2016

Via @LA3ZA

Tesla Energy

I'm pretty excited about Tesla Energy - not so much for the product itself, but for what I think it represents.  I hope there is a coming wave of battery technology that will have performance improvements and cost reductions.

SnapPower Charger

I've looked at face plates that have integrated USB ports, but the SnapPower Charger is different in that it requires no wiring.

Via Uncrate

Li-Fi and NLOS Lightwaves

Tangentially related...

Near Line of Sight (NLOS) Lightwave experiments

And Li-Fi:

Home Data Center

I've added a Dell Mini 10 running Ubuntu and have a Frankensteined desktop that has replaced the one that died a while back. So I am slowly moving in this direction - the home data center.

(Who am I kidding? I'm all about being a minimalist now and I grumble enough about my electric bill.)

Via Data Center Knowledge via Slashdot.org

Shrinking

Sorry about the lack of posts... I've been busy:

Figure out how to shrink the conventional power inverter and we’ll give you $1 million → https://t.co/TgZ3CcU6d7 pic.twitter.com/65f89ik5R9
— A Googler (@google) July 22, 2014

Foaster

Whahahahaaaaa! Want one! RT @isL0uD: This just changed the game pic.twitter.com/yMkBoU5T1n

— Jan-Willem Ruys (@Jruys) July 14, 2014

Reading by Street Light

This is one of the most vivid examples of life without electricity at home: http://t.co/s88OQpRDbL pic.twitter.com/eAIDTnf9sH
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) June 27, 2014

Magic Smoke Captured in HD

Hans has the video.

Practice Safe Charging

You don't want to catch (or spread) anything!

Green iPads

tim Using an iPad for a year costs less in electricity bills than the average lightbulb my.epri.com/portal/server.… via @jackWed, Jul 25 12:24:35 from web

Priorities

More people have mobile phones than electricity or drinking water. I would assume part of the reason is it is harder to run big pipes than a little wire to some towers.

How Long is a Nanosecond?

Shorter than you might think... I love when people do something so obvious I would never think of it. Like demonstrating the length of a nanosecond in terms of distance instead of time.


Many thanks to Owen (KF5CZO) (via AmateurRadio.com) for posting the video and notes. Looks like he and I share a like for a simple Blogger template, too.

Editing on 2015-01-30 to specifically mention Grace Hopper, so this will show up in my searches for posts about her.