Currentcost power meters
Next week I’m going to pick up my Currentcost meter and it’s already starting to fire off ideas in my head. I was twittering them but I think writing them here might make me actually remember to play with some of this stuff.
There are some similar ideas in the comments of this entry on Nick’s blog.
Pattern detection
By detecting power changes in the historical data we can start to build up a profile of what is happening in a house/business. For instance, the toaster going on, or the TV being turned off of standby. Being able to automagically work out what object in the house is doing what, we can fire off different events which we can code against.
Pattern tagging
If we then build up a profile of all these events and begin to apply tags to the data, maybe even from multiple sources all around the country (del.icio.us style) then we could start providing suggestions to users as to what that spike of data might be.
Complex Power Event detection
From there we can start using some smarts to detect not only simple patterns but also some more complicated ones. Lights on and TV is on, ah my wife must be home. Lights on, computer is on and kettle boiling? Ah that would be me back from work. Lights turned on between 2am and 5am, that will be baby feeding time. Once we have tagging I’m sure we could put together a fairly simple interface for creating and displaying these complex power events.
Tuxdroid extensions
Having paid real money for the demonic penguin I now must find more things to do with it. Tux now has a twitter client which I need to tidy up and publish and can talk MQTT. Hooking him up to complex power events could be useful. Tux has both light and sound sensors of his own which might tie into this. Perhaps detecting sound but no light or increased power consumption in the house might alert me to a possible intruder.
