Reading this you’re probably consuming electricity. Your computer, the lights, heating or air conditioning. If you’re in your offices there are probably one or two things plugged in that you’re not using at the moment. At home it’s probably even worse… and when the only real visibility you have is your monthly bill it’s pretty tough to actually do anything about it.

Luckily there are a number of solutions starting to ramp up that will help the typical homeowner to get a better understanding of what’s happening in their house in real time – both as an all-up number but with the more sophisticated solutions on a device by device basis.

Once you have the ability to monitor then you can start to make intelligent decisions – and see the impact of those decisions by tracking changes in real data.

At the macro level solutions like Microsoft Hohm and Google Powermeter can obtain billing data directly from your utility company and give you an overview of what’s happening to a bill by bill basis.  Hohm also has a number of wizards to let you provide more information about your dwelling and it then makes recommendations.

Earth Aid goes one step further by using the same data (already connected to more utilities than either Microsoft or Google) as well as performing analysis on local areas to indicate how well you’re doing compared to your neighbors. They identify appropriate offers and tax incentives that you can take advantage of and also let you earn points that you can trade for rewards.

If you want more realtime information Wattvision and the TED 5000 connect to your power meter and provide real time data. The TED product even uploads that data to the Google Powermeter site to give you a more granular dashboard.

Tracking down performance of individual items is a little harder at the moment. Most TVs and refrigerators don’t have a way to report energy usage but you can plug them in via an individual Kill-a-watt plug or power-strip and gather that data to help you understand what your microwave or DVD player are actually costing you in “standby” mode. 

It’s interesting to see devices like the Intel Intelligent Home Energy Management platform appearing – by using sensors embedded in devices around the home it can track and monitor everything from the external temperature to the power that your phone charger is drawing and help you make decisions based on the information in real time.

Imagine being able to optimize your use of the electricity grid based on the cost – automatically start your dishwasher at 3am so the dishes are ready for breakfast; monitor the temperature in rooms and make a decision based on occupancy patterns as to when to start warming them; flag an in-efficient household appliance as maybe being in need of replacement.

For now however you can start small and simple with solutions like the Conserve to control things at the click of a switch.

After my initial playing with a webcam and weather related time lapse I got a second hand wireless webcam (a Linksys WVC54GC) to play with. As a package it's really easy to set up and connect to the camera and stream video either using their supplied app or Windows Media player. But no use for getting snapshots as user controlled intervals and putting timestamp overlays on them etc.

That left me with a couple of choices:

• Buy an application to do it (but frankly after looking at some of the options I decided they didn't offer much value - when the software costs more than the camera I expect more from them!)
• Build my own.

Now, a few years ago when I was developing code on a daily basis that would possibly have been the easiest.... whip up something to connect to the stream, grab a frame, overlay the timestamp and FTP it to the destination.

Today I'm lazier, and anyway the bits I need to do this are all available for free - I just need to tie them together with the command line and they set up a scheduled task to make them run.

Grabbing the stream

The first challenge was connecting to the stream and grabbing a jpg snapshot that I could work with.

Using MPlayer grabbing the frame didn't turn out to be too much of a challenge. It allows you to attach to a streaming video and pull a number of frame to save as a JPEG

mplayer.exe http://{userid}:{password}@{camera_ip}/img/video.asf -frames 1 -vo jpeg:quality=100:maxfiles=1

Every time this runs it connects to the WiFi Camera video stream and grabs a single, high quality, jpg image (by default saved as 00000001.jpg each time - thanks to the maxfiles parameter)

I used this version of MPlayer built for Windows as it installs and updates easily.

Annotating the image

The next challenge was adding the timestamp to the image to give it some context. This actually gave me two challenges - adding the timestamp and formatting the date correctly from a command line script.

The first was solved with the RunNow.vbs script which allows you to define a number of environment variables for a command line script. I needed to add my own additional environment variable so don't forget to add this to the script

'MonthName
objEnv("MN") = MonthName(Month(dNow))

Next of course was the challenge of actually updating the image itself. For that I turned to ImageMagick a tool I've used before to add text and effects to images. This gives you a number of options for adding a caption to an image.

convert -background "#00000080" -fill white label:"%DOWN% %MN% %Day%, %Year% @ %Hour%:%Minute%:%Second%" miff:- | composite -gravity south -geometry +0+3 - 00000001.jpg image.jpg

This rather scary line takes the source image 00000001.jpg (created from Mplayer) and adds a label using the parameters to position where I want it. The variables %DOWN% etc are all supplied by running this via the RunNow script.

Uploading the image

When the image was composited I wanted to upload it to the Weather Underground site.

Windows comes with a built in command line FTP client, but the Weather Underground server wanted a passive connection which the supplied client doesn't support so I used the free version of MoveIt from Ipswitch - a secure FTP command line client that is a 'drop in' replacement for the existing client.

All I needed to do was create a parameter file to control the FTP script (I saved the script as wificam.ftp)

open webcam.wunderground.com
{username}
{password}
passive
type binary
put image.jpg image.jpg
bye

and call that from the command line

ftps -s:wificam.ftp

Automating execution

Now I had the pieces it was simple enough to create a Scheduled Task that runs every 10 minutes and executes

RunNow.vbs wificam.cmd

the wificam.cmd script contains the call to Mplayer to grab the frame, the call to ImageMagick to add the caption and the call to MoveIt to use FTP to upload the new image.

The results

Every ten minutes the webcam should upload a new image to Weather Underground here, and they create a stop motion view (last 24 hours below).

A quick note on the WVC54GC: While it's an okay camera for the job I can't recommend it. The Linksys software is pretty horrible and the specs on the camera are at the lower end of the spectrum - small image size/resolution and really bad low light performance. I know they have better cameras now so look to spend a few extra bucks.

After my last little experiment creating the stop motion weather watch I wanted to put one together to cover the whole of "Snowpocalypse 2008" as the White Christmas here in Seattle has been tagged.

I used the same tools as before... the webcam had been happily snapping away once a minute and storing the images on the Windows Home Server so I had the source material, but the biggest challenge was to get the 15,000 images displayed quickly enough to be interesting but not so jerky as to be un-watchable. I won't say 8 years working with some very smart TV production teams has actually rubbed off but after some fiddling around the idea of 10 days in 100 seconds seemed to work, so here for your pleasure:

To generate this I took images 5 minutes apart and created an uncompressed 30FPS AVI. The resulting AVI was almost 4GB which obviously isn't practical for streaming on the web (and bigger than the 105MB per file limit for free accounts on Live Streaming!) so I turned to another tool - Windows Media Encoder - to convert the file to a WMV at DVD quality which took me down to 25MB (quite a difference, but remember the AVI was uncompressed and the WMV was a two pass, variable bit-rate encode so heavily optimized).

As it turned out I ended up 4 seconds short of the full 100, but please permit me some artistic license (I should had added a credit roll!)

All this messing about looking at the weather has got me wondering more about what patterns are really like here in the Pacific Northwest so as well as becoming a regular reader of Cliff Mass' musings on the weather Rhiannon and I have ordered our own weatherstation to put in the garden (and started sharing images at Weather Underground as well as the Webcam page here in advance of the hardware arriving!)

A while ago I volunteered for a couple of days at the World Vision AIDS Experience. It's an eye opening look at how poverty and disease are threatening the future of the developing world, and how we can make a difference.

World Vision are not alone in seeing the problem, but it's interesting how many of the solutions revolve around the role of women in that environment.

With World AIDS day and Thanksgiving fast approaching, stop for a moment and consider the girl effect. What can you do to help fix the problem?

(okay, so the headline was a stretch but I’ve not used alliteration on a regular basis since Big Brother so cut me some slack!)

So, it’s been a fun couple of weeks with the Mustang. Apart from the weather not really being ideal for the open top lifestyle there is something nice about rugging up warm and having the wind in your hair (must be something about living in QLD and moving to the PNW that makes the Mustang attractive!)

Mats (and Wheel bling!)

The first little things the ‘stang is now sporting are new mats (gotta try and keep the dog hair under control) and Pony logos on the wheels (to match the dust cap covers).

Both the mats and the center caps came from a great eBay seller Bullitt03722 – it’s great to find someone who’s selling because they understand the emotion behind personalizing your ride (was the only place I could find the right color mats, and one of the only places that list a price for the center caps as a 4 pack rather than make you order individually). If you’re in the market for Mustang parts give him a go.

MPG (and more)

I knew when I got it that the ‘stang didn’t have the usual collection to gauges and computers that modern car owners have come to expect. Even the Jeep tells me the miles per gallon and has a bunch of other gauges I don’t ever look at… but with the current economic environment and gas prices it’s certainly been more topical.

Something I didn’t know is that pretty much every car since 1996 in North America (and Europe and Australia) has a connector for On Board Diagnostics (ODB-II)… while the usual use for this is to let a mechanic find out what’s wrong when the “check” light comes on it also provides a whole lot of real-time data about that’s going on in the car – from oil pressure to water temperature, selected gear and accelerator position, speed and quantity of fuel consumed.

There are a bunch of options including the very sophisticated DashDaq and Trinity (which allows you to tune your engine parameters) but I went for a simple but flexible ScanGaugeII which has a great set of features out of the box and also allows you to select vehicle specific gauges to display as well (the Mustang, for instance, reports Fuel Tank Level via ODB-II. Sadly I can’t find pressures from the Tire Pressure Monitoring System – that would be very neat).

As expected I’ve discovered that top down motoring costs a little more in fuel (though windows up and top down is better) – it’s not been very scientific but it’s shown me some things that have worked…

MAFS (and zMax)

In the quest to try and improve MPG and low end pickup and general smoothness (it’s a V6 not the more muscle-bound 4.6 V8 GT after all) a couple of folks suggested I replace the Mass Air Flow Sensor with an aftermarket option… and as the job was well within my mechanical capabilities (two screws, 10 minutes including time to read the instructions!) I thought I’d give it a go. While it’s probably going to take a long time to pay for itself in gas savings it does seem to have had a difference around the 1-2mpg mark and it’s certainly happier at low revs on these cold mornings.

Because I didn’t know how the car had been treated before I got it I’ve added zMax to both oil and fuel to give it a clean out and smooth over. The results in both the Jeep and the Pony have been noticable – they’re both quieter and feel smoother accelerating. We’ll see over the next couple of weeks as we watch MPG in both cars if it actually makes a difference.

and that leads me to Environmental iMpact

Over the years I’ve been concerned about the carbon footprint of some of the cars I’ve driven so have tried to find ways to offset where I can’t reduce. I try to reduce by taking public transport or telecommuting as often as I can, but here in the US we now subscribe to TerraPass to offset both cars and some of our household emissions. TerraPass offer both carbon balancing credit schemes but also have an online retail store where you can purchase cool power saving, monitoring and generating gadgets (including the ScanGauge)

In Australia we subscribed to Greenfleet and in the UK CarbonZero. We are also saving for a tree in the Carbon Grove thanks to the Internet Explorer team :)

I’ve got some more things planned in the next couple of weeks (not least working out how to fix the ScanGauge to the dash in a more user friendly way!)

WinXP had some power schemes, and Vista improved on the power management options for desktops and laptops. But they were all pretty geeky, you had to know what was going on and to do a good job of getting it set up right there are a bunch of places you needed to go to install things.

Steve Clayton has just reminding me that Microsoft, Climate Savers Computing Initiative and Verdiem have made available Edison as a free download.

Edison (an application we’ve been testing at home for the last 90 days) is a free installation to help you optimize power usage on your PC as we all strive for a greener computing experience.

Download it and give it a try – every little big helps :)

My tree at Carbon Grove

Thanks to the folks on the Internet Explorer team I planted a Virtual tree. I’ve made some commitments to help improve the environment (for instance I don’t drive to work any more, I take the bus or ride my bike) and if I visit my tree over the next six weeks then the IE folks in conjunction with Carbon Grove will plant a real tree.

As well as supporting the environment the site takes advantages of not only some of the new IE8 features (though it will work just as well in older browsers) but the folks at Jackson Fish Market have done a really creative job in bringing the forests to life.

This is just one of many ways you can get involved in making the world a bit better – recycling, composting, reducing your power bill … it doesn’t have to be hard (just remembering to turn out your office light or shut off your PC when you’re not using it) and over a year it adds up.

On May 3rd 2008 that is the challenge. Will you be able to join with people from around the world, turn off your computer and spend Saturday unwired?

The goal is both to reconnect with the physical world, and at the same time try and save some power - or at least raise awareness of the number of devices we have plugged in draining current every day.

I’ve got quite a list of devices to shut down (and we’ll try to include the TV and Xbox in the list as well). Just doing a quick count at home we have 2 PCs, a Media Center, a Server, 3 (yes, 3) laptops, one UMPC as well as assorted printers, scanners, monitors, external drives, WiF gateways, switches etc. It probably adds up to quite a few watts consumed every day.

I’m not sure I can totally disconnect – I’ll make sure my phone is charged up :)

Oh, and on Friday night before you go home from work… don’t forget to turn off everything you can in the office as well.

Spread the word before the countdown reaches zero… find out more a ShutdownDay.org

I wonder if enough people turn off their transformers will it cool the planet. At least it might remind us to flick the switch every now and then :)

We live in a push-button, instant-on age. We leave devices in standby mode because we believe it’s helping save the planet… but is it really?

How much does your flat screen TV or l33t gaming rig consume when it’s “sleeping” and all you see is the little winking light telling you that you’re doing good.

And then all those wall warts. The chargers for your phone, your music player, the DS Lite. What are they draining long after the device is fully charged and idle?

I don’t know either – I’m lazy! But I do wish there was an easy way to shut things right down when I’m not using them, that was easy and wouldn’t inconvenience the family.

It looks like Belkin may have an answer to at least one of these problems about to hit the market. A powerstrip that you can turn on and off with a remote control!

It has two sockets that are always on (ideal for, say, the cable box and modem) and then 6 sockets which can be toggled with a remote control that you can put somewhere convenient.

For our house it means that for the $50 expected retail price we can easily power down the TV, the amplifier and speakers, the XBox360 and SqueezeBox music player without having to struggle and reach to find the wall switch.

Also from Belkin is a neat 3 way power strip than includes two USB chargers – that can eliminate a couple of the wall warts… really handy both at home and when you’re traveling (I often end up unplugging the alarm clock or kettle in a hotel room just to feed all my devices over night!)

While neither of these are a perfect solution – the remote control power strip probably still consumes some power when it’s idle (hopefully in the 2-5W not 25-45W range some surge protectors apparently consume) and the USB charge capabilities of the wall adapter which great I wonder if the transformer (and I hope it’s only one) shuts down when there’s nothing plugged into the sockets to need power…

I guess you could go a long way with some of the home automation solutions to managing this (and all with a universal remote control) but it would be nice to see a more common, consistent approach across all the equipment you find in home and office to really make an effort to stop sucking juice when it’s not needed. Your power bill will thank you now, and your kids will thank you when they don’t have to worry about the consequences!

No offense to the trail blazing Hybrid from Toyota, but somehow it doesn’t quite match up to the $98,000 starting price, 139mpg equivalent, 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds roadster from Tesla Motors that is now officially in production after many months of rumor.

Not that it’s going to do you any good… they’ve already sold out the initial production run, and they’re taking deposits for the 2009 wait list!

If you’re wanting to go “green” but you’re worried about the damage to your street cred then this is a great sign that in the coming years you won’t need to compromise. Now all we need is an all electric Ferrari to be reviewed on Top Gear and we know the new era is here…