Tweet-a-Watt? Gadget Twitters Your Energy Use

A new gadget, revealed at the Greener Gadgets competition, has the power to embarrass you into improving your energy consumption habits. For less than fifty bucks, you can hack a Kill-a-Watt power monitor so that it automatically reports your energy use to all of your Twitter followers. It’s an interesting combination of creative gadget hacking, social networking and environmental accountability.

From Core 77, via Inhabitat:

Using “off-the-shelf hardware”, we have modified a Kill-a-Watt(TM) power meter to “tweet” (publish wirelessly) the daily KWH consumed to the user’s Twitter account (Cumulative Killowatt-hours). We are releasing this project as an “Open source hardware” project – in other words, anyone can make these, modify them and make a commercial product from the ideas and methods.

Here’s how it works: The modified Kill-a-Watt uses a “super-cap” to slowly recharge itself. Once there is enough power it turns on the Xbee wireless module which transmits thedata to a nearby computer (or internet connected microcontroller, like an Arduino). Once the power usage for the day is recorded it uses a predefined Twitter account (it can be your own) to publish your daily KWH consumption for the day. Multiple units can be used for an entire household.

This is pure genius. The whole process is explained in detail, including photos with notes, at Ladyada.net so you can DIY. This kind of gadget not only enables you to keep track of energy use trends in your household, but keeps you honest by telling all of your Twitter buddies every time you use a lot of energy.

Link [Core77] + [Ladyada.net] via [Inhabitat]

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