Show HN: Glow, a smart energy tracker for your home

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1178650747/glow-the-smart-energy-tracker-for-your-home

by blach_out • 9 years ago

10 8 9 years ago

blach_out3• 9 years ago

Hello HN! I'm one of the creators of Glow.

Glow is the first full home energy monitor that you can install without calling an electrician or taking your life in your hands. In addition to providing a detailed web interface & mobile app, Glow changes color in real-time based on how much power you're using. Our findings have been that this information slowly improves how you use power, much like how the Prius's introduction of a real-time MPG display causes people to drive more efficiently. Glow also has goal setting, IoT integrations, and alerts if your energy usage is unusually high, for example when an electric oven has been left on by accident.

One of the things I'm most proud of about Glow is how we found a way to use the magnetic field sensors commoditized by cell phones and a clever calibration technique to measure your power usage non-invasively.

We've been working on Glow for over two years and testing it in real world homes for over 9 months. We'd love your feedback and support if it interests you.

philippnagel3• 9 years ago

Congrats on the launch!

However, why should I use this instead of a smart meter coupled with load profile disaggregation (i.e. no additional devices necessary)?

Disclosure: I work for a smart metering company in Germany that offers that.

tectonic• 9 years ago

Does your smart meter provide real time output? In the US, they're usually only hourly samples.

blach_out3• 9 years ago

a) Feedback needs to be real-time (e.g. < 10s) b) Humans need that extra device. In home displays are key to long term daily user engagement. c) Disaggregation doesn't show super positive results so far.

Super easy read on the subject: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.00962.pdf

blackswan• 9 years ago

This is great. I manually monitor usage quite regularly at my meter (unfortunately not easy to get a smart meter in my country yet...) but it's just a number and you need to work out the current instantaneous usage. This just gives an intuitive sense. I really like interfaces that have this 'always-on-ness' and such a low barrier to insight.

I've actually considered making a glowing light in my office to link to the conversion rate of my SaaS app. For emergency & binary type alerts I get an immediate text alert. But for slightly softer & less urgent metrics a variable color glowing light could be a good way to get across how fast I should look into things ('this week, tomorrow, or maybe this afternoon since it's looking quite orange!').

Show HN: Glow, a smart energy tracker for your home

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