My business opportunities generally come by word of mouth so my network is more important to me than overt promotion. I also need to know people who have complementary skills so I can deal with the widest reasonable range of client requirements.  For these reasons I thought it useful to engage with others via a variety of online mechanisms such as a blog, linkedin, twitter etc. There is no substitute for face-to-face interaction but online discussions are important to supplement this. Nevertheless, given that there are 126 million blogs out there why create another one?

• Not to generate leads because for that you need a clearly-defined proposition. Could do multiple editions but …

• Partly to engage with people with common interests in areas that I’m looking into. I follow a lot of blogs and it’s good form to reciprocate.

• Largely to thoroughly understand the possibilities and the technology (such as it is) of social media so as to be able to advise clients who want to make better use of it in their own businesses.  CPD essentially.

My experience:

• Wordpress was a good choice as it’s widely supported. Lots of themes and add-ons available.

• This blog does its job. But nothing that a few extra web pages wouldn’t do.

• I still don’t see the point of blogging “regularly”. Better to say something if you have something to say.

• I should have put more energy into the branding. I ended up with a bit of a mishmash, but at least only one mishmash.

• I still need to deal with spam properly. I currently disabled the comment facility but it’s on my to-do list to restore it with a CAPTCHA.

• Glad that it was implemented it on our own server as I learned more that way. This approach enables integration with databases etc.  Others may want a hosted installation for an easier life.

• I wasted some time in adapting the “theme” (look and feel) but have since found outsourcer(s) who do a better job for less.

It will be interesting to get feedback from the session and I may return here to add any observations.

Once again we were bombarded with numbers and “evidence”.  It’s too much and it’s self-defeating.  If there was real consensus amongst the scientific community we would not be discussing this at all.  As it is, I still think we are right to keep an open mind about climate but be cautious about interventions and avoid getting carried away by the last blast of rhetoric we’ve experienced.

Fortunately our speaker Declan Murphy of The Ecology Foundation raised some of the related issues that are much more deserving of our attention.  I am talking about energy and food security, investment in renewables and cutting waste and pollution.

Let’s hope that our inappropriately-named DECC and the new minister with his new energy bill will come round to this way of thinking and not get too carried away with the false promises of interested parties in the energy business.

Demos had not been prepared very well and hoped to rely on bluetooth to do a job it was not intended for.  Nevertheless, the vision was clear and continues on a smooth path from WebTV, netbooks and top of the range PVRs (like my home-made one). Android gives this a lot more spice, as does the involvement of movers and shakers in the TV business. G’s position as top search and advertising player is also highly significant.

My interests lie in the “1+1=3″ possibilities of combining TV and browser and my quick reaction is  that the problem of the user interface is the the blocker that this may address.  Search probably is the way to overcome this problem.  Google showed voice-driven search and this can allow effective use of a relatively complex interface without resort to touch screen and mouse - items not easy to use from the sofa.
The other blocker to adoption of an integrated approach is, of course, content.  Until the hardware is out there I don’t see much content getting developed.  Until we have content that properly utilises this integration of capabilities we are just crowding more content onto a screen that was already full.

As they are making such a big point about openness let’s see the designs for the hardware.  Then we can hack something together and start thinking about content designed for this new medium.  I hope it won’t go the way of powermeter where their partnership protection strategy seems to be standing in the way of progress.

The agenda centred on the XMOS technology and featured founder David May talking about the technology and Alan Wood @folknology, covering proposals for an open source XMOS-based hardware and software application platform for developers, inspired by but completely unlike Arduino.

We had two excellent talks and a good session at the local.

I won’t try to explain the XMOS technology here but it’s what we gadget builders have been waiting for all our lives. It used to be that you bought a single-chip CPU and added loads of support chips around to create a system. The XMOS architecture is multi-core so that it swallows up much of what was needed to connect to the outside world. As an example we were shown a conventional PC-type device on a small board with hardly any components. This is a huge advantage now that everything is miniaturised and surface mounted, making it much harder to prototype new gadgets.

Alan proposes to take this in the direction of a system like Arduino (in terms accessibility to all) but hugely more powerful. Code name Amino. He certainly needs a lot of help with this as it needs a load of software beyond what XMOS can currently provide. This is hugely promising, more so because XMOS are in the process of open sourcing a load of their drivers etc.

Watch these spaces - XMOS, Amino and OSHUG.

In my online travels I did find one site that looks promising. They are a supplier but they have a very useful page of links which makes me think I may start with a conversation with them.

Although I’d like to do the installation myself I guess this won’t be possible if I want to get the necessary certificates for a Feed-In Tariff. This is needed to keep the payback time reasonable.

The big challenge will be getting dependable references in relation to the chosen installer.

I also wonder if we could do this as a local group and secure a volume discount?. I’ll raise that issue locally.

Next up for scrutiny are:

• TV etc. aren’t switched off automatically and one can forget - need to add BBSB programmed zapper.
• Fridges and freezers contribute most of the 365W base load - need to investigate replacements.
• The attic. Started to clear it out with increased insulation in mind.
• The kitchen floor has an air gap underneath and the floor feels cold - maybe insulate that
• Underfloor heating in conservatory was a bad idea - consumes too much power even when turned right down - could go with off-peak power or a small solar thermal installation.
• Ventilation currently done by leaving windows open - could look at heat exchangers.
• Cavity walls already filled with foam so may not be fixable.
• Windows - could upgrade 20 year old double glazing but benefit would be minimal
• Transport - get a power-assisted bike to get to station without needing shower and change of clothes
• Buy an eco-home instead? Not yet thanks.

I also want to do more to share the knowledge I’ve gained over the last year and a half. Although my initial investigations revealed a lot of complacency there are many exceptions - people who want to save and are impatient to do so.  Transition Town groups are probably a receptive audience.  Though our local (nascent) one I came across Global Action Plan/ Eco-teams.  They are recording everything (energy and waste) and have demonstrated some useful progress.

My favourite energy book Without Hot Air by David Mackay. It’s online but a paper copy is nicely presented and worth having. His is a rational, science-based approach to the energy crisis.  Accompanying video how-many-lightbulbs is an accessible explanation of some of the key points.

Gadget providers.  You may need some of this kit:

• CurrentCost/ GEO/ AlertMe/ OWL/ PassivSystems
• Intelliplug (for TV and computer; turn off accessories automatically)
• Monitoring sockets Kill-a-watt/ others
• ByeByeStandby - prince of zappers

Ok, enough dreaming.  Back to hacking - and maybe some work

Ken likes to get to the nitty-gritty.  So, as he went through the various elements of a solution, we got quite a bit of the theory as well as the maths thrown in.  Key elements covered were Gas and Electricity meters, Temperature sensors, Arduino, wireless communications in the home and presentation techniques (featuring Ken’s colleague ???? who is software to Ken’s hardware).

We all clearly agree that you need an appreciation of where the energy is going before you can be effective in doing something about it. The finer grained the data the greater chance of useful behavior change.

At the end of Ken’s talk we also heard from ???? of pachube on their system and ???? of Arup on his desktop monitoring solution.  Ken gave homecamp a plug (no pun intended) and also demonstrated some of the kit he’d brought along.

My own take-aways included:

• Although I was less interested in current transformer clamps for monitoring electricity I do see the value they bring for detecting and measuring lighter loads such as the fridge switching on and off.  With my pulse-based approach I get precise predictability of bills but lose out on this level of detail.  The perfect solution would be to have both.
• Those Actaris meters which can be easily read optically are the way to go.  Nice clean pulse too.
• I’ll stick to pre-calibrated temperature sensors like the LM36 instead of having to worry about calibrating thermistors which are only slightly cheaper.

• I liked Ken’s clips for measuring water temperature.
• We need some more discussion about use of remote temperature sensors that are very handy if only we can reverse engineer their protocols.

• For switching loads from Arduino I will continue to favour devices like the ByeByeStandby sockets which also solve the wiring and isolation problems.

My final thought was that Ken’s somewhat bottom-up approach is fine but we need top-down thinking as well.  Maybe I’ll do a session sometime showing a slightly different approach using more bought-in parts requiring less hacking and therefore appealing to those wanting a quicker solution.  I’d also cover some other presentation techniques such as the smartphone app that I’ve been working on.

The initial functions provided are displays of data as at now, a daily view and a 3-month history. The part not yet finished is the boiler control where I am still working on the algorithm. It currently just allows the thermostat to be overridden. Watch this space for a more complete version of that. At the moment it’s using ByeByeStandby controller but there have been some service interruptions and so it might be wiser to drive the smart socket from an Arduino - probably the same one that’s handing the sensors.

As I already had all this data online this was a relatively easy thing to do. For the graphics not supported by Titanium I identified a javascript library oddly entitled “flot”.  I made versions of my online data viewing pages that deliver JSON data objects.  These were very easily accessed from Titanium-provided classes.

Plenty more to do on this.  I’d like to get it ready for use by others in a pilot project to see how much energy can be saved.  I’ll leave the complex topic of converting awareness into behaviour change for another blog.

My favourite energy book Without Hot Air by David Mackay. It’s online but a paper copy is nicely presented and worth having.
A proper, rational, science-based approach to the energy crisis.  Accompanying video how-many-lightbulbs is an accessible explanation of some of the key points.

Gadget providers.  You may need some of this kit:

• CurrentCost
• AlertMe
• Ewgeco (for businesses)
• OWL
• Plug-In Electrictiy Meter
• Intelliplug (for TV and computer; turn off accessories automatically)
• ByeByeStandby - prince of zappers

More to follow.

We had concluded that monitoring is very important but is not the end solution. Controlling the heating automatically is the way forward. Until such time as an affordable commercial solution hits the market we need to keep hacking on.

The three key challenges were external temperature, boiler control and the all-important algorithm. The first two because in my own setup I had run a lot of wiring. That would not work for most people. I’m not worried about network wiring as power-line devices are readily available for those who do not want to run Cat5. (Low-power devices like Arduino do not support WiFi.)

External temperature is easily solved by using feeds from the Weather Underground. The node near our house is driven by a nice piece of kit with more than enough accuracy. The server grabs that data as needed. It’s refreshed at least every 15 mins. Boiler control can be done with a ByeByeStandby socket and controller. I think this is reliable enough but if not I’ll package up the controller I was able to build thanks to the nice people at BBSB having documented their wire protocol. This leaves the algorithm where I have something very simple in mind.

I have enough stored measurements to extract two pieces of information: our house loses heat at the rate of about 0.7 deg C/ hour when it’s freezing outside and gains heat at just over 1 deg C/hour when the boiler is firing. The effect of the sun is hard to predict at the moment so more measurements are needed but I can guess a figure and tune it in coming months. These figures can be used by the controller to decide, based on external temperature, when to fire the boiler in the morning and, importantly, when to shut it off. Although it’s too late to shut off the boiler when the target temperature is reached, the internal thermometer can be used to make sure all is working as expected.

Next step is to test this arrangement and see how it performs. It it does the job we can expect further savings.