Posts Tagged ‘environment’

HomeCamp

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

Yesterday was HomeCamp:

…an unconference about using technology to monitor and automate the home for greener resource use and to save costs. This is about low energy devices and servers, reducing your electricity bills, monitoring your mouse traps, home automation, monitoring your water usage, using solar power…

Fifty or so people came together at Imperial College to talk about how we can reduce our energy usage.

The format was different to other barcamps and unconferences I’ve been to – rather than separate rooms, most of the time was spent with everyone together in a single room. And the talks flowed on from each other – it felt more like a single day-long conversation than a series of separate presentations.

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Thinking about Home Camp

Monday, November 17th, 2008

This is a quick post to spread the word about Home Camp to anyone who follows my blog but doesn’t follow Chris Dalby (aka @yellowpark).

I’ve posted a lot about CurrentCost since I got the meter back in May, but in the past few months it seems like lots of people are giving it a try – I’m seeing more tweets and blog posts about the potential of CurrentCost, and I’m getting more and more emails about my Python CurrentCost app.

So I’m really looking forward to Home Camp – Chris’ idea for a CurrentCost-themed unconference, and a chance to discuss and try ideas relating to monitoring our energy use.

Although it’s CurrentCost-inspired, it wont be limited to CurrentCost or even only electricity monitoring. For example, I’ve prepared a short presentation on monitoring home gas usage in a CurrentCost-type way, which I hope will get some ideas going. And I’ve started thinking about how we could monitor personal car petrol usage – probably my most expensive energy bill!

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