At long last a energy monitor (electricity only) that actually bothers to record the data and lets you upload it to a Mac (ok ok - it works on PC's as well) for further analysis.

And even better - it is made and distributed in the UK>

The meter itself is wirelessly connected to the display unit, using a current sensing clamp around the main input cable to the house.

So a little bit more about the analysis part :

I’m as straightforward to use as wattson. Set me up correctly, and I talk to wattson whenever you plug him into a spare USB port on your computer. He tells me about the amount of energy you’ve used since he and I last spoke, and I store all this information on your computer.
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One of the easiest way of testing PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) for regulating power on electric motors, such as fans, is to attach a standard LED to the Arduino.

Put the short pin of the LED into the socket marked PWN 13 on the digital side of the board, and the other pin into the socket marked GND.

Run the following little program (called a Sketch) on the Arduino.
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This is the book I've just been reading - for a first book from a new writer it's really, really promising.

The book paints a complete new ecosystem on a artificial planet - with a whole underclass living under the city, among the cooling fins for the energy systems. I really look forward to the next book!

"Principles of Angels" (Jaine Fenn)

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Seen in my log files :

30/07/2008 20:49:15 mDNSResponder[23] NOTE: Wide-Area Service Discovery disabled to avoid crashing defective DNS relay 172.16.2.5:53

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I was not aware of this - the Airport Extreme actually supports USB storage devices directly!

You can connect USB-based storage devices to an AirPort Extreme (802.11n). Learn which formats and protocols are supported.

Products Affected
Airport Extreme Base Station/802.11n
The AirPort Extreme (802.11n) supports USB storage devices that have a block size of 512 bytes, and are formatted as Mac OS Extended (HFS-plus), FAT16, or FAT32. Not all USB storage devices use a block size of 512 bytes.

The AirPort Extreme (802.11n) shares storage devices based on the format used to initialize the storage device. For example, if HFS-plus formatting was used, AFP and SMB/CIFS protocols are used to share the device on the network. If FAT16 or FAT32 was used, SMB/CIFS protocols are used.
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