Hasta La Gadget!

EnOcean’s self-powering sensors — found inside these switches — can now communicate via TCP/IP, eliminating the need for pesky wires. Photo courtesy of EnOcean

Humans are inherently inefficient creatures. We leave lights on needlessly, keep the home thermostat cranked up with the windows open, forget to turn off our televisions when we leave the house.

And despite the advances in computing power over the past few decades, our buildings aren’t doing anything to make up for our inefficiencies.

“Most buildings today are dumb,” says EnOcean Chairman Graham Martin, “meaning they completely lack automation systems to manage energy use.”

EnOcean wants to change that. The company created a self-powered, energy-harvesting sensor, which which can be found inside of the inexpensive, easy-to-install light switches and thermostats EnOcean manufactures.

Now those sensors are able to communicate via TCP/IP networks, which means that when installed, the energy use of any web-connected building can be managed from another web-connected device.

EnOcean’s sensors are the latest in a wave of increasingly connected and intelligent objects that some people have termed “the internet of things.” British microprocessor giant Arm Holdings, for example, has bolstered this development with its mbed project, which gives engineers a cheap toolkit to work on a microcontroller, and the encouragement to come up with novel ways to connect them to other (often unconventional) objects. Other companies, like EnOcean and semiconductor maker Atheros, are focused on developing low-cost, low-consumption devices that can operate on wireless networks.

Pressing an EnOcean switch to turn a light on generates enough energy to send out a wireless signal, which enables communication between the switch and a wireless receiver up to nearly 100 feet away. Until recently, EnOcean sensors were only communicating amongst themselves and a specific wireless receiver within range. Now, with TCP/IP enabled communication, any computer hooked up to the internet can communicate with the sensors.

These sensors are cheap and easy enough to install that EnOcean foresees a wide market for them. Current industrial automation systems can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to install, not to mention the need to rip open walls for installing hardwired energy management sensors.

EnOcean’s sensors eliminate those costs. At approximately $50 to $100 a pop (depending on the type of measurement needed), EnOcean’s switches are peel-and-stick; there’s no need for messy construction crews to tear down your drywall. Instead of batteries, the sensors capture energy from their surroundings using a combination of solar cells, thermal and linear motion converters. That means they’re completely self-powering.

With the flick of a switch, for instance, the Eco 100 linear motion harvester converts the movement of an internal spring into a small amount of usable energy (around five volts). This is enough to transmit the wireless signal without the need for a separate battery to power the operation. No muss, no fuss.

The sensors have already been installed in over 100,000 buildings already, consisting mostly of retail establishments and commercial buildings. But EnOcean has its sights set on wider, more mainstream applications, such as college dorms, hospitals or your house.

Can2Go’s Android app lets you control your thermostat from the comfort of your smartphone. Photo courtesy of Can2Go

Installing them is easier than you may think. After hooking up a gateway device — which looks and works much like your everyday router — EnOcean sensors use internet protocol-based communication to relay temperature settings and energy use to the server. You can access that info via a widget from any internet-connected desktop or laptop, whether you’re at home or not.

And yes, there’s an app for that. Android, iPhone and BlackBerry users can install remote access apps like VenergyUI or Can2Go, which let you monitor and control your home energy usage from your smartphone.

Of course, it’s a cost-efficiency thing for larger enterprises. “Where we’re seeing the most savings are the buildings where people don’t pay for the energy themselves,” Martin said. “Hospitals, hotel rooms — there’s no incentive to turn off the heater when you aren’t paying for it in your bill.”

Realistically, you probably won’t be saving wads of cash by installing one in your own home. It’s an idea that appeals to scalable business models and larger operations.

Still, any idea that lets you crank up the heat in your place before you get home at night, all through the use of your smartphone, is okay in our book.



The Safe House is something of a paradox: — a house that is light, airy and open to the outside thanks to windows both numerous and large, and yet almost impossible to break into. How is this done? By the magic power of Transformers.

The home, designed by Polish architects KWK Promes, exists in two states. When you are at home and feeling safe, you leave it open in “vulnerable” mode. One side of the house is all glass, and the open-plan interior is open to the outside world. There is even a drawbridge at second-floor level across to another building housing an indoor pool.

But at the first sign of trouble — over aggressive trick-or-treaters, for example — you hit a button and the house goes into lockdown, turning from home into fortress. A shutter slams down, protecting the front of the house, huge concrete slabs swing in to plug up the windows, and the drawbridge is hoisted up, isolating the building completely.

Who on earth would want such a home?

Organized criminals? Drug lords? Randy and Evi Quaid? Or just your plain, common or garden U.S paranoid? In fact, it is just an overly cautious client on the outskirts of Warsaw.

It seems to me that the best way to avoid the need for a panic room (panic house?) is to live in a country where home invasions don’t exist i.e anywhere in the world except the US. But as somebody who has far too many gadgets, I can appreciate the need for security when I’m not at home. If I lived in this amazing slab of a house, I’d be able to take off for a couple weeks of vacation and not worry about burglars.

On the other hand, I would spend the entire time worrying about losing my keys.

Safe House [KWK Promes via Home Designing]

See Also:

• Indestructible Mobile Home Keeps Out Mad Max, Zombies

Monocomplex Design’s Tack range is beach furniture with a clever twist. Instead of desperately trying not to sink into the sand, the Tack chair and bench are big spikes which slide into the soft surface like golf tees and sit there, solid.

The lightweight plastic chairs also have handles for easy removal. They probably aren’t made to be bought by your or me. Instead, they could be rented out to beachgoers for a few [insert local currency here] per day.

I can see these going down very well in my abandoned country of origin, England. There, on the two days of Summer enjoyed each year, the locals will load up their cars, sit in a traffic jam in sweltering 70ºF heat for several hours and then set up camp on the crowded beaches.

Like Robert Falcon Scott on his Antarctic voyage, the English come prepared: They will have fold out chairs, and perhaps a table. They will bring wind-breaks which they will hammer into the sand around them to turn their small patch of beach into a walled-off outdoor home. They will have thermos flasks full of hot tea, and cold-chests full of sandwiches and beer. There will be kids’ toys, inflatables, dinghies, lilos and cheap, plastic footballs.

The two things that you will never see are beach umbrellas and sunscreen. There’s nothing the English like more (apart from smashing up public toilets) than to spend their two days of summer lying unprotected under the sun, crisping their pale, sallow skin to a frazzled lobster-red, whilst sweating out enough salty perspiration to fill a paddling pool.

Yes, extra beach furniture would go down a storm in England. Or perhaps it is still a little too exotic. Maybe if Monocomplex came up with an easy to carry TV set and sofa that could be quickly unpacked on the beach, then they’d have the English market sewn up.

Tack product page [Monocomplex via Yanko]

The WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery is the OG Beer Robot

If Willy Wonka had invented a home brew beer machine, it would have been the WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery (is it a coincidence that they share the same initials?). The stainless steel, floor-standing factory will give a chilled, ready-to-drink pint in seven days, which is impressive enough. Better, though, is the clever way it does it.

First, a quick recap on manual home brew (we’ll assume you’re using a kit and not mashing your own wort). First, sterilize everything. Second, mix the ingredients, heat them and add to the bucket. Place in a warm spot, cross your fingers and wait.

Then, drain the clear beer from the sediment beneath, into a second sterilized container, or into a pressure barrel, or bottles. Add sugar, seal and wait for the beer to get fizzy.

It’s bigger than you thought, right?

The WWPB does all of this inside one machine. After sterilization, you add water and it is boiled and sterilized. Then add the wort (either from a kit, or of your own making). Add yeast, then sit back and do nothing but check pressure until next weekend. This is the first innovation: the brewery ferments the beer in a pressurized container, meaning you don’t have to carbonate it later — it is fizzy from the beginning.

Next comes clarification. Draining the clear beer into another container would lose the fizz, so the WWPB injects a clarification agent into the beer, under pressure (using CO2). You then attach a small vessel to the bottom of the brew tank and the sediment settles into this. Remove the vessel and you have a tank full of clear, fizzy beer.

Then you switch the temperature control to chill, and the beer is brought to serving temperature. There’s even a tap and pressure system to dispense the beer and keep it fizzy down to the last drop. The brewery uses a 23 liter (6 US gallon) tank

If you have ever made beer, you will be suitably impressed by this very clever design, invented by New Zealanders Ian Williams and Anders Warn. You may be put off by the price, though: US$4,500. That’s certainly a lot for even the most dedicated home brewer, but for a cafe that wants to make and sell its own brew, it’s a pretty good price.

The WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery [WilliamsWarn]

See Also:

• Extreme, Custom and Pimped-Out Kegerators
• High-Tech Home Brew Kit Would Make Beer Robot Swoon
• Genetically Engineered Beer Could Combat Cancer

Steak buttons will tell you when your meat is raw, perfect or ruined

To cook your meat with any consistency, you really need to measure its internal temperature. Timing and grill-temperature control are fine if all your pieces of meat are all the exact shape and size of those in the recipe, but to get it right every time, you need a probe thermometer.

And these cute little individual Steak Buttons are perfect for the grill. You just pop them into a chunk of critter and wait for the needle to reach the right spot. I’m guessing that you’d want to cook one side of the steak before sticking this in, but even then its easier than taking a digital probe to each piece over and over. Especially as your hands don’t really want to be so close to the fire.

The only problem I see is that there is no actual temperature scale. A little calibration with a proper thermometer should take care of that, though (and write down the result somewhere so you don’t have to do it again next summer).

The Steak Buttons will cost you $20 for four, which is cheaper than a decent chunk of meat. Available now, just in time for BBQ season.

Steak Button Thermometer Set [Sur La Table via Werd]

See Also:

• Wireless Thermometer Uses iPhone for Readout
• Taking Earth's Temperature With 30-Mile Thermometer
• Wireless BBQ Thermometer Talks Back, Enables Multi-Task Cooking …
• Thermometer Cufflinks
• IR thermometer laser pointer