Internet-enabled house jewelry? Feh. It will be fun for a week, then boring.
Here's what I want: stuff that will make me a better neighbor and citizen of the world.
Specifically: Realtime smart energy and water consumption meters. Wouldn't it be great to get some sort of alert if there was a pipe burst or even a water trickle? Wouldn't it be fabulous to track electricity consumption? That could generate the creation of sets of light bulbs each of which consumes a different prime number of watts. Then your smart meter can say, "hey chump, you left a light on in the attic. Turn it off."
Combined with a smart grid and demand-pricing of public utilities (yeah, fat chance, I know), this kind of thing could make a dent in my carbon footprint.
This won't address your existing home, but investing an extra $10k in basic building materials during construction to create good insulation will have a much bigger impact on heat/ac saved than any tech solution. It's not complicated to build a home that is passively warm in winter, cool in summer - building companies just don't invest in it. Long term I think that will be a major shift our global society will have to make.
The other thing is...your carbon footprint is impacted much more by buying goods that are shipped from overseas, taking trips in airplanes, and the unseen costs of all the products in your life than it is from the relatively small consumption of your home's water & electricity.
About ten years ago I sat through a funding pitch for a monitor that detects sudden changes in residential water flow rates. Cost was about $250/home, and part of the pitch was that insurance companies would help cover the cost to save catastrophic damage. Apparently washing machine hoses burst on a regular basis, and such an event in an unoccupied home is very expensive. I haven't heard anything about that problem/solution since.
When our washer hose burst, and the adjuster said it's the most common insurance claim, I asked why the insurance company doesn't just send out new washer hoses every five years. Seems like it be more cost-effective than a $250 device that I'm sure doesn't work as well as the maker claims.
And yeah, I previously never gave washer hoses much thought, either. Go change yours this weekend. They're cheap, and a hell of a lot less trouble than the alternative.
Yeah, with respect to water, the simplest solution is probably to have valves that you shutoff. I have them on both washing machine and [EDIT] dishwasher but don't routinely close them. It probably should be part of my routine at least when I go on trips.
The problem is that as soon as you introduce control systems, you also introduce new failure modes. What happens when the smart thermostat crashes in winter which probably happens more frequently than a really dumb mechanical one? Of course, it's not like your heating system can't shut down for other reasons as well.
It's hard to figure out how to plan for rare failures. Ultimately you probably want someone who checks in on your house because smart systems can only handle so many eventualities. But that's may be costly.
You can get moisture detector for some smart home systems/alarms, that is installed under laundry/dishwasher.
Also that is why all houses at least here have to have faucet/valve for laundry/dishwashers, and that is supposed to be kept closed when the machine is not in use. My faucet in kitchen for dishwasher actually has a simple electronic valve, that automagically closes the valve after several hours.
Townhouses. I live in one and my washer is on the second level, off the kitchen. It sits in a pan with a hole in the bottom that goes to a drain pipe. That might save me from a slow leak, but could never deal with a catastrophic failure. I do have a shutoff valve and I keep it closed when I'm not actually using the washing machine.
I've been longing for a nice looking wifi-enabled flow meter I can attach to all my faucets that have a readout of how much water I'm using and tie that data to current water rates to show me the cost in cents/second or something. And the obligatory display of a dashboard via website or app.
Great way to help people in a home, especially little ones become water conscious.
Is water really that expensive? has anyone in a developed area ever actually run out of water? Even in California, people are still flushing toilets every day. The obsession with water conservation doesn't seem like it's based on anyone actually ever having run out of water. For example, where does water actually go when it's "wasted?" Does it disappear?
Surely an area does not need to completely "run out of water" for consequences to occur. Wikipedia has lots of examples of developed areas having less than typical rainfall and encountering problems.
The short answer is, any water saved is a good thing. I see houses over in Los Altos Hills and Atherton and such, and these are large estates with the greenest grass you've ever seen. And I'm sitting here feeling like a schmuck for taking a short shower.
But every little bit helps, and the meter would be a good reminder to not be wasteful.
These already exist in the UK the utilities companies were giving them away about ?10? years ago. Some people noticed quite how much energy the kettle took to boil learned to only part fill it. However, mainly people got them, played with them and then forgot about them.
Please check out wattvision.com and let me know what you think, we share in your vision. Key features are that we work with existing utility meters and smart meters, and are consumer installed (no electrician required), and update our live data every 10 sec or so.
Here's what I want: stuff that will make me a better neighbor and citizen of the world.
Specifically: Realtime smart energy and water consumption meters. Wouldn't it be great to get some sort of alert if there was a pipe burst or even a water trickle? Wouldn't it be fabulous to track electricity consumption? That could generate the creation of sets of light bulbs each of which consumes a different prime number of watts. Then your smart meter can say, "hey chump, you left a light on in the attic. Turn it off."
Combined with a smart grid and demand-pricing of public utilities (yeah, fat chance, I know), this kind of thing could make a dent in my carbon footprint.