The Mazzini Project

The Mazzini Project Take control of your electricity bill Adrian McEwen - www.mcqn.com

Climate change
Adrian McEwen - www.mcqn.com < Insert clichéd image here >

Rising energy consumption
Adrian McEwen - www.mcqn.com

We love our gadget habit

Energy costs are rising

Need to address demand as well as supply

How much electricity are you wasting?
I don’t know. Do you?

You could measure overall consumption
People are already doing this…
DIY Kyoto’s Wattson
The Owl
Efergy
Eco-eye
… but it’s very coarse-grained
See http://www.electricity-monitor.com/features-comparison-chart-i-26.html for a comparison

Or measure devices one-by-one
Using something like…
Kill-A-Watt
Enerjar http://enerjar.net
But…
Results are displayed locally
Only measures cumulative energy

What if your electricity bill was itemised like your phone bill?
See which appliances used the most power

What if your electricity bill was itemised like your phone bill?
Spot patterns in usage over time

Taking control
Measuring your power usage would let you target your efforts. But…

Taking control
… could it do more?

Taking control
What if devices were automatically turned off overnight, or when you were at work?

Taking control
What if you could easily turn off all non-essential devices when you went to bed, or left the house?

Taking control
What if ancillary devices (like a printer) automatically turned themselves on and off whenever the master device was switched on or off?

The Mazzini Project aims to build such a system
A family of autonomous, power -monitoring, controllable sockets

The Mazzini Project aims to build such a system
Simple plug-in-and-go installation
Monitors power usage and reports regularly via wireless to a computer or “master” unit
Attached appliance can be turned on or off remotely via wireless, or…
… based on decisions from in-built “behaviour” program

Scalable
Useful from the first one you install
Add additional units as quickly as you want

Open Standards
Will use existing open standards for data where possible
Will publish the specification for any new data formats or communication protocols defined

Open Source
Desire is to release both the hardware and software as open source to encourage new applications and developments from users

Extensible. Reconfigurable.
Software can be upgraded or reconfigured in the field – it will be easy to download new behaviours
Investigating the possibility of non-techie user hardware extensibility

Tell me more!
Still in development, but if you’re interested then please get in touch – adrianm@mcqn.com
Check for project updates at http://www.mcqn.com/research

Photo Credits
Power substation: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/866669
Switches and dials: http://www.flickr.com/photos/albedo/97915333/
Wattson: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksimpkins/2120466739/

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The Mazzini Project

by Adrian McEwen

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