My British Gas freebies arrived yesterday (big thanks to Peter Parry
for the 'heads up' and offer code). It's the second thing Peter has
helped me with, the first being the author of an excellent website
that gave me the confidence to play with phone extensions years ago).
Has anyone else received theirs?
Anyway, I wouldn't have bought either of the products with my own
cash. I don't have a use for the IR receiver power strip (turning my
gear on and off at the wall is no hardship), but I tested that it
works. It's going to be someone's Xmas present!
The "Minim" electricity monitor has been a bit of fun. Came with 3
zinc-carbon C cells for the transmitter, imported from China. I think
it gets confused by power factors and it samples every two seconds, so
the washing machine motor turning the drum over a few times each way
has the readings all over the place. Haven't bothered with the
costings as it can't do split unit tariffs. Haven't bothered setting a
"target consumption" either. The examples in the instructions seemed
rather high, but maybe I have a simple house without lots of tat left
on standby. I'll keep using it for a month, see how accurate it is
compared with the meter, then the novelty might have worn off.

James

"Part timer" wrote in message
...
My British Gas freebies arrived yesterday (big thanks to Peter Parry
for the 'heads up' and offer code). It's the second thing Peter has
helped me with, the first being the author of an excellent website
that gave me the confidence to play with phone extensions years ago).
Has anyone else received theirs?
Anyway, I wouldn't have bought either of the products with my own
cash. I don't have a use for the IR receiver power strip (turning my
gear on and off at the wall is no hardship), but I tested that it
works. It's going to be someone's Xmas present!
The "Minim" electricity monitor has been a bit of fun. Came with 3
zinc-carbon C cells for the transmitter, imported from China. I think
it gets confused by power factors and it samples every two seconds, so
the washing machine motor turning the drum over a few times each way
has the readings all over the place. Haven't bothered with the
costings as it can't do split unit tariffs. Haven't bothered setting a
"target consumption" either. The examples in the instructions seemed
rather high, but maybe I have a simple house without lots of tat left
on standby. I'll keep using it for a month, see how accurate it is
compared with the meter, then the novelty might have worn off.

James

I cannot say I saw the original post. When was it posted?

Gio

On Sep 5, 11:38*pm, "Gio" wrote:

I cannot say I saw the original post. *When was it posted?

Gio

100% "Friends of the Sod certified":

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-...1?dmode=source

It might still be available. I had submitted my details and forgotten
about it until the postman put a card through saying he had kindly
left it on the doorstep (without knocking).

Part timer wrote:
My British Gas freebies arrived yesterday (big thanks to Peter Parry
for the 'heads up' and offer code). It's the second thing Peter has
helped me with, the first being the author of an excellent website
that gave me the confidence to play with phone extensions years ago).
Has anyone else received theirs?

No & I'd forgotten about them TBH.

Anyway, I wouldn't have bought either of the products with my own
cash. I don't have a use for the IR receiver power strip (turning my
gear on and off at the wall is no hardship), but I tested that it
works. It's going to be someone's Xmas present!
The "Minim" electricity monitor has been a bit of fun. Came with 3
zinc-carbon C cells for the transmitter, imported from China. I think
it gets confused by power factors and it samples every two seconds, so
the washing machine motor turning the drum over a few times each way
has the readings all over the place. Haven't bothered with the
costings as it can't do split unit tariffs. Haven't bothered setting a
"target consumption" either. The examples in the instructions seemed
rather high, but maybe I have a simple house without lots of tat left
on standby. I'll keep using it for a month, see how accurate it is
compared with the meter, then the novelty might have worn off.

James

On Sat, 5 Sep 2009 14:50:46 -0700 (PDT), Part timer wrote:

My British Gas freebies arrived yesterday (big thanks to Peter Parry
for the 'heads up' and offer code). It's the second thing Peter has
helped me with, the first being the author of an excellent website
that gave me the confidence to play with phone extensions years ago).
Has anyone else received theirs?
Anyway, I wouldn't have bought either of the products with my own
cash. I don't have a use for the IR receiver power strip (turning my
gear on and off at the wall is no hardship), but I tested that it
works. It's going to be someone's Xmas present!
The "Minim" electricity monitor has been a bit of fun. Came with 3
zinc-carbon C cells for the transmitter, imported from China. I think
it gets confused by power factors and it samples every two seconds, so
the washing machine motor turning the drum over a few times each way
has the readings all over the place. Haven't bothered with the
costings as it can't do split unit tariffs. Haven't bothered setting a
"target consumption" either. The examples in the instructions seemed
rather high, but maybe I have a simple house without lots of tat left
on standby. I'll keep using it for a month, see how accurate it is
compared with the meter, then the novelty might have worn off.

James

Mine arrived 2 days ago - and I'd forgotten about it as well!

The standby thing seems to be more trouble than it's worth. The TV is 0.9W
(MaplinMeter ??) so OK for the odd half hour.

As for the power monitor: at first my PC was shown as flicking between 80 -
90W, which is about the same as on the above MM. Turning off the monitor
dropped it to 40 - 50W, which is about right for a 35W monitor.
Next time I turned on the PC it was 190W! The monitor dropped it by ~100W -
not bad via a 12V 3.3A PSU. If the PC were to run at 90W+ the CPU would fry
as it's 65W TDP and is very rarely at 50%.

The 3kW kettle showed as 2.94kW, same as on MM.

I need to get rid of everything with 'strange' PSUs and PFs that aren't
unity then the Minim will be OK.
--
Peter.
The head of a pin will hold more angels if
it's been flattened with an angel-grinder.

On Sat, 5 Sep 2009 15:52:33 -0700 (PDT), Part timer wrote:
On Sep 5, 11:38*pm, "Gio" wrote:

I cannot say I saw the original post. *When was it posted?

Gio

100% "Friends of the Sod certified":

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-...1?dmode=source

It might still be available. I had submitted my details and forgotten
about it until the postman put a card through saying he had kindly
left it on the doorstep (without knocking).

The key bit seems to be to state that youy're on benefits or over 70

On Sun, 6 Sep 2009 09:19:06 +0100, PeterC wrote:

As for the power monitor: at first my PC was shown as flicking between
80 - 90W, which is about the same as on the above MM. Turning off the
monitor dropped it to 40 - 50W, which is about right for a 35W monitor.
Next time I turned on the PC it was 190W! The monitor dropped it by
~100W - not bad via a 12V 3.3A PSU.

Did you let it settle or was that the first reading after the switch
on. OK SMPSU's shouldn't have much of an inrush compared to a motor
or transformer based PSU but there will be a bit.

If the PC were to run at 90W+ the CPU would fry as it's 65W TDP and is
very rarely at 50%.

The CPU load does affect the power it takes but I'm not convinced
it's a great deal and there will be other stuff taking power like the
north and south bridges, graphics, and memory. Still it does look a
bit odd.

I have a CurrentCost CC128 with the serial data hooked up to the
server for logging. It's fun ploting out the days usage, I always
turned the coffee machine off once the jug was half empty to stop the
coffee stewing but having seen the plot will be better at that. As
for the kettles "keep warm" feature...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allsorts-60/3891740435/

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:24:42 +0100 (BST), Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Sun, 6 Sep 2009 09:19:06 +0100, PeterC wrote:

As for the power monitor: at first my PC was shown as flicking between
80 - 90W, which is about the same as on the above MM. Turning off the
monitor dropped it to 40 - 50W, which is about right for a 35W monitor.
Next time I turned on the PC it was 190W! The monitor dropped it by
~100W - not bad via a 12V 3.3A PSU.

Did you let it settle or was that the first reading after the switch
on. OK SMPSU's shouldn't have much of an inrush compared to a motor
or transformer based PSU but there will be a bit.

I let the PC boot fully and settle down, so about 2 min.
I do wonder why it was 'right' the first time and then 'wrong'.

If the PC were to run at 90W+ the CPU would fry as it's 65W TDP and is
very rarely at 50%.

The CPU load does affect the power it takes but I'm not convinced
it's a great deal and there will be other stuff taking power like the
north and south bridges, graphics, and memory. Still it does look a
bit odd.

It's a quiet, low-power job. The PSU is a Seasonic 330W with aPFC; the fan
never speeds up and the outflows from PSU and case are cool, so no way is
it taking ~100W. The heatsinks on the mobo are warm, not hot.

I have a CurrentCost CC128 with the serial data hooked up to the
server for logging. It's fun ploting out the days usage, I always
turned the coffee machine off once the jug was half empty to stop the
coffee stewing but having seen the plot will be better at that. As
for the kettles "keep warm" feature...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allsorts-60/3891740435/

Yes, have to be wary of the 'keep warm' feature.
I went next door to feed the new puppy. I needed hot water, went to turn on
the kettle and it was at about 40 - 50C and no-one had been in the house
for 3 hours. My neighbour hadn't realised what was happening - the kettle
is now turned off at the wall.
--
Peter.
The head of a pin will hold more angels if
it's been flattened with an angel-grinder.

In article o.uk,
"Dave Liquorice" writes:
On Sun, 6 Sep 2009 09:19:06 +0100, PeterC wrote:

As for the power monitor: at first my PC was shown as flicking between
80 - 90W, which is about the same as on the above MM. Turning off the
monitor dropped it to 40 - 50W, which is about right for a 35W monitor.
Next time I turned on the PC it was 190W! The monitor dropped it by
~100W - not bad via a 12V 3.3A PSU.

Did you let it settle or was that the first reading after the switch
on. OK SMPSU's shouldn't have much of an inrush compared to a motor
or transformer based PSU but there will be a bit.

Actually, they are often enormous spikes, but far too short
to be visible on a power monitor or to care about the cost.

If the PC were to run at 90W+ the CPU would fry as it's 65W TDP and is
very rarely at 50%.

The CPU load does affect the power it takes but I'm not convinced
it's a great deal and there will be other stuff taking power like the
north and south bridges, graphics, and memory. Still it does look a
bit odd.

On modern PC systems, CPU can be quite a significant consumer
of power. Also, OS's often don't load or start power management
software particularly early on, so you may well have CPU cores
falling back to a default idle loop spin initially. Later in
startup when an OS checks for CPU-specific modules to load, and
selects more appropriate modules optimised for that particular
CPU rather than generic defaults, then you may get power reduction
if the OS decides it can HLT in the idle loop, and even more so
on modern processors where the scheduler may shut down cores when
it doesn't have enough runnable threads to keep them all busy.
(This is important for the likes of Nehalem where closing down
cores you can't currently make good use of gives extra thermal
headroom to the remaining core(s) and increases the chances of
them being able to run in turbo mode, where they are deliberated
overclocked.)

Also, many BIOS's don't seem to do anything to save power when
the system is sitting in the BIOS itself, and this can result in
peak power draw when you're in the BIOS before the system loads,
and it's just spinning CPUs in its idle loop.

I happen to have a true power meter on an old PIII at the moment.
When switched on, it's about 60W, and stays there whilst you roam
through the BIOS screens, and when you boot the OS (Solaris x86
in this case). As Solaris boots, at a certain point when it cuts
across to Solaris's scheduler, the power consumption drops to 20W
when idle.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
PeterC writes:

Mine arrived 2 days ago - and I'd forgotten about it as well!

The standby thing seems to be more trouble than it's worth. The TV is 0.9W
(MaplinMeter ??) so OK for the odd half hour.

I bought one of these a few weeks ago. Fortunately, I didn't
buy it to save power, or I would have taken it back.
It consumes 1.4W. Most mew devices on standby are now below
0.5W, so you would do better to leave them on standy than by
using this device. (In my case, it's to automatically switch
on a table lamp when we turn the telly on.)

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Sun, 6 Sep 2009 12:47:32 +0100, PeterC wrote:

I let the PC boot fully and settle down, so about 2 min. I do wonder why
it was 'right' the first time and then 'wrong'.

Something else came on at the same time... I find that the
orientation and position of the current transformer on my CC is quite
sensitive. Having it a bit skew can produce "odd" readings.

Yes, have to be wary of the 'keep warm' feature.

Ours has it as a seperate, lit, button to the main boil switch. We
only use the boil switch for tea or heating water for cooking pasta
rather than use the hob for the water heating. The keep warm switch
off temp is fine for a mug of coffee and operates a good 30s before
the boil cut off.

It was the coffee machine that really surprised me. What I can't
obviously see are the fridges and freezers their plates are all
100W, though I think the little spikes during the night are them
coming on.

As for my PC, that's 150W to 200W (it's an old 1GHz Athlon and the
exhaust air is decidedly warm...).

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Part timer" wrote in message
...
On Sep 5, 11:38 pm, "Gio" wrote:

I cannot say I saw the original post. When was it posted?

Gio

100% "Friends of the Sod certified":

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-...1?dmode=source

It might still be available. I had submitted my details and forgotten
about it until the postman put a card through saying he had kindly
left it on the doorstep (without knocking).


Thank you Part Timer,

Gio