Still thinking about social energy / water meters after a conversation at Berkman last year.
Here’s one example from a greenwash / happy-marketing-speak site. (you know there’s not much to a company if they only post renderings)
Someone (Gruber?) linked to a description of how an iPhone app grabs images of Sudoku puzzles and digitizes them. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to do the same for different kinds of [water/energy] meters. But it requires discipline on par with a non-Bluetooth pedometer and Walker Tracker: you’ve got to snap the photo or enter the numbers every day.
The other option is to install your own flow meter after the official meter — here’s a McMaster-Carr page for costing. Set up an X-10 for wireless capture?
How social do you need to be? Lots of levels. Your private dashboard. Some sparklines on your homepage. A weekly email telling you how you compare to the other folks you know on [insert social network].
Use some central site to contribute anonymized stats from users with addresses verified (postcard method)? Then sell the ostensibly aggregated data to a utility lobbyist for large profit later. How private is your water usage?
Oliver | 20-Aug-09 at 11:57 am | Permalink
Thanks for the mention. Will gladly send you some real product images from the Consumer Electronics show in Berlin (4.-9. September). At that time you can take a look at the customer case studies published.
Matt Hampel | 21-Aug-09 at 4:38 pm | Permalink
Thanks, Oliver. I certainly would love to see some product images, and have conveyed the same via email.
Ed. note: Oliver’s email points to a generic corporate address at shaspa.com