Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Intel Home Dashboard Concept to help monitor energy usage at home.


With all the potential seen in smart meters to save them and their customers money, utility companies all across the country are in an arms race for their implementation. One of the majors attractions of the smart meters is the fact that they can tell homeowners the cost of the energy they are using at any given time of the day. Armed with that information, homeowners are given the option to defere their heavy energy use untill off-peak hours, therefore saving them money.
But the process is in its very earlier stages with only a very few homes equipped with the devices. To remedied to that, there are some companies offering alternative products, some readily available, some not. Intel the computer chip maker, is one of them with a prototype product called Home Dashboard Concept, part of its new Home Energy Management Concept.
The product looks like the interface in most smart phones with a sleek touchscreen and can be hang on a wall or left sitting on a counter which add convenience since you can move it around the house.
Like the same suggests, the product does more than just monitoring energy use, it serve multiple purposes. Just like a smartphone, the Home Dashboard Concept is equipped of a camera that allow family members to leave video messages to another. It also allow dozens of applications to be run like you would on a smart phone for different purposes like mapping out an itinerary, looking for a telephone number in the phone book, tracking packages, looking for the weather or traffic conditions etc. Watch a video demonstration of the product here.
As cool and exiting as the new product may sound, Intel does not have a plan to commercialize it for now, instead it is looking to work with others manufactures to have them use its designs and processors with their own devices, the New York Times said.

For more, see NYTimes.com

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