Energy Wristband

2016-09-20 | By Matthew Venn

License: None Raspberry Pi SBC

Understanding energy is difficult, even for engineers – as we can’t see, feel or touch it. Conventional home energy monitors try to address this through representations in numbers, screens or bar charts, but many of us aren’t inspired by this. Home electricity usage needs to be reduced and often times there is room for easy savings.

This project aims to educate people about home electrical energy usage with wearable electronics. The energy wristband notifies any energy changes in your home. With the use of a Raspberry Pi computer connected  to a base station (a typical general market energy monitor), when a change in energy usage occurs, the wristband vibrates and a small LED bargraph shows your current usage from 1 to 4. Because home energy use is repetitive, wearing the wristband for a few weeks would be all that's needed to understand how the various household appliances use energy.

Previously, there was an attempt to bring the numbers behind energy use to life using wall-hanging drawing robots. But due to its complexity and is expensive, a change of approach led to this wristband which is much convenient and portable. With the click on the button on the wristband, real-time energy use can be known.