
Show HN: Glow, a smart energy tracker for your home - blach_out
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1178650747/glow-the-smart-energy-tracker-for-your-home
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blackswan
This is great. I manually monitor usage quite regularly at my meter
(unfortunately not easy to get a smart meter in my country yet...) but it's
just a number and you need to work out the current instantaneous usage. This
just gives an intuitive sense. I really like interfaces that have this
'always-on-ness' and such a low barrier to insight.

I've actually considered making a glowing light in my office to link to the
conversion rate of my SaaS app. For emergency & binary type alerts I get an
immediate text alert. But for slightly softer & less urgent metrics a variable
color glowing light could be a good way to get across how fast I should look
into things ('this week, tomorrow, or maybe this afternoon since it's looking
quite orange!').

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blach_out
Hello HN! I'm one of the creators of Glow.

Glow is the first full home energy monitor that you can install without
calling an electrician or taking your life in your hands. In addition to
providing a detailed web interface & mobile app, Glow changes color in real-
time based on how much power you're using. Our findings have been that this
information slowly improves how you use power, much like how the Prius's
introduction of a real-time MPG display causes people to drive more
efficiently. Glow also has goal setting, IoT integrations, and alerts if your
energy usage is unusually high, for example when an electric oven has been
left on by accident.

One of the things I'm most proud of about Glow is how we found a way to use
the magnetic field sensors commoditized by cell phones and a clever
calibration technique to measure your power usage non-invasively.

We've been working on Glow for over two years and testing it in real world
homes for over 9 months. We'd love your feedback and support if it interests
you.

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philippnagel
Congrats on the launch!

However, why should I use this instead of a smart meter coupled with load
profile disaggregation (i.e. no additional devices necessary)?

Disclosure: I work for a smart metering company in Germany that offers that.

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tectonic
Does your smart meter provide real time output? In the US, they're usually
only hourly samples.

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philippnagel
Almost. We get updates every two seconds.

