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Old 05-25-11, 04:53 PM   #2
bennelson
Home-Wrecker
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: SE Wisconsin
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Here's a couple of photos for you.







The device is a remote display receiver screen that you put in your house and see the data on. The other thing is the sending unit. It's an infrared-reciever and data transmitter that mounts on your power meter with a metal band (pipe clamp) that you snug down around the clear cover of your meter.

You have to make the little IR receiver on the band line up with an IR transmitter on the power meter. Then it picks up the signal, and sends data you your device in the house.

The display shows power usage in $/hour or KW. Unfortunately, it's only one decimal point after the KW, so resolution is a crumby 100 watts!

That might be fine for somebody using thousands of watts, but for those of us trying to keep it under ONE KW, that lack of resolution will be frustrating.

I ran my microwave full-tilt, and compared the output data of the Black & Decker with the TED. They were within 10% of each other.

The "update" rate on the Black & Decker is 30 seconds, so it's hard to use to measure something that turns on and off quickly or only intermittently.

Also, there is no computer connection or display - the handheld/desktop/wall-hanging unit is all you get.

Pretty easy to use, not bad to set up, and the price was very good.

What amazes me is that houses don't just COME with some basic device like this. What house DOESN'T have a nice temperature display for the heat or air-conditioning?

Every house should have some basic level of electrical energy monitoring. This is exactly that.
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