MeterPlug - Fighting Vampire Power Waste In Your Home

It seems that power bills get higher all the time, though that may be what it seems like and reality may not be that bad. With all the things that we plug in, there must be a way to reduce the cost for electricity. What has been coming out in recent years is the fact that many of the things we have in our homes use power 24 hours a day. That DVR is running 24 hours a day consuming power, but is required to do that in order to work correctly. And there are so many other devices which consume power when not in use. Your computer is taking power when it is turned off. And then there are the things which consume large amounts of energy, but you do not know just how much, such as your refrigerator. All of these things cost money and there needs to be a better way to figure out where all the power is being consumed.

The MeterPlug is going to be that device which can tell you what is going on with power consumption. It is a small plug that slips between the plug and the wall socket and once in place can provide you with valuable information. Think your xBox 360 is stealing power like a vampire sucking money out of your wallet? The MeterPlug will be able to tell you that. And the information is provided to your smart phone. This is accomplished via Bluetooth 4.0 on either an iOS or Android app you run on your smart phone.

As you can see here, they are showing you what it costs to run washing machine. Just by placing the MeterPlug between the power cord and the wall socket, you can start getting information. So many electronic devices continue to pull power even after you hit the power button and they all add up on your electricity bill. One of the features for the MeterPlug is the ability to turn off a monitored appliance or device so that it is drawing no electricity which right now is like a vampire draining power when it does not need it.

With their huge databases, they can even tell you the costs for using power so that you know what a single item is costing you. Or you can have devices for your home office plugged into a power strip and place the MeterPlug between the power strip plug and the wall outlet. You will then be able to know what your home office is costing you in energy costs. And that dreaded vampire drain after your power things down.

The MeterPlug started as an Indiegog project and is going to be shipping to the US in a matter of weeks with this get method of figuring out where your costs are for electricity. You can pre-order one now at StockNFind.com. The MeterPlug has a lot of intelligence built into it and as a result is not going to be cheap. They will cost you $50 per plug, but are well worth the cost in terms of the value you can get from them.

Power Pack Gives Your Mobile Device A Battery Charge

Until the battery life on our mobile devices improves radically, the need to have a charger along is critical to our daily lives. And if you are in a situation where there is no where to plug in that USB cable you use to add battery life to your phone, then having an alternative handy becomes critical. Portable battery chargers are a necessity if you rely on your mobile device for connections to friends, family or work. When that dreaded low battery light starts showing on your smart phone, you want to have something on hand which can save the day for you until you get to a power source.

And that is where the Belkin Power Pack 4000 comes in to keep you mobile devices charged until you get to a power source. Measuring at 4.3 by 3.3 inches with a height of 0.6 inches, this one is compact enough for you to drop in a pocket or bag for your use. And while weighing 4.6 ounces, it weighs a little more than the iPhone 5. But, with most of us, we are carrying both a smart phone and a tablet and need something which can charge both when we are seeing low battery indicators.

The Belkin Power Pack 4000 has 2 USB connectors to provide power to both your smart phone and tablet at the same time. And they throw in 2 USB to microUSB cables with this portable charger. These are not a partial charge, but a full charge for both devices. Not all portable charges have the ability to charge up two items at the same time.

The Belkin Power Pack 4000 comes with a wall adapter for charging it up after use. But with a 95% battery staying power after charging, it will hold that charge for up to 30 days, so you are not going to need to carry the charger with you for short trips. While the initial charge on the 4000 takes about 8 hours, recharging this portable battery takes 3 to 4 hours from then on.


While the idea of having to carry a portable battery charge is not exactly what we what to be doing, the reality is we are going to experience low battery problems on our smart phones because of the poor battery life in them. The current technology is not where it needs to be for having multiple days of battery life on smart phones. Until you get the kind of battery life that is demanded by our mobile lives, carrying a portable battery charger is a fact of life. The Belkin Power Pack is one of those items which becomes a necessity.

Travel Outlet With Swivel Plugs And Surge Protection

If you have ever traveled and stayed in a hotel, you know the frustration of trying to find more than a single outlet to plug your chargers into. Whether it be for your laptop, tablet or smart phone, most hotels limit you to pretty much a single plug for your technology equipment. And with some of the large plugs for USB drives and others, you need to find something which you can easily carry with you while you travel. And since the power in some locations is not a clean as it could be, you need to be able to check for it being grounded as well. All of this must include the ability to handle surge protection as well.

While there are many portable surge protectors, few have all the features that we want to see. We have found the Travel Swivel Socket with Surge over at Herrington Catalog and this one provides great features. We have searched to see if you could find this one elsewhere and were not successful. There are several things which make travel swivel socket with surge protection a desirable part of your travel gear, if not an essential part.

The two outlets have the ability to turn 360 degrees, so if you have one of those over-sized transformer style plugs, you can still use the other outlet. By providing the swivel feature, it gives you the flexibility to move things around and have 2 items plugged in. There are also 2 USB outlets as well for charging up your smart phone or tablet at the same time. As you can see from the picture, there is a grounded light and a protected light to provide you with the knowledge that you are protected.

The one big additional feature for this portable power surge protector is the retractable plug on it. So many of the travel surge protector do not have one specific feature which is one we consider to be an important feature. With plugs sticking out, they can snag on things causing potential problems with poking holes in your bag if not covered up. For me, this is a great feature to reduce the packing concerns when traveling.

There are a lot of other popular travel surge on the market, such as the Belkin SurgePlus which has a swivel plug. But the swiveling plug is the one that plugs into the wall. And that plug does not retract so it sticks out to catch on things in your bag. The one nice feature is that the USB plugs are on the side and will not be blocked by the items plugged into it. On the Travel Swivel Socket, the USB plugs are on the top and could be covered by a large transformer block style plug.

If you do not have a travel surge protector, the Travel Swivel Socket is a great item to carry because of the flexibility of the plugs which can be turned 360 degrees. And it provides the ability to know that you are connecting to a grounded power source.

SmartThings Provides An Open Home Security System

KickStarter Friday - Opening Connections To Other Products

Home security systems have become very important today. And there are so many different ways that you can protect your home and belongings. The problem with so many of the various home security packages which are available is that they are not open. If you buy a package from a security company, you get their products along with the monthly fees. You cannot add some other product into the mix. Even the ones which leverage mobile technology today are not able to take advantage of other products or apps. And there are a number of different methods used for communication, like ZigBee, Z-Wave and WiFi. And vendors are not going to include multiple methods for communicating with devices.

So, for this weeks KickStarter Friday, we are talking about SmartThings which raised over $1.2 million for their base product. This was done last year and they have shipped product. At the moment, they are working to manufacture more to meet the continuing demand and you can "Reserve Your Spot" for one when they come in which is currently estimated to be in May. The SmartThings hardware unit and the associated software is being worked on to continue to include more and more devices.

If someone's product allows for it to be controlled by a 3rd party, then it can be controlled by SmartThings. There are developers working to add various products and controls to be able to join the SmartThings unit. While this does sound like a fantastic way of doing things, it is going to take a little while longer to create the software connections to other devices. The company is working to make connections to the things in your home and allow for automation of them from a single device. That is a big undertaking and if they are only 50% successful, they will have a great product.

While they sell "things" which are devices you would normally have with a security system, such as door and window monitors, it is the potential to use other devices which do not come from SmartThings. Their SmartApps are designed to let you monitor just about anything that you can reach which has an interface. And with that, they have a large development effort which appears to be operating much in the same way as open source projects. It is these apps which will allow the SmartThings unit to monitor and control so many more items than one would think. It is all dependent on whether those devices will allow for the SmartApps to access their information.

This may be the next be thing for home security and move beyond the limiting packages that you are forced to purchase.

WiFi Cameras Should Be Part Of Your Home Security

With everything that goes on in the world, the need for having a camera to record activities is an important feature for your home security. If your home is being viewed by someone wanting to break in, seeing exterior cameras may be a deterrent to them doing that. Or cameras inside the home can record someone inside the hone who should not be there. You can even be alerted to someone in your home by the recording of information. There have been recent news reports here in Northern California of exterior cameras recording someone coming to a home and stealing the delivered boxes. Having cameras for your home is becoming part of the standard package for home security and is something which should be part of your overall considerations for home security.

While you can run wired cameras, WiFi cameras are far easier to set up and use. It is just a matter of making a connection to them and you are ready to use them. Those of a few years back were limited to connections to the back of a DVR, but the ones of today are using mobile devices to alert you as to activities besides recording the actions. More and more are storing the recordings in the Cloud with added services, so even if someone steals the camera, you still have the images to turn over to the police.

WiFi cameras will leverage your local WiFi router to stream the video, which can be to the web, computer or Cloud. One that is popular is the Samsung SmartCam which has a lot of features at a low price. That includes the ability to detect noise or motion around the camera and then provide notifications to you. Another popular WiFi camera is DropCam which offers a similar set of features and adds night vision to the package as well. The include the streaming video to the web and notification alerts should be the standards you are looking for.

Having a camera for indoor use which these are designed for, still leaves the outside of your home to be covered. You want something which can withstand the weather, such as the Wansview WiFi camera which has notifications and motion detection. The growing market for outside WiFi cameras is growing and it is the feature sets which make these desirable. The Wansview has built in night vision as well which is something that should be expected from all outdoor cameras. There are many other outdoor WiFi cameras on the market and you should research those that you are considering for your home.

With summer approaching and vacation planning, you need to make sure that your home security is where it needs to be. If you need to improve on what you have, WiFi cameras look to be your best bet to cover your home and property. There is no one size fits all for this and you will need to do some research to find cameras that fit your needs. Indoor cameras come in many shapes and sizes while outdoor cameras are less flexible in shapes and design. The key to look for is WiFi enabled cameras that can send you notifications to your phone to alert you along with streaming video which can be viewed remotely.

Electronic Door Viewers Greatly Improve The Door Peephole

Growing up, the front door is the the barrier to the outside world and provides a feeling of security. When someone would knock on the door, my parents would look through the tiny peephole in the door to see who it was and decide whether to open the door. I was too small to look through it because it was towards the top of the door. As I grew older, I could pull up a chair and look through it to see the outside world. But that view was very strange looking. Trying to get a clear picture of who was at the door was not possible. So much has changed in the past 5 years that getting an excellent view of the person outside is now possible.

So, in continuing with gadgets around the home to provide security, we are looking at the old door peephole concept and the numerous improvements which have come about. There are a variety of door viewers which can provide an excellent LCD picture for you to see. And they include a wide angle picture as well. The other big improvement is that they take a picture of what you are looking at and store it on a micro SD card, such as the Digital Door Viewer from Yale shown above. Viewers have improved greatly and the whole family can use them. You press a button and the picture appears, so even the younger members of the family can use an electronic door viewer to see who is at the door.

The pictures being recorded have pretty much become the standard for the door viewers and most come with a 512 MB micro SD card standard. With the 2.5 to 3.5 inch screen sizes being sold today, you get a great picture. The biggest issue with these is the batteries required to power door viewers. It seems that not all door viewers are created equal and some do not get the best battery life. As an example, a generic viewer has people complaining about the battery life in the reviews. Brand names do not seem to have the same complaints, such as the Brinno electronic peephole viewer. Viewers are going to be one of those items which require research on your part.

When you are looking at viewers, be aware that some of the digital viewers do not record pictures of the person at the door and that will obviously impact the price. The added picture taking has more technology with it and raises the price for the electronic door viewer. Some viewers have an associated door bell with them, so that when someone rings the bell, it will take their picture. There are so many features associated with the electronic door viewers that you are going to have to determine which one fits your needs. The best feature of all for these is that from the outside of the door, you cannot tell that there is an electronic viewer which can take a picture.

Lockitron - Remotely Lock Your Door When You Forget

If you are like many in the technology world, you sometimes have to rush out of the house to get to work because of some emergency. And with the rush to get out of the house, how many times have you wondered if you locked your door or not. That is a nagging feeling and one that stays with you until you get home. Since there are other products on the market for turning lights on and off when you are not home, why not one which will let you lock or unlock your front door remotely? This is the week where we are providing gadgets to help around the home while providing you with security. And with that, we have found something new to let you lock or unlock your deadbolt with your smartphone.

Coming this summer, Lockitron will be shipping to provide you with an electronic security device. Listed at $179, you can pre-order one now and be part of the first group to receive your own Lockitron. This is such a simple concept to provide you with the peace of mind to know that you have locked your door. I have left home a number of times only to return a few minutes later to make sure that I locked the front door. With the Lockitron, I would no longer have to wonder. While it can do much more than just this single feature, for me, this is the reason I would go out and buy one.

When the Lockitron arrives, it will have the both Android and iOS apps to provide you with the ability to check the status of the deadbolt lock. With the app, you can lock or unlock the deadbolt with ease. If you need to let someone into your home while you are at work, you can to that with the WiFi enabled Lockitron. While the plans to include WiFi into this security device are underway, there will be no visible interface for the device to set things up. The built in WiFi device can be configured with the Lockitron app on your phone. You place your smart phone near the device and enter the provided user name and password. Then press Send and it syncs things up for you in a matter of seconds.

Since this is technology, it requires power which is provided by 2 AA batteries. And they claim that this will power the Lockitron for more than a year. This looks like a great device to have and is very simple to use. It can even alert you when the door is unlocked which is a great feature. And there is even more to this. They are going to include Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities so that the Lockitron knows when you are approaching with your smart phone and automatically unlock the deadbolt for you. All of this is coming and will be easily installed. Take a look at the video to see just how great this product is.