You had me at ZigBee

OK, I like refrigerator magnets. So much so, that my wife has expelled my "collection" to a box in our storage space. When I saw an article on Embedded.com about a ZigBee refrigerator magnet, oooh, I had to read it.

The project's ultimate goal is to eliminate the need to manually read power meters. A side benefit is that it will allow customers to "monitor aggregate usage in their area and adjust their individual consumption". In other word, they will put off making that grilled cheese sandwich, because Fred, next door, has his hot tub cranked up? Well, I’m not completely sold on this second feature, but, for me being the first on my block to have a ZigBee refrigerator magnet is good enough <grin>

-Jim

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 08, 2007
  Our water, gas and electric meters are all read wirelessly here in Pittsburgh. The electric meter guy told me that they stand at the end of the street and read the whole block, but someone else told me that the meters talk to each other, and hop along short range between each meter all the way back to the electric company, which that would be pretty cool.

• Anonymous
  May 11, 2007
  I just got a letter from my electric company saying that they now allow me to login to their web page to view all sorts of interesting statistics, since they read my meter daily, which seems to support the theory that there is a mesh network sort of thing. Just need to get the water and gas to do that as well.