DIY Kyoto Wattson 01 Full Review
Posted: 05 February 2008 by Adam Vaughan
Decent green gadgets are few and far between, so it's with open tree-hugging arms that we welcome the excellent Wattson. This little glowing gizmo falls into a small but emerging category of devices dubbed 'energy monitors' or 'real-time electricity display meters'. If studies are to be believed, it'll save you between three and 15 per cent on your electricity bill -- a lot of cash if you're near the average £383 UK bill.
The device for the job is a table-shaped box, which wirelessly connects to your electricity meter and tells you -- in bright red LED numbers -- how many watts you're using at that second. For added effect, it glows blue when your house is using a reasonable amount of juice, jumping to red if you've left all the lights blazing, switched on the electric heater and fired up the electric oven.
Unlike its main rivals The OWL and the Efergy Meter, the Wattson is -- to borrow Zoolander parlance -- really, really good-looking. Eco gadgets generally seem to have skipped design school, but this one is well made and comes with a smart plastic finish. Size-wise, it's worth pointing out it's about the scale of a thick hardback novel rather than the full-size table it can look like in photos.
A blue glow indicates you're not using much juice, but it turns purple and then flashes red when you up your consumption
Getting started with the Wattson is easy. The supplied paper manual is clear, well written and nicely illustrated, and we can honestly say you don't need to be an electrician to fit the transmitter unit (and we're frightened of swapping out light switches). You simply connect it to one of the two cables coming from your meter and you're done. The only bummer here is that DIY Kyoto supply the transmitter with four non-rechargeable AA batteries. We'd prefer to see rechargeables, which would mean fewer resources and carbon expended making a replacement set of batteries. Continue reading...
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