Imagine that your devices could send you a push notification asking if they could switch themselves off. That you could switch appliances on and off remotely to stop them drawing power in standby mode. That would be neat, right? Well, that’s exactly what the energy-saving Parce plug will do.
The Parce is an adapter that sits in the wall socket between the power and the plug of your TV, media center or other device. It connects to your home network via Wi-Fi and monitors the power running through it. This data can be viewed on your computer, letting you see just what’s using the most power in your home. But it also lets the Parce detect when a device is in standby, and – if it’s been sleeping for a while – it can send a message to ask if it’s allowed to turn off the offending device.
It’s all very neat. Who wouldn’t want their home pretty much taking care of itself? But there’s one big gotcha. Each Parce costs $100, or about the same as an Apple TV. Even if you pitch in on the Indiegogo funding campaign, the cheapest you can get a single unit for is $69, which means that you’ll be waiting years before it pays for itself in electricity savings.
You can pitch in now, or do what I do, and just switch things off before you leave the house, and spend that $100 on a delicious dinner.
Source: Parce
