Onzo

“The icon on my phone changes from a smiley face to a gravestone so I know I’ve got to go up to the loft with the body bags”. This isn’t the confession of a serial killer. Andy Stanford-Clark is explaining how his mousetraps Twitter him when they catch a mouse. In the corner a group are huddled excitedly around a water meter that one of them has made; a plastic pipe wired to a hacker-friendly circuit board called an Arduino.

Yes, I’m at HomeCamp: “an unconference about using technology to monitor and automate the home for greener resource use and to save costs”. It was a fantastically inspiring day full of thought provoking conversations that ranged from hacks to behaviour change, shifting the peak to MQTT. All things we love at Onzo.

We talked about graphing energy and what’s next with Dale Lane. The appropriately named Usman Haque explained recent developments on Pachube, the site he started for data fans. James Govenor shouted alot, then bought beer for everyone. There were a whole host of other motivated and interesting people doing cool stuff to save energy. It was a great day and a great introduction to a community we’re proud to be part of. Thanks to Dale and Chris for making it happen – can’t wait for the next one.

We’re going to be releasing stuff shortly – get in touch if you’re interested in getting your hacker hands on some early kit so you can start playing with some data from Onzo.

Gotta go – my plant’s just texted me that it needs watering…