Review: energyEGG

The energyEGG^TM is a home automation/power saving device that does one job and does it very well.

The job the energyEGG^TM does is to turn of a socket or number of sockets in a room if that room is empty.

It does this using a combination of an Egg shaped PIR and one or more wireless sockets. All sockets can be turned on by pressing a button on top of the egg and they will power off when the PIR detects that the room is empty. One really clever thing here is that the Egg will detect occupancy even if the people in the room are totally still – what it calls the SitStill^TM  sensor.

To avoid turning off when you have just popped out to make a cup of tea the Energy Egg has a timer dial on the bottom which you can set for a delay between 5 and 30 minutes.

The device will warn you a minute before it is due to turn off and also if the device has switched off the plugs will beep at you when you re-enter the room to remind you to turn on by pressing the button on top of the egg.

This last was really my only concern with the device. To get the best sensor coverage I had to position the sensor the other side of the room to the entrance. This meant groping about in the dark to find the egg to turn the lights back on. Although I guess in any sensible house the main light switch would be near the door, It would still be nice if they could supply a remote switch with the energyEGG or an option to turn on when the sensor detects movement in the room.

You can have multiple energy Eggs in a house and it is easy to pair sockets to Eggs. By default each Egg only controls the devices it is paired to (Room mode) but you can set an Egg to control all the devices in the house by pressing the button for 5 seconds and putting it in house mode.

The solution is supplied in convenient sets with the egg and one or more plugs. Ours came with one plug so we really couldn’t test the house mode but as everything else worked so well I have no doubts it would work as described.

You can’t beat this device for simplicity of set up – as one of my colleagues described it: so simple it is boring. Sometimes boring is good though  and there is nothing at all boring about the potential energy savings with this device.

Perhaps not a device for the real Home Automation enthusiast as there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to integrate it with other systems but as a simple setup and forget unit to turn off devices when they are not being used it is really good. My only caveat would be the aforementioned issue with the only switch being on top of the device.

The set reviewed retails at 40 UK pounds more details at http://www.treegreen.net/energyegg.php