New testing toy

[flanzig1]

Bought this little toy and been trying it out this afternoon: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7657/

It's actually a pretty smart unit. Was testing it on my PCs to check power usage. It can even calculate the reactance of a load and give the reading of the apparent power in VA or in real power in Watts. Had to read up on AC power in my old electronics textbook to remember the why of the differance; an all resistive circuit(light bulb), the reading are the same.

Check my folding boxes(no CD or floppy drives/basic video card) for power useage:
1: P4 2.8B/117w
2: P4 2.4 Prescott/127w
3: Dual 2.2 Zeon/190w
4: P4 2.4B/112w
5: P4 2.8C/143 (unit in my sig)

I got this thing to see if I can add another folding box to this house circuit. Still need to test other things to get the complete load on the circuit.

[MaxRat]

thats pretty cool....

[TwoRails]

I've always wanted a watt meter. Have you checked wattage on startup??

[David M]

I saw one of those on a commercial. Wishing I had received one for Christmas. Looks really handy for saving energy.

[enhanced08]

Awesome! I have wanted one for awhile. Actually made my own awhile back with an old PS cable and old multimeter. I displayed the current amp draw and I could figure out the wattage from that. It wasnt fancy lookin, but it worked.

[TwoRails]

I remember Leo on ZDTV showed how to make one, but I doubt I could make one with all those functions for only $30

[12twelve12]

Awesome...just bought one. Thanks for the post.

Wife is rolling her eyes....some just don't understand.

[newbuilder14]

Wait a minute here - is that saying that those computers are using less than 200w? Why buy a bigger power supply then? Is it because most of the power is lost to heat? Thanks.

[MaxRat]

nope...thats AC current wattage draw...you're talking about DC wattage the pc uses...

[juppy]

Those are pretty cool. I just saw one used on Mythbusters about a week ago. They were having to measure power consumption by different kinds of light bulbs so they could answer whether or not it actually saves energy to turn the light off every time you go out of a room or if the bulb's power consumption at turn-on negates the savings.

[TwoRails]

Hi juppy -- You got me curious: so what did they come up with?

[David M]

I saw the episode...basically, the initial higher current draw is so minimal that it is worth turning out the lights to a room...even if you are only going out for a few minutes. Sorry kids....dad is right again.

Also, turning lights off and on thousands of times does shorten a bulbs life some, depending on the type of bulb, but leaving the lights on in order to make a bulb last longer makes no economic sense because the cost of the energy burned is way more than the cost of replacing the bulb.

[juppy]

Yeah, most of the bulbs turned out to be not so bad on the turn-on power consumption. The only *possible* acception was the normal everyday incandescent bulb, because it had the highest turn-on current of all the bulbs tested, so if you're only going out of the room for a short few minutes, the money you save by turning it off would be used up when you clicked it back on again. But they said even that one wasn't TOO bad either. Just as a side note, they tested about every type of bulb made......incandescent, several fluorescents (regular tube type and compact type like go in an indoor reading lamp), spotlights, floodlights, and they even had this weird one that had a bunch of LED's all over it. I mean this thing probably had at least 60 or 70 LED's in sort of a compact fluorescent design.

The funny thing was that not only did they measure the turn-on power consumption, but they also set a timer to flip the bulbs on and off every few minutes to simulate normal use. I forget how long they let that thing run, but I believe they said it was equivalent to a year's worth of normal usage. The wear and tear of turning them on and off had burned out all of the bulbs by the end of the test EXCEPT that funky-looking LED bulb. It was still kicking!

So in the end they didn't really know whether it was better to turn the bulb off when you go out of the room (as the power consumption results would say 'yes' to) or whether it was better to leave the light on because of wear and tear that the latter test revealed.