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By Evan Ackerman

The Visible Energy UFO, which I ran across at Stanford’s CPX, is a remote control powerstrip that allows you to monitor and track your energy consumption. It’s not designed to be a color changing (and collapseable!) snack bowl at all, but in spite of that, it would make an excellent one. The UFO has four color coded outlets (plus a surge protector) inside, spaced around the central axis so that you can fit even the bulkiest of power adapters into them. If you don’t need the snack bowl part, you can fold the flexible plastic cover down to keep everything nice and tidy. The light on the top of the UFO changes color (green, yellow, or red) depending on how much juice it’s sucking.

The reason that you might want one of these, however, is the slick iPhone app that comes with it. The app connects to each one of your UFO power strips separately, and lets you see at a glance how much energy you’re using. You can also turn each outlet on and off, from anywhere. Setup is supposed to be fast and easy, and as far as home automation goes, I can’t imagine it gets much simpler than this. The only problem is, if you don’t have your iPhone, there aren’t actually any switches on the thing. Oh well.

The Visible Energy UFO should be available this summer for less (hopefully a lot less) than $200.

[ Visible Energy ]

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In Digeo’s latest move into the consumer DVR market it is rolling out first big update since the launch only a few months ago. The list of additions is pretty nice, but our most anticipated feature, the Moxi-mate, is still just “coming soon.” Although all the new features are interesting, the most notable is the DLNA certification which allows your Moxi to play all kinds of media from your PC, including from a PlayOn server. What’s even better is that Digeo is actually throwing in the PlayOn software — famous for its Hulu and Netflix support — for free with the update, which $40 normally. The other new Moxi features users will have access to within the next few days is an expansion of Moxi Net outside its walled garden, as well as a few new home automation tricks that’ll let you take advantage of Z-Wave lights and various IP cameras — also configured via Moxi Net. Believe it or not though, there is actually more, but rather than go on and on covering the Flickr improvements and Rhapsody support, we’ll just provide the entire release after the break.

Gallery: Moxi’s spring update
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Think of it as home automation but on a far larger scale: The Small Robotics Building project is a joint undertaking by Shimizu Corp and Yasukawa Electric Corp in Japan. Utilizing smart infrastructure technology and robotics, the companies are creating an automated living environment that can handle such duties as reception, deliveries, cleaning, and security, without the need for human intervention. Instead of relying on individual robots to perform functions like human detection and device control, all this is handled by the building-wide network, which then dispatches robots to perform various tasks. Sure, this all sounds very High Rise, but don’t start mulling over notions of postmodern alienation yet: all we have right now is a demo called the Smart Showroom, where visitors are greeted by an adorable robot, who gives a little presentation while involving spoken explanations and a projector. Sounds innocent enough, right?

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It’s been a hot minute since S1Digital tickled our attention with a new media center, but the outfit is hitting back this year with a new machine along with updates to a number of its ProLine Series rigs. The new kid on the block is the P500 Media Center, which is available with up to four CableCARD tuners (plus a QAM / ATSC tuner), support for internal RAID5 storage, HDMI / DVI, 7.1-channel audio output and Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo processors. As for the refreshed bunch, you can catch the S800 and P600 with Blu-ray drives as standard, quad CableCARD tuners and support for home automation integration with Crestron, AMX, RTI, HAI and PC based-touchscreens over IP or RS-232. Every machine mentioned here can be ordered up now, with the new P500 starting at a staggering $5,999 sans tuners.
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When we first heard about Ecobee’s Smart Thermostat last October, it claimed the device could recoup its $385 price tag within the first 12 to 18 months of use. Whether or not that’s the case, you can now find out for yourself. The WiFi-enabled home automation tool, complete with ZigBee expansion slots, is now available to order online from the company’s website. The upfront cost includes the $35 access fee for first year of use. Now how long must we wait until someone throws an emulator on this thing?