Home Camp is an “unconference” held in central London. The goal is to increase environmental sustainability in the home using technology, a mix of closed and open source projects were represented. This weekend we saw first hand what it’s all about.
Day 1 stated with a keynote by Moixa Energy about a home solar power system prototype. The concept is to replace multiple inefficient AC->DC adapters with a solar-augmented home DC power supply. They solve the connector problem by using a smart USB3 socket that provides multiple voltages with specialized cables.
The morning continues with short presentations from:
- OpenEngeryMonitor project
- Nanode, a small Arduino network node
- Pachube, data backend for embeded network devices
- AMEE, an API for calculating carbon emissions
We’ll have more on some of these projects later today.
From the start we wondered exactly what an unconference would be. The afternoon was open to short presentations and demos from all participants. Anyone who wanted to present put their topic on a post-it note and stuck it to a board. We heard from the developers and users of several energy monitoring platforms, as well as related topics like the psychology of energy conservation. Many participants had hardware projects with a growing community, so we gave our open hardware manufacturing overview.
Day two was filled with small group hardware demos in different rooms. We saw a wireless serial connection for the Arduino, an internet radio based on open hardware, and a Nanode live build. We did an EEPROM demo with the Bus Pirate, and used the Logic Sniffer to capture and verify the signals.
Home Camp was a great experience. Don’t miss it if you’re interested in home sustainability and open hardware. The participants were smart, motivated, and dedicated to improving the world through hacking and making.