PowerSafer

[Bill]

I don't know if anyone is mad enough to find this useful, but yesterday I was in the local 99p store and saw a whole shelf of boxes that said "Save the environment". I just purchased the one as it looked interesting, heavy and possibly convertible to something useful. Today I've opened it up and poked around. It seems well made, but unfortunately all the ic's have had the part numbers overpainted, and I haven't the time or youth any more to bother reverse engineering.

It's called a PowerSafer, and seems intended to be used with remote control TV's or Hi-Fi. It works by detecting that the TV has dropped from working current to standby and then powers down the device fully. When you use the TV's remote control to fire up the TV, the box sees the infra red of the control and applies power to the TV. A second press then switches the TV into a working mode.

I can see lots of reasons not to want to bother with it as designed, but I'm posting here as it's the most likely place to trigger the inspiration of someone who can think of something more useful to do with it than just use the unit as a box to build something else into.

[GB]

Is it heavy enough to use as a door stop?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You'll probably find it uses more power in its standby mode than the TV etc, so designed to sell to idiots.

[Martin Brown]

Don't bet on it - unless it is very badly designed.

A fair number of TVs around run their optical output and TDTV decoder continuously and inefficiently by default even when in standby mode. Highest consumption I have seen was ~20W on an older Panasonic.

There is usually a setting to disable it but it is worth checking. 20W off your 24/7 base load is a saving worth having.

Eon do a badged version of this kit for about £4 on Amazon. (free with some tariffs)

It is ideal for little old grannies who would otherwise risk life and limb unplugging the TV every night and plugging it in again daily. They remember the era when TVs ran hot with valves and wax capacitors which did catch fire or emit smoke as a more or less regular occurrence.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Even when switched off?

Very few valve sets had a remote control which switched to a standby mode.

[Adrian]

Saving about 15p every two days...?

[Bill]

To be quite clear, I have no intention of using it for the purpose intended, and it quotes its power consumption as

[Chris French]

We have a couple of those (if it's an adapter type thing) - though just works on sensing if the TV or whatever is on. got them off ebay cheaply

I'm not bothered about he TV, it uses

[tabbypurr]

20w is about £20 a year, or £200 per decade. Worth having if it costs y ou 99p to get it.

NT

[News]

The point, I think, is that many homes these days have more than one TV. Couple that to Martin's 3.75 pa to run a wall wart and Chris's point about Wiis and PCs and the savings can be substantial. Count the number of wall warts and chargers always plugged in, add PCs, TVs, STBs, Xboxes, Playstations, shavers, clippers, and the total soon mounts up.

I can see that a little care could easily save a hundred pounds a year.

[PeterC]

I had a free one from some energy co. It was stashed away for a couple of years, then I got a bigger telly which made access to some switches difficult. Dug out the device, read TFM (not at all intuitive set up), put it on a button that's not used and is well away from others and tried it. When it seemed to do the job properly, I checked it with a watt meter. No readings on A, W, VA or PF (the TV, AVR and BD player all give readings) so I assumed that it was doing its job.

[Bob Eager]

I worked out that leaving our TV on syandby (except at m=night) would cost about 55p per annum. 25p extra if we left it on at night.