By Andrew Liszewski
The best way to make sure the appliances and electronics in your home or office aren’t wasting electricity when not in use is to just unplug them. But given the placement of wall sockets (which usually end up behind desks or larger appliances) unplugging everything is not always easy or practical. So the Bye Bye Standby adapters are designed to sit between the wall socket and the plug, and can be used to easily cut all power to the device that’s plugged in.
A small remote control has a series of red and green buttons that can be used to selectively cut power to different devices, or cut power to a group of them all at once. Each adapter even has a manual override to make sure a device you’re actually using doesn’t accidentally get powered down. And if you’re worried that you’ll forget to shut things off, there’s also a motion sensor accessory that can be programmed to cut power after everyone has left a room. (After a certain adjustable time frame.)
Unfortunately given that socket layout it seems like the Bye Bye Standby is not designed for use in North America. But for those of you on the other side of the pond the accessories range in price from about $15 for the remote to about $23 for a heavy duty wall socket to about $29 for the motion sensor.
[ Bye Bye Standby ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]
For the US, there’s always X-10.
Does anyone else see the irony in using a device which always draws power to turn off other devices to save power.
Hahaha I was just about to say that too!
Very very cool… I was actually thinking this morning about unplugging my devices, but – of course – the socket is somewhere behind my desk and crawling on the floor to unplug it is not my idea of fun. Too bad that being on the other side of the pond doesn’t mean I can use these. Our sockets are still different.
@Anon: Yes. Also in trying to reduce your environmental footprint by manufacturing additional hardware.
In my case, the would-be savings are vastly exaggerated, anyhow. And those who are even less aware of their energy consumption will never buy this in the first place.
So, while this product is a nice means for exploiting the remaining in-between market of people who want to buy themselves a clean conscience, in the greater scheme, it won’t solve anything.