Owl Cm119 Wireless Electricity Monitor

When the Owl arrived my wife sighed and complained about how this device would drive me insane, running around the house turning off lights, unplugging devices, and worse.Well, guess who is running around the house turning things off, guess who sits there looking at the monitor, guess who screams at the kids to turn off lights, guess who uses it to check if they're reading upstairs when they should be asleep (she confiscated torches some time ago)!That said I am impressed with how well it works, how much we're using it to measure the relative inefficiencies of various devices. The children have taken an interest, they find the setting for CO2 creation interesting and try to keep it low, although in a fit of eco-warrior I am concerned they may turn the cat's water fountain off.The only suggestion I would make is that the instructions should have a web link to various photo's of typical installations. The very clean diagrams supplied don't do justice to the under the stairs chaos most of us have, I spent some time following the spaghetti to the meter before deciding which was the correct output wire to put the clip around.Another idea would be to supply a strong sticky pad to hold up the clip into which the sender unit sits, rather than screwing it to the wall. I got one from another supplier, a no-more-nails one which is strong enough and does the job.I'd recommend the Owl to anyone who has a family, it's great for pointing out when lights and devices have been left on, and you can cheer yourself up working out how much you've saved as you trail the kids around the house turning off all the things they've left turned on, that and unplugging phone chargers!Another trick is you can see if anyone has their bedside light on well after they should be asleep, or has sneakily put on their CD player to listen under the bedclothes. Oh yes, the Owl is something all Dads should possess.After having had the Owl for several months now it has proved to be quite accurate, and now I have several months data I've altered the tariff rates and it's proving to be very accurate.I love my Owl. It lets me be a complete so-and-so, but an eco-friendly one, so nobody can complain. My wife, I suspect, is not quite as enamoured about the Owl as I am, and the kids...well less said the better.

Despite reading in Watts and Watt-hours and claiming to measure power consumption and energy, this unit actually measures only V-A (Volt-amps). In fact it really only measures amps, which is all it can do without an actual connection to the mains, and then multiplies by the assumed voltage. This leads to HUGE ERRORS because certain appliances draw current out of phase with the voltage, giving rise to vastly inflated readings. The ratio of actual Watts to V-A for an appliance is given as the 'Power Factor', and for most fridges and freezers and other devices with induction motors it is around 0.3, so don't be surprised when your 50 watt fridge reads 160 watts. It gets worse: some electronic devices like induction hobs draw considerable capacitive current when they are switched OFF; probably because they incorporate large capacitors to filter the high-frequency noise they generate and stop it getting back into the mains. My two-hob induction unit reads around 100 Watts on the Owl even when turned off, though it is not actually consuming power, just pumping current in and out of the grid ninety degrees out of phase with the voltage! The true facts were revealed when I connected this and other devices through one of those little plug-in power monitors which do read true power as well as current and power-factor.The 'base-level' power in many homes is taken by fridge and freezer, plus a few things on standbye, and in my case reads around 350 Watts even though it's actually nearer 100 Watts - very misleading as this is a major contributor to total energy used because it is on all day! At higher readings, when cookers and kettles are used, the readings are fairly accurate, as such devices have a power-factor of one. Interestingly, the added contribution of fridge and freezer is then also correct, because the high resistive loads swamp the out-of-phase current producing an overall power factor very close to one, which is what counts.Even more confusing is the fact that turning on my induction hob at the wall (but leaving it turned off) REDUCES the reading on the Owl considerably! This is because it draws capacitive (leading phase) current which cancels some of the inductive (lagging phase) current drawn by the fridge and freezer. Add to this the resolution limitation and it's all rather useless, though I actually find it useful to monitor my total load on my solar off-grid system so that I can keep within the 3kW limit of the inverter. Sorry to get a bit technical, but I think this is necessary in order to give some insight into the mysteries reported by other reviewers. If the manufacturers did it right, and didn't make such false claims, there would be no need for all this - they should bring out an alternative clip-on unit which also plugs into a socket, measuring true power by muliplying instantaneous current and voltage, and needing no battery. The monitor itself could remain the same.

The idea behind this product is quite good, enabling you to keep an eye on your minute to minute electricity use. However the design and execution of this particular monitor is so poor that it puts you off trying to use it. The instructions that come with it are truly appalling, the worst instructions for any electrical device that I have ever come across; they make it almost impossible to set up and use. After one year of use the display has changed to a line of double dots (which indicate that it is not receiving a signal from the electricity meter sender). Despite changing both sets of batteries (not cheap) I absolutely cannot get it to work again and so won't recommend it to anyone. I will just have to wait until another company brings out a model that it better thought out.

avendo un impianto fotovoltaico volevo monitorare sia il consumo che la produzione di correnteho risolto con 2 cm 119

difficoltà a trovare un canale libero, con l'affollamento degli apparati wireless di cui son piene tutte le case. Quando si sostituiscono le batterie si ricomincia da zero. Però quando funziona è comodo a prevedere i carichi eccessivi e a regolarsi per evitare l'intervento del limitatore di potenza dei moderni contatori elettronici.

Accessorio molto utile per capire dove e quando sprechiamo energia.Senza rinunciare a nulla e on qualche accorgimento (tipo ciabatte con interruttore e lampade a led) con questo wattometro ho ridotto sensibilmente l'utilizzo di energia elettrica in casa.Vantaggio sia in bolletta che per l'ambiente.Consigliato sia l'oggetto che la filosofia che lo ispira.

pienamente soddisfatto.ottimo prodotto servizio eccellente lo consiglio vivamente confrontato con altri e il rapporto qualita' prezzo e buono. funziona molto bene io lo utilizzo per controllare un impianto fotovoltaico

comprato perchè consumi elettrici lievitati, ho scoperto che si trattava di un microonde difettoso. Da una bella idea dei consumi istantanei, quello che non mi è piaciuto è il complicato modo di impostazione, non funziona la possibilità di vedere il costo dell'energia consumata perchè non adatto a tariffe italiane