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Comment by mv | Hacker News Reader

I really wanted one of these when they first came out, however, the arrogance of having locked down hardware really irked me...

iirc you had to pay something like $5/month after spending $250 for the sensor just to have access to the data! After spending $250 for it, I would have like to be able to write my own script to read the data off the device and not rely on their web service.... not having open access really turned me off...

This one is much cheaper : http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-Monitor/dp/... and it occasionally can be had for a simple $25... sure it'd take some hacking to get the data to the computer, but avoids the insulting monthly fee!

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Comments like this are part of why we have "Fear of Money":

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377054

It is one thing to say "Wattvision costs too much for me; I think they should lower or restructure the price".

It is another thing to say "the way this startup has structured their pricing is insulting to me".

The fact that you were easily able to come up with a market substitute for this offering just underscores how silly the idea of being "insulted" by pricing is.

Things cost what they cost, not what we think they should cost. As a general rule, we HN'ers suck at thinking about what things should cost.

Charging for a service is fine, but I agree that it is legitimately insulting to charge for use of a consumer-owned device.

That said, what wattvision lists in its FAQ is extremely fair. Using data from the last three months is free, so if you want to do your own processing you can easily download from there even if the device is difficult to directly access.

We have no monthly fees for typical home use and anyone buying through the kickstarter. And you can download everything in 15-second intervals to CSV or via our real-time API at any time.

You're welcome to try that other device. You'll find, among other things, that:

1) the +/-100 watts of resolution, updated every 30 seconds, at best, will yield a cumbersome user experience. Turn on five 20 watt bulbs and then the data will jump 30 seconds after you turn on the fifth bulb. Wattvision: +/- 2 watts, and 3x faster updates.

2) You need to buy another piece of hardware, and figure out what software you want to use, and then tie this all together, if you want to look at the data online or your computer. It's a cumbersome user experience, not counting the need to change batteries rather often on the sensor (Wattvision is a set-and-forget system).

We're building the best user experience for this scenario. Thanks for your feedback, perspectives, and kind words.

Giving kickstarter donators special treatment doesn't really change anything. Why don't you just charge for access to the web UI/feeds/etc, but still leave the hardware open and usable independently for those inclined and able to set up their own software? You certainly wouldn't lose many subscriptions to it.

100W increments isn't really fine-grained enough to isolate lots of small devices (presumably why the B&D is cheap).

On the Kickstarter FAQs, they mention that there won't be any recurring fees for Kickstarter backers.

As others have said, the resolution on the B&D is not that great. But if you are really up for some tinkering, you could build something reasonably cheaply with better resolution with A/C current sensors and an Arduino, like this guy:

http://www.flashsense.com/?cat=3

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