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NEWS: Intelliplug wins Innovation Award

Joe Cox Tuesday, April 22, 2008 14:47

Oneclick Image 003-1

In the past it may well have been hard to square your love of AV with your natural concern for the environment, but slowly but surely, it's becoming easier to offset your ravenous consumption of power.

Not only are TVs becoming more conscious of power usage, but we've also seen a few clever gadgets designed to help us conserve power further.

The Intelliplug is just one of those gadgets, and it's usefulness has now been rubber-stamped with a Queen's Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category.

OneClick, the company behind the Intelliplug, is rightly very chuffed with this Award, not least as it has a staff of only nine people working on its innovative, energy-saving products. The Intelliplug is all about turning off your AV peripherals when they're no longer in use, saving you power.

Peter Robertson, the company founder, explains: "The user simply plugs the peripherals into the Intelliplug, which then takes over. The plug has full range auto calibration allowing it to automatically determine the on/off power level of any desktop computer, hi-fi, AV amp or TV to then switch power to peripheral equipment only when in use.

All this, and more, is explained on the website here. The Intelliplug is calculated to pay back its price in energy savings in one year, and then naturally goes on to save you cash every year after. With a working life of 'one million clicks', that should be a decent wedge of cash...

Technorati Tags: Innovation, Intelliplug, OneClick, Queen's Award for Enterprise

Comments

basshound April 23, 2008 09:01

What about the theory that hi-fi kit should be left on all the time? Does this still hold water in the light of enviromental concerns?

daveh April 23, 2008 11:55

These devices work by sensing whether the TV is on or off. So if you just want to listen to the tuner part of a AV receiver or a connected CD then annoyingly you have to have the TV on thus defeating any savings to the purse and planet.

JimF April 23, 2008 14:08

Any chance of you guys testing these along other power sources to see how they effect hi-fi performance? You're always telling us mains leads count!

al7478 April 23, 2008 14:53

daveh - stand to be corrected, but they have a number of products on the website for specific kit, so i assume (i admit its an assumpton only tho) that they dont all depend on the tv...

bigrich April 23, 2008 15:35

I've had a 6 gang Intelliplug on my PC since they came out and its brilliant as all my PC peripherals (printer/scanner/speakers/etc.) are switched on and off with the PC. I've got another one on my AV kit with the amp as the principal device acting as the master switch. I have to have the amp on to watch TV as the built-in speakers are appalling (ancient CRT set).

al7478 April 23, 2008 16:26

bigrich - which probably means my above point is wrong. Im less keen now - i have my amp and speakers going into my pc, and i hardly use my printer. id probably not use much less power.

daveh April 23, 2008 17:27

I'm always open to someone correcting me if I hapen to err but I have one of the panels connected to my PC . This closes everything connected when you power down the PC. It may be poss to use one of these on AV kit but then if you have a recorder of some sort it would have to be pIugged into a seperate feed as it needs power to timeshift. I also have an AV panel connected to TVs, AV and audio equipment. I tried plugging an AV receiver into the master socket but it just kept switching everything off after 20seconds.

So I came to the conclusion that it had to be a TV that is plugged into the Master socket. Unless anyone can tell me differently.

borderav35 April 23, 2008 22:43

Just a thought could we not just save the cost of the intelliplug and switch the gear off at the socket when not in use.

daveh April 24, 2008 11:56

In my set up I would have to move several pieces of kit to get to the socket so it is not an easy solution. I'd also have to get the duster out and clean there.

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