There is a lot of potential for making use of the Home Easy range of products in a typical house, but the following looks at low cost solutions to real problems that the elderly or people with difficulties operating normal household electrical appliances may experience:
1. Remote control lighting.
A person has a table lamp or standard lamp, which is awkward to switch on and off. It already has an energy saving bulb in it to reduce the cost of electricity it consumes. The lamp is preferred to the main room lighting which is seen as a little harsh, expensive to run and does not provide light where it is really needed. The lamp is already plugged into a mains socket.
The solution here is to purchase a remote controlled socket and key-fob remote control. These would cost just under £15 at B&Q's current prices, before any discount, such as that offered to pensioners, is applied. The key-fob remote is easy to use with a single on and off button. The lamp is plugged into the Home Easy socket, which in turn is plugged into the mains socket that had been used to power the lamp. The lamp is left as if it were switched on so that the remote has control of it. The user then has full control of the lamp without the need to reach for its switch.
A person has three lamps which he would like to control as the single one in item 1 above via a single remote control. For this, 3 remote sockets are purchased and just a single key-fob remote. Cost would be £35.92 at B&Q's current prices. See option 3 for a cheaper solution.
Each socket would be paired with the one key-fob remote, so that a single press of the on or off button will switch all 3 sockets simultaneously.
As with item 2 above, a person wishes to have control of three
sockets. This solution allows control of them as a group OR independently and
costs less than item 2.
A set of 3 sockets and a 4-way remote are purchased from B&Q at the current
price of £19.98. The remote control is "paired" with each socket independently
so that operation of the pairs of buttons labelled 1, 2 or 3 operate each of
the sockets and the "Group" on and off buttons operate all 3 sockets simultaneously.
This has obvious benefits over item 2, although does involve the use of a slightly
more complex remote control unit.
4. Saving electricity at night.
A person wishes to reduce their electricity bill by not leaving their TV and DVD or video player in standby mode at night.
It is quite a well publicised fact that modern electrical
equipment such as televisions that have their own remote use a small about
of electricity even when they are switched off (by the remote) but are still
in "standby" mode and ready to be switched back on by remote. That consumption
could be reduced by switching off the equipment at the wall socket every night.
Another way to do that would be to have a single remotely controlled socket,
possibly on a timer, which controls the power to all the equipment. Home Easy
claim their sockets use between 1 & 3 watts of power when switched off. A TV
and DVD player combined could quite easily consume 10 to 15 watts when in standby.
You would have to check the specifications of the device concerned to get a
more accurate figure. These are not big figures, but 10 watts consumption when
not required for an 8 hour period every day could cost something like £30 per
year. So. there is not a huge saving to be made but it is there and would do
a little for the environment as well!
If a person was using one of the options above, particularly item 3, it could
well be worth allocating one of the sockets to a standard extension cable powering
the entertainment equipment. Home Easy do make a remotely controlled 4 way extension,
although it is not readily available in B&Q at present.
With this option it would be worth looking into timed operation, which could
be achieved with the Home Easy HE-200 timer/remote already detailed. This is
currently available for £19.98 or £29.98 with two sockets. It can control up
to 16 different Home Easy devices and has capacity or 12 timed on/off programmes,
so it may be the only remote a person needs.
With such a remote, you could set it to switch off a socket at midnight every
day and back on at 8am. The user could still use the remote to override a current
setting simply by switching the socket on or off as required ahead of the timed
setting.
It is worth noting
that a connected device (such as a DVD or video player) with a clock in it may
well lose the time setting when powered off so will need adjusting again if required.
Also, any timed operation due to take place when the socket is powered off will
not happen. Future programmed recordings set for normal "on" time may be lost
due to the equipment being powered off as well, so it is worth considering all
of these, before going ahead.