Flume didn’t catch some of my initial irrigation runs-I felt it was rather obvious that a usage of 300 gallons of water over the course of one hour couldn’t possibly be anything else-but after a few days of testing, it finally caught on. One new addition to the app is its ability to determine whether water is being used inside or outside for irrigation, although this was still in beta during my testing. A budgeting system lets you track usage against a target you set-although Flume doesn’t provide much guidance in figuring out what “normal” water usage really is. One panel in the app shows the day’s water use so far, another indicates if water is actively running (and how much), and a large panel at the bottom provides a 24-hour graph of your usage, broken down hour by hour. The Flume app hasn’t changed much in the last year, and it really couldn’t be easier to use-in part because it’s largely designed to be a passive monitoring system. And while the system did report that it lost its wireless connection a couple of times over the weeks I tested the unit, it was always quick to reconnect and never lost any of my data. I’m happy to report that I didn’t encounter any trouble during setup thanks to the Flume 2’s improvement to its wireless range. Christopher Null / IDGĪ simple dashboard gives you a quick look at water usage, even down to the minute. Flume asks you to run the water for a minute or two to ensure it’s detecting water flow, after which setup concludes and you can begin tracking your home’s water usage in earnest. Once you do get the sensor strapped to the meter (which shouldn’t take more than 5 or 10 minutes) and the bridge connected to your Wi-Fi network via Flume’s app, it’s quick work to get everything running. Flume includes rubber gloves and a plastic meter cover opener to help you out, which is convenient.
The Flume 2 bridge installs inside your home and relays data from the monitor that’s attached to your meter to your Wi-Fi network.Īs a reminder, installation means getting your hands a bit dirty, unless your water meter is conveniently located in a basement or garage. The bridge hasn’t changed significantly, but it does look a lot more appealing now, and the spindly antenna that made the first version of the bridge look like a kid’s science project has been removed. The bridge is still a small device that plugs in to an outlet inside your house as near as you can get it to the sensor. To the fact that my water meter is located not near the house but rather at the street about 200 feet away, buried underground inside a concrete vault. This is great news, because loss of signal was a major issue in my testing of the original Flume, due The sensor is now considerably larger, in part because Flume says its batteries now last twice as long and in part because the wireless signal is much stronger. The Flume Smart Home Water Monitor installed on the author’s water meter.Ĭosmetically and functionally, both devices have been significantly enhanced. Like the original, the Flume 2 consists of two main components: a battery-powered sensor that you strap to your water meter with a tough rubber band, and a bridge that relays the radio signal from the sensor to your Wi-Fi network (and from there to the Flume mobile app).
The overall concept is the same, but the Flume 2 is a significant step ahead of the first version, which I also tested for several months.
Now the system has been updated and improved with the launch of the Flume 2. The original Flume arrived last year as a clever solution to this, letting you track how much water you’re using and, more importantly, sussing out any leaks you should know about. Wouldn’t it be nice to be alerted to such problems electronically? As in-home disasters go, a water leak is among the worst of the bunch, made even more troubling by the fact that many leaks go undetected in the form of unnoticed drips or toilets that never stop running, all of which can drive up your water bill-not to mention the insidious damage water can cause to your home.
0 kommentar(er)
