The Whole House-Off Switch

Brought to you by someone brighter than a brain pie (with apologies to Rowan Atkinson):

The ‘House-off’ Switch is a switch that allows a user to turn off all non-essential electronic items in their home from a central switch. Push the button to turn your house on when you get home; push it again to turn it off when you leave. Aiming to make the ‘green’ way the most convenient way, the ‘House-off’ Switch was part of a larger project to encourage ‘green’ action among the environmentally disenfranchised.

…

a more expensive version of the same concept has a central switch that also allows the inhabitant to leave some items plugged into ‘safe’ sockets around the house which can be left on for security of peace of mind when everything else has been turned off at the central switch.

Originally spotted at – unsurprisingly – the blog Inhabitat.

What a wonderful idea. I’ve thought this often: that it is all well and good to talk about how much power our ‘devices’ use when merely on standby, but we have a lot of them, and it’s a pain in the ass to go turning things on and off at the wall – particularly given the nature of the modern entertainment system (I’m using those of my parents and brother: we do not have one, just laptops), where it’s deliberately made difficult to get at those sockets (Americans: outlets).