Tweet-A-Watt Internet-Connected Energy Meter

Twitter's rampant popularity looks set to increase even further, as your household appliances begin to tweet for attention.  MAKE maestro Phil Torrone put together the Tweet-a-watt, a hacked Kill-a-watt energy monitor with the ability to wirelessly transmit energy stats and have those posted to a preset Twitter account. 

Tweet-a-watt was designed for the Core77 Green Gadgets competition, but Torrone intends to release the source, schematics and the idea as an open-source hardware project.  That means it's quite likely that we'll see versions of this springing up – DIY and for sale – for some time to come.

Inside the standard Kill-a-watt casing is a sizable capacitor that slowly charges up to power an Xbee wireless module.  That's responsible for squirting out the power stats, which are picked up by your computer (or an Arduino-style microcontroller) and funnelled into your Twitter account.  More than one Tweet-a-watt can be operational at any one time, meaning your whole house could eventually be reporting your flagrant energy wasting.

[via CrunchGear]