http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377054
It is one thing to say "Wattvision costs too much for me; I think they should lower or restructure the price".
It is another thing to say "the way this startup has structured their pricing is insulting to me".
The fact that you were easily able to come up with a market substitute for this offering just underscores how silly the idea of being "insulted" by pricing is.
Things cost what they cost, not what we think they should cost. As a general rule, we HN'ers suck at thinking about what things should cost.
That said, what wattvision lists in its FAQ is extremely fair. Using data from the last three months is free, so if you want to do your own processing you can easily download from there even if the device is difficult to directly access.
You're welcome to try that other device. You'll find, among other things, that:
1) the +/-100 watts of resolution, updated every 30 seconds, at best, will yield a cumbersome user experience. Turn on five 20 watt bulbs and then the data will jump 30 seconds after you turn on the fifth bulb. Wattvision: +/- 2 watts, and 3x faster updates.
2) You need to buy another piece of hardware, and figure out what software you want to use, and then tie this all together, if you want to look at the data online or your computer. It's a cumbersome user experience, not counting the need to change batteries rather often on the sensor (Wattvision is a set-and-forget system).
We're building the best user experience for this scenario. Thanks for your feedback, perspectives, and kind words.
iirc you had to pay something like $5/month after spending $250 for the sensor just to have access to the data! After spending $250 for it, I would have like to be able to write my own script to read the data off the device and not rely on their web service.... not having open access really turned me off...
This one is much cheaper : http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-Monitor/dp/... and it occasionally can be had for a simple $25... sure it'd take some hacking to get the data to the computer, but avoids the insulting monthly fee!