New HomeKit gadget tracks how much electricity you’re wasting

Gadget maker Elgato has been churning out HomeKit-compatible devices like crazy, and it’s just dropped another that takes the smartplug concept one further.

                                                    Eve Energy became available for sale in the U.S. today after a European launch. It plugs into your wall, and then a device of your choice plugs into it. You’ll be able to turn the thing off and on with your phone either through Elgato’s app or with Siri, and plenty of things on the market already do that. But Energy will also tell you how much power the thing plugged into it uses, which adds a new layer of functionality to the gadget.



                                                  “Eve Energy was carefully designed to make your home smarter, not more complicated,” said Elgato CEO Markus Fest in a press release. “It is ready to use out of the box in seconds and consumes virtually no energy itself. Eve Energy is the most elegant way to control and monitor your electrical devices.”
Energy joins Elgato’s existing, HomeKit-ready gadgets — Room, Weather, and Door & Window — which keep you posted on inside and outside temperatures and conditions, as well as whether or not your doors and/or windows are closed. In terms of direct usefulness, we’d place Energy below Room, but well above Weather and Door & Window because we’re not sure why you’d need an app to tell you that your window is open. Just, like, go and look at the window.

                                                   You can control Energy and the other devices either from Elgato’s Eve app, but like most other smart-home devices, you might feel cooler using HomeKit and Siri instead.
HomeKit is Apple’s automation framework that works with its digital assistant to let you run devices from your iOS device or Apple Watch using your voice. It was off to a slow start due to a lack of compatible devices (possibly because of Apple’s rigorous security demands), but the platform currently supports more than 30 devices including lights, deadbolts, and thermostats.