HPM-Legrand

Smart power center “Cube” — prospective study

Strengthen HPM-Legrand’s lead­er­ship by design­ing a forward-looking smart power cen­ter solu­tion for home and SMEs for 2012 (thus a 4‑year pro­spect­ive). First con­sid­er­a­tion, it must be very simple to install, this type of product being as easy to install as a power­board. Also, we need to think about the man­age­ment of cables, which are increas­ingly numer­ous to power all the elec­tric­al devices around us.

Proposal for a real-time dis­play sys­tem for the power con­sump­tion, read­able both on the hood of the device and also on its elec­tric­al meter, the inform­a­tion cir­cu­lat­ing by the cur­rent (CPL). The power cen­ter also has a WIFI con­nec­tion to con­nect to the loc­al net­work (and to the meter if it is equipped), which allows each one to track the elec­tric­al con­sump­tion on each device of his choice (com­puter, mobile phone, PDA etc…), or for the whole power center.

An intel­li­gent igni­tion sys­tem even allows you to turn on or off the con­nec­ted devices (either by the hood or by an applic­a­tion and WIFI con­nec­tion). The entire plant can also be stopped or star­ted in the same way, the sys­tem check­ing before the state of the con­nec­ted devices. For example, if a com­puter is run­ning and a print­er is print­ing, the sys­tem detects it with installed applic­a­tions and high­er power con­sump­tion than the standby mode of the device.

In this case, the cube power cen­ter cuts the cur­rent from the detec­ted devices into standby mode, but wait until the print­er has fin­ished print­ing (by mon­it­or­ing its power con­sump­tion, or if it is con­nec­ted in wifi, its status), as well as the com­puter. Once the print­er fin­ished, the power cen­ter will shut off the print­er cur­rent and send a com­puter request to shut down the con­nec­ted com­puter before switch­ing off the current.

The interest of the sys­tem is to be able to man­age a small net­work of power cen­ters very eas­ily, at home or in a com­pany, mon­it­or its power con­sump­tion, organ­ize its cables and bet­ter man­age the start-up and shut­down of its devices, either on site or remotely.

For example, a big storm is com­ing, you are not home and you have left your com­puter on, just remotely take con­trol of the power cen­ter loc­ated in your office and ask for the shut­down of the com­puter, which will turn off the com­puter and turn off the power from all the oth­er devices.

A spe­cial elec­tric­al con­nec­tion allows the cur­rent to be passed from the base to the remov­able cov­er. The digit­al dis­play on the hood even allows you to dis­play the sta­bil­ity and qual­ity of the cur­rent delivered to the devices (a mes­sage alert­ing sys­tem is of course integrated).

The hood, when closed, rests on a light grey rub­ber strip to avoid any unpleas­ant shock or noise when open­ing or clos­ing the hood. The cent­ral hole allows all cables to be assembled in a single out­let (if loc­a­tion and cable length allow it).

Backstage of the project

Competitors’ trend analysis

Most of the home user power­boards offers a surge pro­tec­tion, as well as a main switch. Shapes are glob­ally very geo­met­ric (Hama, Infosec, Belkin Power Surge Center). The col­ours are either black/very dark grey, or white. The under­side of the product is always dark­er than the top (logic, to keep it clean when the product is on the ground). Some like Tributaries or BachMann bring a very technical/industrial style to their product. Belkin has a much sim­pler approach, almost sen­su­al in its style. Almost all of the plugs (except Belkin Power Surge Center and Socket Sense) have their sock­ets into recesses. This cer­tainly allows the plugs/transformers to be hold stronger in place, but this makes them in return, very dif­fi­cult to remove without pulling on the cable (which is dangerous).

Trend pos­i­tion­ing

Simple but func­tion­al, ser­i­ous and reas­sur­ing forms. A square base cap­able of accom­mod­at­ing sock­ets and trans­fuses of all sizes. A glossy fin­ish and non-slip pads, so that they can be high­lighted on a desk rather than at floor level. It is a prac­tic­al and aes­thet­ic object, a product that we want to show.