Starting Up

When you start the Earthpill Phone application you will see the standard iPhone search bar.

Touch the search bar to make the keyboard appear.

Searching

Type in the name or type of electrical item that you are looking for. For example to search for a Sony Playstation you could type "Sony", "Playstation" or "Games Console".

Press the blue Search button at the bottom right of the screen.

Results List

You will see a list of electrical items that match your search.

If you don't have a WiFi or mobile network connection to the internet you will see an error message. You must be able to connect to the internet to run this application.

Underneath the name of each item you will see the number of Watts that it uses when it's turned on and the number of Watts that it uses when it's left on standby.

Click on the buttons above the list to sort the list by item type, the amount of electricity used when the item is turned on or the amount of electricity used when the item is on standby.

Touch the entry in the list to see more details about this item.

Item Details

The details page shows you a photograph of the item if one is available and also shows you how many measurements have been made by members of the Earthpill Community in order to create the consumption readings.

As a very approximate rule of thumb an item costs £1 for every Watt that it uses continuously.

So if you see that something is using 5 Watts on standby and it's plugged in all the time you will save around £5 a year by unplugging it when you're not using it. This would also save approximately 18Kg of CO2 emissions a year if you use electricity that creates UK average emissions.

In the same way an item that uses 60 Watts when its in use and is turned on for 2 hours a day will cost £5 a year. To reduce this cost you can look at replacing the item with a lower energy model or using it less.