Mobile Energy Conservation with Taapi

Mobile Energy Conservation with Taapi






This post originally appeared at Wired.com as "Taapi Seeks to Mobilize Energy Conservation"
In the United States, energy conservation has always been a hot issue. Now more than ever, people making a conscious effort to conserve energy are pressuring those who don't. Turn your lights off when you leave a room, turn the fans off, turn the thermostat up a degree - all of these methods conserve energy. But truth be told, we can't all be as dedicated as Al Gore (hypocrisy aside) and we tend to be a bit lazy when it comes to energy conservation. Well, one company and its app are aiming to make it easy for you to turn off your lights to conserve energy - by having someone else do it. This is the main concept being Taapi, a social game for mobile interfaces that seeks to turn energy conservation into more than just a proverbial game and change the world.
Basically, Taapi will connect users across the interface to turn on/off lights and reward points. Though Carol Glennon, the brains behind Taapi, puts it a bit more eloquently, "At its very core, Taapi harnesses the power of individuals to act together as a group to solve a problem."
According to the International Dark-Sky Association, we waste about one-third of all lighting in the U.S., amounting to about a $2 billion loss annually. Lighting accounts for about 11 percent of all household energy use. To produce that wasted energy takes 30 million barrels of oil, 8.2 million tons of coal which generates 14.1 million tons of CO2 per year into the air.

Taapi will allow people to check into the app and set blocks of time when their lights are available to be turned off. Each enabled light and wall switch is assigned a unique serial number and added to a pool of other lights waiting to be turned off. Users will play games, puzzles and other assorted challenges developed using the Taapi API by independent developers to turn off lights that are in the pool. Of course, you can opt out of adding your lights to the general population, and just play the games to turn off your own lights.


Taapi's WiFi enabled wall sockets and the WiFi enabled light bulbs communicate with the Taapi hub (either hardwired or connected via WiFi to the router) which communicates with the Taapi network to turn off your lights and/or toaster oven. The communication between the hub, wall sockets and bulbs utilizes the JenNet protocol standard for this type of communication.

Taapi itself will not be the home of the games that will control the lights in your house. This will all be done through open development with the Taapi API. Taapi is relying on independent game and app developers to utilize their full rest API to integrate their game with Taapi features and functions. Taapi is hoping they can become an important part of a game's point system or the management console of an app.

Taapi will be using Atlassian for community support, Mashery for API hosting and they have a built-in OpenSocial container for devs to write gadgets.

At this point, Taapi still has a way to go before they can change the way we conserve electricity. The products are designed and awaiting production, the API is developed and waiting distribution. The only thing missing is the proper funding for this kind of project. Taapi is currently running a campaign on Indiegogo to raise the appropriate funding, or independent venture capital if you will, to complete this energy saving gamification venture. The Indiegogo campaign page also has more information on the open development features, as well as what can be done through the API.

Taapi is set to be available via iOS for iPhones, iPods and iPads, Android, OUYA and the web, pending a successful Indiegogo campaign. You can sign up for Taapi now on their website, or view videos on how the whole thing works here and here. Also check them out on Twitter and Facebook for updates.