It’s Just Cool (Or Hot): H2Glow
By Benjamen Johnson
You can buy an H2Glow for the safety of the little ones — though in the fine print of their installation PDF, Sector Labs points out that the H2Glow is not a safety device — or just because it looks really cool. It makes your water glow as it flows out of the tap, blue if it’s safe to touch and red if it gets too hot.
Measuring just 34 x 51mm, the H2Glow replaces the aerator on your faucet. For environmentally or economically conscience readers, it also limits the flow to 2 GPM.
The H2Glow runs $17 plus $5 shipping from Amazon. Two universal adapters to fit the H2Glow to your faucet are included, as well as the three LR44 batteries required for operation.
H2Glow [Sector Labs]
Street Pricing [Google]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
June 5th, 2009 at 10:56 am
I have one of these from Thinkgeek.com.
If you have hard water, they become pretty useless quickly; the temperature sensor on this is very tiny, and with just a little bit of lime buildup, it stops changing color.
I also have the shower version; it doesn’t even need a battery, as the water pressure spins a turbine for the power. That one must have a larger sensor or something, as I’ve had no problem with it.
June 5th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
“Mom! There is blood coming from the faucet!”
June 5th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
@tmib_seattle
Thinkgeek carries a competing product; not H2Glow. In other words, you own a totally different product.
June 5th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
I could never buy myself one of these because I’d feel compelled to open it up and switch the blue LED to activate when the water was hotter and the red when it was colder (as in blue flames and red flames). Yes, I know this a total geek pet peeve.
June 5th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
@Daniel: does this version also have problems with hard water?
June 8th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Pretty neat.
If it didn’t have a flow limiter, I’d consider it. I hate being nannied.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Possible Improvements I’d like to see before it’s useful to me.
1. A “sweet spot” where the red and blue flicker or blink or something to tell me it’s in the warm region I like.
2. A way to adjust said region.
Otherwise, there’s no way to tell if it’ll burn my skin or 1º from switching to blue. It’s not kid safe until I can tell.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
@PongMan:
I guess I too was disappointed that the shade of the water didn’t turn from blue to purple to red as the water got hotter.
Seems kind of like some sort of stupid lawyer or management decision, ’cause you know that’s what the engineers would have wanted to do. You’d just vary the current to the red and blue LED’s based on the water temperature.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:46 am
[...] It’s Just Cool (Or Hot): H2Glow You can buy an H2Glow for the safety of the little ones — though in the fine print of their installation PDF, Sector Labs points out that the H2Glow is not a safety device — or just because it looks really cool. It makes your water glow as it flows out of the tap, blue if it’s safe to touch and red if it gets too hot. [...]
October 9th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
H2Glow isn’t sold via Thinkgeek. They sell our competitor’s product, which doesn’t perform as well as our product. You can find our product on Amazon or directly from our website (www.sectorlabs.com).
By the way, we’ve got 4.8/5 stars on Amazon.
Daniel Kokin
Sector Labs
October 9th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
@PongMan
The flow limiter can be removed (if you already have already have low water pressure, of course)