Using my handy new Kill-A-Watt power usage meter, today I found that my main linux server at home (spock [spockpowerusage, spockserverspecs]) consumes an average of 90 watts. That's a machine that is on 24/7. And the SGI monitor attached to it consumes 6 watts when it is off.
The server I have in the garage monitoring two motion cameras uses 57 watts when idle, and about 68 when recording motion capture [motion, motionrpm] images. This includes the power used by the two Lorex cameras [lorexnightvision, lorexcamera] and a Linksys WiFi Bridge.
I was thinking of retiring these boxes and building low-power machines. The main server handles X10 control (via serial port), Bluetooth routing (via USB), USB print serving, DNS, DHCP, very lightweight PHP web serving, media serving (mt-daapd and UPnP), and general file serving via Samba. I don't think I need a very powerful box to handle all of that. Same with the motion capture system.
The Mini-Box 15 watt machines look interesting, as well as the KuroBox.
That all said, 150-170 watts is about like running two or three light bulbs all of the time. I need to calculate just what kind of impact that has on my power bill.
