This is more of an idea i thought i'd share - and hopefully have someone inspired enough to go and build it for us

Imagine a Power Usage aware chumby?

Thought it would be pretty awesome (and great for the environment) - to have a widget that would keep track of your power usage.... perhaps increasing colour  from green to red - or displaying yearly power cost.  Basically to have people more concious of their power usage & perhaps change their living habits to reduce their energy consumption, reducing carbon emissions and all that.

Anyway.. you get the idea.

I currently use one of these:
RFXMeter
http://www.rfxcom.com/sensors.htm
http://www.rfxcom.com/downloads.htm

On my PC to have my current power usage displayed through my home automation setup.
There's a driver for the usb com port it used for linux & they have example source (but in VB.net ) & documentation.
We're only talking about reading a live value through the device over a Com port - so should be pretty easy? to do.  - if it wasn't on linux i'd give it a crack myself! (i'm an old school dev guy - so VB , ASP, Vbscript is my forte - so no chance for me!

Not sure if Flash Widgets can ready values from on board devices though? (i've only just starting looking at the dev side of things for my chumby) - if so - it could spin off a whole bunch of cool widgets to use this value in creative ways.

There's bound to be other similar sensor devices out there too.

Anyway just thought i'd share and perhaps inspire