Interest check: Energis PDU pricing and early community units

[DvidMakesThings]

I’m close to finishing the Energis PDU project and want a realistic signal from people who actually build and use hardware. This is not marketing. I’m validating demand at the expected launch price before committing to a production run.

Pricing

The calculated minimum public launch price (incl. shipping) is:

• ~550 EUR / ~645 USD

This would be the price if a Crowdsupply campaign goes live.

Community validation units

Separately from any Crowdsupply campaign, I’m considering offering 3 community validation units at ~450 EUR / ~528 USD (incl. shipping). These units are paid, basically at assembly cost. I’m not trying to make money on them.

What I can test myself is mostly HIL/SIL and a couple of rack setups, which only gets me so far. I’d really like to see how this behaves in other real labs, doing actual work. That’s the whole point of these units: real usage, real feedback. Not giveaways.

For these 3 units I’m specifically looking for people who can use and evaluate it like equipment, not just unbox it. Ideally you have a professional or semi-professional setup (lab, rack, test bench, CI/automation) and you can report back clearly: what you tried, what broke, logs/photos, and what you’d change.

Target audience

• Makers with labs
• Small companies
• Test benches, racks, CI / automation setups

If you vote, comments are welcome, especially:

• Your intended use case
• What makes this worth the price (or not)
• What would block you from buying

[CyberGWJ]

I am located in the US and am interested in one for my 10" Home Lab Rack. Looking for a PDU that provides per outlet power monitoring without the need for external smart plugs.

[SuperQ]

I'm also mostly interested in the monitoring aspect of the PDU.

I was using a CyberPower PDU81005 19" unit, but I downsized from 19" to 10" rack. Price was similar, about 500€ when I bought it. I understand that this is a low volume production.

I was also disappointed that the CyberPower had a minimum of ~30W for measuring each outlet. So all of the smaller items in the rack were invisible to the power monitoring.

My homelab setup currently looks like this:

Not really a serious business use case, sadly all of my day job is cloud software engineering.

I'm located in Berlin, DE.

[adec]

I'm in a similar position that I want something to do power monitoring for the devices in my home automation and networking 10" rack. Likewise I know this is a low-volume product and I'm assuming the intention is for the device to have the relevant certifications that bumps the price up but I'd still be interested.

[DvidMakesThings]

The certification process doesn't really bump up the price. The low volume producion does. Eg. if I have 400 component on the board, I need to pay approx 1.5$ loading fee per component. This fee is the same for 1 unit and 100 unit. Same with the components. Bigger amount of purchase will result in better price. I could probably go under 300$ if I would order 5K+ units, but I simply don't have the resources for that

[Yethal]

Interested in buying. Would love to be able to use a single wall outlet for the entire rack and have per-device power usage stats

[NOP64]

I do not have the tools to adequately asses this PDU. My interest is in the USB-C variant as my 10" rack items need DC input. Location is the USA.

[DvidMakesThings]

PDNode is already in design phase. I'm trying to speed up the development, but I need patience here, since it's a much bigger project than ENERGIS was

[NOP64]

Thanks for the note and, yeah, I am willing to wait. I also appreciate your efforts and skills.