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Step 7Watt comes next?
Power Meter Device Plans:
Obviously the tangle of wires on the breadboard is not a long term (or pretty solution) to stuff into the utility cupboard so I am planning to create a PCB to house the various component. As I am a fan of re-cycling the PCB is going to have 0.1" headers so I can install a boarduino as well as 0.1" header to hold the XBee breakout board. This will increase the physical size of the PCB but will allow me to scavenge the parts if I need them for another project. I also have a preference for this more 'Lego' based approach to device design.
Receiving device:
As previously mentioned I went for the path of least resistence on the receiver side of things and got a very direct route to the data via the XBee and an FTDI chip. Long term I want to construct a device that will sit on the network capturing the log information on an SD card and serve up the data via HTTP to whatever visualizer you want to use (e.g. a standalone Mac OS X application, iPhone application etc.) A topic for the next instructable.
iPhone enabled:
As aluded to above, my long term goal is to be able to monitor the power consumption of my house via my iPhone. Additionally, if I implement the control protocol I have in mind (see step 4), I could change the sample rate of the power meter reader and monitor the increase in consumption as I turn on an appliance.
References and thanks
I am not sure if it is good Instructables form to thank people but seeing as I have built up the concepts used here from reading good reference material, asking questions on forums and from friends, I think its only fair I tip my hat so others can work out where to go to to ask more questions and get help. Note, none of the suppliers gave me a discount or were promised anything, I just wanted to thank them for good service and supporting people like me.
Suppliers
Adafruit industries - great forum and Limor has some great tutorials and articles to help out on the XBee side of things.
Sparkfun - top service and always a pleasure receiving red box gifts from the US.
Farnell - the quickest delivery possible in the UK.
People
Zoe (the wife) for giving me some time off from parenting duties and household chores.
Dave Watkins for giving me the RTC from Futurlec and realising one day I may do something useful with it.
Tom Igoe for writing "Making Things Talk" and making me realise I could use that A Level electronics I got back in 1990!
References
The Art of Electronics - Horowitz and Hill (I bet Hill wishes he had put his name first!)
Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X - Aaron Hillegass
Making Things Talk - Tom Igoe
Stackoverflow.com - best place for code questions
Obviously the tangle of wires on the breadboard is not a long term (or pretty solution) to stuff into the utility cupboard so I am planning to create a PCB to house the various component. As I am a fan of re-cycling the PCB is going to have 0.1" headers so I can install a boarduino as well as 0.1" header to hold the XBee breakout board. This will increase the physical size of the PCB but will allow me to scavenge the parts if I need them for another project. I also have a preference for this more 'Lego' based approach to device design.
Receiving device:
As previously mentioned I went for the path of least resistence on the receiver side of things and got a very direct route to the data via the XBee and an FTDI chip. Long term I want to construct a device that will sit on the network capturing the log information on an SD card and serve up the data via HTTP to whatever visualizer you want to use (e.g. a standalone Mac OS X application, iPhone application etc.) A topic for the next instructable.
iPhone enabled:
As aluded to above, my long term goal is to be able to monitor the power consumption of my house via my iPhone. Additionally, if I implement the control protocol I have in mind (see step 4), I could change the sample rate of the power meter reader and monitor the increase in consumption as I turn on an appliance.
References and thanks
I am not sure if it is good Instructables form to thank people but seeing as I have built up the concepts used here from reading good reference material, asking questions on forums and from friends, I think its only fair I tip my hat so others can work out where to go to to ask more questions and get help. Note, none of the suppliers gave me a discount or were promised anything, I just wanted to thank them for good service and supporting people like me.
Suppliers
Adafruit industries - great forum and Limor has some great tutorials and articles to help out on the XBee side of things.
Sparkfun - top service and always a pleasure receiving red box gifts from the US.
Farnell - the quickest delivery possible in the UK.
People
Zoe (the wife) for giving me some time off from parenting duties and household chores.
Dave Watkins for giving me the RTC from Futurlec and realising one day I may do something useful with it.
Tom Igoe for writing "Making Things Talk" and making me realise I could use that A Level electronics I got back in 1990!
References
The Art of Electronics - Horowitz and Hill (I bet Hill wishes he had put his name first!)
Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X - Aaron Hillegass
Making Things Talk - Tom Igoe
Stackoverflow.com - best place for code questions
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Jan 7, 2010. 5:36 PMmark.duyvesteyn
says:
check out my instructable on how to get the data online. heres my power consumption website, www.sites.google.com/site/19acussen works great on my iphone :p
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