Hey Ot,
How whole app runs https for all the energy stuff and other things like logins etc. (blogs and forums aren't https forced)
All the data collected is yours and it's your choice to share! And it's totally independent of the utility company too.
Sam, @samotage
Hey - cool stuff, guys! You've got me interested, for when I stop renting and buy my own place. Question - https transport of data, I'spose? In other words - there are many commercial 'smart' meters available through the various utilities, and with quite a few of them they're either not password protected, or use plain http or even worse communication protocols, basically allowing anyone to listen in and find out (if they're clever enough) what kind of TV or PC or whatever you have and when you're home or not. So, it's cool to see private energy consumption data being collected and being processed on bit of a clever server, but I'd like it to remain private, non-of-their-business as you know what I mean. How do you handle this? /ojh
Hey Marian,
Sure, head over here:
Build guide that has the circuit and parts
Its a simple band pass, a high pass that removes DC offset then a low pass to remove extraneous noise in the AC signal.
Thanks,
Sam.
Is there a circuit diagram / schema available for download somewhere? I would be specially interested in how you solved the sensor connection with low-pass. Is that 3,5 mm stereo audio jacks with additional capacitors?
Great to find your site this afternoon. I am doing very similar work in Berkeley, CA based on info from MightyOhm's ASUS WL-520GU to Internet Radio and Adafruit's Tweetawatt.
I am mostly a business software developer (C#, .NET, Web Services, SQL Server) but now I'm learning about hardware, xbee, arduino, openwrt, python, sensors, energy, etc.
My framework looks much like yours; sensors, zigbee, ASUS to internet web services (and to twitter; like the tweetawatt). My design so far has not required an arduino although I have one and have played around with it. I am looking to have more of a one to one connection between a sensor and an xbee transmitting to a single xbee receiver in the ASUS. The ASUS is sending data to a simple SOAP web service (plan to change to REST when I get time).
Ideally, I would like to put watt meter sensor on every plug load I have and collect the usage of every appliance, light, etc in the house. That means bringing the cost way down... The xbee seems to be the limiting factor for now; don't think I'll be building those anytime soon.
Question, please: Looks like you're using the 900Mhz Zigbee. I went with the simplest xBee modules from Adafruit (about $20). How are those working and do they use a similar setup to the xBee Series 1?
Also would like to know what kind of sensors you have developed. I've got the tweetawatt and a temp sensor and I've ordered a gas sensor. I have plans to build a water leak sensor as well.
Great to see your enthusiasm for this kind of application. I'll keep you posted on my progress, slow as it may be...
Hi Sam!
Flukso is an open-source hardware/software community metering project, quite similar to SEG. We want to lower our energy (electricity) consumption through better visualisation, feedback and benchmarking against peers. Our Fluksometer blends a router board based on an Atheros 802.11b/g chipset with an AVR-based sensor board. The sensor board accepts split-core current clamps as wel as S0-type pulses from kWh meters. See this blog post and presentation for an overview, our code repository is on Github. Should you guys feel like exchanging some experiences or ideas, let me know.
Cheers, Bart.
