Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
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Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
#2Tangential, but what other fascinating things can I do with an SDR dongle? I've had one for years and have not heard of this.
* Listen to various radio stations
* Track airplane positions
* Receive weather images from a satellite
what else?
One other thing off the top of my head is combining ship position and cargo databases: https://github.com/marcdacosta/ambient-shipping
Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
#3Excellent, I was about to go the route of reading the led flashes with some kind of sensor but I was reminded that anything touching the meter can be considered meter tampering in the US which is a crime...yikes.
Thankfully passively decoding its RF emissions from the garage isn’t illegal yet!
So HN, which SDR dongle should I buy?
Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
#4Nice method, but for future record you don't really need to mess with mains to hook up Sense or OpenEnergyMonitor, they use inductive current clamps which work by detecting the field around the a single terminal of your incoming mains. Pretty much as safe as it gets with this stuff.
Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
#5Excellent, I was about to go the route of reading the led flashes with some kind of sensor but I was reminded that anything touching the meter can be considered meter tampering in the US which is a crime...yikes. Thankfully passively decoding its RF emissions from the garage isn’t illegal yet! So HN, which SDR dongle should I buy?
Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
#6"Some research told me that the power company accomplishes this via a simple radio broadcast on the 900Mhz spectrum."
So, will there be a website similar to flightradar24 but for meter readings on a map? :)
Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
#7This is neat. I had vaguely heard of the RTL-SDR, but this is a cool example of a potential application.
A few points of note:
The author starts off by discussing how the Sense energy monitor piqued his interest, but he didn't want to go through the trouble of installing it. My understanding is that Sense offers granular usage data down to the appliance level, which reading polled usage off the meter simply won't do. So this isn't a solution that replaces what Sense offers.
And... doesn't your power company already offer you this data? APS here in Arizona does, down to the hour, with the ability to easily export as CSV. But I'm sure plenty of utilities don't offer that, and this is a cool way to read it.
Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
#8Tangential, but what other fascinating things can I do with an SDR dongle? I've had one for years and have not heard of this. * Listen to various radio stations * Track airplane positions * Receive weather images from a satellite what else? One other thing off the top of my head is combining ship position and cargo databases: https://github.com/marcdacosta/ambient-shipping
You can use an upconverter and listen to shortwave radio, but you'll need a much larger antenna.
You can receive and decode "POCSAG" and "FLEX" pager messages.
You can receive and decode messages from all sorts of 433MHz wireless devices (doorbells, car keys, thermostats).
You can use a downconverter and receive the bitcoin blockchain from blockstrean satellite, but you'll need a dish and some other equipment too.
It's a surprisingly versatile bit of kit.
Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
#9* OWL power monitor with inductive clamp and separate LCD display (in the reduced bin at the local DIY barn), transmits data on 433MHz - £12
* Arduino Mega+ESP8266 combo board - £8
* Rflink Rx/TX board - order a kit or build your own (http://www.rflink.nl/blog2/wiring) 433 or 868MHz operation, can also work with some devices at 2.4GHz - About £15
* Rflink software (http://www.rflink.nl/blog2/) + Serial link software for the ESP8266 - all free.
* Configure the serial link software to talk to your MQTT broker (Raspberry Pi running Mosquitto and Node-Red)
You now have an rf receiver/transmitter system that can not only pick up and display your energy monitor signals, but also those of many other rf devices AND can record/re-transmit such signals too - in my case, I can get an alert when the doorbell rings + Capture shots from an IP camera, plus I can control a bunch of those cheap, remote controlled rf mains power sockets I've collected over the years.
Not as cheap as the SDR option, but with much more functionality
Re: Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25
#10I hadn't heard of the company Sense before I read about this blog. I looked up their product... 300 bucks, are you kidding me? And it requires licensed installation on top of that, so maybe even more in labor. Who's buying this stuff and how is their margin defensible from Tesla or somebody selling Raspberry Pi kits for $25?