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You connect the reader around the mains supply cable, plug the other end into an Ethernet port and it works. No monthly subscription charges, just the initial cost of the device which is £60 at the moment.
Not the most high tech solution but seems to work pretty reliably
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about thieves going around selecting data and pinpointing the house the one with the least consumption so they can find out if you are absent or not. Incredible techonology
That's what my second paragraph is talking about. Note that "least consumption" is not the right indicator, different people have different levels of consumption. What you want is a break in the consumption pattern, a home with lower than usual consumption of electricity.
> Some research told me that the power company accomplishes this via a simple radio broadcast on the 900Mhz spectrum. Interesting. Around here (mainland Europe) they're currently installing "smart" meters which do this using CPL rather than radio. > And with one simple command, I was reading the power (and probably water) meters for my entire neighborhood That is a bit troubling from a physical security perspective,…
> Some research told me that the power company accomplishes this via a simple radio broadcast on the 900Mhz spectrum. Interesting. Around here (mainland Europe) they're currently installing "smart" meters which do this using CPL rather than radio. > And with one simple command, I was reading the power (and probably water) meters for my entire neighborhood That is a bit troubling from a physical security perspective,…
Dumb question - what's CPL?
A flashing LED is neat because you can then use a very simple-to-install adhesive photodiode to count the flashes and radio the results back to some reader (e.g. 1000 impulses per kWh). Doesn't require an electrician because you never actually tamper with the meter, unless you want to leech a tiny bit of power to your transmitter.
The normal connection here is a big outdoor box for the incoming line, with 3 main fuses, one for each phase. Typically 3x25A @ 230V for a detached home (Max ~17kW). This is where you want to read the power consumption. Inside the house there is a box with 3 DIN rails (1 per phase) with switch type fuses. With 3 phases it's a lot harder to read the power consumption there than it is at the outside main fuse box (which is unfortunate, because it's a lot more convenient to mount a meter indoors and near a wall socket, than outside inside a thick steel box without easily accessible power for your power meter+radio).
In the UK I just use one of these https://loopenergysaver.com/ You connect the reader around the mains supply cable, plug the other end into an Ethernet port and it works. No monthly subscription charges, just the initial cost of the device which is £60 at the moment. Not the most high tech solution but seems to work pretty reliably
To be honest, having had one, anything that makes water hot is expensive, everything else is cheap. Before winter hit I was using a 1/5th the electricity I am now (useless storage heaters). TVs, computers, etc. are not worth really worrying about.
Although, even then, boiling a kettle for a cuppa is like 1 pence, but my hot water costs like 40p per day and my heating like £4.
In the UK I just use one of these https://loopenergysaver.com/ You connect the reader around the mains supply cable, plug the other end into an Ethernet port and it works. No monthly subscription charges, just the initial cost of the device which is £60 at the moment. Not the most high tech solution but seems to work pretty reliably
In the UK we have smart meters now[1]. They tell me how much I'm using at any time for free. Why not just use one of them? Or are they not in your area yet. To be honest, having had one, anything that makes water hot is expensive, everything else is cheap. Before winter hit I was using a 1/5th the electricity I am now (useless storage heaters). TVs, computers, etc. are not worth really worrying about. Although, even…
Because you don't want your electricity meter to have the ability to be remotely-instructed to disconnect your electricity supply, and you don't want your electricity meter to have the ability to record fine-grained data about your electricity usage patterns, which it is required to store for 13 months, and which you can't actually know for sure isn't sent off remotely even if you opt out of that.
I am interested in having a device in my home telling me how much electricity I'm using in real-time, but not if it comes bundled with a load of surveillance and the ability to remotely disconnect my supply.
It's weird that he didn't give the ELK stack a chance. Kibana would be awesome at graphing this and data ingestion would also be very simple. Very useful for automatically generating graphs based on data. Would have automated the whole "writing PHP + jQuery + SQLITE3" part entirely - and consume the JSON directly and created visualizations based on that.