Home Energy Monitoring
Tracking electricity in the home
More datapoints I say. Here I am tracking the electricity usage in the house.
Latest 24 hours:
Recent 3 months:
Constructed during May 2010. The setup uses a CurrentCost cc128 device, through a dedicated bridge unit, router and into Pachube. Then it is suitable for exporting as graphs etc. This device also tracks the indoor temperature
Some notes about installation steps:
I have one cc128 unit which contains the indoor display unit (and the little mains power adapter for it), a clamp which goes around the mains cable into the house at the mains box outside, and the transmitter unit which the clamp plugs into. That transmitter is powered by battery.
So I connect up the clamp around the main supply coming into the house. That transmits over wireless (ZigBee protocol, not wifi) to the indoor display unit. The display unit tells me the current power usage and the indoor temperature.
The display unit is then hooked up to the PC using a data cable which plugs into the PC usb port.
I then installed the driver (PL-2303) which allows the comms over the cable to work. Then I can use any of the variety of software to capture the data (same link as above).
Including, the pachube uploading one.
Then create an account on pachube and enter the pachube API into the local software and it uploads the info.
-Update: The bridge unit has now been installed and hooks directly into the indoor display unit. It now comms to pachube itself, without requiring the PC.
- Update: Pachube is now called Cosm.