wireless kill-a-watt meter reading - hack

ecomodded · 11-20-13, 10:57 PM

I happened upon a indestructible that will give "the kill a watt meter" the ability to send its energy usage information to a computer.

Tweet-a-watt - How to make a twittering power meter...

Tweet-a-watt - How to make a twittering power meter...

from site:

This project documents my adventures in learning how to wire up my home for wireless power monitoring. I live in a rented apartment so I don't have hacking-access to a meter or breaker panel. Since I'm still very interested in measuring my power usage on a long term basis, I built wireless outlet reporters. Building your own power monitor isn't too tough and can save money but I'm not a fan of sticking my fingers into 120V power. Instead, I'll used the existing Kill-a-watt power monitor, which works great and is available at my local hardware store.

My plan is to have each room connected to a 6-outlet power strip which powers all the devices in that room (each kill-a-watt can measure up to 15A, or about 1800W, which is plenty!). That way I can track room-by-room usage, for example "kitchen", "bedroom", "workbench", and "office".

Each wireless outlet/receiver can be built for ~$55 with a few easily-available electronic parts and light soldering, no microcontroller programming or high voltage engineering is necessary!

You can see my setup including graphs and reports at http://twitter.com/tweetawatt

If you'd like to build one for yourself

1. Buy a kit: get all the parts you need, there's a starter kit at the adafruit webshop
2. Make: turn each Kill-a-Watt into a wireless power level transmitter
3. Software: Download & run it on your computer to get data and save it to a file and/or publish it

If you want to know how it was made, check out:

1. Listen: write simple software for my computer (or Arduino, etc) to listen for signal and compute the current power usage
2. Store: Create a database backend that will store the power usage for long-term analysis at http://wattcher.appspot.com
3. View: Graph and understand trends in power usage

Check out the latest readings at http://wattcher.appspot.com

11-20-13, 10:57 PM	#1
ecomodded Supreme EcoRenovator Join Date: Sep 2012 Location: Vancouver Island,Canada. Posts: 1,037 Thanks: 116 Thanked 100 Times in 87 Posts	wireless kill-a-watt meter reading - hack I happened upon a indestructible that will give "the kill a watt meter" the ability to send its energy usage information to a computer. Tweet-a-watt - How to make a twittering power meter... Tweet-a-watt - How to make a twittering power meter... from site: This project documents my adventures in learning how to wire up my home for wireless power monitoring. I live in a rented apartment so I don't have hacking-access to a meter or breaker panel. Since I'm still very interested in measuring my power usage on a long term basis, I built wireless outlet reporters. Building your own power monitor isn't too tough and can save money but I'm not a fan of sticking my fingers into 120V power. Instead, I'll used the existing Kill-a-watt power monitor, which works great and is available at my local hardware store. My plan is to have each room connected to a 6-outlet power strip which powers all the devices in that room (each kill-a-watt can measure up to 15A, or about 1800W, which is plenty!). That way I can track room-by-room usage, for example "kitchen", "bedroom", "workbench", and "office". Each wireless outlet/receiver can be built for ~$55 with a few easily-available electronic parts and light soldering, no microcontroller programming or high voltage engineering is necessary! You can see my setup including graphs and reports at http://twitter.com/tweetawatt If you'd like to build one for yourself 1. Buy a kit: get all the parts you need, there's a starter kit at the adafruit webshop 2. Make: turn each Kill-a-Watt into a wireless power level transmitter 3. Software: Download & run it on your computer to get data and save it to a file and/or publish it If you want to know how it was made, check out: 1. Listen: write simple software for my computer (or Arduino, etc) to listen for signal and compute the current power usage 2. Store: Create a database backend that will store the power usage for long-term analysis at http://wattcher.appspot.com 3. View: Graph and understand trends in power usage Check out the latest readings at http://wattcher.appspot.com