[chbot] Electrical Meter LED pulse detection and capture

[Tokala]

Hi

Sorry I haven't replied before now. I'm working through lockdown so have been very busy.

My power usage monitor uses an Arduino ESP8266 that has a small LDR circuit that collects the pulses from my power meter. My meter pulses 1000 times per Kw/H. https://photos.app.goo.gl/nZdce2HDEbvERMRf9
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Bg7j75GA8e5rhpWE8

The ESP8266 subscribes to a channel on my MQTT server. The ESP8266 listens to the channel and when I put a particular command on the channel, the ESP8266 sends its current pulse count onto a second channel. The ESP8266 counter is then reset to zero. I poll the channel every 5 minutes so I'm getting the power usage at a 5 minute cadence.

A script on my home automation server reads the pulse count MQTT channel and then uploads the value to a No-SQL database (InfluxDB https://www.influxdata.com/products/influxdb/). No-SQL allows you to place any information, in any format, into the database so I can use the same database for many different applications.

To graph the power usage I use Grafana. https://grafana.com, it queries the InfluxDB directly and give a nice pretty interface. Gafana allows you to drill down on data and export in CSV.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/BUvp7WFJgxsQsjHQ6

Darran

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‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Monday, August 23rd, 2021 at 2:25 PM, hamster at snap.net.nz <hamster at snap.net.nz> wrote:

> For what is is worth, I have a few PCBs with an LDR and transister buffer for sensing these LEDs. If anybody wants one just ask and I can post you one.
>
> Because of the slow response of LDRs and ambient light changes it is best used with a ADC rather than trying to use high gains and triming it to work with a digital input.
>
> Mike
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Henri Shustak <henri.shustak at gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2021, 1:26 PM
> To: Christchurch Robotics <chchrobotics at lists.ourshack.com>
> Subject: Re: [chbot] Electrical Meter LED pulse detection and capture
>
>> Hi I am not this person. Also, I have not gotten a pi to monitor the flashing. But I do know that the pulse of the LED on a digital smart power meeter is able to report various information such as current.
>>
>> It is just based on the frequency of the pulses.
>>
>> Hope that helps.
>> Henri
>>
>>> On 18/08/2021, at 11:34 AM, Andrew Sands <andrew at theatrix.org.nz> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> During the Q and A around the possibilities of how to use a raspberry pi to monitor a water pump, a gentleman from the group stated that he had some form of detector monitoring the power pulse LED on his mains electrical meter.
>>>
>>> I began a brief discussion with him (sorry, whomever you are as I completely forgot to ask your name, me I'm just one of the Andrew's) before Mark shuffled us all out of the building.
>>>
>>> So, now that I might have a couple of extra days of 'forced' downtime would it be possible for said gentleman to describe what he has implemented / installed to the group via this reflector or pointers to a website. Or just communicate with me via direct email, it would be very much appreciated.
>>>
>>> Everyone keep up the social distancing, stay safe and just go make something.
>>>
>>> Regards all,
>>> Andrew Sands
>>> (022)681 6655
>>>
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>>
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> _______________________________________________ Chchrobotics mailing list Chchrobotics at lists.ourshack.com https://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/chchrobotics Mail Archives: http://lists.ourshack.com/pipermail/chchrobotics/ Meetings usually 3rd Monday each month. See http://kiwibots.org for venue, directions and dates. When replying, please edit your Subject line to reflect new subjects.
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