Current Cost/Arduino to web - power use demo

A short demonstration of my Current Cost power meter connected to a web-enabled Arduino, publishing real time power usage. The kettle increases the power consumption of the house. This is shown on the phone which is displaying a web page.

How it works:

The Current Cost power meter has a sensor clamp which goes round the incoming power cable in to the house. Every 6 seconds this transmits the power draw over a radio link to the Current Cost display, which shows the power being drawn.

The Current Cost display has a serial connector on the back through which it transmits the readings. I connected this to Serial1 of my Arduino Mega 2560 (a microprocessor with lots of inputs/outputs which is easy to program). The Arduino reads the serial data coming in from the Current Cost and picks out the relevant power figure.

The Arduino then sends the figure over the web to my server using its ethernet shield. The server runs PHP and receives the power figure, storing each reading in a MySQL database.

Finally a web page displays the latest reading from the database, using AJAX to refresh the data every 6 seconds. This is the web page the phone is displaying.

This will become part of a larger home automation/home monitoring system.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• CurrentCost
• Arduino
• ethernet shield
• PHP
• MySQL
• Internet of things
• home automation

[maidbloke]

@ThatKidKnows Arduinos are anything from £20-£50. Current Cost meter £30. A bit of hosting....around £5. I had them all anyway. Arduinos are very flexible and great fun, take a look at arduino.cc

[ThatKidKnows]

How much did this cost to set up? I am interested in doing something like this, it could be good for logging usage and stuff :)

Tweak your simple web page with a bit of code, and you can also show the stuff like live cost, usage/day, usage/week, avg cost etc.... endless possibilities, almost...

[maidbloke]

@ThatKidKnows Thank you :)

[ThatKidKnows]

Nice idea Paul! :)