Monitoring Electrical Power consumption

 Power Monitoring for Household

Almost most of the household in India consume electricity, we all know that their is a electricity meter which keeps track of the consumption and once in a month the meter reader prints the bill for payment and we need to pay before due date.

We also except that day by day we are more dependent on electricity, to name a few things following are the equipment's which we will use 

• Television [100W typical] - some time we do not bother to switch off for that short interval of time
• Geyser  [2000W typical] - we leave it ON till the time we are ready for bath
• Chargers  [10W typical] - most of the time hooked up, how if they turn OFF after a charge full
• LED Lights [each 20W typical]  - how if they turned ON if we are present in a room
• Ceiling FAN  [60W typical] - how if they turn ON if you are present and Temperature set
• Desktop / Laptop  [100W typical] - Any ways will hibernate when you don't us it for some time
• Refrigerator  [100W typical] - need to run always, any idea how many units you consume?
• Water purifiers - always ON and motor works when water level low
• Vacuum cleaners - used only during vacuuming
• Washing machine - Lightly used, may be once or twice a week
• water pump - will turn ON and OFF with water level sensor.

If we look at all the devices we use we may get thoughts about using sensors, power monitoring , automating home.

Automating home is really an interesting idea, automation is done using sensors and electrical equipment's. example use 

• Motion sensor to sense your presence and turn ON / OFF the light
• Use LDR to detect and turn ON the light
• Use water level sensor to check over head water level
• Turn OFF your TV if you are not watching 
• Turn OFF  all light, FAN and other devices when you are not in home

All automation if works round the clock is good, but most of the time you need a feedback if all devices are OFF, because your automation sometimes may not work because of various reasons - may be the device is dependent on the cloud, power supply failed and resumed which made some equipment ON

 

So if you have a means of measuring power this give an estimate of how much power is consumed currently and also you can see the log and try to make better decision in buying products. Monitoring power can be dome in various ways

1. Local monitoring on a display
2. Local monitoring on local wi-fi network
3. Monitoring using a cloud service

An Example power Monitoring using SONOFF Mini R3 device

I use a SONOFF (from https://www.sonoff.in/) to monitor the power. The good thing is that this device can be integrated with Home assistant Automation OS which runs on Raspberry pi. 

SONOFF Dual R3 with Power Monitoring

Display in home assistant 

Display of Monthly energy consumption in Phone APP

Do i need a Micro-controller for My Project?

The first question which comes when doing a project in electrical/electronics/ communication project is to use a micro-controller or not.

Most of the time we try to satisfy with using only hardware because using micro-controller involves programming compiling, IDE, knowledge of programming.

In consideration of these difficulties industry and the community of engineers have come up with very easy way of using the micro-controller; using a micro-controller is very easy and also makes you circuit more flexible and interesting to develop, modify and get great result. Read more.... 

Power Supply Modules

Power supply is necessary for all electrical and electronic devices to work. In this post i will be concentrating on DC power supply that is required by electronic circuits; these may include AC to DC, DC to DC power supplies Read more....

Display for Embedded Controllers

Display is a major component for Human Machine Interface (HMI). Graphic display's was a major concern in past decade as the technology was not mature. Most of the time projects were managed with 7-segment or 2 line character display which were seen in many public telephone boxes, EPABX, Billing machines... At present if we look at what display you can use with arduino - you will get a list of display that can be used from simple 7-segment to color graphics with I2C, SPI or parallel interface. Read more....

Off board electronic communication

Off board electronic communication are communicating from micro-controller board to another board or Sensor device OR a PC. For this communication we would love to have minimum wires or a wireless connection. Read more.... 

How to select power supply for my circuits

How to select 12V / 5V power supply for my circuits?

Barrel Jack adapter

Micro USB adapter

Most of the circuits including arduino powered circuits need a 5V power supply. It is good till we develop a board to use the USB power from computer / laptop. Once the development is complete we need a standalone power supply. for this you may need an power adapter, of-course an USB charger will also do the job. If you need a Micro USB connector you can buy it from robu.in. This board a little quality board over the other green color board.

AC DC Power Module

In some cases we want power supply to be housed inside a box, then external power adapter may not be the choice, for this you will get a SMPS module for 3.3V, 5V, 12V from Sunrom. These power supplies are modular and those from HiLink are good but little costly than the open board ones.

If you decide to make your own power supply you can start with the Viper12 / Viper22 IC from ST micro electronics. These IC's are cheap and available in local market. ST provides reference design for both isolated and non-isolated supplies.

[Isolated power supply]   [Non Isolated power supply] 

Using the Free SDCC C Compiler to Develop Firmware for the DS89C430/450 Family of Microcontrollers - Maxim

Using the Free SDCC C Compiler to Develop Firmware for the DS89C430/450 Family of Microcontrollers - Maxim