Don said:
This needs a data grabbing ( and data grubbing ) logging interface to
save its usage history to a website.
Ferinstance to extract an air conditioner or hot tub duty cycle.
--
Many thanks,
Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss:
http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email:
[email protected]
Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at
http://www.tinaja.com
BlueLine Innovations offered a wireless receiver that plugs into
your computer. Sounds like what you want, but it wasn't cheap.
I believe the B&D is just a rebadged Blueline.
Microsoft Hohm offered some areas the ability to get that data
directly from the utility, but that seems to have just failed.
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/5-reasons-why-microsoft-hohm-didnt-take-off/
Seems like there was a hack to put bluetooth..or maybe it was zigbee
into a KillAWatt. I can't find the link.
Again, complex and expensive.
I found the link on the Blueline
http://www.eightlines.com/blog/2009/06/black-decker-power-monitor-hack/
Never found the follow-on article where they made it useful.
I solved my air conditioner problem with a flapper sitting on a duct vent
with the switch hooked into the serial port of a PDA.
Could do the same thing with a relay or optoisolator hooked to the hot tub.
If you have an electronic utility meter, you can use the IR port on a
Palm PDA
to log power consumption. Pretty easy to see the big spikes from the
air conditioner, water heater etc. I never tried to publish the code
'cause nobody seemed the slightest bit interested.
I experienced the same problem outlined in the linked article.
Was fun to watch it for a few days...now what? I'm bored with it.
I've already taken what steps I could to reduce consumption.
Now what?
I've got the Blueline monitor. Cost me $1.76 to wash clothes this
month...now what???
Air conditioner has run 37 minutes out of the last 3466 minutes...
now what???
Shower last night cost me 15-cents...now what???
It's easy to OVERTHINK continuous monitoring of energy consumption.
An electric clock in parallel with your hot tub heater
will give you all the duty cycle info you need. And unless you're gonna
grab the knob and change the temperature, you've learned nothing
useful.
I think I'm spending more on batteries for all this stuff than
I'm saving in electricity.
If you snag any interface info, publish the link.
I'm up for building more useless stuff...
Thanks, mike