ESPproMon Smartphone App for Energy Monitoring and Control with Appp Technology
What is Appp Technology?
It's appliance profiling which allows you to identify when specific appliances are powered up or powered down etc. It's very much in it's infancy but fully expected to be the next big thing in Smart Energy Monitoring.
PeaceFair make some very reasonably priced energy monitors and they have a user friendly interface for the ESPproMon system. You will however need the services of a qualified electrician to safely wire up the PeaceFair products. Below is one of their products wired up in our consumer unit and providing very accurate data.
The picture below is a simple plug and play CT (current transformer) clipped around the live feed of our consumer unit. The other end of the CT is hooked up to your chosen energy monitoring hardware and the Smartphone app does the rest.
Included in this repository are files for the emonTx and Arduino Shield supplied by Open Energy Monitor in Wales. You will find the sketches in this directory.
The emonTx is available in kit form for the Arduino Uno and Leonardo. This is the kit we received and found the build procedure to be very straightforward.
This is the completed shield fitted to a Leonardo with a DS18B20 sensor and USB2TTL adaptor. It also has the AC - AC adaptor that's essential if you want to accurately measure Real Power and therefore real Energy costs.
Actually the shield is not technically complete as we only fitted CT1 and CT4. Please note CT4 is a regular current transformer port on the shield, unlike the emonTx where CT4 is a high precision port up to a maximum of 4.5KW. Although you might use less than 4.5KW most of the time, there will be times when your whole house consumption goes above this figure so the emonTx firmware is set to use CT3. For the shield the firmware is set to use CT4.
Below is a photograph of the emonTx (not shield) and you can just see the USB2TTL connector cables. Only 2 pins are required to be connected to the ESP for use with ESPproMon but you will need a full USB2TTL adaptor to flash the modified sketch to your emonTx. We recommend this adaptor from Open Energy Monitor or at least one with a RST pin. We have included the modified hex files for the emonTx (not shield) so you can flash the firmware wih avrdude (Windows or Linux) if you don't already have the Arduino IDE installed.
We have included the hex and ino files for the emonPi but as we don't have an emonPi it's untested and you use the files at your own risk. The emonPi from Open Energy Monitor is probably the safest Energy Monitoring system currently available and it offers a plug and play solution for anyone that doesn't have formal training with electrical installations.
THE RASPBERRY PI UARTS and Configuring The GPIO Serial Port On Raspbian Jessie
ESPproMon can also be used with the ACS712 (5A, 20 and 30A) from Allegro MicroSystems and details are available at ESPecoMon
If you have any questions you can open a GitHub issue or contact us via our website at ESPproMon.