Detecting appliances and white goods

Community Playground General Discussions
1

I am kicking off a new project for the new year and looking for some advice.

I would like to understand the energy consumption in my home. I have purchased the Vera Lite and the Aeon Labs energy monitor. So this will give me a good overall picture of whats going on. However to make it really smart I would like to monitor individual sockets and also to know what appliance/device/thing has been plugged in.

Can anybody suggest a way to do this. I was originally thinking, RFID readers on the sockets, with a tag in each plug. Combining that with the Aeon Labs micro smart energy switch or similar. But I cant see how to get RFID data onto the zwave network.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatfully received.

Thanks

Rob

2

I believe that with the Brultech monitor you can have multiple point of data gathering. There is a Vera plugin.

3

If you’re in the UK, then you can use the CurrentCost, or EcoManager IAM (Individual Appliance Monitors). I’ve got a DIY interface for the EcoManager ones which seem more reliable than the CC (as they are 2 way comms) and they update every 6 seconds (which might be a little overkill, but it’s cool!).

You can also use the CC plugin which I think updates every minute.

Chris

4

Thanks for the suggestions, I was hoping for something a bit more discrete. So for instance, if I plugged in a food processor, the monitoring would know it had been plugged in and the energy use could be directly attributed to it.

Rob

5

Nice idea - and I agree the IAMs are a little larger than one may otherwise like. However I suspect that there’s probably a lot of ambiguity by “simply” trying to resolve device power usage from a single whole house meter.

Good luck.

Cheers
Chris

6

Hi

I’m personally not aware of anything ‘discrete’ that’s available to monitor electricity consumption in the wall socket department, all the inits i have seen are external (and bulky).

The Brultech device and plugin i think can allow you to more accurately monitor the electrical zones in your house via the main consumer unit. (But I don’t think that’s an easy DIY job, I might be wrong)