Electricity consumption version 0.1
11/03/2017
A comment about the article on water consumption provided a lead for a sensor allowing to also monitor electricity consumption.
A workstation with two large screens
The expected result is a bit different. Here it is about knowing the instantaneous consumption to realize the electrical power used. For water, it was the cumulative quantity used for a given action but the basic principle remains the same.
To explore this possibility, the sensor is installed on an old electrical extension cord recycled for the occasion:
ATTENTION: it's 220 V! Do not do this assembly without perfectly understanding and mastering the risks it implies.
And then a test bench is set up:
The whole interest of the sensor lies in its digital output:
This output is connected to the input of the test bench:
Here it is in parallel with a manual input; a simple button allowing to simulate an impulse and to validate its reading by the Raspberry Pi.
To visualize the impulse provided by the sensor, a digital oscilloscope is installed, geek version:
Which allows to capture a magnificent impulse:
The digital input of the Raspberry Pi maintained at the "high" state of 3.1 V by a pull-up resistance abruptly passes to a low state of 1 V for 76 ms when the sensor announces the consumption of a watt-hour.
It remains to have a professional electrician install the sensor assembly on the electrical panel to have visibility on the general electrical consumption. In the meantime, this simple device already allows to become aware of the consumption of a computer station.
In standby, the same equipment consumes much less:
And in even more prolonged standby, even less:
Hey, this would therefore also allow to give objective indications on the times and effective working hours of a computer scientist...
Oh!