Project: Power Monitoring System update

Getting my multimeter was a little bit of a challenge. I was eager to break it out (ironically, the outlet that was giving us the problem tripped that day it "arrived") and found a microphone.

They overnighted me the right product after some prodding. I was checking out the protocol information which all looked pretty standard. I am using Perl under Linux to pull in the information, but have only gotten results twice. So I tried Minicom just to see what it was spitting out. Again no luck. HyperTerminal? Got information but it looks like this

=E[c~‰Ÿ °ÀÐä

That isn't very readable, but it is very repeatable. Meaning that if this was 100 volts for example, 101 would be very similar. There is not a discernable pattern between each increment. Meaning the difference in ASCII value between increments changed between .9 and .8, .8 and .7 etc.

So, if I can at least get it into a file, I can create a lookup table and a check the left most digit(s). Any power reading that is not at least 100 volts is a problem though 120.0 is rare (usually we get +/- 5V).

--Joey