Project: Power Monitoring System
I decided to start a project that I have been thinking about for a while now. When our family added on to our house we put the addition on its own breaker. An odd quirk was that where the TV is currently was originally on the porch, and that porch breaker controls an outlet in the garage...which is hosting a fridge. Therefore, with our TV, DVR and the like we are always approaching the breaker's capacity, and about once a month we have to reset a tripped outlet. Needless to say this is not too good for food inside, but because our TV is flipped on so much, we know within 6 hours of when it happens.
But what happens, if we don't happen to watch TV, or we are away from home? It would be nice to be alerted. To solve the problem I need the following items:
1.) A multimeter with an RS232 communications port
2.) A UPSed server with an internet connection
For ease of putting it together I will use a lightweight linux distribution and my old p2-350 which is collecting dust.
I should receive the multimeter which I bought online ($50) shortly. This is good practice for tinkering and may have other applications. I'll try to keep weekly updates going with my progress on the project.
--Joey
posted by Joey @ 3:34 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Dear Joey, You lost me at "To solve the problem ..." I understood most of the individual words, but the meaning of the whole phrase is beyond me. Are you trying to get the refrigerator to e-mail you an SOS when it goes off? Too '2001' for me. Love.
Precisely!
Linux has a "mail" command which will accept an argument from a command line. So let us say that the power goes off on August 12th 2006 at 12:34, I pass the date to the mail command as the subject. None of the complexities involving Windows style gui's etc is necessary.
And it has geek appeal.
--Joey
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