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Hello from the dead of winter (in NJ)


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Well I should be nice as the snow is melting. They're predicting 48F on Sunday (woohoo - beach weather - ugh forgot snooki is still there ;-). Anyway, I have a Sparkfun 1223 board on the way and I intend to use it to monitor my home's AC (frequency and voltage). I'll be developing under Linux (I found the post with the Linux information, thanks :-) and I hope to get this working soon. I will have a few ADC questions to post later.

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Welcome.. I'm in MA and this winter was awful :( Looking forward to Sunday and your questions!

Well it's not the worst winter I can recall but it's here now. :-) I am hoping to get in a few miles on my bicycle this weekend. I haven't been out since early December and I need some miles.

 

My first question is where can I find the information on what the max external vref is for the 1223? It looks like it's a value no greater than Vcc. I guess that mean 120vAC to 12vAC (power supply/transformer) to an OpAmp (10:1). I guess I should post this part in one of the forums. I've not done a lot of analog.

 

Thanks

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Welcome linuxha! I'll be very interested in your AC monitor project. I'm working on a project that just monitors my electric meter to help keep track of usage (much simpler).

Some of the utility folks don't like seeing things attached to their meter so I'm avoiding that route. Welcome to post 9/11. I'll be adding this:

 

Brultech Mono-200

 

I've got 200A service and the utility doesn't share the usage info on the web site. This way they can't complain and I get very accurate information. I did find this:

 

Dr. Ed Cheung's power monitor

 

It's an excellent article but I still need the frequency so I might as well look at the voltage too. Otherwise seems like a waste of the processor. :-D

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Some of the utility folks don't like seeing things attached to their meter so I'm avoiding that route.

Interesting part is, they almost never see the meter. With this Itron meter, they just drive down the street and gather the readings over RF. :)

 

You can see my "sensor" attachment in my blog post here. Just a piece of inner tube and an IR transistor and wire from an old ball mouse. A zero-dollar solution :D (until I added the junction block and its housing ;) ).

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Some of the utility folks don't like seeing things attached to their meter so I'm avoiding that route.

Interesting part is, they almost never see the meter. With this Itron meter, they just drive down the street and gather the readings over RF. :)

 

You can see my "sensor" attachment in my blog post here. Just a piece of inner tube and an IR transistor and wire from an old ball mouse. A zero-dollar solution :D (until I added the junction block and its housing ;) ).

Thanks

 

I've seen the reader driving but I've seen a few making the trip to the meter still.

 

I was wondering where you got that black tube. Where do you get car tire tubes? I haven't seen one in decades. I have plenty of bike tubes but I'm pretty sure I'm not getting that over the meter.

 

My fun with my monitor right now is getting out my op amp notes. I haven't played with them in years. Do we still have LM741s? ;)

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I was wondering where you got that black tube. Where do you get car tire tubes? I haven't seen one in decades. I have plenty of bike tubes but I'm pretty sure I'm not getting that over the meter.

I just went to a local tire store and asked if they had any trash inner tubes. They gave me one for free (it was about the size for a trailer tire). I cut a flat strip from it and glued it into the right sized loop with glue from a tire repair kit. The whole setup is cheap/free!

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