counting impulses from an LED

Apr 22, 2005 11 Replies
M

Good evening everybody --



My problem is this: there's a pulsing LED on my power meter that I'd like to use to track my electricity usage. The LED pulses 500 times per kWh usage, that translates to a pulse every 20s in normal times, but could go up to a pulse a second.



I can do some soldering off a diagram and I do use a 1-wire bus to measure other stuff (Linux computer running 24/7 taking regular samples from some DS1820 temp sensors), but am very much not into hardware. What would be the easiest way to capture those pulses? 1-wire is preferred, but I'm happy with a serial connection, too.



Thanks for suggestions!



Marc


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D

Marc, I would think at this low pulse rate a photo cell connectrd to a DS2450

1-Wire Quad A/D Converter would work. I would expect that you would have to take into account ambient light(my meter is on the outside of the house). Dave
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A

Actually, probably not a 2450, but ds2423.. It's counter and not an a/d. Check out the usage of them in the 1-wire weather station...

A good place to ask about specific code/logic for reading the led flashes might be the Dallas/Maxim forums at

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as the developers are there and might have seen this before

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M

Patrick --

Not in France, but close (Luxembourg). My meter is 'electronic', but it doesn't have a phone input. The electricity company provides a solution in form of a module that connects to the meter and transmits consumption data via GSM/GPRS to their servers, where they allow me to log in and see my data. Theoretically nice, but there's no GSM reception in my basement.

cu Marc

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P

Hello Marc, are you in France ? is it an "electronic" power meter ? I ahev one too, but I am cosnidering using the teleinfo digital output instead of the led flashes...

Patrick

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D

Hi Patrick, I'm in France have experimented with the teleinfo port on my meter I'll dig the information out if you like?. From memory it's a ~50khz signal turned on and off to represent the 1's and zeros at 9600baud 8N1.

Dave...

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P

In France we use Merlin-Gerin or Siemens meters which are equipped with a TTL output (and a flashing LED). There are ways to interface this TTL output to RS232, giving you the real time load of the meter. May be your model is the same, there must be some sort of output for their module to get the data ?

Patrick

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P

Thank you, I am about to do a little interface based on the RS232 schematic at .

I am interested in info and experience you might have though ! we can get in contact through email if you want, just remove the zut at the beginning of my email.

Patrick

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R

Patrick, Dave

I'm in Le Mans and I would be interrested in your experiance with the meters.

TIA

Richard

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D

Hi Richard, I'm in the northern Dordogne area. What I did was just use the input part from here and simply fed it into the RS232 port, and get loads of meter data!. There's a Homeseer plugin I got from somewhere to read the meter in Homeseer.

Dave (Englishman living in France) snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com into Electronics,Amateur radio,Computers,etc etc .........

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G

There is a similar project here:

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