I’ve been working on a new home energy monitor since my old one stopped working after the new net meter went in. It’s easy enough to send some data up to pachube.com, but there are a lot of neat sites out there which have gotten started helping consumers track their home energy use:
- Google Powermeter
- Microsoft Hohm
- Mapawatt
- Wattzon
- Pachube, and others
Each has their own API, and most of them work with some subset of the commercial energy monitors out there:
- Ted 5000
- CurrentCost Monitor
- Efergy
- Brultech ECM-1240
- Blue Line Innovations
- Eco-eye
- The Owl
- Various Homemade devices
But do you really want to pick your device based on the sites they support, or vise versa? And wouldn’t it be nice if a single device could report to any or all of the above monitoring sites, each with their various strengths and weaknesses?
It’d be possible to make an energy-data-multiplexer which can accept inputs from any of the above devices, store the basic usage in a database (just feed name / timestamp / power value), and from there send it out to any/all of the sites which accept such data. It’s just a Simple Matter of Programming ™ to write the interfaces on both sides…. right? :)
Anyone have experience with this kind of thing?
Hey,
it is possible – the real problem you have is where to put the multiplexer. Having an always-on pc will munch power, really you need to have a bridge device between your reader and the internet, and you multiplex from your online service
more tomorrow – gotta go ..
T
Sure – well, I already have an always-on (40W) PC which performs many tasks, so that’s ok for now. Otherwise something like a Sheevaplug could fit the bill.
It could certainly be an online service as well. I’m more interested in what existing bits and pieces may help with this…
Thanks,
-Eric