Keeping an Eye with Raspberry Pi - Monitoring Electricity + Bandwidth

RE: Keeping an Eye with Raspberry Pi - Monitoring Electricity + Bandwidth

kmikemoo — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 14:53:56 GMT

I voted "I don't". It's just because it hasn't risen that high on the project list. A couple of times a year I will look at what the power company sends out, but since the kids moved out a few years ago and our energy costs dropped in half... I don't worry about it as much.

** That being said... just last week at work, we received a letter from the water department that said we were using 200 gallons per hour. (A letter.) Anyway, it seems that a toilet in the ladies room was running continuously. With no ladies in the building due to "Safer at Home", no one knew. It reminded me of the urinal that got stuck on one Friday afternoon and flooded the offices over the weekend. Sometimes monitoring makes more sense than we give it credit for.

RE: Keeping an Eye with Raspberry Pi - Monitoring Electricity + Bandwidth

genebren — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 23:39:19 GMT

I have begun routine monitoring of my electrical usage, using an online tool provided by our electric company. This all began when our electric bill suddenly doubled. Sure enough, the daily usages were way up. We went from being one of the top ten most efficient homes to be one of the top ten users of energy. This all started about the time that my new shop was connected to our main electrical panel. We called out an electrician to inspected and measure currents to see if the shop was causing the increase. After a few minutes, it was clear that the shop was not the problem. I dug a little deeper on our usage, via the online plots, and it seemed that our A/C unit (less that two years old) seem to be the problem. I then called our normal A/C service guy. No luck, he said everything was fine including freon level/pressures. So, I called a new A/C guy. He shows up and the first thing he does is check for freon inside of the home. Oh boy, his detector goes off big time. He then checks the unit and says that the heat exchanger coils felt too warm and he continues to sense freon, but can not find a actual leak point. He then states that he did not feel that he knew enough about the unit to repair or further diagnose it. So I looked for a service company that was qualified (by the A/C manufacturer) to service the unit. So another new guy shows up. I tell him about the possible (not not found) freon leak. He looks it over, but does not sense a leak and he suspects that his sensor is not working correctly, so he calls in another of his service team. So he leaves, the other guy shows up and he is not able to find a leak or sense any freon. By this time I am about to lose my mind. After talking a bit, he decides to go have another look at the unit (he really want to please his boss/father-in-law), so up he goes. After a few minutes, he comes back down and says he found it. This unit (a heat pump) has a special aux heater that is used to pre-heat the air, prior to the heat exchanger, as heat pumps do not work well in extremely cold temperature. The relay that energies the aux heater had welded on and was causing the aux heater to run whenever the A/C was on (using almost twice the current), hence the high rate of usage. He remove the relay and everything looked good. Right away the online tool showed a much improved usage.

Just recently we installed a water flow sensor that is WiFi enabled and programmable to report long periods of flow above a threshold level (think irrigation). We have had some issues where the garden drip system was left on over night, or some other water source.

RE: Keeping an Eye with Raspberry Pi - Monitoring Electricity + Bandwidth

fmilburn — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 20:53:56 GMT

Nice post! Sensing, measurement and remote data analysis used to be a large part of my job. More recently I have set up sensors and monitors for everything from marine traffic in my area to measurement of environmental conditions and home control as personal projects. I really enjoy these personal projects but they but they are largely based on intellectual curiosity and interest as opposed to real need. I suspect it will always be an area of great interest for me though.