We’ve been working with the brilliant OpenEnergyMonitor project to provide monitoring of our current range of home retrofits. What’s great about the system is that it’s modular, so you can add additional sensors as and when we need to show not only how much energy your using, but how your solar PV system is performing or how warm or how humid different areas of your home are. The system uses the latest DIY technology, using Arduino sensor boards to send data to the internet via a Raspberry Pi.
We did a call out for help building monitors for our pioneer houses back in October and had a great response, but we’ve had many more requests from people wanting to build a monitor for their own home. So, with support from the Catalyst Project we will be doing a number of events including a build day and also offering the energy monitor kits to Carbon Coop members at a significantly reduced price.
The build day will take place at MadLab on Saturday 20th April [note the date change from the original post] 10am till 6pm, with an introductory session at 6pm the night before. The session will be free but as places are very limited we are asking for a £10 deposit. The kit you will need for the day is listed below, Carbon Coop members will be able to purchase the entire kit for £100. Do bear in mind that all the boards below need to be assembled from parts, soldering irons and guidance will be on hand on the day to help you construct your kit. No previous electronics knowledge is necessary, but if you haven’t soldered before watch this video and try to get some practice in beforehand if you can. This is a short build event, the aim of which is to get you started with a working kit, this means there won’t be time to look at system design, arduino programming or coding on the raspberry pi (though we will be looking at these in our monthly meetups and there is great documentation on openenergymonitor.org). If you are interested in developing a full set of skills around this system, we would highly recommend this 4 day course at the Centre for Alternative Technlogy.
What you will need
- Home Energy Monitor Kit Bundle 868Mhz [no longer available as of 2018]
- Programmer – USB to serial UART
- 2 x Mini USB cable
- 2 x USB power adapter
- AC-AC Adapter – AC voltage sensor
- Raspberry Pi – model B
- RFM12Pi Raspberry Pi Expansion board kit 868Mhz [no longer available as of 2018]
- Micro USB Power supply for raspi
- Sandisk SDHC 8GB for raspi
- 1 mtr cat-5 cable
If you’re interested in booking on, Get in touch!
