Home Power Monitoring Hack

dvogt writes "You think your power bill is bad? I built a power monitoring system to monitor every circuit in my house with three second resolution for over a year. And while I had to rewire all my electrical to do it, I can now reconcile my electricity bill down to the penny... Of course when my wife figured out most of the bill was because of my computer gear I had to build her a dome, so reader beware!" From the article: "About a year ago I developed a web based power monitoring application for data centers. The application was designed to monitor thousands of individual branch circuits using current transducers at the breaker panels. Among other things, the data logging requirements were to provide one year of min/max/mean measurement data with one minute resolution per circuit. Since I had all the hardware for testing, I figured what better way to test things than to install it in my own home."

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[zegebbers]

Since I had all the hardware for testing, I figured what better way to test things than to install it in my own home.

That's an awesome attitude that we don't get enough of on slashdot these days :(

Re:Another way to do it: read the meter

[d2_m_viant]

Yes, but that won't do much if the power company is cheating you. The article's way, you'd be more able to catch the power company charging you for something you didn't use.

On a side note: Imagine trying to convince the customer service rep on the phone that you rewired your house with a homemade power monitoring system and your monthly audits of your electrical usage uncovered the error...me thinks you'd have better luck convincing a Slashdot reader to install the WeatherBug...

Re:Does your home still meet safety codes?

[CyricZ]

Just because it is working now does not mean that it will be in several weeks, months or years. Such codes are in place to prevent home hackery like this, especially in the case of electrical wiring. The potential for his modifications to fail are astronomical. And if he did such modifications without proper inspections, then the situation could get very hairy were things to go wrong.

Perhaps his insurance company would not pay him if it was found that his uninspected electrical modifications were the cause of his house burning down, for instance.

Re:Does your home still meet safety codes?

[ErikZ]

Such codes are in place to prevent home hackery like this, especially in the case of electrical wiring. The potential for his modifications to fail are astronomical.

I agree! Think of the dangers of brewing your own beer, working on your car, or even programming! Almost all viruses were programmed without any kind of government oversight.

There should be codes that are enforced by the governemnt that touch upon everything you can possibly do. To protect you, and others, from yourself.

Seriously, the codes are there to protect people from substandard wiring. But to insist that you have no right to modify the wiring in your own house is too "Big Brother" for me.