Software program engineer Paul Austen has designed a web-accessible energy meter, constructed round a Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller board, which goals to supply multi-port vitality monitoring for a wise dwelling: the CT6.
“This challenge initially had the straightforward requirement [to] monitor AC energy utilization on a number of ports,” Austen explains. “Given this broad requirement I initially developed a {hardware} machine that had 4 ports linked to present transformers. This used an [Espressif] ESP32 microcontroller and 16-bit ADCs [Analog to Digital Converters] to measure the present stream utilizing the present transformers. It grew to become obvious that this strategy had it is limitations which restricted the accuracy of the measurements.”
The CT6 is an RP2040-powered four-port vitality monitoring machine with panache. (📷: Paul Austen)
Going through these points, Austen set about redesigning the challenge — switching from the Espressif ESP32 to a Raspberry Pi Pico W board and its dual-core RP2040 microcontroller and including a Microchip ATM90E32AS vitality metering chip to supply extra correct outcomes — together with the flexibility to measure every of the 4 ports’ root-mean-square (RMS), obvious, and reactive wattage, RMS and peak present, energy issue, and even the route of energy stream.
“The event of this {hardware} concerned schematic design, PCB format, PCB manufacture and case design of this unit. The PCB was fabricated, assembled, examined and a 3D printed case was produced,” Austen explains. “This challenge additionally features a internet server that gives a helpful person interface to entry to the information offered by the above {hardware}. I additionally wrote an Android App that’s used to attach the CT6 machine to a WiFi community.”
The {hardware} is joined by software program which incorporates an on-device internet app, providing detailed readings on-demand. (📷: Paul Austen)
Schematics and supply code for the CT6 have been launched on GitHub underneath the permissive MIT license; Austen has additionally requested events desirous about shopping for an assembled unit or a PCB-and-case bundle to get in contact. “I’ve some out there,” he notes, “and will add them to Tindie to permit them to be bought.”