Although we’d had a slow start, thinking of different projects we could do as 4 computer engineering students; it finally ended up on a tossup between a complex door control system and a smart electricity measurement system for a household. We went for the latter, and have finally started to make some headway.
The system will place current sensors in each electrical outlet that will all connect via wifi to a central control unit.
This control unit will upload the data to a web server that will retrieve live price updates. Using that data we can provide automated notifications to the user to optimize electricity usage and estimate monthly expenditure.
Component list:
1x Arduino
3x Wifi cards
2x led diode
2x relay
1x Raspberry Pi
2x current sensors
Outlet:
1x relay
1x wifi card
1x current sensor
The outlet unit will constantly transmit the current power usage. It will activate the relay upon receiving a signal.
Hub:
The arduino will assign IDs to each new outlet. The data from the outlets will be updated every second and be converted to kWhs.
Each outlet will be tagged as essential or non essential. Essential outlets cannot have their relay toggled. This is to prevent damage to complex circuits as these components can’t tackle power outage/brownouts very well.
The hub will send the current usage of each outlet to a web server, where the information will be stored.
Progress:
This week we have been scoping the project and all the necessary products that we need to accomplish our goal. We want to first and foremost focus on the base of the project and then later on implement functions that would make the system better.
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We wish to create a prototype using an arduino and sensors to simulate a scaled down version of the system as a proof of concept.
We’re thinking of using a Pi for the web server, and might be able to forego the arduino for the hub altogether.
Stretch goals:
2x Outlets (form factor)
Google Home integration
Individual power provider contracts (profiles)
A simple web app