Tinkerman

So far I've posted about hardware and theoretical stuff like network architecture or naming conventions. I think it's time to move to the software side. The core of the sensor network I'm deploying at home is the Mosquitto broker that implements MQTT protocol. It manages the messaging queue, listening to messages posted by publishers and notifying the subscribers. I've been working in parallel to have at least some pieces in place to get and store information from the pulse counter sensor....

Thesmartmeter pulse counter will be the first standalone sensor I will deploy so power economy is a requirement. I will have to power an Arduino Pro Mini and an Xbee radio. I plan to power the Xbee from the 3V3 regulated output. The Arduino VCC output can provide as much as 200mA which is far enough to power the Xbee. The built-in regulator requires at least 3.35V and up to 12V so 3 AA cells will provide enough potential to drive the whole setup....

Naming stuff is one of the core decisions one has to take while designing an architecture. It might not look as important as utilising the right pattern in the right place or defining your database model but my experience says that a good naming convention helps identifying design flaws. In a previous post I introduced the network I'm building for my home monitoring system. As I said it will be based on MQTT, a lightweight messaging protocol....

This week I have had some spare time - well, I should say I've borrowed some time from my sleep - to work on the smart-meter pulse counter setup. In my last post about this I analized the signal from my photocell sensor. My conclusion was that the signal was clean and neat, even before throwing in a schmitt trigger to make it more “digital”. I have found out that it is also very dependent on the environmental light so I good isolation is a must for the sensor....

All of us tinkermen eventually end up working on a home monitoring/automation system sooner or later. And that's for me the big background project at the moment. I have already some of the pieces in several stages of readiness but I was lacking an overall view of the system as a whole. My initial approach was to store everything in a MySQL database and develop a web application to graph the time series values....

Endesa has recently updated my home energy meter to meet new UE and Spanish regulations. The new meter it's a smartmeter by Meters and More and it basically provides the means to perform remote meter readings and supply changes. The goal of the new regulation is to provide better and more accurate information to final customers regarding their energy consumption habits to promote energy efficiency and saving. The reason I'm writing about this is that the meters has two communication ports on the front side, an I/O optical port with unknown protocol and a simple LED labeled “4000 Imp/KWh”....

Funny how this has ended up being my first post… It has recently been our 12th anniversary with my wife and as it always happens you feel like socially impelled to give her a “material” present, although there is no better present than a night out together or a romantic weekend out of the city. But anyway, since it was supposed to be something personal and since I've been tinkering with electronics for quite some time now, I though about putting something of my hobby into it....