RFXCOM monitoring electricity and temperature

[KenB]

MikeM,

I devised a "poormans"  graphical output to run on hyperterm.

Everytime the PIC saw a pulse it would print out a P to the terminal, and every 15 minutes (running an RTC) it would print a CR/LF character - so during the course of the day you would build up a horizontal bargraph of how many litres of gas consumed in each quarter hour.   I was going to get the PIC to also print a time stamp every 15 minutes - but got distracted at the end of the heating season when my gas usage plummeted.  The results were something like this:


PPPPPPPPPPPP
PPPPPPPPPP
PPPPPPPP
PPPPPPP
P
P


PPPP
P

And so on.


I'm keen to try out my fibre optic idea tonight - will let you know how it goes.  I found that my meter has a couple of moulded plastic pins where the optomodule was meant to sit.  It's easy to drill a piece of veroboard to attach to these  pegs.

Now that I've learnt a little C on the Arduino, there's lots of monitoring projects to get moving.  The woodstove/backboiler is finally getting plumbed in this weekend so that offers a whole host of interesting possibilities.



Ken