Steve,
I have a kilowatt that you would be more than welcome to borrow if you
simply wanted to check out what some of your devices are using. I offer
this to save you the money on buying one if you were only going to use it
for a short term.
Ryan
On Wednesday, February 10, 2016, Yevgeniy Soroka <ukranians2@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Sorry to sidetrack, but the talk about power meters gave me the idea, and
now I'm thinking about it, haha.
For the laser cutter power meter, I'm thinking a CT on the wires going to
the outlet. Some circuitry to convert the CT signal to an arduino, you
press a start button, and then add up the power usage while the laser
cutter is cutting, press a stop button, and the arduino displays how much
money you owe on an LCD screen. You will also be able to enter the current
rate per minute.
For the current system of 25 cents/min, we are assuming the power levels
are constant during the entire cut. In reality the power levels vary a lot
depending on if youre etching, or cutting regular materials, and of course
depending on the power level you set in the laser cutter software.
When all is said and done, the accurate $ value will not be too different
from what people are currently paying, but its a fun project, so why not.
-Geno
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 3:22 PM, Yevgeniy Soroka <ukranians2@xxxxxxxxx
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','ukranians2@xxxxxxxxx');>> wrote:
You might want to create a system similar to the one used by HackPGH. The
one near the fusebox with the LCD screen. From what I understand its
connected directly to the fuse box and measures all power use of all
devices in the shop.
The Kill A Watt only measures power usage from devices connected directly
to it.
As a Power Electronics guy I'm very interested in how the HackPGH power
meter setup with the LCD screen works. Who set it up, and when? Also I'm
potentially interested in creating a power meter for the laser cutter which
will tell you directly how much money you owe.
-Geno
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Matthew Beckler <
matthew.beckler@xxxxxxxxx
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','matthew.beckler@xxxxxxxxx');>> wrote:
I have one, and it works well. It logs how many hours it's been running,
and totals up the kWh used. It also displays the instantaneous power
statistics (voltage, current, power, power-factor, etc).
The biggest thing to consider when heading down this road is to ask what
you want to get out of the process? I was just curious about how much power
things used, and I wasn't interested in long-term monitoring. Keep in mind
that you can't use a kill-a-watt to monitor things that don't plug in to
the standard wall socket (furnace fan, oven, etc).
-Matthew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 2:01 PM, Steven Owens <stevenjowens@xxxxxxxxx
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','stevenjowens@xxxxxxxxx');>> wrote:
Thinking about doing some optimization of my household electricity
usage. Anybody have opinions about the Kill A Watt or similar devices?
