Introduction
You all will agree with the fact that high energy consumption by our household appliances is quite bothering and each month we make every possible effort to reduce the electricity bill. Not just that, in the quest to understand and monitor the power usages, we keep checking electricity meters installed in our home/offices. What if we can monitor the electricity bill from anywhere on our smartphones? Yes, with the help from the Internet of Things, we can easily monitor power consumption using a smart energy meter. We have previously done other IoT based Remote Monitoring projects like Temperature and Humidity Monitoring, Battery Monitoring, Food Monitoring, Air Quality Monitoring, etc.
For quite some time, I have been trying to find out ways to build a simple yet accurate way to measure and monitor the power usages from anywhere, be it at home office or on the go. After some research, I decided to build a simple one by using a current sensor with NodeMCU and send the measured current values to the IoT Cloud Platform. This can be done with the help of the Adafruit MQTT IoT Platform which is free and doesn’t require a subscription. To build this energy meter, you will only need very few components and an internet connection.
MATERIAL REQUIRED
- ACS712 Current Sensor
- NODE MCU ESP8266 Module
- Mobile charger and USB cable (for power supply and program uploading & for serial monitor reading)
- Bulb holder
- Stable load – here 100 watts bulb
- Some wires