Re: Electricity meter monitoring

[Steve Hetherington <sjhha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm using the rfxcom units to measure electricity and gas usage.  The
electricity monitor uses a clamp-on sensor and the gas a reflective
detector.  If you don't fancy the clamp electricity monitor, the optical
one I use for gas might work for the 'spinning wheel' black mark.  More
information at www.rfxcom.com

Regards,

Steve H.

James Fidell wrote:
> I can find a few web pages discussing monitoring of a "spinning
wheel"
> electricity meter and logging to a pc, but they generally seem to be
for
> (US-style?) meters in clear cases rather than black shrouded ones such
> as my own and rely on shining some sort of light through an index hole
> in the wheel from above or below, which obviously isn't going to work
> for me unless i fancy taking a dremel to the meter case, which I can't
> see the electricity-supplier finding too amusing.
>
> Has anyone successfully built something that (say) counts the
> revolutions of the wheel using the black mark on the edge and grabbed
> the data on a PC?
>
> (My fallback solution is to take the meter tails and divert them
through
> a second digital meter with a pulsed output, but as I have no way to
> disconnect the mains at that point other than by disconnecting the
> supplier-side fuses, I'm not desperately keen on that.)
>
> James
>