Jeremy Harris
Senior Member
I've had a search, but can't see any mention of this, so thought I'd ask.
The majority of digital electricity meters (and some gas meters, I believe) now have an IrDA port from which the meter can be read. The great thing about this is that I understand that quite a bit of data can be extracted from the meter registers via this port, opening up the opportunity for some interesting Picaxe monitoring and control projects. The data is received/transmitted at 9600 baud I believe, which again suits a Picaxe pretty well.
It seems easy and cheap enough to get hold of an IrDA module (like this: http://www.mcustore.com/irda-board-old-version.html) so I'm wondering if anyone here has tried to do something like this.
One really nice thing about this approach is that it is intrinsically safe, and offers a way to monitor energy use without any connection to the household electricity supply.
The majority of digital electricity meters (and some gas meters, I believe) now have an IrDA port from which the meter can be read. The great thing about this is that I understand that quite a bit of data can be extracted from the meter registers via this port, opening up the opportunity for some interesting Picaxe monitoring and control projects. The data is received/transmitted at 9600 baud I believe, which again suits a Picaxe pretty well.
It seems easy and cheap enough to get hold of an IrDA module (like this: http://www.mcustore.com/irda-board-old-version.html) so I'm wondering if anyone here has tried to do something like this.
One really nice thing about this approach is that it is intrinsically safe, and offers a way to monitor energy use without any connection to the household electricity supply.
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