Current Cost Support Forum

Kindest,

I have the Current Cost EnviR setup and love it. Loved it even more when Google Powermeter was operational and find the current website lacking in functionality to really make it a viable analytics tool. Hence I have started to ponder a few options as I am redoing the electricty layout here where we live.

The options that I have pondered are:

(1) USB data logging device
(2) MAC; connect the usb to the iMac
(3) Small/micro pc connected with USB

I've not seen any reference to any use og USB data loggers with the USB cable. Has anyone done this? That it is not real time is ok as I never look at this in real time anyways... only occasionally.. and the display on the EnviR is more than sufficient for that. Hence sticking a USB data logger that can just store the USB data points for lets say a month or two.. then extract and analyze that retrospectively could work.

As for #2 and #3, they are doable I am guessing, but guarded wrt to #3 as that would require XP or Win7 installed, which will require me to aquire a license. All in all quite a costly implementation in comparison to #1.

Would love any feedback from anyone that has done this or even tried that.

Thanks in advance!

With respect,
Jorgen

Goodday Jorgen,
I also came to the conclusion that a data logger would be an ideal solution . I found that most usb data loggers are very single purpose e.g. record temperature. We need to be able to record XML or to convert the xml to something we can record. Perhaps you have a general purpose Data logger in mind?

If you are connected to a PC or Mac there is plenty of software around that will log the detailed output from an EnviR. These would draw about 20W.

With respect to your option 3, there is a range of choices. I have acquired an EtherTen (Arduino + Ethernet + micro SD) to build my own but I haven't had enough time to do anything serious with it at the moment. This would draw about 2W.

Right now I am trialing a "" which logs all of the data from an EnviR to a USB stick or USB drive in CSV format. This is based on a tonidoplug which is a PC in a powerplug ( running Ubuntu 9.0.4). It draws 8W with a USB stick and 14W with a 1TB USB drive. I am logging 1.2Mb per day for an EnviR with 4 channels.
The tonidoplug is advertised as a 'personal cloud server'. It has a gigabit ethernet connection and can share any data across a home network or the internet. This wold allow processing to run independently of the data capture. (you would not need to move the USB stick to another machine for analysis).
The SmartnowBrain software is still Beta and needs to advance further before I would recommend purchase.

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