PowerCost Monitor

[blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org (Tom Metro)]

Rich Braun wrote:
> ...a few more days remain on the NSTAR discount deal for those
> PowerCost Monitor units...

I ordered one of these a few weeks ago. It hasn't arrived yet. I'm 
curious to see how it will interface with my digital watt meter.

Several years ago when I still had an analog watt meter with the 
spinning wheel I was thinking of sticking an optical encoder in front of 
it and sending a signal off to a computer to track power usage. I had a 
laugh when I saw photos of the PowerCost Monitor installed on an analog 
meter and noticed they were doing exactly this.

When you first mentioned these devices and their affiliation with the 
utility company, I figured they were probably designed to work with the 
digital watt meters which have the ability to be read remotely.


> ...I'd like them better if they had a computer interface...

The sensor and the display unit communicate wirelessly, right? If you 
were sufficiently motivated, you should be able to reverse engineer the 
wireless signal, or better yet hack one of your receivers to intercept 
the signal. Worse case scenario is you capture the signals going to the LCD.

On a privacy note, I'm guessing the data transmitted by these things 
isn't encrypted, so if you consider your power consumption to be private 
information, not the best device to be using. Then again, most houses 
have their watt meter on the exterior and in plain view. I tend to doubt 
the signal from the digital meters is encrypted either.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/

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