A New Project

Summers here and for me, that's time to tackle a personal project.  Currently this is still in the design stages and will be a rather large undertaking once all is said and done.  I want to develop a system to act as a staging platform for a full scale evergy management and optomization system.  The idea is to take something simple and prevelant in homes and create a device from it that allows for energy management and allow for sensor deployment.  I chose the power outlet for my summer project.  I intend to develop an opensource, arduino based solution that at its most basic level allows for active wireless monitoring of power usage of a socket, remote control of the socket, and a system for employing more sensors as time passes.

There are a few design goals I intend to keep in mind as I progress with this project.  I intend to keep the low voltage and high voltage portions of the device completely seperate.  I intend to keep the final design of the project fairly small.  If at all possible I want the device to fit inside the standard outlet box.  I'll be employing the use of the SeaDuino in the final revision of this device due to its smaller size but initial prototypes will use my Decimilia and the xBee shield once I incorporate wireless.  I intend to keep the design open and explandable, allowing for integration into networks such as X10 or others if someone need do so.  I also intentend to keep the project opensource.  From start to finish all hardware designs an software revisions will be availible as they come.  I'm looking at posibilitys for an established SVN right now, possibly through Origo for tracking.  We'll see in the next few coming weeks.  Right now I'm going to be selfish and work on my first prototype.

The first design phase will be wired, it will use a relay to control the output of the outlet and find power usage through determining the voltage and the current being delivered to a load.  For rapid prototyping I'll be using the relay control board from Sparkfun Electronics. I'm hoping for them to have arrived by the end of the week.  Initially I'm looking at a project by Cornell students for the designs related current and voltage monitoring.

That's about it for now, expect some more on the project shortly!