0. LuzMon¶

The project¶

Here is a quick presentation of the project I developped for my Fabacademy

This video presents the processes used to reach the goal of creating my own Energy Consumption monitoring device.

License¶

My final project being freely inspired by OpenEnergyMonitor I looked into their website to follow the spirit of their licensing.

In their case they have one license for the software and one for the hardware so I decided to apply the same idea.

Software : AGPLv3 FreeSoftware

Hardware : Creative Common

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This license allows to share adaptation of the work as long as others share alike. For the moment it does not allow commercial use of the work.

How did I design it¶

To understand the design process of this project, one can refer to the following pages.

First steps of the Project
PCB : I explain the design, production, debugging and testing of the PCB’s
Casing : I explain the choices made for the casing design and its specificities
Software : I explain how I make the whole project and boards work together + a big part of debugging.

Make your own¶

If you are interested in the project and want to reproduce it; here are all the files you need for it

Casing¶

3D Models¶

Ready to print or laser cut¶

Electronic¶

Software¶

Bill of material¶

The project costs 170€ approximately. But could greatly reduced with a cheaper screen (or no screen) and less current sensors.

Complete bill of material

Pending Improvements¶

PCB¶

Remove copper below ESP32 antenna
Avoid mechanical effort of the boards especially due to the jacks
Through hole connectors for interboard communication

Casing¶

Adding U-cut on the board-clips to put and remove
Holes for screws instead of pins to maintain PCB (they break to easily)
Thinner plastic column to support PCB screws (hard to mount)
Adapt current sensor holes for better mounting
Add cable inserts to hold 220V cables
Create a cap for the SPI pins.
Improve printing settings for a better quality
Adding sensor number within the design

Software & Interface¶

ATMEGA¶

Calibrated current sensors

ESP32¶

Send MQTT message info by info instead of board by board
OLED communication to be done

RaspberryPi¶

Monitor live current to reduce number of clamps
Monitor peak current to adapt my energy contract
Improve data packaging to save data to database

A word on OpenSource¶

Info

This project would have never seen the light without the efforts of the open-source community. I found really exciting to mix information from different places to get to the final product :

EmonLib : OpenEnergy Monitor
Compiling the code : Avr
Designing my PCB : Kicad
Designing the casing : Freecad
Milling my PCB : Mods
Clips of the casing : Victor from FabLab Barcelona
All the help I got from Fablab Barcelona
All the help I got from the opensource community who attended my questions on forums

Last update: July 5, 2021