Re: Remote energy metering

[Kevin Hawkins <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Viom's have 16 inputs and you connect each output of the DRM100's
to
an input.  You configure the Viom to count the pulses that it sees on
each input. It stores these counts internally.  It is a bit weird how
you setup the Viom to do this but its all software commands issued to it
over a serial port (setup by your software).    Now you can also send
requests to the Viom , again via the serial port to report the current
count for each of its inputs, which would correspond to the number of
pulses it has received from the DRM100 ie the energy consumed.  So you
effectively can read the meter this way. You can also preset or zero the
counters.  The DRM100s at 1 DIN width are great - your Ethernet unit was
9 units wide.

In your software you would just periodically read these values to get
the KWHr consumed since the last reading, you may choose to reset the
counters after a read.. You can do this as often as you wish - right
down to a few secs apart should you wish. The only thing you must do is
read counters before they overflow/roll over so that the values are
valid. This is obviously dependent on the 'sensitivity' of the meter (#
pulses per KWHr).  I use the most sensitive versions and I get peak
pulses of over 1 per second sometimes. How large the counter (number of
bits) and how often you read these can thus be calculated.

Kevin




Richard Parker wrote:
> Hi Kevin,
>
> Like the idea of the DRM100S, and I'm all for spending £50 on the
Viom vs.
> £350~ for the ethernet device. I certainly wouldn't want to
consider using
> the ethernet device to track consumption through each MCB as that'd
get
> quite expensive. But the idea of using multiple DRM100S connected to
the
> Viom sounds perfect, especially since I could start with just 1
DRM100S and
> expand if I wanted.
>
> How can the DRM100S be connected to the Viom?
>
> Thanks
>
> Rich
>
>