Re: Re: How suitable would Xap be for monitoring Gas + Electric?

[Kevin Hawkins <yahoogroupskh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Paul,

I use a Current Cost unit and my own xAP software (not planned for
release) but the other Kevin 'T' has a xAP conduit that is available.

In addition I use three of the standalone full rated  (63A ?) energy
meters - same as the ones supplied by the electricity companies but with
the digital pulse output enabled - My house is essential fed from three
consumer units - upstairs - downstairs and annexe and I ahve one on each.

Then within each consumer unit I have several of the DIN mounted
single width 25A pulse output meters with the mechanical displays.
These either feed single appliances or rings.

I also have added a pulse output gas meter (as a secondary meter)
and a pulse output water meter.  I'm a little disappointed that the gas
meter isn't more sensitive - more pulses per volume but I'm told its a
standard and there aren't more sensitive ones available.  It's not too
bad but could be better.

Each of the pulse output unit goes into a digital 'counter' input on
the xAP Netiom mentioned below (16 bit counters) and also I have them
going into some IDRANet module inputs that integrate with Cortex's power
monitoring and graphing.

I also played with using a Viom (another Phaedrus product) to
measure the period of the pulse waveform out of the meters, particulalry
electric to provide a realtime electricity consumption figure. It was
fairly bandwidth intensive on the PC's serial port - had to reset, wait,
read counter, calculate, zero, restart timers all in one marker pulse
width - which IIRC was 10ms - it worked but it didnt work well with 8
channels at high consumption, at least not when the 8 marker pulses had
any overlap.

I'm watching the 'Alert Me' product with interest but they are not
very responsive to any contact..  :-(

K


Paul Bendall wrote:
>
> Kevin,
>
> Do you have details of how you monitor the zones for electircity, gas
> and water? What sort of sensors do you use?
>
> Paul
>
> --- In xap_automation@xxxxxxx
> <mailto:xap_automation%40yahoogroups.com>,
"Kevin Hawkins"
> <yahoogroupskh@...> wrote:
> >
> > Just to mention that xAP hardware can also help here.
> >
> > There is a device called the xAP Netiom
> >
> > http://www.phaedrusltd.com/system/index.html
> <http://www.phaedrusltd.com/system/index.html>
> >
> > This provides a lot of I/O (inputs , outputs, serial, counters,
> > latches) as well as a web interface and all the I/O is xAP
enabled.
> >
> > One of the useful aspects for this application is the counters
and
> you
> > can attach the pulse output type energy meters to an input and
have
> > the Netiom count those pulses for you. Then you can either report
> > them every 'n' increments via xAP or have an application that
just
> > reads them. Effectively you have a network readable meter,
meaning
> > you don't need the PC available 24/7.
> >
> > I use this approach myself for several zones of electric and both
> gas
> > and water.
> >
> > K
> >
>
>


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