By jlbrian7 on
Topic Type
Idea

You may be interested in this board that I have designed http://hackaday.io/project/1150-Power-Monitor. I am using an electric imp, but I believe that it could easily be configured with this board http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/GPRS_Shield_V2.0 . And in addition to sending an email if the temp is too high or too low I believe that this shield can push data to xively.com, but I will check that out this weekend. There is more information on my github page, and a link to the BOM on the hackaday site.

Forums
Greenhouse Monitoring with Text Message Alerts
Forum comment

Hi jlbrian7 - Measuring electricity is definitely an important application. If the electricity is out and we detect it, it could provide an early warning before greenhouses overheat or refrigerators thaw. I've been looking at the [Grove Electricity sensor](http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/Grove_-_Electricity_Sensor) + [GrovePi](http://www.dexterindustries.com/GrovePi/) to accomplish this. I checked out your hackaday project page. How would one hook it up to an electrical system to monitor electricity?
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I have also wanted to know when the electricity goes out in the greenhouse, because that means the heater doesn't work. I did this simply with the "normally closed" contacts on a SSR (solid state relay). As long as there is power, it holds the contact open, when the power goes out the contacts close and ring a wireless doorbell in the house. I know that eventually the relay may fail being energized all the time, but after a year I have had no problems.
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It wouldn't suprise me if the ssr lasted for a long time, even in a constant on state. It sounds like your set up would work well, and even if the relay failed it would be somewhat obvious what the problem is. The only thing that my setup would be able to offer is that you could remotely see the state of the power, as well as see how much amperage is being drawn. However, if all that is needed is the ability to detect the on/off state of the power you could hook the wireless doorbell chime to an arduino so that when it went "bing" it sent a pulse to one of the digital pins of the arduino and then updated the state to a website such as xively. For me knowing the power consumption for some things was important, this way at least I would be prepared when I got a large electric bill in the mail. I have several of the extra shields sitting around, I just need to order the DHT22's for them. If you are interested in trying it out let me know.
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Sorry it has taken so long for me to reply I have been kind of busy here. I just uploaded a short video to my youtube. This will hopefully be a little more descriptive. I should have some more videos and pictures up soon let me know if you think this might be useful, or if you have any ideas on what would be more useful. Here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhWnQGCwB7s&feature=youtu.be and you can also find it on my hackaday page.