Author Archives: Skye Sweeney

Return of the dreaded disease

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Last night as I making for algorithm changes to my lightning detector, I experienced an unexpected reboot. Never mind, I was probing with a scope lead at the time. That likely caused the problem. But after a few minutes it … Continue reading →

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Data from my lightning detector

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Here is a sample CSV file from a lightning storm that passed through my area on August 2, 2011 at around 5:30PM. sparks_38 Here is a sample piece of that CSV file: 1312198123.414 8 187.975 8 1312198123.416 0 0.002 8 … Continue reading →

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HomePowerMonitor with a CS5460A?

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

A poster on the Sparkfun forums (donnib) clued me into the Cirrus Logic CS5460A Power/Energy IC. This part appears to be designed specifically to be the backbone of a power meter. It takes as inputs the instantaneous voltage and current … Continue reading →

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HomePowerMonitor on an Arduino? First tests.

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Using an Arduino for my Home Power Monitor (HPM) has many advantages. It is cheap, simple, small, and has a good user base behind it. But could it meet my requirements (more on these in a future post)? To find … Continue reading →

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Start of a HomePowerMonitor Design

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

So what does one do when you want to put in a whole home power monitor? Hit Google of course. After many hours of searching, I found numerous consumer power monitor systems and countless industrial systems. The industrial systems where … Continue reading →

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Sources of data on Home Energy Monitoring

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

This posting will be updated with external sources of information of power measurement.

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Power monitor

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Over the last few years my wife and I have noticed out electric bill getting larger and larger. This is not surprising with the cost of everything going up, but what does bother me is that our usage of power … Continue reading →

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Trouble with Reset

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

I have been working on an MSP430 based sailboat start timer. For those readers not into sailboat racing, races as started by a series of “guns”. At predetermined times before the start of a race, the race committee creates an … Continue reading →

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Indoor Lightning

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Strange as it may be, my lightning detector goes off every few minutes… but without the thunder and blinding flash of light.

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A Max Hold Circuit

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Since the conversion rate on the MSP430 would not reliably see my piezo sparks, I decided to try my hand at a max hold circuit. I considered using a simple RC circuit to try to capture and stretch out the … Continue reading →

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