No display on Kill-a-Watt after adding xbee

[franklin97355]

OK, I got it working. Problem I didn't read the instructions but looked at all the pretty pictures. The point where you place the reset cap shows putting the long lead in the rst hole and the other lead LOOKS like it goes in the next lower hole on the other row when in fact it goes one hole further down as stated in the instructions. When removing and replacing the cap with a larger one I noticed this and now it's working. Now on to the software (for now python on windows...yuk)

[franklin97355]

Woopie!! It's up and running and communicates with the base, writes the csv file and.... doesn't communicate with twitter. It's a script problem it seems, perhaps not everything is installed correctly.
Here is the errors

Code: Select all

1       Current draw, in amperes: 0.banned
        Watt draw, in VA: 85.119544592
                Wh used in last  2.03099989891  seconds:  0.0480216073505

2009 05 17, 16:00, 1, 81.8975981795

twittertime!
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "wattcher.py", line 300, in <module>
    update_graph(None)
  File "wattcher.py", line 270, in update_graph
    wattsused += history.avgwattover5min()
  File "C:\Tweet-a-Watt\wattcher\sensorhistory.py", line 124, in avgwattover5min
    return self.cumulative5mwatthr * (60.0*60.0 / (time.time() - self.fiveminutetimer))
ZeroDivisionError: float division


Any thoughts? I'm newer to Python than I am to the Tweet-a-fill_in_your_sensor_here thingy Thanks all this thing is fun.

[adafruit]

change
return self.cumulative5mwatthr * (60.0*60.0 / (time.time() - self.fiveminutetimer))
to
return self.cumulative5mwatthr * (60.0*60.0 / (time.time() - self.fiveminutetimer + 0.1))

?

[franklin97355]

That worked to eliminate the error but now when it tweets it says "Currently using 0 Watts, 3445 Wh today so far" (This is for a 25" tv and banned player !)
It seems like it is getting the data wrong but I'm trying to make sense of sensorhistory.py where this seems to be calculated.
Any ideas where I should be looking? Thanks.

[jdoscher]

No idea on the power usage, but I also found a workaround for the startup problem. I changed the radio's sleep duration from 2 seconds (the C8 hex value when programming the radio) to 3E8, which is 10 seconds. I only get watt updates every 10 seconds, but it is plenty of time to allow the radio to charge.

[franklin97355]

OK, thanks for all the help I got with this. I got the TaW to communicate and it is posting data correctly using the EnergyLogger program. I don't have a computer I can dedicate to this so the updates to twitter will be spooty for a while. I'd like to find an embedded way to do the updates that I could power from a battery so when power goes down it would continue to log (the lack of power). Thanks, all for the help.

[richms]

Why not do the asus router like featured in the article and then power it from an external source.

Unfortunatly the 520GU router just feeds the 5V in straight to the USB port so you actually need to give it 5v - if the USB wasnt needed you could use the GC model which is happy with anything between 5 and 12V so you could just hook it to a battery etc.

who knows, perhaps you could rig the USB memory drive to use the internal 3.3v rather then the regulator in the flash drive and mount it inside while you are at it?

[dgerman]

Did this ever get resolved?

[franklin97355]

Yes the original problem was resolved.