Hi All,
I was planning to set up a kill a watt with an xbee inside. Unfortunately one that I got here in Australia has a few problems:
The model is MS6115 but it's not a Kill-a-Watt brand. There is a website here that shows off the internals:
http://www.dansdata.com/quickshot041.htm
1. There isn't much space in the box to fit an xbee.
2. It has a facy LCD screen.
3. It has a chip 5460A-BSZ. I'm not sure if it's possible to do the same with that as with the chip that uses OP Amps.
I don't have that much experience so not sure what to do with this kind of chip. I may have to look for a Kill-a-Watt brand here in Aus.
Cheers
Kill-a-watt equivalent in Australia MS6115
Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
- richms
- Posts: 558
- Joined: Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:05 am
Re: Kill-a-watt equivalent in Australia MS6115
Same meter is sold here in NZ at bunnings, dse, the warehosue etc as elto.
The old ones had an opamp in them with signals, but were not the same - lower level, rectified for one of the waves (current I think) and a pathetic power supply that wouldnt even charge a large cap in 20 seconds. pics of the old one http://www.flickr.com/photos/richms
The later ones have a digital metering chip in it, which is what you have got. I had a bit of a look at the datasheet for that and it seems that it is a quite good digital metering chip, but no analog signals to read like the old opamp based ones.
Its on the "get around to it" list for me to look into putting an arduino etc in place of the display board to read from the chip and send it out some how to a PC. Keep in mind that the whole board is sitting on the live side of the mains plug before you mess around with it.
The board is labeled with the SDI SDO and CLK for the SPI to the metering chip, and there are also SDA and SCL that look to go to the 8 pin chip, which if I could read the label would probably be an eeprom.
If you are looking for the old style one, you can tell by the battery requirements, the old one takes 2 LR44 cells, the new one takes 3.
But the old one will not work with Limors design straight away, the signal really would need to be level shifted and amplified before going to the xbee, and the software would need to be rewritten to allow for the rectified waveform that it has rathar than the sinewave the the killawatt outputs.
The old ones had an opamp in them with signals, but were not the same - lower level, rectified for one of the waves (current I think) and a pathetic power supply that wouldnt even charge a large cap in 20 seconds. pics of the old one http://www.flickr.com/photos/richms
The later ones have a digital metering chip in it, which is what you have got. I had a bit of a look at the datasheet for that and it seems that it is a quite good digital metering chip, but no analog signals to read like the old opamp based ones.
Its on the "get around to it" list for me to look into putting an arduino etc in place of the display board to read from the chip and send it out some how to a PC. Keep in mind that the whole board is sitting on the live side of the mains plug before you mess around with it.
The board is labeled with the SDI SDO and CLK for the SPI to the metering chip, and there are also SDA and SCL that look to go to the 8 pin chip, which if I could read the label would probably be an eeprom.
If you are looking for the old style one, you can tell by the battery requirements, the old one takes 2 LR44 cells, the new one takes 3.
But the old one will not work with Limors design straight away, the signal really would need to be level shifted and amplified before going to the xbee, and the software would need to be rewritten to allow for the rectified waveform that it has rathar than the sinewave the the killawatt outputs.
- richms
- Posts: 558
- Joined: Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:05 am
Re: Kill-a-watt equivalent in Australia MS6115
I have just uploaded pics of the guts of the new one too, untill I get around to tagging them (still uploading) look at the date to know the difference.
-
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Fri May 10, 2013 6:48 am
Re: Kill-a-watt equivalent in Australia MS6115
Hey was wondering, did you manage to do this?
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.