This project will involve measuring water usage in one of the bathrooms in my house, predominately for teaching my nephew, and possibly others, the value of conservation and efficient use of available resources. Additionally, I hope to implement monitoring the electricity usage in said bathroom as well as my nephew's bedroom in order to expand the lessons beyond what's obvious and into things which are taken for granted; might expand this to the whole house if it becomes feasible to do so.
Topology:
- Individual sensors with MCU, sensor and power source at each station, transmit data via wireless to central control station where calculations and report / monitoring occur.
Monitored stations:
- Shower. Individual hot/cold monitoring not required due to those being mixed at the valve.
- Sink. Will require independent hot and cold monitoring due to lack of space at the faucet outlet.
- (future) Electrical: bathroom light, exhaust fan, bedroom light, various outlets, possibly entire house distribution panel, with inductive sensors.
Sensors:
- Water: to be determined; will update this post as solutions are decided on.
- Electrical: to be determined, likely inductive type; will update this post as solutions are decided on.
Reporting / Display:
- To be determined; I will update this post as solutions are decided on.
- Would be nice to use the LCD peripheral in the FR6969.
Considerations:
- Powering the devices.
-- obtaining power for electrical monitoring can be done from the AC circuit in place.
-- obtaining power for the water flow sensors will be more difficult but may be possible to generate power from the water flow itself.
- Transporting data:
-- Data will require wireless transmission.
-- Simple transmission of sensor transitions, i.e. 'high' to 'low' with a 'StationID' seems plausible, so that said data can be fed to the ESI peripheral on the remote MCU.
-- Transceiver types to be determined later; considering CCxxxx and nRF24 types at the moment.
- Sensor data processing:
-- Limited MCU resources: 4 ESI modules.
--- Will require some means to switch between sensors since there will eventually be more sensors than ESI modules.
--- Since data will be transmitted wirelessly, buffering data at the remote end and transmitting in bulk is an option. My thought here is the remote MCU 'records' data, then transmits that to the central station where the data is 'played back' into the ESI and interpreted. This should work well with the water flow sensors where flow data will likely be a bit stream from hall-effect sensors, but electrical may prove more difficult as it will probably be analog in nature.
I welcome any comments and suggestions.
And thank you TI for providing this opportunity!
Topology:
- Individual sensors with MCU, sensor and power source at each station, transmit data via wireless to central control station where calculations and report / monitoring occur.
Monitored stations:
- Shower. Individual hot/cold monitoring not required due to those being mixed at the valve.
- Sink. Will require independent hot and cold monitoring due to lack of space at the faucet outlet.
- (future) Electrical: bathroom light, exhaust fan, bedroom light, various outlets, possibly entire house distribution panel, with inductive sensors.
Sensors:
- Water: to be determined; will update this post as solutions are decided on.
- Electrical: to be determined, likely inductive type; will update this post as solutions are decided on.
Reporting / Display:
- To be determined; I will update this post as solutions are decided on.
- Would be nice to use the LCD peripheral in the FR6969.
Considerations:
- Powering the devices.
-- obtaining power for electrical monitoring can be done from the AC circuit in place.
-- obtaining power for the water flow sensors will be more difficult but may be possible to generate power from the water flow itself.
- Transporting data:
-- Data will require wireless transmission.
-- Simple transmission of sensor transitions, i.e. 'high' to 'low' with a 'StationID' seems plausible, so that said data can be fed to the ESI peripheral on the remote MCU.
-- Transceiver types to be determined later; considering CCxxxx and nRF24 types at the moment.
- Sensor data processing:
-- Limited MCU resources: 4 ESI modules.
--- Will require some means to switch between sensors since there will eventually be more sensors than ESI modules.
--- Since data will be transmitted wirelessly, buffering data at the remote end and transmitting in bulk is an option. My thought here is the remote MCU 'records' data, then transmits that to the central station where the data is 'played back' into the ESI and interpreted. This should work well with the water flow sensors where flow data will likely be a bit stream from hall-effect sensors, but electrical may prove more difficult as it will probably be analog in nature.
I welcome any comments and suggestions.
And thank you TI for providing this opportunity!