Abstract:
In recent time there is an increasing usage of electronic and electrical devices for many household operations. Similar increase in usage is seen in offices and industries. With recent increase in electrical tariff, it is necessary to utilize such electrical devices only when necessary. Many user of such appliance have no way of directly quantifying their daily or average usage of electricity; many people forget to switch off their appliances from the electricity mains when they are not at home and as such incurring unnecessary electricity bills. This project aims at the design and construction of a GSM/GPRS base device for monitoring daily or average usage of electricity and that can be remotely controlled through SMS codes for the activation or deactivation of electrical devices from the main electricity supply. The device combines known analogue and digital electronics components for electronic power monitoring system composing of AC current sensing and measurement and a controlled step down transformer for equivalent voltage monitoring. The outputs were connected to an embedded processor for the necessary processing and the embedded processor attached to several relays for the direct switching ON or OFF of the attached appliance through a command from a cell phone. A display unit was also used to show the value of the voltage, current and power consumption. The controller is also connected to a GSM/GPRS module for transmission of daily power consumption rate and reception of control signals to and from a remote cell phone.
