Do you know how much electricity does fridge consume normally?
Our fridge is an electricity hog, and every time someone opens the door, all the cold air slides out and the fridge has to cool it again. Opening the door is responsible for 7%–10% of the cost of running a fridge, burning about 28 watt-hours (Wh) every time, or 500 kilowatthours a year —$100 or more annually.
This project connects your fridge door to the Xively data service using an Ethernet-connected Arduino and a magnetic sensor. It monitors how often the door is opened and for how long, and creates a persistent data archive you can use to detect usage trends. We chose Xively (formerly called Cosm, formerly Pachube) because it’s straightforward to use, it accurately time-stamps and archives the data, it’s free for small projects like this, and it was started by friends of ours. However, there are many other similar services such as Nimbits, Paraimpu, ThingSpeak, 2lemetry, sen.se, and ioBridge.
This is just the beginning of what you can do with the Internet of Things. Add a thermistor to monitor temperatures inside your fridge. Apply this same setup to your front door, pet door, or secret underground lair door. If your back door is left open too long for a nice summer breeze, use your net-connected Nest thermostat to command the air conditioner to switch off. If your CurrentCost electricity meter shows electricity prices going up, lower the alert thresholds on your triggers to chastise you sooner. Many of our devices — phones, laptops, DVRs — are already full members of the Internet of Things, and others will soon join them. Perhaps these new members will be things that you make.
URL: http://makezine.com/projects/make-36-boards/look-inside-cloudfridge/
Source code: http://cdn.makezine.com/make/36/cloudfridge_code.zip.
Tag : 201311, Arduino, Ethernet shield, W5100, WIZnet, IoT, Xively, Door sensing
COMMENTS