Energy Cloud Technology

Our mission is to, “Extend boundaries of our clients and customers by providing cutting edge technology and innovative services in embedded and wireless energy management domain”.

Our vision is to, “Improve humans living and resource management using embedded and wireless technology”

We at Energy Cloud Technology, provide electronics Hardware/Firmware/Software development services in Industrial automation,  Embedded & Wireless Solution, Linux/VoIP application domain to clients for realizing their concept into an actual product from requirement gathering point to complete production solution.

Please visit www.energycloud.co.in for more detail.

Choosing Wireless Technology and Hardware chipset

As and when I get satisfied with work of Energy meter which is still not complete, I Moved on to prototype development of wireless Transceiver which can be used for the transfer of data to the central coordinator node which should be having Internet connectivity and data of energy meter can be avail to the cloud of Internet and to the needed user.

For the transfer of data, wireless technology chosen is Zigbee standard.

Zigbee standard is specifically design for short range,low power data transfer and it can achieve some what long range through multi hoping technique which may be known to you.Zigbee standard is at good stable stage and aslready labched two stable standards for developing stack which Zigbee stack2003 and Zigbee Pro which is launched in 2007 if not wrong.Then after it has also launched many application profiles standards like home automation, Automatic meter reading and few more to hold a compatibility between different manufactures working zigbee technology.

There are many more hardware chipsets availble for the zigbee standard from different manufactures like Atmel, TI, Freescale, Ember, Jennic etc.Many of them have also launched this Zigbee hardware chipset with in built microcontroller like 8051,MSP430 and from freescale 16 bit .
Among this all atmel do not have on chip microcontroller and RF platform for zigbee yet but As informed by them they planning to launch it by end of 2008 but still not available so we can hardly expect it by MID of 2009.

Out of this all (MCU+Zigbee transceiver) combination with 128kb flash from Atmel cost lowest around 8$ as on DIGIKEY.And more than that I have choosen this due to availbility of good resources for the development based on it.SO finnally I have chosen ATMEGA1281+AT86RF230 combination with hope that Atmel will launch both items on chip by Mid 2009 which will further reduce price of this.

Now to run zigbee network we need stack for the embedded firmware which may be designed by some third party because it is a long time job to developed it at our own.Atmel provide ZIgbee stack to the user with online agreement.they have released two stack namely "Ezeenet" and "Bitcloud stack".Bit cloud stack is based on Zigbee pro stack standard launched in 2007.Whereas if I am not wrong then ezeenet stack is based on 2003 standards of Zigbee.There is also something called Zigbee Net from Meshnetics which is being needed to load into the Zigbit chipset from meshnetics which is a basically combination of ATmeaga1281+At86RF230


So this was enough to chose Zigbee technology chipset from Atmel as well as MCU.

Energy Meter Prototype Ready

So As a final result of work, Energy meter prototype is ready and It is able to measure energy of a 60 Watt lamp.

In the part of design we have utilized ADE7753 chip from Analog devices which software calibrated IC so no need to have hardware calibration using resistors and all cumbersome way.And as I have already mentioned in first post that this IC is able to measure most of the power parameters like Active Power,Reactive power,RMS value of voltage ,current and frequency of signal and many more parameters.out of this only Active energy Part is implemented currently in a firmware.

For this to do , ADE7753 is interfaced with AVR(atmega16/32/1281) microcontroller through SPI interface .Through this interface we can provide different command for register reading and writting,Enabling and Dissabling Control flags like integrators,Gain adjustments etc.


Few problem which was found during development of this prototype is,when we tried to interface this IC ADE7753 with micon(Microcontroller) through SPI,we were not able to establish communication intially but finnally after correcting error of edge setting which is there in SPI control registers.

Another major problem which was found when we connected load to the energy meter prototype and when we switch off load then one of two IC get reseted.Probable reason for this may be due to sudden change in current which generates kind of noise.

Right now I am looking for solution of this and one probable solution for this is to use Ferrite bead to prevent noise transfer.I haven't tried this yet but I will try it soon.

29 Jan 2009
EaRTh

Straightening Thoughts

=> Who were knowing, an unsuccessful maker of japan's first electric rice cooker will become SONY corporation, a world leader in consumer & business electronics.

=> A company that began by opportunistically making welding machines and weight reduction machines, move on to oscilloscopes & computers, becoming well known Hewlett Packard.

wSNAMR:Wireless Sensor Network based Automatic Meter Reading

In this Development project,

Main Idea is to develop wireless connectivity to the Energy Meter available at the home.
By means of the we can have Remote collection of Energy Data,Multi rate Tariff,Prepaid billing,energy theft Prevention,VAS like Messaging,Controlling device Remotely etc.

And for this first step is to design Energy Meter which can measure energy consume through 230 v,50 Hz,Single phase,two wire line.It should also be able to measure parameter like Active Energy, RMS value,Apparent power,Reactive power,Power Factor,waveform of the V & I,Remote control of Devices,Security Event Messaging etc.

Energy Meter can be design in two measure ways,

One way is to use exiting Analog Front End IC like CS5464,ADE7753 etc which will give this all value through SPI interface.

Other Way is to use existing ADC on the At mega Microcontroller for measurement of the Energy which will be less costlier but need to take great care in design and development.

Once we have Energy value and other different parameters in hand,we can use Zigbee Smart Energy Profiles to transmit it to the coordinator which is connected with Internet and hence this value can reach to central server.

This value can be measured periodically which may be helpful to analyze power quality,Billing information,energy management,Dynamic load management,enhanced customer quality services