Dr. Wattson
Energy Monitoring Breakout Board for Arduino and other Maker-Friendly Microcontrollers
Easily integrate quality AC energy measurements into your next project!
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What is Dr. Wattson?
Dr. Wattson is a new energy monitoring breakout board from Upbeat Labs.
Based on the MCP39F521, a single-phase power monitoring chip from Microchip, it is coupled with rich Arduino and Python libraries (for boards like Raspberry Pi and BeagleBoards) to facilitate energy monitoring without much ado. The board is designed to be tolerant of a wide range of voltages, which means that it can also be used with the Raspberry Pi or any other 3.3v MCUs just as easily.
Dr. Wattson makes Professional-Quality energy monitoring and measurement available to the Maker, catering to both the novice and advanced user! The unit comes pre-calibrated to enable you to start taking quality measurements on the get go with just a couple of simple commands, pre-installed in a safe enclosure if you don't want to deal with AC directly. If you are a more advanced user, you have a wide range of functionality available from the rich library, as well as the ability to tweak the hardware to suit your needs and recalibrate easily using the library.
Measure Big. Or Small
Whether you want to measure small standby power consumption or larger loads, Dr. Wattson has you covered. Boasting a 4000:1 Dynamic Range, and capable of 0.1% accuracy, the MCP39F521 is a versatile chip, allowing you great flexibility with measurements. Dr. Wattson takes that flexibility and makes it easy to use!
Arduino & Python Libraries
Comprehensive, yet easy-to-use Arduino & Python (Raspberry Pi or BeagleBoard) libraries means you can integrate this into your application and jump right away into making measurements and other functionality.
Quality Construction
Environmentally friendly and high quality ENIG finish with 2 oz copper and wide high-voltage-traces and quality components lets you use it to measure power in systems up to 12A or more!
(traces 10A @ 10˚C rise, 15A @ 25˚C rise, with the terminal connectors rated for 300V, 12A)
Use up to 4 boards
Solder jumpers on the board enable you to pick from 4 possible I2C addressing schemes, allowing you to control 4 of these boards from a single MCU using the same I2C bus.
ZCD and Event pins
Use the Zero Cross Detector (ZCD) output to orchestrate any synchronization like firing a Triac for dimming, or making a clock based on your AC line frequency!
The event pin gives you output indication on the presence of configured events of interest, like voltage surge/sag, over-current, over-power.
MCU friendly
While the board is powered by 3.3v, it includes a Vin pin (set it to your MCU voltage) and bi-directional level shifting on all IO pins, so you can use a 5v system or a 3.3v system without any modifications or need for level shifting.
Dr.Wattson is now available on Tindie!
Sign up below for updates and news!