Measure current and consumption

Question

I'm trying to measure kWh with an Arduino that I have connected to a ESP8266 that communicates this value to a web server I have. And I've been trying to find the best and easiest way to go about this.

I'm thinking that I can hook a PMAC903 up to the Arduino using the interrupt pins and measuring the pulses, but I don't really know how I'm supposed to do that? Will it even work? Is this the way it's normally done? I can't really say I've found an easy solution to measure current.

You can find documentation for the PMAC903 here and I'm currently in possession of an Arduino Uno that I'm using.

Answer 1

The state of this meter can be read in 3 ways:

• Pulse, this is very easy to implement. But depending on the stability of the hardware u can miss pulses leading to inaccurate values. In this way u have to calculate the meter value yourself.

• RS485, this is a communication bus not default on arduino. But given this link https://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/RS485-Modules i think it is doable but not easy. This will read the value from the meter.

• M-Bus: There is special hardware needed to interact with it. This is the industry standard of doing it. It's not cheap. But u can link many meters together. This will read the value from the meter.

Depending on your time/knowledge/other requirements u have to make a chose what way your going to use.