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Power Mate: Firas J. Steitieh, Wesam M. Jabr, Zaid S. Zmaily, Esam Alqaralleh

This document summarizes a student project called Power Mate that aims to help customers control and monitor their home electricity consumption. The project uses an Arduino board connected to a power meter via IR, a GSM module for remote control via text messages, and a LCD screen. This allows customers to check their usage and estimated bill, and the electricity company to remotely read meters. The project aims to help lower electricity costs by encouraging off-peak usage and providing over-usage warnings. The students faced issues with noise on the IR connection that they solved by adding an amplifier, and with inverted signals that were fixed using inverters.

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Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal
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70 views3 pages

Power Mate: Firas J. Steitieh, Wesam M. Jabr, Zaid S. Zmaily, Esam Alqaralleh

This document summarizes a student project called Power Mate that aims to help customers control and monitor their home electricity consumption. The project uses an Arduino board connected to a power meter via IR, a GSM module for remote control via text messages, and a LCD screen. This allows customers to check their usage and estimated bill, and the electricity company to remotely read meters. The project aims to help lower electricity costs by encouraging off-peak usage and providing over-usage warnings. The students faced issues with noise on the IR connection that they solved by adding an amplifier, and with inverted signals that were fixed using inverters.

Uploaded by

Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal

ISSN 1992-8424

POWER MATE
FIRAS J. STEITIEH, WESAM M. JABR, ZAID S. ZMAILY, ESAM ALQARALLEH
Faculty of Engineering, Princess Sumaya University for Technology
Amman, Jordan
{firas.steitieh,wesam.jabr, zaid.zmili} @students.psut.edu.jo, [email protected]

ABSTRACT
In our life there are many economic challenges facing a customer because the
cost of electricity is very high nowadays. The high electricity bill because of the
customer cannot control the power consumption. We are looking for a unique
solution that is easy to use, also having small size. In our project we try to make a
smart device that can help the customer to control the power consumption and
help the electricity company to contact with a meter remotely.
Keywords- Power Mate, Power Consumption, Meter, GLCD, Arduino, GSM.

1 INTRODUCTION

These days, people are increasingly relying on


electronic applications, it makes the work and life
easier, and it also saves time and effort. People use it
in their homes refrigerators, washing machines and
televisions, now the technology looks forward to
remote control.
Power consumption is growing daily due to the
increase in number of electronic devices, which leads
to increase their monthly electricity bill which raises
the cost of kilowatt consumption based on the
packages determined by the electricity company. Our
goal is to have a device that allows the user to
control remotely (via SMS) the electricity meter and
know and manage the power consumption which
helps the users to reduce the bill
Also it can help the electricity company to control
the meter remotely this can reduce time and cost of
man power (Power meter reader). Power-Mate
provides the company with the power consumption
at any time; also it can cut off the current if the user
did not pay the bill. Also the meter sends to its user a
message to warn about the current packet has
reached its limit.
In Jordan, one of the issues the electricity company
faces is that power consumption during day light is
very high forcing the company to use extra power
generators which lead to higher cost. One of this
devices functions is to allow the company to control
the power consumption of the country to
approximately be an average at all times by
informing the customer via SMS that using electric
devices such as dishwashers, washing machines etc.
at night may help save energy and cost to both
customers and the company.

Volume 9, Issue 3

Another function the Power Meter provides is the


ability to reduce the current provided to the
customer. The electricity company can use this
technique to warn the customer if he/she hasnt paid
the electricity bill and the power is about to be cut
off. This way the company can allow their customers
to use only a limited amount of electricity devices in
their homes such as lights and the refrigerator for
example.
2 SYSTEM MODEL
Basically this project consists of Arduino,
graphical LCD, GSM module, meter, IR connecter
and Keypad.

Figure 1: The System Block Diagram

As shown in Fig. 1. Our project process works in


a full duplex way. Basically each end of the month
the Arduino sends a command to the power meter
through the IR connection and then the meter
responds to the Arduino with the power consumption
(in kilowatt) through the IR connection. The
Arduinos job here is to receive the data and
calculate the bill to be sent to the user and the
electricity company.
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Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal


One of the options available to the user is to see how
much power is consumed for the current month then
an SMS command is to be sent from their mobile to
the Arduino via GSM, where the Arduino calculates
the bill up till the meaning time and replies with the
amount of kilowatts and cost. A GLCD and keypad
were added to the design in case the user wanted to
interact directly with the device.

ISSN 1992-8424
we can see below.

3 HARDWARE DESIGN
Now for the hardware design of our project, the
main component that handles most of the processing
is the Arduino. First, data has to be taken from the
meter, therefore we designed an IR cable consisting
of a transmitter and a receiver connected to the
Arduino. Users can use a keypad connected to the
device to enter data directly. As an input and output
the GSM is added to communicate remotely with
users, it is used to receive commands and send data.
Another output interface used in our system is the
GLCD attached to the Arduino which displays
information and settings. All these components
together are connected to the Arduino which
manages and operates to give us the Power Mate.
THE FOLLOWING FIGURE SHOWS THE IR CABLE HOW
IT IS CONNECTED TO THE ARDUINO.

Figure 4: Arduino interfaced with the Graphical LCD

The Keypad was added to use the device directly


and was connected as shown below.

Figure 5: Arduino interfaced with the Keypad

4 SOFTWARE DESIGN

Figure 2: Arduino interfaced with the IR Tx/Rx

The GSM is connected to the Arduino as a Shield


that is designed to fit exactly above the Arduino and
its pins are connected as shown below.

Figure 3: Arduino with GSM Shield

As for the Graphical LCD, its connected to the


digital pins of the Arduino with a potentiometer as
Volume 9, Issue 3

After having the hardware ready, the software part


begins where data is being manipulated and
organized to be sent to users. First of all, the Arduino
in idle state waits for a request to be given via GSM
or the keypad, after that the Arduino sends the
command to the meter via the IR connection to give
us the information it has, which allows the Arduino
to save this data by storing it into an array or string
and process it by looking for the required
information requested by the user and sending it
back through the GSM or displaying it on the GLCD.
The Arduino commands the meter to send the data it
has by sending a slash, question mark, exclamation
mark ("/?!"). Each time a request has been received,
the Arduino has to take fresh data from the meter in
order for the information to be updated. Now for the
data the Arduino receives, it looks for how many
Kilowatts were consumed for a specific month and
calculates the bill with the company's prices for each
packet. Another function the Arduino provides is that
it warns the user each time he/she has exceeded a
packet limit and the price of electricity is now
higher. On the other hand, the device can contain two
cell phone numbers of users in order to communicate
with. The numbers stored can be edited by the
keypad or through an SMS command but with safety
and confirmation protocol similar to changing a
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Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal


password to an email address. For the keypad to be
used, a password is needed for the safety of the
device from fraud or abuse.

ISSN 1992-8424
6 RESULTS
In this project, we were able to design a helpful
device that would advance electric meters in Jordan
to a much higher level that helps both the customer
and the electric company. This project allows the
customer to stay notified about his electricity bill in
order to manage power consumption to save money.
The electric company on the other hand can save time
by controlling its electric meters remotely and
observe its readings from distance.
7 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this device was designed in order
to help the customer control and observe his power
consumption.
REFERENCES
[1] Microelectronic Circuits by Sedra/Smith Fifth
Edition
[2] An Introduction to the Intel family of
Microprocessors Third Edition James L. Antonakos
[3] www.pyroelectro.com/projects/
[4] www.Stackoverflow.com/
[5] www.Fritzing.org/
[6] www.Arduino.cc

Figure 6: General Flow Chart

5 PROBLEMS
As for the problems we have faced, the IR
connection we used consisted of an infrared
transmitter and an infrared receiver with current
limiting resistors connected to the Arduino. When
the Arduino sends its command to the meter, the
meter responds but the Arduino detected nothing but
noise on its receiver. After analyzing the problem by
using a digital oscilloscope and examining the
signals sent and received, we added an amplifier to
raise the threshold voltage on the receiving part of
the Arduino to give us discrete data with no noise at
all. Another problem we faced was that the Arduino's
transmitter and receiver always used to send and
receive incorrect data. By using the oscilloscope we
found out that both the Arduino's transmitter and
receiver were inverted, resulting in sending and
receiving incorrect inverted data. The solution was
adding a CMOS inverter to both the transmitter and
receiver of the Arduino which gave us correct results
when interfaced with the meter.

Volume 9, Issue 3

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