Breaking news! Tweet-a-Watt now works with Google Powermeter! and all the code is up on github. Once you have the Tweet-a-Watt working with the python scripts we provide, you can add a cool extension and have beautiful graphs generated thanks to Google Powermeter! This code, based on the original Tweet-a-watt, was created by the super-rad Devlin Thyne as special project with Adafruit (you can get a kit here).
You can download it from our source repository on github which now includes this script Please note that this mod is new, and is still under development, if you are having difficulties, try posting to the forums. Right now its only tested to work with a single Tweet-a-watt.
Google did release an API a few weeks ago, so this how it’s all working. Unfortunately, Google ignored our requests for access, choosing only to work with commercial partners and not the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Tweet-a-watt makers out there, we’re excited that anyone can now build their own power meter and have it work with Google Powermeter now. Hopefully someone from Google will read this and consider adding Tweet-a-watt as an official option (besides AlertMe, UK and TED, Energy Detective, US). We’re open source, we’re power metering that works, we’re a good option for many people who wish to share their power usage.
For those interested in all things “net connected power meter” related, here’s a brief history on the Tweet-a-watt and what we’ve been up to. You can see all of these via our Tweet-a-watt blog category too.
- Present – hundreds of customers and makers are making and sharing their power usage.
- March 4th, 2010 – Google PowerMeter API introduced for device manufacturers.
- December 11, 2009 – Graham Winfrey at Yahoo and Business Insider says we are “dumb”.
- October 28, 2009 – Google’s household energy monitor arrives in UK, still closed, ignoring engineers, tinkerers, makers…
- October 6, 2009 – “Energy use information drives meaningful behavior change” – Google power meter has a device partner (ignores requests to be added).
- August, 2009 – Tweet-a-watt in Popular Science
- June 12, 2009 EnergyLogger – Tweet-a-Watt add-on
- May 20, 2009 – CE smart grid using Tweet-a-watt.
- April 2009 – Tweet-a-watt how-to in MAKE Volume 18: ReMake America
- April 23, 2009 – Google powermeter (press site) Google engineer Ka-Ping Yee says “Tweet-a-Watt is a really cool project! We’re excited by all the interest around Tweet-a-Watt and other do-it-yourself energy-monitoring projects, and we’d love to have all kinds of devices working with Google PowerMeter. Please stay tuned”…. (we resent requests, we received auto-replies and were ignored).
- April 20, 2009 – OurWatts – Graphs of Tweeted Energy Data – dozens of start ups are now using Tweet-a-watt for prototyping.
- April, 2009 – HOW TO – Using the Tweet-a-watt with Pachube.com
- April, 2009 – Tweet-a-watt wins “Best of Green: Science & Technology – Best gadget hack!”
- April, 2009 – Hacking the ASUS router for the Tweet-a-Watt
- March 26th, 2009 – Tweet-a-Watt kits become available
- February 27, 2009 – “Twitter your energy footprint” on CNN
- February 27, 2009 – Tweetin’ the Watts at Greener Gadgets WINS! (Wins the competition, Adafruit donates the prize money to Engineers without borders!)
- February 26, 2009, Tweet-a-Watt on Attack of the Show (video)
- February 2, 2009 – Ed Lu from Google quickly “announced” Powermeter a week after our published project appeared on popular blogs / tech sites.
- January 24, 2009 – Adafruit (Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone) release “Wattcher! For when you want to watch your Watts“. A Twittering power meter that uses the Google app engine. Project entered in the Green Gadgets competition and published on popular blogs / tech sites. All of our work for this project was placed in the public domain to avoid patent squatters.
- December 2008 – Adafruit (Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone) create “Wattcher” aka Tweet-a-watt.
- 2006-2007 – Phillip Torrone starts collecting equipment for testing a “share-able” power meter for use with instant message networks
Tweet-a-Watt is a DIY wireless power monitoring system. The project uses an ‘off the shelf’ power monitor called the Kill-a-Watt and adds wireless reporting. Each plug transmits the power usage at that outlet to a central computer receiver. The receiver can then log, graph and report the data. This pack contains nearly everything* necessary to build a single outlet monitor and receiver. To monitor additional outlets, you will need an add-on transmitter pack. One outlet can monitor up to 1500 Watts.
The starter pack contains:
- 2 XBee modules (one for receiver, one for transmitter)
- 2 XBee adapter kits (ditto)
- 1 USB FTDI cable (for updating, configuring and receiving data from XBee)
- 1 bag of parts including 10,000uF capacitor, 220uF capacitor, 2 1% 10K resistors, 2 1% 4.7K resistors, 5mm green LED, 6″ rainbow ribbon cable, and 2 pieces of 1/8″ and 1/16″ heatshrink