Save Energy: Hack Yourself A Watt Meter!

Ever wonder how much electricity your XBOX ONE, Playstation 4, gaming PC, refrigerator, or window mounted AC unit is pulling? Is that cell phone charger sucking Amperage even when your phone isn't plugged in? Build a DIY Watt meter and find out for sure!

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[paintingmanAlan]

Safer to hack into the neutral line. The same current flows there and (if the mains is wired correctly) it's much less likely to give you a shock.

[DeIeted]

I just turn everything off in the house except what I want to know the usage of and run out to the smart meter, and write it down.  Take a lot of time and running around but it works.

[naturalcure]

Is it any gadget or trick
to stop or slow down electricity digital meters?

[funtoon]

say in a home, a fan is using 40W, a light 50W, a tv using 150W, a refrigerator 1250W. the total load of this house is 1490W. Now i just want to disconnect minimum 80W load or more out of total 1490W . For this reason i need to disconnect a fan and a light. so a system or device that can sense each loads power consumption and then disconnect required loads to meet the condition of load reduction. how can i make such a device?

[jasonGreenVw]

Most multimeters that have a high enough amperage rating are going to cost as much or more than the watt meter that you plug in   

[rakly]

If I would make a device that sits in line between the socket and appliance, but connect it so power doesn't interupt when I remove the multimeter...
No wait, let me rephrase that, I make the same things you guys did in this video, but I DO connect the bannanaplugs even without the multimeter,
If I then connect the multimeter, can I derive the Wattage by (V x Amps) x 2 ?
So if the multimeter reads 5Watt, i can assume it's 10Watt?


I would like to be able to measure several devices without having to interrupt them.

[paintingmanAlan]

Also... The voltage variation is probably caused by the time rather then the location of the measurement. The incoming supply voltage varies considerably depending on the loading and the number of power plants in operation at any particular time.

[urra]

Since the wire in the multimeter is thin, is it recommended to use it for high wattage stuff like a pc? ~200watt - 300watt. Afaik, high voltage AC carry low Amp, but the wattage part that makes me worry wether the multimeter probe wire can handle it.

[luongmaihunggia]

But how do you gonna measure the watthour and measure HUGE power like 100kw?

[Evan_Adams]

idea for eppisode 3 of this series.... how to figure out a car plug or the USB power thing Apparently they vary hugely and is why many phones don't charge in the car.  

[Howtomake]

Can you guys pleas do a vid on shift register programing and how they work inside of theme.

[paintingmanAlan]

Also the power factor discussion is only academic as UK power companies charge us for voltxamps (rather than wattage) because they want to keep the power factor as close to 1 as possible. (Their losses depend on the current and not on the current times pf).

[shadfurman]

120v isn't gonna hurt you unless your sweating and have a bad heart. Textbooks will say 30ma will kill a person. I've been shocked by 2, 000v right across the heart with enough amperage to burned holes down to my finger bones. How many amps is that? average human body resistance is about 1 Mohm ohms = 2mA, but resistance drops as the epidermis is eroded, could be as low as 1000 ohms, but let's assume I got lucky and it was 10kohms, that's 200mA. I'm alive and healthy. 120v through dry skin yields about 120uA through your body, maybe enough to palpitate your heart, but it's not gonna kill you.

[haydenc]

now do it with one of those current sensing modules, and a tinyduino or RPi, cool build...dangerous as heck but cool none the less

[aaronkoh]

It should be 50watt/120v not 120v/50w.

[accordioneddie]

HI can you two show me how to wire a pzem-051 watt meter to monitor a wind turbines output, please !!! want to monitor watts, amps, volts, can you please help !!!ED.

[Laetteralus]

Did you guys just re-upload the same video from yesterday, or am I from the future?

[MRInuzaki]

i always watch your guys videos even though i will never do what your doing... but its still great entertainment :D

[MrRoyalblunts]

There is no neutral in a 2 wire circuit. But I won't doc you marks for that :P
It's called the "identified". By definition the ground wire is more of a "neutral" then the identified. 
Knowing what youre using won't save it. But a capacitor bank might if you pf is bad enough.

[Drewccc]

You guys do the things I think about in my head but don't do, great work boys :)
Drew, Scotland