Make your own Power Meter/Logger

Thanks to EasyEDA for sponsoring this video.

Parts list (affiliate links):
Aliexpress:
Ebay:

In this project I will show you how I combined an Arduino, an INA219 power monitor IC, an OLED LCD and a Micro SD Card PCB in order to create a power meter/logger that has more functions than the popular USB Power Meter.

Music:
2011 Lookalike by Bartlebeats

[ElbadriEgyption]

for the logging you can use an CSV file and open it with format and it's pretty easy to create for example per each line you can have:
TIME, VOLTAGE, CURRENT
just use comma (, ) as separator between you values and excel should be able to put them in column for you

[waynebutane]

The best part about this video for me was the project file on easyeda. Not because I want to build this myself, but because I kept searching for a website like that and it is really useful for me. Thanks.

[BoomBrush]

Wow, I just realized how much time and effort it must take to make these videos.

And this is only 6-7 minutes long. Damn.

[yavniksharma]

A smart engineer with a German accent makes his own power meter/logger but when not satisfied with just an oled screen, adds a data logger too, Great Job!!!

[flingmonkey]

I love the INA219 module. I once used one to replace an expensive stepper motor with a far-cheaper and more powerful 12VDC gear motor. I had a n arm on the shaft of the motor, and I just blocked it so that it could not turn past the points where I wanted it to stop. Then I would start the motor turning and monitor the current. When the arm hit the block, the motor would start taking more current, and I would know it was time to shut it off. It was self-calibrating! It worked perfectly once I thought to drop a little super glue on the flange and motor shaft, because the motor was so powerful the flange set screws were not enough.

Hint for your data logging: Have your Arduino log all data to a .csv file. Each line is a row of data, separated by commas, and you can even have the Arduino do some of your calculations for you and include them on the line. Stick the SD card into your computer, double-click the .csv file, and it opens up in Excel, each data point in it's own cell, nice neat rows and columns. Select a column, select "Insert", and insert a graph of the data, easy-peazy.

Lastly, I know this video was created four years ago, but we now have some data logger modules. I got two of the ones you just plug an Arduino Nano into, and I got one of them working yesterday. The module gives you everything pre-wired, including a real time clock module. So you can time-stamp your data in the .csv file, you just need two more commas and columns, and you can see when that spike occurred. I like this data logger. I intend to program it to accept a string from another Arduino and log it, with a time stamp, to a .csv file. The string will be a pre-formatted string sent via SoftwareSerial.h. That way I have the complexity and memory requirements of the RTC and SD card set aside from the Arduino doing the real work, leaving precious memory for other things.

[___aaron.m]

learned more from your channel in the past month than an entire year in school love your channel!

[ufohunter]

​GS, This is one fantastic project. Made one and even added a few mods to the code.
I didn't have to buy anything new or substitute. I had everything already and was going to design and code this exact design from scratch, but you did all the hard work for me, and I thank you for it. Also, thank goodness for these cheap modules.
This and many other projects would not have even been possible only 5-10 years ago, without these cheap and wonderful modules from China.

[iamwood]

I'm really glad you took your time to properly design the board and have it compact and neat

[entropic]

I needed this last year and just abandoned the project, (cause I'm a beginner and couldn't find how to do it) will resume it in a few weeks when I have time. Thank you!

[rodneydelapena]

I really like this one, I managed to buy all the modules for less than 5 bucks. I already have an UNO lent to us by our teacher.

[shedactivist]

Perfect. This is exactly what I am looking for to experiment with small garden wind generators and other projects. Thanks for showing me the way.

[francoisgirault]

Thank you so much for this video and saying to use SdFat library. I have lost a lot of time, not knowing why I could not open a file on a SD card with a Chinese SD module and the SD library. I found nothing about it on many forums. Now it works ! GREAT !!

[Donatusification]

You should modify the sketch to create a single CSV file (current, voltage and time separated by comma or semicolon), so you wouldn't have to copy the 3 txt files to Excel, but you could easily open with it, and create diagrams out-of-the-box. :)

[DIYTechRepairs]

Nice video! Tips: Output it into a csv formatted file instead and you can directly open it into any program suitable. Then you dont have to copy paste the rows :)

[chrisd]

Awesome video, I really like how you created the data logger for power consumption, this will prove really useful for evaluating and diagnosing battery life.

[mk_annan]

Wonderful approach to build a custom power meter

[RacinJsn]

I like that little character/dot display you're using

[Educs]

Great video. The resolution of the OLED display is not set correctly though. It is not set to the maximum resolution. Edit the library file in order to set the correct resolution 128x64 pixels .

[abdulazeez.]

I really liked the way he skimmed over the code, It's nice to see the code without downloading the file :D.

[WildLifeBackyardCamera]

instead of writing it to a file and graphing via excel, i would rather send all data via UDP to influxdb and have real time graph using grafana, apart of this part, awesome video, thanks a ton !!!! Helped me so much