Modern City Life

SmartMeter

Let me know if you want your own prototype

click on image to enlarge Photos: Anna Kirschner

SmartMeter is an open-source power analyzer board platform based on a powerful, 32-bit ARM9 microcontroller. SmartSocket can be used to measure, store and real-time analyze AC mains signals like current and voltage or can be connected to software on your computer via USB ports (full-speed and high-speed ports) to be able to use the computing capacity of a desktop computer. SmartMeter is fundamentally a GNU/Linux capable embedded system concept, the open-source IDE can be downloaded for free (currently for Windows). If you ever dreamed of playing with a Smart Meter, or building your own power analyzer application, this is the card you want!

It’s very easy to use: there are two user push buttons which could be used to trigger built in applications, several LED lights to indicate status. SmartMeter DL can be used to log certain voltage, current and sound information to an SD card or to the built in 2GB NAND flash. When the SmartMeter DL is attached to a computer, the USB kicks in and you see a new drive on your computer and you will be able to access the files that the board created – downloading the data to your computer by drag-and-drop!

Isolation is done by a few isolation amplifiers, therefore there is no need for a heavy transformer.

Board comes fully assembled and tested with AT91SAM9XE256 pre-loaded with bootloader.

Hardware specification

• Processor: Atmel AT91SAM9XE (208-pin PQFP package)
• System memory: 256 Mbytes of SDRAM
• System flash: 2Gbytes of NAND Flash
• Storage: SD/MMC card slot
• USB: one USB hi-speed device port interface, one USB full-speed device port interface, one USB host port interface
• Analog-to-Digital: quad, simultaneous sampling, 24-Bit ADC (ADS1274)
• Analog inputs: isolated current, isolated voltage, microphone
• Program/debug interface: JTAG/ICE
• User interface: two input push buttons, power LEDs and general-purpose LEDs
• System inputs: wakeup push button, reset push button with microprocessor reset circuit
• Power Supply: Li-Ion battery input with USB 1-cell Li+ battery charger
• Backup Power Supply: Lithium Coin Cell Battery Retainer for 12 mm cell size
• OS support: Embedded Linux 2.6.31

Documents

Download Schematics (pdf) - soon
AT91SAM9XE256 MCU full datasheet (pdf, 13MB)

Software

Download latest binaries - soon
Download latest source - soon

How-tos