Watt's The
Matter?

Watt’s the Matter is a home power monitoring system whose purpose is to record and track a users power consumption in a manner that is familiar to them. The system records real time power consumption at an outlet by measuring the voltage and current and then calculating power. This power calculation is then sent wirelessly to the main unit to be displayed in the familiar kWh unit. With this information a user can track and make adjustments to control the power they are consuming.

The main menu reports the current power consumption, how much power has been consumed in the current billing cycle, as well as what the current bill is and when the billing cycle will end. Finally it gives an easy to understand pass or fail if the user is going to meet their goal or not. A goal can be set in terms of a bill or power consumed. If the user wants to keep the bill low they can do so by keeping track of it, or if they want to consume a certain amount of power then the same can be done.

Other features include add and removing outlets from the system as well as individually tracking the power individual outlets are consuming. Finally the history allows the user to go back for the current day, the current billing period, or a specific month in the past and display the content in a line graph. This graph makes it a lot easier to see what has been consumed over the time frame the user is looking at. It is easier to see peak usage when it is displayed in a graphical representation. This also makes it easier to move through the months and quickly see when the most amounts of power in being consumed. The real time clock on board in addition to an external eeprom allows for accurate time keeping and the ability to keep the history which should prove to be one of the most beneficial features of the system because without the ability to track long term data, the user cannot make adjustments to meet their goals.