CurrentCost CC128 working with RRD, Pachube and Twitter.

After finding the instructions at http://www.jibble.org/currentcost/ to create a basic perl script that read the Currentcost datastream, parsed the XML and updated a RRD file I was able to create some power usage graphs. Using the RRDTool CGI application on a local linux box with the apache webserver I’ve got graphs for the last 10 minutes, 60 minutes, 6 hours, 24 hours, 7 days, month and year. However as tis is not internet facing, using an updated perl script I can now update a pachube.com feed. The pachube updates are once per minute so as to not exceed the api posting limits.

With the CC128 there is a history output that is generated every 2 hours, this includes the total kWh used on a daily basis. With an addition to the perl script I can now get a daily usage value that is used to update my Home automation twitter feed.

The script used is as follows: (Please note, this has been updated on 3rd September 2009 to include a daily cost calculation and to fix an issue with the history information attempting to update the rrd file)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# Reads data from a CurrentCost CC128 device via serial port.
# Based on script at http://www.jibble.org/currentcost/
#
# Heavily updated to include pachube.com updates every minute
# and a daily tweet at twitter.com for previous days power usage
#
# Andrew Lindsay http://blog.thiseldo.co.uk
#

use strict;
use Device::SerialPort qw( :PARAM :STAT 0.07 );

# Alter these values to suit your configuration
# Serial port CC128 connected to
my $PORT = "/dev/ttyS0";

# Pachube.com values
my $pachubeApiKey = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX";
my $pachubeFeed = "NNNN";

# twitter.com values
my $twitterUser = "USERNAME";
my $twitterPass = "PaSsWoRd";
# Set your own values here
my $unitCharge = "0.115";       # 11.50p
my $standingCharge = "0.1441";  # 14.41p

# End of configuration

# Setup the serial port.
my $ob = Device::SerialPort->new($PORT);
$ob->baudrate(57600);
$ob->write_settings;

print "Reading currentcost datastream\n";

open(SERIAL, "+>$PORT");

# Keep track of how many sample and total for updating pachube once a minute
my $sampleCount = 0;
my $totalWatts = 0;

while (my $line = ) {
        # History received every 2 hours, look for last day, d001 and limit to whole house sensor for now.
        if ($line =~ m!.*0.*(\d+\.?\d*)1.*!) {
                # process history output
                print "$line\n";
                my $histSensor = "0";
                my $kwatts = $1;
                my $cost = sprintf("%.2f",$standingCharge + ($unitCharge * $kwatts) );
                # Tweet yesterdays usage, only need do this once per day if hour is 0
                my ($second, $minute, $hour, $dayOfMonth, $month, $yearOffset, $dayOfWeek, $dayOfYear, $daylightSavings) = localtime();
                print "Got a match for day 1, sensor $histSensor Watts $kwatts kWh Hour $hour\n";
                if( $histSensor == "0" && $hour < "2" ) {
                        print "Tweet\n";
                        print "Yesterdays usage was $kwatts kWh at an approximate cost of £$cost Hour: $hour\n";
                        system( "curl -s -u $twitterUser:$twitterPass -d 'status=$kwatts kWh used yesterday at an approximate cost of £$cost' http://twitter.
com/statuses/update.xml");
                }
        } elsif ($line =~ m!(\d+).*0*(\d+)!) {
                # Regular updates received from CC128 approx every 6s, total to create average over 1 minute
                my $sensor = $1;
                my $watts = $2;

                # Only deal with sensor 0 - Whole house sensor now
                if( $sensor == "0" ) {
                        $sampleCount++;
                        $totalWatts += $watts;
                        # Update RRD
                        system( "/usr/local/rrdtool/bin/rrdtool update currentcost.rrd N:$watts:0");
                        # Update pachube once a minute with a minute's worth of averaged data
                        if ( $sampleCount > 10 ) {
                                # Do a little formatting on the output
                                my $averageWatts = sprintf("%.2f",$totalWatts / $sampleCount);
                                #system("curl  --request PUT --header 'X-PachubeApiKey: $pachubeApiKey' -D tmp.txt --data $averageWatts 'http://www.pachube.c
om/api/$pachubeFeed.csv'");
                                system("curl -s --request PUT --header 'X-PachubeApiKey: $pachubeApiKey' --data $averageWatts 'http://www.pachube.com/api/$pa
chubeFeed.csv'");
                                # Reset the counts
                                $totalWatts = 0;
                                $sampleCount = 0;
                        }
                }
        }
}

The script currently runs from a shell and outputs to a log file:


# ./readCurrentCost.pl >currentcost.log 2>&1


This is not a permanent application yet, more a learning exercise to determine what information comes out of the CC128 device while I develop an Arduino based version. Another aspect is tha we ar also identifying how much power we use on a daily basis and when it peaks.

The pachube feed is here. The twitter feed is currently restricted to my main account.

Bookmark this post: