measuring and recording voltage
measuring and recording voltage
(OP)
Hi everyone,
Thank you in advance for reading this. We seem to have outages in our building due to construction next door and number of people in my group run experiments overnight. Outage renders these experiments useless (if the outage is longer than 1 minute). Equipment doesn't report loss of power, it just restarts.
My simplest $10 solution was to buy an alarm clock that has no batteries. It'll blink if there is a power outage but it won't give me the duration of the outage.
I looked around online and found a bunch of voltmeters that measure voltage and log it. I just can't believe that $700 is the cheapest one around. I mean all I need is basically a voltmeter and a PIC to log the data. I'm wondering if there are cheaper solutions out there. If so, I'd appreciate the direction.
Thank you in advance,
Aleks
Thank you in advance for reading this. We seem to have outages in our building due to construction next door and number of people in my group run experiments overnight. Outage renders these experiments useless (if the outage is longer than 1 minute). Equipment doesn't report loss of power, it just restarts.
My simplest $10 solution was to buy an alarm clock that has no batteries. It'll blink if there is a power outage but it won't give me the duration of the outage.
I looked around online and found a bunch of voltmeters that measure voltage and log it. I just can't believe that $700 is the cheapest one around. I mean all I need is basically a voltmeter and a PIC to log the data. I'm wondering if there are cheaper solutions out there. If so, I'd appreciate the direction.
Thank you in advance,
Aleks






RE: measuring and recording voltage
ht
RE: measuring and recording voltage
old field guy
RE: measuring and recording voltage
The meters from a company here in Brisbane Aus (PM me if required) have an output relay contact that can be programmed to close on loss of volts.
Connected up to a GSM unit (Mobile network Modem) you can have the meter send you an sms message on events like this.
Its a bit of a gold plated solution to your partticular problem. However your meter may already have a loss of power alarm built in somewhere. Worth having a look.
Let me know if you want details on the equipment we used for the power monitor described above.
Thanks,
Andrew
RE: measuring and recording voltage
Rafiq Bulsara
http://www.srengineersct.com
RE: measuring and recording voltage
Although depending on the size of the experiments, if it really is critical as pointed out above a UPS is a good idea.
RE: measuring and recording voltage
Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: measuring and recording voltage
Thank you all for such timely responses!
Aleks
RE: measuring and recording voltage
Bill
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"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: measuring and recording voltage