Current sensing to computer...

[Geir]

Hi,

I'm looking for mains 0.1 - 150A range current sensors with some kind of
computer interface: 1-wire, RS232/485 / Ethernet etc...

Induction (transformer) or Hall type, one or three phase.

Not high accuracy, 5% would be ok. Hopefully not too expensive ;-)

Thanks a lot for any hint, URL or comment.

regards

Geir

 

[Bob]

Hi,

I'm looking for mains 0.1 - 150A range current sensors with some kind of
computer interface: 1-wire, RS232/485 / Ethernet etc...

Induction (transformer) or Hall type, one or three phase.

Not high accuracy, 5% would be ok. Hopefully not too expensive ;-)

Thanks a lot for any hint, URL or comment.

regards

Geir

There are a few models of digital clamp meter that have
an RS232 interface.
They cost a few hundred dollars though.

For 5% accuracy I'd look at buying cheap analog clamp meters
and feeding the reading to an ADC, perhaps reading the voltage
across the meter movement, maybe replacing the meter
movement with an equivalent resistor.
There are lots of options for adc to computer.
For one off small scale test projects I like the
Velleman K8055 kit, connects to a USB port,
has two 8bit analog inputs and some other i/o.
Fairly easy to access with vb6, not sure about
dotnet etc.

Bob

 

[Bob]

Current transformer into sound card?

John

I expect that would work but it would require calibrating
with each different model of sound it was used with.

I'v briefly played around with real time audio processing
and found the windows API's for getting the real time sound
data fto be horrid but that may just be me, it's not worth
me spending enough time to be good at windows software
when rentacoder.com gets it done cheaply.

Obviously there has to be a sense resistor on the
secondary of the current transformer.

From a safety point of view I'd want to buy the
current sensing part off the shelf.

Bob