Digital Energy Meter

[cRash1001]

I would like to build a Digital Energy meter for calculating the kWh. I am currently in the study phase searching for the right micro-controller. So guys can you suggest me some micro-controller for energy meter reading.

[hamdi.tn]

Search for a microchip application note about that, i saw one before, you can learn what it need to design one. most MCU can do that so you have to focus on the surrounding circuitry more that the micro itself

[gmb42]

TI have a heap of application notes for this, e.g. here.

[mjkuwp]

Depends what your goals are.

I did a board based on ADE7953 and was really pretty easy to get good results.  It's a really nice chip that does all the heavy lifting for you.  It breaks down to a voltage divider for the V and a current shunt for the I.  SPI communication is used to read the results.  I like that this particular part operates at 3.3V.

Documentation is here:
http://themzlab.tumblr.com/wattmeter

or here

https://github.com/themzlab/imp-watt-meter

If you want to do more of the job yourself there is still a lot to learn reading the datasheet and the app notes for that chip and others in the family.

[cRash1001]

Depends what your goals are.

I did a board based on ADE7953 and was really pretty easy to get good results.  It's a really nice chip that does all the heavy lifting for you.  It breaks down to a voltage divider for the V and a current shunt for the I.  SPI communication is used to read the results.  I like that this particular part operates at 3.3V.

Documentation is here:
http://themzlab.tumblr.com/wattmeter

If you want to do more of the job yourself there is still a lot to learn reading the datasheet and the app notes for that chip and others in the family.

Well I did study the ADE7753, it was great had all the features phase correction, tamper detection all that but a friend of mine had made a energy meter using  that IC but quickly fell into problems during firmware programming. He said it was hardm confusing, all that. So whats the case with  ADE7953, is the firmware programming reasonably complicated all that and other things?

[coppice]

Well I did study the ADE7753, it was great had all the features phase correction, tamper detection all that but a friend of mine had made a energy meter using  that IC but quickly fell into problems during firmware programming. He said it was hardm confusing, all that. So whats the case with  ADE7953, is the firmware programming reasonably complicated all that and other things?

The various metering ASICs from ADI, Cypress, Atmel, Microchip, and others are all pretty similar to program, and all have SPI interfaces. A couple, like the Atmel (originally IDT) ones, also have UART or I2C options for the interface. The big plus with these is you can pair them with pretty much any MCU that has the right feature mix for you.

The main alternative is the metering SoCs from Maxim (used to be TDK, then Teridian, and now about to be sold off to Silergy), TI, Atmel, Prolific and others. Some of these contain computation modules, specifically to calculate the voltage, current, power, etc. Others have ADCs tailored for the job, and leave all the computation to the main processor core. The vendors usually supply code libraries to performance these computations, so it doesn't take huge effort to get up and running. A big advantage here is if you need to measure something not in the standard software feature set its easy to add your own features. If you use the devices with fixed function blocks you are stuck with what they provide.

I've never heard of anyone choosing among the various options on the basis that one or more were especially hard to interface to.

[Brutte]

I would like to build a Digital Energy meter for calculating the kWh.

For commercial purposes? If it is for hobby then I hope it is a 12V solar panel, not a 230V mains line.
Dave has made a teardown of a three phase energy meter some time ago - you should check the related thread just before you search rest of the forum.

[mjkuwp]

....
Well I did study the ADE7753, it was great had all the features phase correction, tamper detection all that but a friend of mine had made a energy meter using  that IC but quickly fell into problems during firmware programming. He said it was hardm confusing, all that. So whats the case with  ADE7953, is the firmware programming reasonably complicated all that and other things?

I think the two chips are very similar except the ADE7753 is 5V and at a quick glance it has at least one more feature- a temperature sensor.

I understand about the datasheet.  There are so many features and options for setup it can be overwhelming.  I was fortunate to be following some example code that was very basic and I expanded on that.  I am happy to share code - in fact it should already be listed on the blog page that I referenced.    If you or your friend have questions I can try to answer them.  The main thing that I enter to the registers is the PGA and the offsets for V, I, Watts and for V*A.   The calculation for offset is confusing but I got through that and for some applications it would not be important.  I do the scale calculations in the host software so I did not bother to set any gain registers on the device.

[ElectricGuy]

Depends what your goals are.

I did a board based on ADE7953 and was really pretty easy to get good results.  It's a really nice chip that does all the heavy lifting for you.  It breaks down to a voltage divider for the V and a current shunt for the I.  SPI communication is used to read the results.  I like that this particular part operates at 3.3V.

Documentation is here:
http://themzlab.tumblr.com/wattmeter

If you want to do more of the job yourself there is still a lot to learn reading the datasheet and the app notes for that chip and others in the family.

Hi mjkuwp;

I tried to download the files from the webpage project, but it doesn't seems to work.
Can you send me the files of the project?
Thank you