Monitoring energy by counting blinks

[shantanu@india]

Hi,
Most of the energy meters working around the world has no interface for a microcontroller & the only way is to monitor energy consumption is to count blinks.
Whats the best way by means of which you can...
1. Adapt your optical sensor to any LED intensity
2. Eliminate effect of ambient light
3. Eliminate effect of accumulated dust/dirt on the meter transparent cover
Is a simple photodiode/phototransistor/LDR reliable or should we use something like a ESP32-cam to read pixels & detect that a led-flash has occured by an AI routine?
There can be a huge demand for a cheap IOT device to monitor energy by couting blinks & uploading to server.
Some ideas are here..
https://hackaday.com/2018/09/05/monitoring-power-by-counting-blinks/

[trastikata]

Most of the energy meters working around the world has no interface for a microcontroller & the only way is to monitor energy consumption is to count blinks.
Is a simple photodiode/phototransistor/LDR reliable or should we use something like a ESP32-cam to read pixels & detect that a led-flash has occured by an

Hi Shantanu,

thanks for sharing the information.

Is a simple photodiode/phototransistor/LDR reliable or should we use something like a ESP32-cam to read pixels & detect that a led-flash has occured by an

Actually you can use two LED's of the same wave length (colour) to detect the difference in the light intensity between the one and the other.

Some time ago I made a UV tilt sensor using two UV (Purple) LEDs to measure the difference in the UV intensity between the LED looking to the sky and the one looking to the earth. You can use something similar.

https://youtu.be/nfnwvgQ-hCU - Demo how the UV tilt sensor works.

[shantanu@india]

Thanks Trastikata.
You mean to say one led pointed towards the meter and the other away from the meter?

[trastikata]

Thanks Trastikata.
You mean to say one led pointed towards the meter and the other away from the meter?

Indeed. Note, it's a just an assumption that it might work, the initial design is for UV LEDs measuring the difference between sky and earth even in the shadow. The OPAMP should be in the pico-amp input bias current range since the current generated from the photo-voltaic effect in the LED is minute.

[shantanu@india]

To cancel out ambient light a cover can be fixed over the energy meter. Then maybe a simple phototransistor working in darkness can do the trick.