Arduino Version

October 2014

The prepayment electricity meter project is successfully completed! (If anybody wants more infos on the prepaid electricity meter, please contact me)
So I can concentrate on the Electronic Load Controller again. Due to increased performance requirements (on the PIC16F1939, the program memory was getting too small, and there weren't enough I/O pins), I had to switch the MCU. Since I would have chosen the Arduino platform in the first place, had I known about it, the choice was obvious: The Arduino Mega.

To Do

Shopping Exp-Tech:

• Arduino Mega 2560
• 2.2" tft screen
• Stacking headers
• SD Card

Shopping Conrad or Reichelt

• Ampere meter clamp
• (12V relays)
• 3 x Baby Battery holder
• USB cable type B

Shopping ebay, once familiar with the platform:

• cheap arduino with U16 bootloader chip
• cheap 2.2" TFT screen with 5V power and 5V logic compatibility
• 12V power supply MF09009 LED Driver 12W
  http://www.ebay.de/itm/LED-Trafo-Treiber-Netzteil-Driver-Transformator-12-Watt-12V-fur-MR16-MR11-MN-/231195256231?pt=DE_M%C3%B6bel_Wohnen_Lampenschirme&hash=item35d44fa5a7
  
  http://www.ebay.de/itm/LED-CE-Halogen-Trafo-Treiber-Transformator-Driver-DC-12V-6W-250W-G4-MR16-Lampe-/131233069389?pt=Bauteile&var=&hash=item1e8e19b94d
  
  http://www.ebay.de/itm/LED-Trafo-Treiber-Netzteil-Driver-Transformator-12-Watt-12V-fur-MR16-MR11-MN-/231195256231?pt=DE_M%C3%B6bel_Wohnen_Lampenschirme&hash=item35d44fa5a7
• 
  

Shopping pollin: - 8x2 lcd display

Working steps:

- buy arduino and screen
- get the screen to work
- program a menu function library (additional menu points: Number of dump loads, enable startup assistant)
                  this needs to be able to hide menu points, depending on the configuration

Hardware: 

build a hydro power simulator with the NE555, Frequency control with the CTRL input
output board: 14 dump loads, 3 relays (water more, water less, main relay off)
input board mains: 3 phase (frequency, voltage)
input board low voltage: 12/24v power monitoring, amp sensor monitoring

Software

AdaptiveTuning: detect oscillations (frequency goes 0.1 Hz around setpoint more than once every 5 s)
                        error bigger than 10% (45Hz) for longer than 1s

deactivate adaptive tuning and protection shutdown during system startup, i.e. every time the microcontroller restarts. Automatically go into protection mode once all parameters are green.

Error log: why did the system go down, when did the adaptive tuning change parameters

Nice to have: USB data logging with "Processing" software. Main reason for this feature is evaluating the adaptive PID tuning. But maybe this can be achieved with the internal detection mechanism.