This post is an update to my previous one about the CurrentCost Energy Monitor and the software I built for it.
After posting brief details about it, I agreed with the guys over at the MSDN Coding for Fun site to write a full project article for them. The suggested a couple of changes – using the Managed Extension Framework (MEF) stuff available in .NET 4 and a Windows Phone 7 client, to make it more generally appealing.
I had not seen the MEF stuff before, but it turned out great – very simple framework that allows a full ‘plugin’ style architecture in around 10 lines of code. I also had little experience with the Xaml stuff required for WinPhone 7 apps, but it is actually pretty simple.
There are a number of plugins and clients for it now including :
- A plugin to post to Twitter every X minutes (using oAuth)
- A plugin to post to Pachube streams
- A plugin to post to a web service
- A web page to display the latest readings sent to the web service
- A Windows Phone 7 application to display the latest reading sent to the web service
- A Windows Sidebar Gadget to display the latest reading sent to the web service
I have also had submissions from a couple of other developers, one for a plugin that posts to Google PowerMeter and another that records the readings in a database – both of these will be uploaded to the Codeplex site when I have them integrated into the source and working correctly.
Anyway, you can read all about it here. There is also a Codeplex site for all the source code and binaries.
Post in the comments if you have suggestions for other plugins or features, or want to get involved.
Great app.. does not parse correctly when there are more than one appliance connected.. can we add that to the parsing.. I may have to get out some very rusty programming skills (long lost last Century!!) and have a go if no one here with some skill has some time!
Regards
PS
@PS Can you send me a capture of the XML you are getting (from a terminal application), and I’ll have a look at what is going wrong.
Are you expecting it to sum all the appliances ?, or just take the channel 0 (whole house) reading ?
Regards .. Ken