Energy Monitoring AC Power Bar Coming Soon

[Rob F]

I got the case designed and heat sink mounted so here's some pics of it ready to go.

The one thing that really bothers me is the placement of the LED's, I want them to the right more but I really screwed up on the board that holds them as I made it so large, I'm lucky to get it in without having to increase the case size just for it. The power bar is 245mm x 153mm x 49mm and all the outlets are flush with the top.



This is everything mounted in the case, there's 8 - 7 amp fuses for each outlet and a main fuse of 12 amp. Each fuse holder has the outlet number as a label. 



After removing a few screws and some bolts in the AC power socket the board lifts out the case and this is what you get. This allows easy servicing if anything ever goes wrong which I don't expect as all the parts are good quality and some have already proven themselves, always got to add that in. ;) All the parts can be replaced without much trouble. 

At the front of board you can see the large heat sink. I like how this turned out as it works well and overkill but it does add quite a bit of weight, the whole power bar in case weighs 910 grams which I think is more than double the current power bar so you wouldn't want to drop it.

The main heat sink is 7.6" x 5/8" square aluminum and the front is 7.2" x 1/8" flat aluminum which makes a triac sandwich. They're held in place using 3D printed brackets which work really well. They wrap around the sink so it's can't be pressed into the board and there's one screw at the top which squeezes things together so it's no going anywhere, the brackets are solid so the screws have a good bit as well.



This is same as above but before the outlets are soldered in place, here you can see the white heat transfer compound on each triac.



This is the back side of the outlet plate.


This is the empty case and lid. You can see the LED board pressed into it, this will be glued in placed. I must say I really hate these lights though, they add a lot to the assembly time and because it requires messing with wires I can't say the power bar is wireless internally anymore. :(



The "P" LED is for power, the others are for outlets obviously.



The 2 USB's on the side are used to connect it to controller and plug in another accessory like a power bar or pH circuit. Doesn't matter which is used for any function. 



This is the back and where the AC power socket is. There will also be 2 bolts on the side holding it firmly in place but for these pics I just placed the board in. Some of the outlets aren't flush because I made the holes a hair to small so it's a little tight and I didn't want to fight it, they will be flush not to worry. ;)



I also changed the page to view energy for each outlet. I didn't like only 4 outlets being visible so with this you can view all 8 outlets and using the menu switch what's being viewed.

Instead of posting 4 pictures I put each view type on a row, power, energy cost, kWh totals and alerts. The charts for now will take you to the current graph menu but it'll return you here when you leave. 

For the alerts I'm going to have the controller generate the values. Whenever something new is plugged in you can press the "train alarm" button and it will generate a min/max after 24 hours and will display what it calculated. At the bottom you can press the alert type icon, it'll turn green and you'll get the alert if the outlet is on and not in the correct range.

The 7 and 30 day estimates for the cost and kWh will likely update every 24 hours.