Monitoring and control of energy consumption using smart sockets and smartphones

Abstract

In this paper, we present a way of monitoring and controlling energy consumption of electronics and devices using smart sockets and smartphones. We developed wireless smart power sockets which can measure power consumption of electrical devices, and transmit the collected data set to a gateway connected to a host server. A Java-based program running on the host server puts the received data set into MySQL-based database tables, and a Web interface using JSP (JavaServer Pages) offers access to the data set stored in the database. In addition to energy consumption monitoring, energy use of devices and electronics can be controlled by turning on and off relays embedded into smart sockets. We send smart sockets the command signal through an Android-based smartphone app we developed, which changes control values of smart sockets that are registered in database. It also offers the functionality of displaying energy consumption graphs in real-time on smartphones. We hope to encourage users to recognize how much energy they are using, but also help them save energy use by remotely controlling everyday electronics and devices. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.