Chris Bergeron's Blog

I was out of commission today, so I figured I could be productive by updating my blog. Here’s a picture of the kitchen kiosk computer:

The original thread can be seen here

Tags: electronics, home
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Last week I primed the theater room and replaced the carpet (temporarily). Here’s the room as it exists right now:

Tags: theater
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This weekend my friend Jeff and I worked on finishing the drywall in the basement. Natalie painted the stairway. Here are some pictures:

Tags: home improvement, theater
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I wrote a program to read events from the security system and put them into an RSS Event Log . I have some logic in it so that not everything gets recorded. I wouldn’t want a would-be robber knowing when the system is armed or disarmed, of course!

An event is anything that is monitored by the security system, including door openings, windows being opened / closed, etc.

Tags: electronics, home improvement, php
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I finally got around to finishing the cabinets in the main-level garage. Organization is a wonderful thing, and having enough cabinet space to store everything is going to make it much easier to find things.

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I spent most of the day installing some unfinished oak cabinets in my garage. I still have one more cabinet to mount, though. I also installed a pegboard to mount my tools on to. Here are some pictures:

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This weekend I worked on the theater room some more. I started to frame the proscenium base. It’s been very slow going, but it’s some progress.

Tags: theater
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I installed some carpet in the theater room. I don’t think it’s permanent, but it will have to do for now. I also found the tiles that I’m going to install in the wall arch. Here are some pictures:

Tags: home improvement, theater
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I’m adding a circuit breaker interrupter to my home security system. The purpose of it is to completely turn off some breakers in the home when the alarm is in ‘AWAY DAY’ mode. The goal is to conserve energy by completely disabling certain circuits in the house. I have a lot of electrical vampires, things that consume electricity even when turned off, in my home. One example is our DVR. It draws about 50 watts even when it’s powered off. I don’t have any scheduled recordings, so it makes sense to disable it when it’s not being used. This is only one example, but one of many devices that consume power when I don’t need them to. As a result, I’m building a circuit that breaks the electrical circuit when we’re not home. If the resultant savings are a few hundred watts (that would otherwise run 24/7) it will be a worthwhile endeavor; particularly considering the introduction of solar power. Here’s a picture of the interruptor circuit:

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Tracking electricity usage is an important component of solar power. In order to help me achieve this goal, I wrote some software to help me monitor my electricity usage. Each month when the electric bill arrives, I input the data into an iPhone applet. This applet records the data into a database. I’m not going to link to it for privacy reasons, but here’s a picture of the applet:

Here are a couple of graphs produced from it. The first are the bill amounts:

The second is the number of kiloWatt hours used:

Here’s the latest data (as of Sunday 5th of September 2010 06:12:11 PM):

• 37 months of data
• 31,870 kiloWatt hours used totalling: $USD 3,951.52. This equates to a practical average price per watt of: $USD 0.12 (including base charges and tax)
• Average bill amount: $USD 106.80
• Average kWh per month: 861

Tags: iphone, solar
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I put up the final wall of the theater room. I’ve also finished the design and layout of the proscenium (stage).

Tags: home improvement, theater
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I framed an arched opening in the theater room. Ultimately, it’s going to be tiled, but for now it’s just framed in. It was pretty simple to do. I just used a string to draw a semi-circle on the drywall and cut it out. Then I built a simple wooden arch and placed it behind the drywall. I added a couple of two by fours for the lower shelf and to add depth. I’m going to add lighting and possibly build a water feature into it.

Tags: home improvement, theater
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In anticipation of installing a Solar Array at home (someday), I’m going to need to monitor my power usage more accurately. I’ve created a worksheet to approximate my power usage, but I need more solid data. So, I’m going to need to read data directly from the Itron Centron CL200 meter. It uses ANSI C12.19 and C12.22 standards for transmitting data, so I should be able to tap into it after I familiarize myself with the specs. The CL200 also transmits watt-hour usage via infrared pulses on the top of the meter. It seems that the meter transmits 1 pulse for every watt hour of usage, so in the near-term I’m going to have to build a circuit to read this data. Once I’m able to read the data, I can begin analyzing it and I’ll post it (along with graphs) on this site.

Fortunately, there’s already an existing open-source project dedicated to Automated Meter Reading(AMR): OpenAMR

Another blogger is also working on a similar project. His page can be found here: http://davestech.blogspot.com/2008/02/itron-remote-read-electric-meter.html

Tags: amr, solar
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I took an LCD display out of an old laptop computer and coupled it to an overhead projector. The result is a 5′ projection screen. It’s not the highest quality, but in a dark room it’s suitable for watching movies, surfing the web, or playing computer games. Here are the pictures:

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I spent a good part of the day installing can lighting in the theater room. The room is slowly progressing from an unfinished basement into an actual room.

Tags: home improvement, theater
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A few years ago I built my own generator. I cobbled it together with some parts I had laying around the house. I found a free lawnmower on craigslist and I used the engine from it as a power source for the generator. I coupled the engine to an automobile alternator and a power inverter. The result is a cheap AC power generator. It only produces a few hundred watts of power, but it’s enough to power lights or emergency equipment in the event of power failure. I did this project for fun, not as a replacement for a real backup power generator. Here are some pictures:

Tags: home improvement
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