FAQ

• General
• Hardware
• Software
• Troubleshooting

This project is only capable of monitoring AC power systems, including North American 120V 60Hz grids, and Eurasian 230V 50 Hz grids.

Adaptations to monitor other systems like DC power, gas, and water, are not supported.

If your existing current transformers are of the “current-output” type, please make sure they do not provide more than 53mA at their maximum rating.

If they are of the “voltage output” type, please make sure they do not provide more than 1.65V at their maximum rating.

Sensors that exceed these values may damage the ADC on the PCB.

The sensors available in my online shop are custom made specifically for my project and provide the best possible sensitivity and resolution. Using other sensors that provide significantly less than 53mA or 1.65V will decrease the sensitivity and resolution of the power monitor readings.

The most recent versions (v0.2.0 and above), you can run the following command in your terminal:

pip list --format=freeze | grep "rpi-power-monitor"

If this doesn’t show anything, then you are likely on an old pre-v0.2.0 version.

If you installed the custom OS, the OS build version can be determined by running the following command:

cat /root/rpi_power_monitor_os-version.txt

If you see No such file or directory, then you are likely on the original v0.1.0 version that did not have this file.

Unless you have updated your power monitor software, the OS build version should match the power monitor code version.

You need to create and/or enable the power-monitor.service file. See Running As a Service for specific instructions.

First, make sure Grafana is running with the command:

sudo systemctl status grafana-server

You should see Active: active (running) near the top of the output, like this:

$ sudo systemctl status grafana-server
● grafana-server.service - Grafana instance
    Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/grafana-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
    Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-02-21 01:23:44 GMT; 1 months 9 days ago

If you don’t see active (running), then you can try to restart the service with the following command:

sudo systemctl restart grafana-server

If Grafana refuses to start, you can check the logs for an indication with the following command:

sudo journalctl -u grafana-service -n 25

This should give some indication of the problem which you can use to research online.