Inside the Hopi power meter. (It contains a smart meter chip!)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 มิ.ย. 2019
- I've often been asked if I can take the Hopi to bits, so I did.
While being a bit shady in some areas, the design is surprisingly sophisticated.
It also has a secret button I didn't know about!
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of TH-cam's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Only half way thru "what the f*#/ is the button for" had me rolling.
+Raymond Mucklow I'm wondering what that button is for myself. I imagine that button is probably a reset button.
Same, I saw the button and was wondering about it just before he noticed!
@@scratchpad7954 Or maybe an interlock button to keep it from functioning with the case open.
i nearly spat my coffee out when he said that. haha
Haha :D 5:17 PEGI 18
"There's a button."
"WTF is the button for?"
"I have no clue what that's for."
"I'm obviously gonna have to press it"
"Right, that has to be investigated as well. One moment please."
"That took a while because there were a couple of interesting things...."
This is why we subscribe. Thank you Clive, for being Clive and for sharing your videos with us.
I agree
Hands up those who took their Hopi out and discovered the button too.
Radar system training in the military.....I remember my instructor saying 'never press a button unless you know exactly what it's going to do'. It's advice that's served me well over the years!
I just chuckled and said out loud "Come on Clive RTFM for god's sake!" :P
@@davidhunt240 Do you really think the Manx man reads Chinese? Givum a break! RTFM yeah right.
"What the f*** is the button for?" Great t-shirt texts. I thought it was the hopi logo. So unassuming. lol
yes that would make a great t shirt, i could make that happen.
Mu Effe I would buy one
if you want to relive that button moment 5:15
"what the f is the button for?"
LOL Even Funnier clicking that number! Thanks!
That made my day LOL
I've put together a small tribute to Clive and his button:
th-cam.com/video/kca2K9XKErw/w-d-xo.html
I replayed it like 5 times before i seen your link. Hahaha greatest moment ever
I reckon the numbers 1-24 you can select in the annual power consumption part are the number of hours per day the device is in use?
I was just going to comment that - 2.4W at 1 hour/day = 0.876kWh which is what is showed when 1 was selected
Yes the manual says this is for setting the number of hours per day the device is switched on, when calculating annual consumption.
@@Berkeloid0 Ah! So you read the manual? :D
@@calmeilles there's a manual?
@@Rac00n search on Aliexpress for hp-9800. the most sellers have a descripton for the button functions on the sell page.
And i got a manual includet in my HP-9800
"there is a button" "wtf is the button for" that cracked me up.This is why clive's videos are amazing, you are just a genuine and funny person that shows in your content.
That button comment has to go into the Big Clive highlights video when someone makes it.
That video definitely should be made and it obviously has to include the reaction of the Fanny Flambeaux doll
@@my2ndlogin There was already a review of the bigclivedotcom channel here:
th-cam.com/video/kDhhBQvXtUE/w-d-xo.html
Don't forget to include the lead up. "There's a button...."
And the exploding disconnect haha. That is still my favourite.
Definitely! Along with my favourite, his Nosulus Rift accident th-cam.com/video/Ucymk0q70aQ/w-d-xo.html 6:00 to 8:00
Love the battery cover that exposes live terminals !
Ian Clarke - dangerous Chineseum feature 😱
It's Chinese population control, and it only culls the intellectually challenged, who are the only people who would stick their fingers (or any other appendage) in there to see what happens, hence, a smarter residual population!
At least, there's a locking slider to prevent curious fingers from seeking knowledge.
...but makes sure to still halfway cover the actual fuse you might want to change someday, even when the lid is off... :P
I don't have any excuse for it, but then again, i find it hard to feel sorry for any inebriated ape that might open that under load. You'll get a shock, you'll live. We've all shocked ourselves a few times.
"There's a button ... WTF is the button for? ... I have no clue what that's for .. I'm obviously gonna have to press it"
I was so hoping for the display to change to "Please do not press this button again"
2:44 “..end up with a gap if I did try to turn it around”.
But what the hell, it already has a deathdapter style mains socket, mains voltage clip in speaker terminals, and a user accessible live battery compartment round the back! What’s one more design defect amongst friends!
I just took delivery of a HOPI today based on Clive having one. Good enough for Clive to use in his videos, good enough for me. Greetings from Australia.
I want to get one too.
uH-- = Complex (or apparent?) power (datasheet says it's active electric energy)
AEC = Annual electricity costs
APC = Annual power consumption
CO2 = Annual CO2 consumption
L-UP = Upper limit of power
When the display shows 'uH--', the display below it shows the apparent power. In the video, calculated apparent power is 5.645VA (slightly offset, it is 6.86VA), and when the displays changed to show another value, it is defined as load time, which is the combined value of those two displays, 0001 17.42 = 117.42h of load time (datasheets says h, I don't know what it is for).
USB section is just used for USB-to-serial port converter, but the IC is omitted on the board.
Additional note: The range it goes between 1 and 24 is both to set up an alarm for upper power limit and to set hours for APC.
HAHAHAHA! I've never heard you swear like that over a button!
I needed to do a double take on that @5:15, "Oh there's a button. what the fuck is the button for..." 😂😂😂😂😂
When did he shock himself with a lighter?
I almost skipped back to see if I heard right when he said "what the f$&% is the button for". Very much not what I expect in a Clive video.
Just here to tell that HOPI is being unboxed right now ❤ The T button is now described in the manual: "Key: adjust hours, display model, clear energy data. Remark: w hen display active power power will a lternate display the hours of load." There is also long and short press operation with graph provided! It can show even "annul CO2 consumption". Remember that "it will automatically stores the current operation as long as you not to press the key for more than 3s"!
3:45 “Without taking the circuit board out...”
Two seconds later- the board is coming out...!
Thanks for that.
Unbelievable!! After all this time, you find a button on the Hopi!
@bigclivedotcom, I've been looking at the datasheet and the communication to the processor is SPI, which means the speed of communication can be anything, so I guess you could put a faster crystal on the processor side without any apparent issues. I'm guessing the CS5463 Xtal speed is 4.096Mhz (which was shown in the datasheet examples). It IS a pretty amazing chip.
The pulse output on the metering chip is often exposed on terminals which can be wired to an external recording system, most usually a building management system (BMS), or a dedicated pulse counting logger. Advantage: simplicity, disadvantage: any failure of the monitoring system and pulses are missed (with a BMS, notouriously pulses might be missed if the microcontroller is too busy doing other things, or comms to the central unti fail). The alternative is a serial communications protocol between the meter and BMS, most commonly MODBUS, a variant of RS485.
Hi! The variability of mains AC frequency is a lot greater than we often assume. While the grid is regulated closely, and the frequency is maintained at 50hz almost perfectly over longer time frames (think days), it can swing around considerably in the short term. Excursions of up to a few hundred millihertz are not uncommon, and smaller deviations are constant. The stability of the quartz crystal inside your Hopi will contribute some, but over the short term and with a constant ambient temperature I think what you're seeing on the display is pretty accurate.
Unless you are the EU, where the problem went on for many years and made many timers and clocks highly inaccurate.
Interestingly enough there's a group who use that variability in criminal and other cases. Basically they keep/get really accurate measurements of the actual mains frequency and keep them for a long time. Then when somebody says this video/audio recording happened at a certain time they look for the mains hum even if it's sub audible they can reconstruct it.
Then by looking at the variance of that hum as it goes up and down they can determine what the actual time it was recorded was. They don't look at the absolute frequency, but the relative motion then match it to the logs they have.
Pretty cool really.
To test it properly I want you to plug the Hopi meter into a Hopi meter.
Right! Just push its plug into its outlet and voila - you just got yourself perpetuum mobile. I mean it. Try it. You'll see that there will be no current taken, nor power consumed. ; -)
Clive, here in the US, power stablizers/cleaners are a way of life in the world if high end light and sound. At a planetarium I used to frequent in my youth used Xenon arc lamps. They are expensive and kept blowing. Power company said all was fine, until a bunch of high school kids and teacher got out their meters and found just how dirty the wall power was. Will remember that meter going back and forth well past my 50's (since I am 60, done). After the "Power Cleanser" was installed, life of the lamps literally tripled. Sad but true. The 60HZ frequency appears to be a guideline. Can vary from 58 to 63 Hz. Your meter is probably very accurate in that regard, power is probably that dirty! Keep the very interesting and occasionally weird videos coming! And Americans do not have hotdogs in a can...just saying...we call those sausages...
That's easily the best reaction anyone has ever had to a button.
I like the flickery display, it adds to the charme of this channel. Not everything has to be professional, a little bit of flicker fits with what is written in the channels about page: "So just like a normal workshop really." Also unexpected button was unexpected.
It would have been funny if it turned out the button changed refresh rates and eliminated the flicker on camera. After all this time...
If any of your phones have a high speed camera function, it could be vaguely interesting to see a slowmo shot of the leds so we can better understand how they are driven.
You mentioned the lower current range HOPI meter which had me interested, based on a quick search the only place that came up for HOPI meters appears to be aliexpress. The HOPI HP-9800 model does have a "HP-8173" listed in the description below rated up to 2.5A and "active power test range" 0.01W~550W instead of 0.5W~4400W of the HP-9800. The only minor issue appears to be that no HP-8173 is anywhere to be found, not on aliexpress nor on other places at the internet.
There is also some documentation on that description about the button btw (any weird spelling below is directly from their image)
"AEC: Annul electricity costs
APC: Annul Power Consumption
uH__: Active electric energy
CO2: Annul CO2 Consumption
L-UP: Upper limit of Power"
Yet another interesting bit here, they have button press instructions consisting of long (>2s) and short (
I think you'd have to populate more of the board with a USB-serial chip as well as the connector. That does imply the 4-pin pattern near the display CPU is a serial link.
Great video, Amazing that after so many uses already, you revealed that magic hidden button.
Regarding mystery optocoupler: it could be for creating a nice square wave for mains frequency counting ( if that specialized power-monitor IC wants it that way )
Am I the only one who was half expecting one of the displays to say "RTFM" eventually? :P
Yes
I quite like the flickering effect. It's something you don't see on most modern electronics in videos anymore, since everything is usually so high speed you just get bars along the screen, if anything at all.
I have some Chauvet DMX4 cheap lighting dimmers which have a very flickery 4 digit LED display, the flickering looks really tacky. I assumed it was because they were re-drawing the entire display when they refreshed it (I have this problem with using OLEDs with an Arduino, best to avoid clearing display and just overwrite data that has changed), but for a 7 segment display Clive;'s explanation makes more sense.
In my world, Hopi (long o, named after the Hopi Tribe of Arizona) is a Labrador who enjoys chewing on Flukes.
I love you videos Clive. I understand about half of what you're talking about with the circuitry, the rest is just over my head until I have the time to sit down and learn about it. Nonetheless, I love your stuff.
Ohh... That button reminds me of a secret button inside my old CRT TV remote, it has the rubber pad with the carbon contact but it's very shallow and the label has buried the hole it's sitting in, use a needle and press it reveals a service menu that let you change a lot of things like overscan, rotate the screen...
YEEE! Fluttershy
@@daretodreamtofly3288 i wasn't expecting that reaction tbh...
i remember that old samsung projection tv, once i was servicing, it had hidden menu after some kind of on remote button combination.
@@sebo0855 Samsung TV's are still like that now. Info, Mute, Menu, Power if memory serves me correctly.
@@firstsurname9893 maybe you're right because internal muting relay was clicking during this combination. And i haven't seen more TV's with back projection from close-up, it was the only one that i saw in my life, maybe It was caused by horrific price in this region ( Europe, Poland ). Good to know it's still existing.
According to the manual, the 1-24 is number of hours in a day that the device is used. uH is "Active Electric Energy," AEC is "Annual Electricity Costs," APC is "Annual Power Consumption," and CO2 is "Annual CO2 Consumption."
Zzyzx Wolfe But how does it know the Annual Electricity Cost, if there is no way to program the cost per kWh? (Rhetorical). Weird.
@@andyowens5494 Clearly it's designed for communism, where the energy is always free! /s
1-24 may be how many hours the appliance will be used per day.
Yeah I only found that out by accident, they hide that button well 😂
It is.
www.aliexpress.com/item/HOPI-HP-9800-Handheld-Power-Meter-Power-Analyzer-LED-Metering-Socket-Measurable-Current-voltage-Power-Factor/32375959317.html
Manual down the page a touch.
@@ballsrgrossnugly Some of that manual did not make much sense !!
@@highpath4776 It's pretty clear about the 1-24 being hours per day of use for the yearly estimate though.
I bought one of these devices from Aliexpress after I saw you using it in one of your videos. Great little device and great videos.
I was waiting for the teardown of this thingy. Amazing!
Unexpected mystery buttons inside devices are like free candy unexpectedly
You can get versions with a micro USB port on the top so it's definitely for data logging.
I would suspect that the 4-pin header silkscreen is for a regular size usb A plug header.
There are some other unpopulated parts next to the footprint for the USB, so I suspect those would need to be installed and possibly the firmware on the MCU changed in order to get that function.
The RC04V is FRAM memory. These FRAM parts are fairly common in applications where a relatively small amount of non-volatile storage is required. Being non-volatile they'll hold their contents without power applied, much like Flash does, but they don't need the complicated unlocking sequence before writing. My company uses them for storing fault logs, elapsed time indication, unit identification information, etc.
The other cool things about FRAM are virtually unlimited writes, and no additional write time (same access speed as a read).
@@Peter_S_ With FRAM a write is potentially faster than a read, as reads are destructive. The device has to read and re-write the cells for every read operation. This means there must absolutely reliably be enough stored energy to complete a read and re-write cycle before it begins, or you would end up with a corrupt memory when the power fails.
FRAM tends to have less retention time than flash or EEPROM has though (only 10 years for a part I'm currently using ). Good for data that changes regularly, not so good for calibration data that remains constant for the life of the device.
so CS5463. That's a lot of functionality in one little chip. As ever, brilliant video and now I have that chip on my radar for a project. Thanks B.C.
True bravery and optimism - taking apart one of your most vital measuring tools.
If you set the number to 2 you get the monthly power consumption, which I personally find more useful. Unfortunately my hopi doesn't remember the cost per kWhr, so you have to set it every time if you want to have a direct display of cost.
Also the male plug gets hot at only 8A for a few seconds, so I will probably change it.
And in my unit the soldering of the thick wires was pretty bad, so I resolder it before use.
I forgot to mention, if you hold the button for a couple of seconds more you reset the energy and time of the "uH" screen.
For anyone curious like I was, I purchased one and have the manual.
HAND-HELD POWER MONITOR, Operating Instructions
MODEL: HP-9800/20A, HP-8713/2A
Shenzen HOPI electrnoic technology co. LTD.
1. Description of menu and key
REC - Annual electricity costs
APC - Annual Power Consumption
CO2 - Annual CO2 consumption
uH - Active electric energy
L - UP - upper limit of power
Short press: Press key less than 1 s
Long press: Press key more than 2 s
2. Set the allarm upper limit of power and the hours for annual pwoer consumption
Short press
Set the amount of hours per day to calculate annual power consumption
3. Set the display content
Reset device by unplugging and plugging in
Long press "FREQUENCE" segment display shows:
A. Active electrical energy, "uH--"
short press
B. Annual electricity cost "REC"
short press
C. Annual CO2 consumption "CO2"
short press
D. Annual Power Consumption "APC"
Note: When set to display "uH--" model, display the load time: 1880.5h (No idea what the hell this means)
4. Clear the electrical power data and load time
Reset device by unplugging and plugging in
A. Long press until 'FREQUENCY' segment display shows 'uH--'
B. Long press once more until 'FREQUENCY' segment display shows 'REC'
5. Storage operation
It will automatically store the current operation as long as you do not press the key for more than 3s
Note: After some experimenting you are able to set the kWh price when using the AEC mode
a. Switch to Annual energy cost mode
b. Short press and set the price per kWh
The range is $0 to $20 per kWh.
If you work out the annual power consumption for the load to be connected 24/7 it reads way out. By pressing the button to around 23 it reads nearer what you would expect the consumption to be over a year of use.
The Hopi is coming apart? I'm making dinner and watching this! Wow, rock on!
You can stop the display flicking on the camera by turning down the lights in the room, thus causing the camera to compensate for the dimmer light by changing its shutter to effectively stay constantly open (or at least not be shut for so long during each video frame).
The not meassuring low loads could be to avoid a ADC-offset from building up a bill.
Smart-meters (and mechanical ones) have a thing about not metering at very low power to avoid ghost-load.
Basically inperfections that "make the disc spin" at absolutely NO LOAD.
Just wanna say i have a Hopi meter too, also UK, and i just checked the fuse inside the plug and its a 13A fuse that they've bridged with some solder and copper wire...
Might be worth checking yours, and maybe even the new meter you have (even tho the new one isn't rated at 4500W)
Sweeeeeet :) I want one even more now! I know you sometimes use them but I would take the speaker conns out seeing as you have the quick block for non plugged things :) x Loving the battery compartment of death :D
You could always remove the opto-isolator and see if any readings look suspicious or wrong. That may give a clue as to it's purpose.
This reminds me of a sequence from Titan A. E. ...
Gune: "Does this look familiar? Do you know what it is? Neither do I. I made it last night in my sleep. Apparently I used Gindrogac. Highly unstable. I put a button on it. Yes. I wish to press it, but I'm not sure what will happen if I do."
that geniune reaction to the button was comedy gold. thanks for the laugh, i needed it today.
Clive, I have a similar meter from Banggood or Fasttech and it came with a Chinese manual.
I complained about the fact that they didn't supply an English manual with it and they were kind enough to translate it for me.
I believe the button is used to set up the device to do longer measurements. I'm not sure since it was quite some time ago but I can lookup the e-mail and send you a copy.
This was a fantastic tear down! Now, I want to know more!!
Can you imagine Clive in an Ulduar raid, getting to Mimiron and seeing the BIG RED BUTTON on the wall that says DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON.
the photo blow up is at just the right angle that its fooling my eye into thinking youre actually holding it. top shelf special effects
I just got my Hopi today and there were two issues, it had the wrong country plug and the red filter doesn’t completely line up over the LEDs so the left side is really bright. I attached the correct plug myself and I hope I got the polarity right but I’d googled it beforehand, (I’m not a sparky).
The case easily came apart in your hands, mine is very tight and I couldn’t insert the spudger tool. I watchwd this video a couple of months ago and I’ve now looked at it again and I know that I can access the LEDs as soon as I get the case open.
Very nice. I've seen the Hopi in a lot of your videos and it's nice to see how it's made. The dedicated power meter chip is really surprising!
The mystery button though..... have you tried to contact the manufacturer about it? They might be happy to explain it to you.
You could theoretically put a faster osc in the board without affecting the serial communication, where it's SPI or I2C, they both have a clock pulse line
Although look at the datasheet for the microcontroller for max clock speed, i would say it's max would be 20Mhz, but don't quote me on that
Thank you!! Nice to see something you use regularly can still surprise you!!
Love the "Live terminal cover", doesn't seem like something that could, or should be battery powered so I wonder why the cover is even there??
It's a universal case.
I got mine after you told me where to get it. Unfortunately the speaker terminals are mounted on a black plastic block but mine is so thick it won’t let most UK plugs sit flat in place. What a pain but fixed by fitting one of those square deathdapters in place and plugging into that.
The 2 columns of displays run in parallel rather than series. If you pause the video when the meter is displaying (at the end of the vid), you can see matching blank LED segments on each column.
2:35 A little bit of filing and some how glue n she'll be right 👍🏻 If it was me then I'd definitely stick a double pole switch in for those speaker terminals AND a fast blow fuse because they're only rated for 3A at 50V so that's almost 6x the voltage rating! 🤯
Clive, love the irony, live connections covered by flimsy lid, yet what appears to be warning symbol on board, which you cannot access! Maybe that AEC, isn't and it's REC just using simpler and cheaper digits, so can record data, as it has memory chip? Also then the USB provides instant and recorded data capture facility possibly?
Clive there is loads of “depth” ( not sure of the correct term ) on the back of the socket, instead of turning it 90 degrees push it outwards to raise it above the speaker terminals.
I guess the counting up from 1-24 is the hours a day the device is on for calculating the annual power consumption.
was about to suggest to change the crystal but, didn't think of the baud rate, Clive is sharp as always
Tips for flickering display i found online. Put two identical videotracks at 50% seetrough and 1-2 frame offset in the video edit software. It's used to fix when you recordet at the wrong framerate compared to mains Hz. But it might work at higher refresh rates as well. Thanks for the cool video.
Clive is too cool for editing. ▶️⏯️▶️ Idiots like me need to edit in order to try and keep up with today's attention span. And I tried the pause technique but forgot or the camera glitched out on me.
The mysterious button had me gasping for breath, havent laughed like that in several months!
uH - current power consumption
APC - annual power consumption
numbers - number of hours a day the thing is on - want 24 for constant use measurements
RTFM, i think
The mains frequency will vary on The Isle of Man just by a few folk turning on and of things. For a larger grid such as the UK it has been found that frequency changes can be recovered from such things audio recordings and give an accurate time and date for them rather like a finger print !
The grid frequency right now is 50.018Hz.
And 20 minutes later it's 49.917Hz. Lot of people put the kettle on perhaps.
Great video Clive
I'm willing to bet that 2nd optoisolator going into the display driver brain box is literally just a clock signal for switching the multiplexer between digits. It would also explain the slow flicker.
Ran out of things to tear down?? few days ago I bought a toy from Walmart that was on clearance and called "Boxer Robot", seemed very interesting until I took it apart to see what chips are there and found 3 black "blobs". I was disappointed, so I put it together and returned it. now I got the thought that I should've sent it to you.
Best Clive's sentence ever 😂 5:18
I've seen breakout modules for the CS5460A IC (not the CS5463 as seen here) on AliExpress, but they only really provide you with the IC and a few resistors & capacitors - they don't include the current shunt or voltage divider (or the current transformer/potential transformer for that option), nor any of the filtering and other components that are required by the datasheet. Besides the CS5463's 2.5V reference having a better temperature coefficient (25 ppm/℃ vs. 30 ppm/℃ typical, but both have the same specified maximum of 60 ppm/℃), I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between the CS5460 and the CS5463, but I've not spent long reading the data sheets.
There's also a CS5464 version, which describes itself as a "Watt-hour meter on a chip" and looks generally a bit better, though its temperature coefficient is 40 ppm/℃...
All three of them are ~$2-2.50 in single quantities on LCSC, but can be found for a fraction of that cost on AliExpress (which is less-trustworthy than LCSC, but honestly I've never had a problem buying cheap ICs from AliExpress before; I wouldn't want to rely on them for critical or professional applications, but for hobby use they're probably fine...).
1...24 hours of daily use - then it also makes sense with the kWh/year
Ah yes, the hardworking, venerable HOPI 😊. Not bad really - looks reasonably well made with some interesting hidden functionality. While it's open I'd remove the "speaker" terminal as you're not going to use that. And super glue that battery door too 😊
I do actually use the speaker terminals from time to time. Not "compliant" but convenient in the hands of someone who understands the hazard.
It would take 168 capacitors but I wonder if you could put a capacitor across each led in the display so the flicker on the camera would be a brightness flicker rather than a hard on/off
I have a HOPI power meter which has seen very little use, but I still have the original packaging and the minimal Chinese documentation. The outer packaging is labelled "Energy saving lamps tester", so it's probably not intended for bigger loads. The push button behind the T is identified as part (7), but I can't read the Chinese explanation of its function. Maybe Google Translate could help, but I doubt it.
It must be show week in your lab Clive.Test equip teardown time....
Interesting...Thanks for sharing...
Is the button for setting the cost of a unit of electricity?..this will display the total cost per year of the load applied
For the Display, you could try those cheap glow-in-the-dark-tape between the Digits and the filter. they work much better with blue LED, but maybe it is enough to prevent camera view from flickering.
Optocoupler on input is simply there to provide a reset to a watchdog timer. Mains fails and the timer overflows, providing a way to write the data to the ferroelectric memory on power fail, without killing the memory with writes. Probably there is a version with a non volatile memory storage that stores some data long term after power failure, so needs this timer.
I did wonder if it was for secure memory writes, but on the other hand it could also be deriving accurate clock timing from the 50Hz.
Clive, I think you are the same as me: I love pulling my new "toys" apart, just for a look look see what's inside!
Quite a bit more sophisticated than I’d expected
waaait a minute! looks super familiar case! It's the rigexpert! :D
Awesome I was waiting for this 😎
AEC could also be REC or record. And the multiplier could be used if you have multiples around the house like lamps
I hope you noticed the apparently loose/cold solder joint of the incoming green wire as seen at the lower right of your photo of the board.
I was beginning to wonder if anyone else noticed that. Unless I got disoriented, there are other bad connections as well.
The way to fix the rolling screens is to adjust the shutter speed and frame rates of your camera.
Yes, to something which may be but almost certainly isn’t synced to anything useful. If it was 50 Hz, Clive would have noticed by now. It’s more likely 93 or something.
30fps and it looks fine , anything at 60fps upward and Clive's trademark filcker occures ,
I did the test in this terrible video
th-cam.com/video/Nk0AnUR-gfs/w-d-xo.html
Ya know, I've often noticed that odd yellow T on that meter and thought it seemed very out of place on that front panel. And now I know.
Haven't watched the video yet. I wanted to save this one for the weekend but couldn't wait. Let the fun begin.
Sounds like we need a high speed camera to check the display
Rec =record?
Interesting teardown
Thanks for sharing😀👍
function 1: umm clive I believe the intended use is to say "i have 5 of this device and wish to see TOTAL kwh use"
decently useful as multi-lamp fixtures are VERY common
function 2: most likely to test older non-PFC dirty inductive loads with all the spiky noise so it says "uH" to signify mode and shows some complicated motor coil measured data
function 3: likely the AEC was intended to replace APC with an added "price per KWH" multiplication and so as it is a 240v "British" or "European" model it might mean "Annual Euro Cost" but obviously unfinished
function 0: default APC mode with 1x device multiplier at boot
hope this perspective helps you use your smarter energy meter more in future vids as the idea of having multiple copies of a lamp is very common
"What the fuck is the button for!?!"
Best line of 2019 - Big Clive
That socket sure does look square inside the unit. Looks like it just clips into place as well. If it were mine, I'd try turning it sideways just to see it it'd work.
Just an FYI, Most industrial power meters use a "Transducer" which operates from about 90 Volts to 280 Volts to power the unit. The current input is most often 5A for the base transducer. Then current transformers are used for metering higher currents, and Potential transformers are used to measure higher voltages. These are used by utilities for example to meter 13.8KV power at for example 1,000 A for 13.8 MW reading. The transducer is programmed for the appropriate scale factors even though the base instrument operates on up to 5A and up to 280V. Most of these are designed to measure VA, Watts, Power Factor, Harmonics, Volts, and Watt Hours. Most are factory configured for 3 phase power and most can be configured for single phase. The actual transducers are not that expensive and can be found online. You can buy the Current Transformers if needed. For my diesel generator I have 150:5A current transformers and don't use potential transformers. Many of the transducers do not have terminals for current, but have current transformers for you to pass the 5A current wire.
For your videos you might want to pick one up with an LCD instead of LED display.
Sometimes they are listed as a multi function digital panelboard meter. You found the right ones when the spec sheet specifies the input current is 1/5Amps and 3 or single phase. This is industry standard for industrial power measurement. The instrument will have a power connection to power the device and a metering input for 0- typically 280 or 480 volt range. Display will switch between Watts/Volts/Amps/VA/PF for each phase and K and M scales of it such as KW or MW, V, KV, MV as they can be scaled to display properly when using transformers for metering. Google a Theta 30 Single or 3 Phase Transducer for an example meter with an LCD display. There are many to choose from.
That was a genuine explosion of surprise and wonderment. "Well I never..." would never have suited the moment. You found the 'Button'! Heh! Heh! I thought that the 'uH' symbols might mean 'Ultra High Frequency' and the 'AEC' one could be read as 'REC' perhaps. Had me baffled...once I'd stopped laughing like a drain too. The HOPI has a whole new meaning! Nice one.
That looks a bit like a serial port to me, where the USB to serial converter has been left out.