After being disappointed with the local energy grid, Debasish Dutta fitted a solar-powered LED lighting solution for his home and has used the Arduino development platform to monitor the system. He measures the voltage of the battery using a simple voltage-divider with an analogue input, and the current is measured with the help of an ACS712 hall-effect current sensor. With this setup the full power, voltage, current and consumption statistics can be calculated with the Arduino, and displayed using a typical LCD as shown in th following video:
And with the use of an Ethernet-enabled Arduino, Debasish can monitor the data remotely from another connected device. Doing so is quite simple and can be very useful, so visit his Instructable page to learn more. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
If you're using an LCD with your Arduino-based projects - instead of building your own LCD module onto a breadboard, save time and move forward with the Freetronics LCD & Keypad shield which contains a bright 16x2 character LCD and five buttons that can be read from only one analog input pin: