Hmm, my plan for powering an Arduino from the CurrentCost energy monitor has hit a little snag – the idea was to use the 3.8v unregulated supply on pin 1 from the CurrentCost. I could then run either a Xino at 3.3v or boost it up to 5v.
However, as soon as I put any load on that supply, the energy readings on the CC128 display flatline and there’s nothing in the data transmission either. I wonder if I’m simply drawing more current than the display unit has “spare”, which means that it doesn’t have enough left itself to power its own RF module and thus gets no sensor data? Or, it does have enough to power the RF, but not enough to get a signal from the sensor – amounts to the same thing really.
Guess I need to go look up how much juice an Arduino Uno consumes …
Can’t remember where I saw it but I remember reading that the CC power supply was not very robust.
The Netsmart bridge does it the other way round. The Bridge gets a nominal 5 volt supply and feeds 3v to the EnviR.
The cable connecting them has only 3 wires (to pins 1,7,8 on the RJ45). Looks like the power is on pins 7,8. Not sure of polarity – I think 7 is positive.
That’s the way I ended up going, having given up on the pathetic CurrentCost support forum who sat on my question for three weeks before deigning to publish it. I went back to say I’d sorted the problem, but that response is awaiting moderation now, so you’ll probably see it some time in June! It almost looks like they don’t give a shit about their customers …