The Beginnings

I've had an Arduino for the best part of a year now.  I originally bought the Uno for a project I had in mind, but one thing lead to another, and it got put on the back shelf.

Then in February 2012 I moved into a new house, needing to buy a new central heating thermostat, and being somewhat of a geek (the wife calls me a nerd) I decided to invest in a WiFi enabled Heatmiser thermostat with the idea of tracking my heating usage.  For the past 7 months or so, I have been logging my energy usage using Google Charts and it has been a rather significant eye opener into how much gas I use along with the temperature fluctuations in my house.

This was fine for a few months, but I was lacking electricity monitoring and temperature else where - such as outside.

I could have bought a standalone energy monitor, but where is the fun in that?  I decided to investigate using the LED indicator on my meter which flashes once per Watt Hour used - ie 1,000 flashes per KWh.  This took me into my first "real" Arduino project.  More to follow.