Development of a WiFi Smart Socket and Mobile Application for Energy Consumption Monitoring

Abstract

In recent years, with the advancement of Internet-of-Things (IOT), there has been research into the development of smart sockets that are able to monitor the energy consumption of appliances. Some smart sockets can only monitor energy consumption while others include a controller which is able to make decisions to switch on/off the connected appliance without user interaction. This paper presents a first prototype of a smart socket based on an advanced 32-bit ESP32 Microcontroller Unit (MCU) which features an in-built Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connection. The MCU was programmed and interfaced with devices to enable voltage, current, power and power factor measurement which are transmitted to a cloudbased server. A mobile application was also developed using the Blynk platform which enables display of the connected appliance energy consumption data. The application also enables the user to remotely switch on/off the appliance through the MCU. It is hoped that this design will be a starting point towards embedding further improved features on the smart socket which will enhance efforts to improve energy efficiency of households.