For everyone who loves this kinda stuff,
a complete house connected to the interweb:
http://www.bwired.nl/

Here’s a cheap clamp sensor you could use along with a micro to monitor current without messing with your meter. If you put your project next to the panel in your house you could monitor the individual circuits also.

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/noninvasive-ac-current-sensor-100a-max-p-547.html?cPath=61_70

Actually, after looking at the API, it’s not as straightforward as it is with wattzon.com (obtain key then send data)

Google’s API requires activating the device and POSTing back the API key. So a device with a webserver built in is necessary. Lame.

http://code.google.com/apis/powermeter/docs/powermeter_device_activation.html

moridin, it doesn’t look as complicated as you think. I just “activated” a non-existant device by going to a specially crafted url like this:
https://www.google.com/powermeter/device/activate?mfg=manfinc&model=s101&did=11122&cvars=1&dvars=2
After signing into my google account, I got all of the necessary key codes I would need to have my custom device send data to google, including an AuthSub security token my device would send as an HTTP header. As long as the device sends data using the right keys, the data is viewable by me. So any curl cron job could send data.
Disclaimer: I could be wicked wrong, so YMMV.

now we one step closer to free google toillet (google it) with will recomment you places to go eat, based on data collected…

This is scary. Soon our “progressive” government will have the ability to monitor your power usage and tax you more the more you use. Redistribution of everything Comrades!

Drone, are you kidding? The government already knows what you use. Look at your utility bill. There is a tax already based on what you use. This technology is not necessary for them to know how much you use.

Google would be the very last I’d get involved with my powermeter.
And I question hackaday’s willingness to push this crap.

Next: Report a jew api, report all jews in your area for a google maps of jews.

Brave new world.

google only monitors electricity – what about gas/oil/etc?

google’s protocol requires the use of SSL. measuring electricity and gas use here in the uk is relativly trivial, with electricity meters flashing an led 800 times per KWHr, and gas meters having a white dial with a red pointer gong round in proportion to yer gas use.

simple, you think – a couple of optical sensors, a few calculations, a simple web page – Arduino with an ethernet shield and a bunch of code and job done… except…

you’re going to need a lot more horsepower to drive the encryption than everything else put together. you could festoon your house with temperature sensors, automatic window openers, humidity sensors, and all the wonderful stuff hackaday is famous for, and *still* drive it with an arduino-class microcontroller, if it weren’t for the SSL requirement.

I’m not going to use a pc just to add encryption (my nslug and bifferboard are gradually being nicked by my kids), i want to include all my energy usage, not just that which is convenient to googlescam, and can think of simpler and better ways of doing this without their “help”.

Is this really the best they can do?

Energy is money, and world’s most needed good second only to information.

Thinking about the reasons why Google should invest significant money monitoring power usage (in a *secure* way), I see a future where you can park your electric car in front of my house, and recharge it from my garden’s plug.

Google keeps the bills through its huge servers, and refunds me for the energy you used transferring money from your Google account to mine (earning a small sum in the process).

Too visionary?

F google, and anything that has to do with them.

@Aaron, why not? you can’t tell if it’s correct or not. i suppose you could stick a clamp on ammeter to the line in and log that to compare, but the point is there’s more ways for a digital embedded system to mess with the numbers than a plain rotary dial system.
nobody would be able to tell because nobody is actually paranoid enough to monitor the monitor. (i’m not either lol, i just like complaining)

I’m working on an advanced power monitoring system, perhaps I could integrate google power meter support in a few months. Currently we are logging power data to a local database and dislaying it via amcharts.

I have been working on home automation items for awhile and have bare bones internet functions. Trouble is the specs read like it has to be a standalone device that can do SSL/TLS which is rather a heavy thing to do. It pretty much (please let me know if I am wrong) means you have to do it on something like ARM, at least without expensive external hardware. (There is one SSL socket chip out there I found).

A more sane scheme for a low cost device would be to have a home controller, say an Atom based computer running Linux, and everything else just be data collection.

They want about 250 dollars as I recall for a commercial device. You could easily have an atom system for 120 working, plus say 20 dollars a sensor tops…

But I don’t think the Google API/Specs let it be done this way.

To all moaning about ssl, yes I agree.
However, I solved it by writing the Google API in php on my hosted webserver, then my homemade meter only has to do a simple HTTP GET to my webserver and the PHP contacts google with SSL.
No extra server at my house, no ssl overhead on my meter.
As for reading digits, use an old Optical mouse sensor to grab a tiny image of the last two digits, send them over to your webserver where an open OCR library converts it to a number, and again, uploads to google.
Simples.

I believe most of those systems provide their coding, I know there are multiple programs out there now created by pretty much anyone. I would imagine a powerMeter hack would be pretty easy