My new house has an old generator with this transfer panel which doesn’t support any external control or monitoring interfaces. The only way to know if you’re on generator power is by looking at the display. There are a total of 5 light-up indicators which give you the current status of the utility power and the generator, if you can tell which ones are on or off.
If I were to put a webcam in the basement and point it at this panel, is there an image processor I could use with the IP Camera binding to detect the states of the 5 indicators?
I would use opencv to detect the LEDs states.
Something like Opencv – Detecting LED object status from Image – iTecNote
Searching for opencv there are other examples.
As an alternative to trying to interpret the web cam image, here’s what I did. Note, however, it requires that you have a Z-Wave network.
I used a Z-Wave energy meter (I think it was an Aeotec model) to monitor the feed from the generator. When I see anything but nominal power on that feed, I know the generator is running. The added benefit is that I also can monitor the energy usage when running on generator.
Thanks, I have lots of other zwave devices so that’s a great option as well!
