A couple of weeks ago, I wanted to create a fun gift for a friend of mine. While browsing reddit for inspiration, I stumbled upon Mikal Hart’s reverse geocache puzzle. I ordered all the parts I needed, and waited a couple of days until they had all arrived. The basic idea is to create a box that is locked from the inside, and only opens when brought to the right location.

In Part 1, I explained the general idea for my smart meter and how I assembled the hardware as well as the microcontroller code. In this part, I will explain the little API that I built to record the ticks and to display it using either a website or another microcontroller with a small OLED display. I decided to build a RESTful API using the Flask microframework with Connexion. I chose Flask mainly because I have already worked with it at university in the past, but don’t worry, it is very easy to get started with it.

I recently read a lot about smart power meters and how they allow detailed analysis of a households power consumption as well as the habits of its inhabitants. Since our power meter is an old analog Ferraris Meter, I decided to build one myself, which would allow me to analyse our energy consumption without giving the info to my energy provider. This makes it even better than a commercial one!