So I wanted to get myself a Kill-a-watt. Being who I am, I wanted information regarding its accuracy, especially at low power draws. I found a comparison with a industry grade equipment (Fluke is about the best out there in handheld electrical meters). It’s not encouraging, so I thought about a more proper meter, but it’s not easy to find an actual power meter that is accurate at low loads, isn’t a hassle to install and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

What do you use? Am I overthinking it?

Edit: thanks everyone for chiming in! To clarify a few things:

  • I wasn’t (at least initially) looking for a permanent installation on my home server, but rather a good instrument to measure things around the house once I’m done fiddling with the server.
  • the comparison with Fluke was just to illustrate what kind of error we can expect from a Kill-a-watt. It would be nice to have a Fluke power meter, but there’s nothing I do at home would even come close to justify it. The kill-a-watt is such an old design and the company behind it seems to focus on cheap trinkets. I was just hoping to find something a bit better than what P3 offers. Wouldn’t mind paying up to $75 for the same features and better accuracy.
  • I looked for a multimeter that measured power somehow as I need a better one that can measure capacitance too anyway. Didn’t find it.
  • zout@fedia.io
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    8 months ago

    It will be technically a bit more challenging, but I don’t think you need to use the lantern power monitor software with the device. The device seems to be built around two MCP3008 IC’s, which are basic 8 channel analog to digital converters. The values from these can be read and processed (like, sent to home assistant) using a python script on the raspberry. This is the kind of minimal programming effort someone with no experience could do using chatgpt.