Portable power quality analyzer with networking capabilities
View Patent ↗An intelligent electronic device (IED) for monitoring power quality of electrical services and receiving/transmitting information using a wireless and wired communication protocol is disclosed. The IED may be configured as a terminal or server of a Wi-Fi network, a cellular network, Intranet, LAN, WAN, or the Internet. In one application, these techniques are implemented in IEDs such as portable power quality analyzers.
1. A portable power quality analyzer comprising:
a portable carrying case enclosure having an openable cover for enabling a user to access components within the portable carrying case enclosure when the cover is open, the portable carrying case enclosure including at least one voltage connection and at least one current connection accessible at an outer surface of the portable carrying case enclosure configured for temporary connection to at least one phase line of electrical services, the portable carrying case enclosure further including a handle attached to the outer surface configured for transportability of the portable carrying case enclosure from one monitoring site to another;
an input module disposed within the portable carrying case enclosure and coupled to the at least one voltage connection and the at least one current connection, the input module configured for monitoring waveforms of voltages and currents of the at least one phase line of the electrical services;
a processing module disposed within the portable carrying case enclosure and configured for processing the waveforms and determining power quality events;
a user interface unit disposed within the portable carrying case enclosure and accessible by the user only when the cover is open, the user interface unit including a display module configured to display voltage and current waveforms monitored by the input module and to display power quality events determined by the processing module;
a first communication module disposed within the portable carrying case enclosure for communicating over a first network, the communication module configured for wirelessly transmitting information from the portable power quality analyzer using at least one first wireless communication protocol and wirelessly receiving information into the portable power quality analyzer using the at least one first wireless communication protocol; and
a memory including code of a program to configure the portable power quality analyzer to operate as a server or a client of a second network,
wherein the first communication module is configured to receive wireless signal strength data from at least one other portable power quality analyzer and the processing module is configured to execute the code to operate as a server if a wireless signal strength of the portable power quality analyzer is greater than a wireless signal strength of the at least one other portable power quality analyzer.
2. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 1 , wherein the at least one first wireless communication protocol is a Wi-Fi communication protocol.
3. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 1 , wherein the at least one first wireless communication protocol is a SMS communication protocol.
4. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 1 , wherein the user interface unit is a touch screen graphical display.
5. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 1 , wherein the first network is the Internet and the second network is a mesh network.
6. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 5 , wherein the second network operates in accordance with IEEE 802.15.4.
7. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 1 , wherein said IED is compliant with at least one of TCP/IP and 10/100Base-T Ethernet, Modbus/TCP, Modbus, DNP 3.0, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTML), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and/or Extensive Markup Language (XML) Protocol.
8. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 1 , wherein the first network is at least one of a Wi-Fi network, a cellular network, an Intranet, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), and/or the Internet.
9. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 1 , wherein the first communication module is configured to transmit and receive information over the first network via e-mail messages.
10. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 1 , wherein the processing module is configured to use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to assign an Internet address to the portable power quality analyzer.
11. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 1 , wherein the second network is an ad hoc network.
12. The portable power quality analyzer of claim 10 , wherein the ad hoc network is self-configuring.