This week we received a INA210 from Texas Instruments. Officially it’s a “Voltage Output, High/Low-Side Measurement, Bi-Directional Zero-Drift Series Current Shunt Monitor”. It allows us to monitor the amps flowing through the shunt, and to display the “right now” amp consumption (or production), volts, watts, and watt hours (with some simple arduino programming).
Combine this with one of our calibrated shunts (100a, 500a, and 1000a), and you have a powerful method of monitoring the power produced by a solar panel, consumed by an inverter or other dc load. Build your own watt or watt hour meter.
We will be working with this chip in a number of future projects.