I thought folks here might enjoy this. I built this analog power meter inspired by vintage weather stations. It’s powered by a raspberry pi pulling data from Sense to drive the volt meters. I spent a ridiculous amount of time building it but I’m thrilled with the result. It sits on our mantle and we watch the needles move over the course of the day.
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Wow… talented. 
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So cool @chucksspencer, I shared this with the team here and everyone loves it so far. There’s a lot of admiration of your craftsmanship.
Did you make everything here by hand, or was this a conversion from something off the shelf?
Also, folks here would love to see internal shots of this (if you have any!)
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Wow high praise - thanks! The voltage meters are cheapo off the shelf ones. I added 3d printed bezels for the front of them and made liberal use of spray paint and filler to try to get them to look like brass. I also printed and cut out custom labels for the interior of the meters.
The rasberry pi hooks up to the meters with little voltage steppers in between (the meters are 0-15v and the pi’s GPIOs put out 3.3v)
The box itself is just a plywood box with shoe molding and fancy looking trim glued to it. Enough fancy trim and varnish makes anything look ostentatious.
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Fantastic!
Meters read: Solar output, Consumption, Daily Power Produced
I’ll bet you could sell these on Etsy for the Sense community & more
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Thanks! I dunno about selling - it’s not exactly the most cost effective thing to build mostly because of the time required - but I’ve considered doing a blog post about how to build it if enough people were interested. I’ve got the code and some of the 2D/3D assets up on Github.
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That is very impressive. How much power does it use?
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Hehe good question! The only thing drawing power is the raspberry pi. From what I’ve read they pull between about 3 and 6 watts depending on how much work they’re doing. This one isn’t really doing much work so I’d guess it’s at the low end of that range. Not enough for Sense to pick it out of the noise.
I would still consider selling it. Price it where it is worthwhile for you to make them and only build after you get a buyer. People will spend money if it’s high quality and fills a niche no one else can.
The source code would be great if you’re willing to share. I have some things I want to try and examples are useful.
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Very cool project, exactly the type of thing I want to do with the Sense system. I’m new here so I’m sure I’ll find this as I look around more but how are you importing the data from Sense into the Raspberry Pi? I initially assumed the data was proprietary and stuck in their app but exporting the information for projects like this is what I was hoping to be able to do.
Have you decided to share the project info for other DIY’ers? If so, where have you posted it?
Thanks for sharing your project, now I’m more excited about what I can do with Sense!
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Hi @shanechristopherson! So I whipped up some code based on this Unofficial Sense API project. It’s unofficial but it works very nicely. We’re all hopeful that the Sense folks will hear our pleas for an official API someday 
. Here’s the link to my project. I use a combination of data from Sense and from the monitor system built into my solar system (Solar Edge). Feel free to reach out with questions!
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