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Thread: CurrentCost USB connection - Error code 10 (not working)

  1. #1
    Automated Home Sr Member jaffab's Avatar
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    Default CurrentCost USB connection - Error code 10 (not working)

    Hello All,

    Has anybody on here managed to get the Currentcost meter to talk to their PC/server. I love the device, but when I try to connect it to my home PC or server, the USB-to-serial connection software (using the prolific (USB-Serial) chipset and dreiver) always produces a Windows hardware error, with a status code of 10.

    Looking over the internet, it seems there are an awful lot of people with the same situation.

    I wonder if anybody else had this problem, and if so, how they overcome it.

    The same device has been plugged into 3 different machines (2 running XP, 1 running Windows Server 2003), and all 3 produce the same Status code 10 error.

    Thanks

    Jaffa

  2. #2
    Automated Home Legend TimH's Avatar
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    It seems there's a problem with the standard driver for the unit
    Others on the mailing list have had success using a driver downloaded from here:
    http://www.cooldrives.com/wividrforprc.html


    HTH,

    Tim.

  3. #3
    Automated Home Jr Member KirasHome's Avatar
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    Thumbs up

    Just to back up Tim's post. I was having exactly this problem. Tried it on two W2003 server machines and an XP machine. Could NOT get the drivers to install. Tried a lot of fiddling and a bit of hacking. No joy.

    Downloaded the drivers from cooldrives and it work perfectly, first time. Interestingly these drivers seem to be older then the ones on the Prolific website. To be honest, given the number of people who seem to be having problems, I'm surprised Prolific don't have these drivers on their website as an alternative.

    Give them a go - Jamie.

  4. #4
    Automated Home Sr Member jaffab's Avatar
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    Tim, Thanks for the info. Worked like a charm. Now, just have to get my software working to crunch the data. Data feeds every 3 seconds creates an awful lot of data (28,800 sql records a day, or 846,000 a month - will need to build up a summary picture for my analysis (yes, I am aware there are packages to do this, but I want this to appear on the home automation device I am setting up in my liunge).

    On a seperate but sort of linked subject, the reading that somes in every 3 seconds that shows the watts, is the watts the current wattage (usage) at that point in time, or since the last 3 second burst?

    I.e, if it sends 300 watts (I wish, more like 700 in my house), is that 300 currently being used, or 300 watts in total in the last 3 seconds?

  5. #5
    Automated Home Sr Member jaffab's Avatar
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    Cracked it. Thought about using the history information sent by the device (as most others have done), but this does not give me the breakdown that I wanted. So in the end, calculating the try KWh figure from each real-time Watt flow using the calulation

    Kwh = (watts x ( secs / 3600) ) / 1000

    where secs is the number of secs since the last real time data feed. then my app saves the totals (which are broken down by everning, day and night) per hour, day, week, month, quarter and year.

    Perfect.

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