Wireless indoor lamp status monitor

A device capable of data logging on/off status of all lamps in a house or office room for the purpose of monitoring energy consumption is described. It is based on 3 components which are a CMOS digital camera, a card type computer board and a WiFi module. An image of the room is taken once every minute and transformed to a two level black and white version from which a simple lamp detection is operated. Since the camera location is fixed, an initialization step can be implemented to reduce the candidate regions and avoid confusion due to reflection or window light. Together with the known lamp type, the energy consumption of each lamp as well as their total sum can be plot almost near real time through internet. Compared to other techniques, this approach is very simple and does not require in line installation and the estimation error can be within 10%.