Wondering if anyone knows of a device that exists to output LED light according to if you’re feeding power into the grid or consuming?
Idea is if I can get an output from Iotawatt/influxdb/grafana or similar to a ‘something’ that shows red for consuming, green for feeding power that I can put in the middle of the house to remind the wife to conserve power, or run things like washers while we’re getting solar power, that would be ideal.
Im fairly handy, so DIY option is there
There are a few options here based on your expertise and setup. You could could simply stand up a small dashboard that has the info you need with a tool like EMonCMS, etc. Or, you could pull this data dynamically from EMonCMS or the IoTaWatt via an APA and leverage something like an ESP8266 or ESP32 with a small OLED or LCD screen showing the details you want. Coding a Arrow up/down/sideways, etc may be helpful. I have created something for my own viewing which I can place around the home or in a box if I wanted to make it nicer.
Here is a sample, sorry for the image quality as the LCDs do not capture well.
]I have not had the time, but I will be adding my Battery storage as a screen as well. I have a third screen (these all rotate every 3 seconds) which has my voltage, grid cost (based on KwH costs), and solar radiation value.
Hopefully it gives you some ideas. Happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thanks mate,
I was looking at more of a graphical UI, not text based. It needs the wifes tick of approval, so something easy to read with colours will only be tolerated 
I was leaning towards using an old phone with grafana stat dial on it possibly, or using a neopixel ring which could show colours (NeoPixel Ring - 24 x 5050 RGB LED with Integrated Drivers : ID 1586 : $16.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits). Just dont know how to fill the gaps inbetween to drive it. Have access to pi and arduino if needed.
Any ideas?
I have seen these LED rings in a bar format as well which might work better in this situation. Maybe one for each thing you want to show (if more). There are also these LED Bar modules which you can get in a single color or multi color (Bi-Color (Red/Green) 12-LED Bargraph - Pack of 2 : ID 1719 : $3.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits) You could do something with a small OLED screen 1.5" mounted to a ESP device (https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Display-Bluetooth-Internet-Development/dp/B07DKD79Y9) which you can get from other places cheaper. If you wanted to go very simple, you could just have three multi-color LEDs which would show a given color for importing/exporting/solar. Do not use the dryer unless all are green, etc. Good idea overall, but it would need to really be based on your way to display the details best.
Let us know the direction you go.
