Pro/Forums - View Single Post - Seasonic Power Angel: Could it be Hacked ?

ToasterIQ2000 · 01-27-2006, 02:25 PM

I recently bought a Seasonic Power Angel, a nifty little device to measure power consumption.

I openened it up and I see that there are two circuit boards in it: one houses the AC in / out plugs; the other seems to be dedicated to the LCD display and buttons.

There are six wires connecting the two boards. From my familiarity with electronics I could resolder the wires to separate the butttons and LCD from the larger board and mount that half in a sigle drive bay faceplate -- mostly an informative and amusing bling-bling mod for a pc.

I'm curious though: what exactly is happening on those six wires? Do the buttons on the LCD panel signal the power monitoring board at all, telling it what to report? What sort of signal(s?) does the main board send to the display panel? 0-5 volt or 4-20ma process signals? RS485 protocol? Something uniqe designed into the power angel?

Those questions are over my head: all I can do is speculate. But I am curious if anyone on the SPCR forums would look at this and know... It occurs to me that somene far more familiar with the tech might investigate and come up with a way to make the meter report Amps, Volts, Power Factor, or Watts over a serial or USB port in the same manner that better uninterruptable power supplies can report things. Or extract info off those six wires and turn some part it into something that can be read via a fan tachometer header...

It is beyond my keen. Just tickles my imagination. I think it would be neat...

01-27-2006, 02:25 PM	#1
ToasterIQ2000 Cooling Neophyte Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Gorky Island, WA USA Posts: 22	Seasonic Power Angel: Could it be Hacked ? I recently bought a Seasonic Power Angel, a nifty little device to measure power consumption. I openened it up and I see that there are two circuit boards in it: one houses the AC in / out plugs; the other seems to be dedicated to the LCD display and buttons. There are six wires connecting the two boards. From my familiarity with electronics I could resolder the wires to separate the butttons and LCD from the larger board and mount that half in a sigle drive bay faceplate -- mostly an informative and amusing bling-bling mod for a pc. I'm curious though: what exactly is happening on those six wires? Do the buttons on the LCD panel signal the power monitoring board at all, telling it what to report? What sort of signal(s?) does the main board send to the display panel? 0-5 volt or 4-20ma process signals? RS485 protocol? Something uniqe designed into the power angel? Those questions are over my head: all I can do is speculate. But I am curious if anyone on the SPCR forums would look at this and know... It occurs to me that somene far more familiar with the tech might investigate and come up with a way to make the meter report Amps, Volts, Power Factor, or Watts over a serial or USB port in the same manner that better uninterruptable power supplies can report things. Or extract info off those six wires and turn some part it into something that can be read via a fan tachometer header... It is beyond my keen. Just tickles my imagination. I think it would be neat...