Portable Power Monitor

This instructables show how to squeeze a power monitor into a tiny transparent mint box.

1. Jintan Nude Capsule Sugar Free Mint
2. Digispark Dev board
3. INA219 Current Sensor Breakout board
4. 0.96" SSD1306 128x64 OLED breakout board

The mint box and the OLED have different colors, if they can match color should have better result.

This project reuse my previous project Digispark Power Monitor design. It can continous monitor the power usage of a dev device. It can help you develop a portable gadget with expected battery life.

My previous power monitor built on a breadboard, it is not portable enough. So I want to squeeze it in a transparent mint box to save the space and more protection in normal use.

We need to cleanup the plastic in the middle of the mint box to free up the space. I just bought an ultrasonic knife, so I try to use this to patch the mint box. Actually use pliers and mini grinder also can do the job.

As show in above video, the breakout boards also need some minor patch to fit in the mint box.

Please use thin wires soldering the connection. And also remember use high temperature masking tape to avoid short circuit between the boards.

Here are the connection summary:

Arduino IDE

Download and install Arduino IDE latest version if not yet:

https://www.arduino.cc/en/software

ATTinyCore

Follow installation step to add ATTinyCore support if not yet:

https://github.com/SpenceKonde/ATTinyCore/blob/v2.0.0-devThis-is-the-head-submit-PRs-against-this/Installation.md

Please download the source code at GitHub:

https://github.com/moononournation/ATtinyPowerMeter.git

In Arduino IDE:

1. Open ATtinyPowerMeter.ino
2. Select Tools menu -> Board -> ATTinyCore -> ATtiny85 (Micronucleus / DigiSpark)
3. Press Upload button for compile and upload
4. Wait compile finish and show the "Please plug in the device" message
5. Plug in the Digispark dev board to upload the program

Now you can bring along this decent portable gadget with you!