Help Choosing Dev Board for a Project

Projects General Guidance
1

Can anyone recommend me which Hardware I require to develop a small project to measure Energy saved.

I have a system which currently switches off AC and lighting circuits for rental homes when the client is out of the premisses using a simple keyfob Timer and Relay circuit. I would like to develop a monitoring sytstems to show me energy saved using loop sensors which show me current flow at the mains.---

I need to Measure 2 analogue sources of Current using a small loop sensor which give me a small voltage change. Then I need to record the values and compare them to values obtained prior to them removing the keyfob which genertates another signal to tell me to start counting time and multiplying that by time elapsed and the energy used thus giving me the amount of KWH saved between Client out and Client In.

I want to store the results to show me how much energy has been saved since the last reset say and display this on a LCD which could also show me lapsed energy saved until the key is returned on the keyfob.

I have looked at the Arduino Uno option with Makershield but there are other options which seems more attractive given that I will want a more permanent solution once developped.

  1. Ardweeny + Protoshield
  2. Prototino
  3. Boardwino

I Have yet to purchase any of these but would like guidance as to which combination I should use to develop then build my boards--- given that I might want to make about 20 of these to hand out to my clients. The Programming side looks fairly comprehensible as I was a C programmer.

2

voodoo, welcome to the forum! I'm not very familiar with measurement so I will suggest on hardware only:

  1. Ardweeny + protoshield (this shield? http://www.solarbotics.com/products/52125/)
    I just looked at the design. I don't like it too much! Could be fragile. The microcontroller pins are soldered to male pins. I bet after many insertions the pins could get damaged. On a second thought, with the protoshield I found, it's way less of a problem if you seat it on the protoshield and don't disturb it.

2)Protoduino, chip is not included? Making it not that good of a deal for the price. I doubt there is a lot of support or users.

3)Boarduino seems pretty good from a reputable seller LadyAda. There should be no problem with support and customer base but there is no shield for it so going from breadboard to having an LCD buttons shield is not possible.

Well, my suggestion after the discussion would be 1). You will benefit the fact it has a shield that you can plug in an LCD buttons shield on top for final installation. There's screw holes too. Important. On the other hand, for easy of use, you should get an arduino UNO to prototype with and only work with the ardweeny when you're ready to move from breadboard to a project box.

[Self promoting alert] Here is my version of LCD buttons shield. I consider it the best with all the software and support:)