I am looking for a sensor that I can plug into a standard 110vac home power that can tell me if any wattage is being used at that location. so if I plug a lamp into it, it can see the power draw and give me information.
it does not have to be very granular, I am not interested in how much wattage is in use, I just want to know if it is in use or not.
does anybody know of an inline sensor that I can use that could accomplish this task?
Kill-a-watt meter,
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=kill+a+watt+meter
Can see how much power your lamp, wallwart, printer are using when idle/off.
I have seen that before but I am not sure that will do it. I need to use it as a sensor to update other things.
I used a lamp as something simple that would work for the same use case but ultimately I am using it for my washing machine. my washing machine turns off at the end of its cycle, I am trying to add a sensor to the power line so that i can trigger an event to le me know that the washing machine is done. the Kill-a-watt meter does not look like it is designed to work like that,
Use an AC line current transformer as a non-invasive sensor. See a simple interface for Arduino here.