Aether

AETHER is an ESP32-based smart energy and home-safety system designed to monitor electrical loads, improve energy efficiency, and detect household hazards. It uses an ESP32 mesh architecture, with gateway and room-level nodes that can control sockets and monitor sensors.

Its most distinctive feature is load-signature detection: instead of simply measuring how much power an appliance consumes, AETHER analyzes the shape of its AC current waveform to determine the type of load connected to a socket. For example, a filament bulb produces a near-sinusoidal waveform, while a conventional laptop charger produces sharp current spikes.

Main components

• ESP32 nodes — control sockets and collect sensor data.
• ACS712 current sensors — capture the AC current waveform.
• Waveform processing — captures multiple mains cycles and extracts features such as crest factor, form factor, conduction percentage and THD.
• Load classification — uses waveform shape rather than raw amplitude, making the system less dependent on the sensor's imperfect power measurement.
• Safety monitoring — the broader AETHER architecture includes gas and fire detection and socket control.
• PIR occupancy detection — helps distinguish situations such as an appliance drawing power while nobody is present.
• Dashboard — a React/TypeScript/Vite PWA provides the software interface for monitoring the system.