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About rbAmp

Open AC energy metering, made by makers. rbAmp builds I²C-bus energy monitoring modules for engineers, makers, and system integrators who want honest specs, long-term support, and code they can read end-to-end.

Why we built rbAmp

The DIY energy monitoring world has been stuck on the same pattern for a decade: a UART meter (PZEM-004T, JSY-MK, HLW8012) wired to an ESP32, one device per UART, Wh accounting drifting 0.5–2% per month because every read of the energy register resets it. Pick more than one meter and your two ESP32 UARTs are gone. Pick a tariff with hourly zones and you fight read-reset drift forever.

We built rbAmp because we hit this wall ourselves while working on rbDimmer and RBgrid. The fix is structural:

  • I²C bus, not UART — up to 16 modules on two ESP32 pins, no contention, no SoftwareSerial fragility
  • Atomic period latch — a single command freezes the time-averaged power; the master multiplies by its own clock; Wh accounting never drifts at the read-reset boundary
  • Master-side time base — the chip exposes a time-independent statistic, the master owns the wall clock; all modules in the system share that clock; per-module crystal drift cancels out
  • Honest tier separation — BASIC for consumption-only homes, STANDARD for solar / battery / signed P, PRO for lab-grade harmonic analysis. Same protocol; same library; you pick the analog front-end you actually need

That is the technical story. The business story is simpler: there was no I²C-based AC energy module in the ESPHome / Arduino / Home Assistant ecosystems. We filled the gap.

What we believe

  • Open hardware compatibility. Our hardware is closed; our firmware is open and re-flashable; our libraries are open source. ESPHome, Arduino, ESP-IDF, MicroPython, Tasmota — pick the stack you want.
  • User owns their data. Cloud subscriptions are optional and always paired with a self-host path (RBgrid runs on your own Raspberry Pi, ESPHome stays in your Home Assistant). We will never lock a feature you paid for behind a forced subscription renewal.
  • Honest specs and disclaimers. Tier accuracy bands are realistic, not marketing. If a feature is BASIC-only we say so. If a register is SKU-specific we say so. The API Reference is the spec, not a summary.
  • Long-term support over flashy launches. The protocol on shipped firmware v1.0 will stay backwards-compatible. Forward features (REG_TOPOLOGY, FW_VERSION gating) are documented in the library so old client code keeps working as new modules ship.

What we do not do

A few things we are explicit about, so you do not waste your time:

  • We do not sell certified billing meters. No MID certification on the roadmap. If you need utility-billing-grade metering for tenant invoicing, look at certified products from Iskraemeco, Itron, or similar.
  • We do not run an installer business. We ship hardware to integrators, makers, and small B2B. Mass residential / commercial installer channels are not our distribution.
  • We do not track Cloud users without consent. rbAmp Cloud is opt-in. Self-hosted RBgrid, ESPHome, and Home Assistant integrations stay on your network. Telemetry on the modules themselves is zero — they speak when you read.

rbAmp is part of a bigger family

rbAmp sits next to two sister brands. Each focuses on one part of the AC-control / monitoring stack:

  • rbDimmer — phase-angle dimmer modules and intelligent controllers (TRIAC-based, 4 A to 40 A). The brand that started it.
  • rbAmp (this site) — I²C-bus energy monitoring (Basic, Standard, PRO, Wireless, LoRaWAN). Measures what rbDimmer controls.
  • RBgrid — self-hosted energy management software for the modules above. Tariff zones, AI insights, time-series storage on your own Raspberry Pi.

All three are RocketController brands and share the same parent legal entity (ZHUHAI ROBOTDYN TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD).

The team

A small distributed team of firmware engineers, hardware designers, and integration writers. Some of us came from industrial automation, some from open-hardware Maker projects, some from utility software. We work asynchronously across timezones and ship on a steady cadence (not the "launch silence years" cadence that kills DIY hardware projects).

The technical leads are on GitHub — check the commit history of rbamp-arduino, rbDimmer firmware, and the open libraries.

Contact

Questions about the products? Press inquiries? B2B? Partnership ideas?

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