Apparatus and method for determining shaft speed of a motor

The present invention relates to an electrical measuring and testing device and method and more particularly to a device and method for precisely and remotely determining the speed of a single-phase or polyphase induction motor. Briefly stated the motor speed monitor includes a method of determining a shaft speed of a motor by using an electrical signature of the motor. The method includes: (a) sensing an electrical current supplied to the motor to generate a current sensor output signal for at least one electrical phase of the motor; (b) demodulating the current sensor output signal for a predetermined time interval to obtain an instantaneous amplitude of the electrical current signal; (c) generating a frequency spectrum of the instantaneous current amplitude; (d) finding at least one spectral peak of the instantaneous current amplitude frequency spectrum within a predetermined shaft frequency sideband range; (e) estimating a shaft frequency from the at least one spectral peak and converting the shaft frequency to shaft speed.