Allow cloudless local instance

[hackish]

I would like to have the unit configurable so it sends the raw measurements to a local server. Not all sites have internet access, and it would be ideal to have it able to send data to a local device, either to cache for a later upload or for locally collecting it – ie a raspberry pi or something similar would be nice – integration into openhab or homeassistant would then be doable.

I suggest allowing the destination URL to be configurable to something like api.emoriaenergy.local instead of api.emporiaenergy.com. I’m sure someone here can write a server to collect the data, but it would be nice to have factory supported to help in this area.

[Marty @Emporia]

@hackish You’ve probably seen in these forums that we have APIs on our roadmap in the coming months to help our customers integrate the Vue into their smart home ecosystems. We understand that some people may want to log and analyze their data locally; however, our software, hardware, and business is developed around collection and analytics of energy data in the cloud. Therefore, we currently don’t have any plans to support local logging or data collection.

[hackish]

I can understand that your business is designed around the cloud, but there are a number of markets, such as remote solar arrays where it could be used, but not everyone has reliable or inexpensive internet. In addition, the history of security surrounding cloud-connected IOT devices hasn’t exactly been stellar. The ability to host a device like this locally enables integrators to purchase and install it in environments where internet is not guaranteed.

Unless you’ve got something like wink planned where suddenly all subscribers will be obligated to pay a monthly fee or have their devices turn into bricks, I see this as a win/win situation. There is an increased market with no ongoing costs associated with every device you’ve sold.

[Pragmatist]

I agree 100%. Being dependant on someone else’s cloud service is a BIG disincentive to purchasing these products.

Not only does it limit creativity in presenting the data but it makes potential customers suspicious that they will get locked into a product that will eventually have a monthly fee associated with it. That’s what Google did with their “free” photo storage.

Perhaps of even more concern is that the server will eventually disappear leaving us with a bunch of now-useless hardware. That just happened to me with ConnectSense monitoring devices that, as of December 31st this year will no longer have a cloud server to report into. 😟

[jj613]

I strongly support this idea.  I appreciate the cloud model of your business, and I think it makes sense.   But there is a strong case to be made for SOME local data collection.     Mine is the following:  We get a lot of trees falling on our lines.   These take out power *and* internet.  The Vue is great for managing power draw on my little generator.  I can see what’s going on, how near I am to generator capacity, what devices are drawing power and when …. it’s great.

But what if I have power, and I have local network and wifi in my house, but I don’t have internet service?

There should be a “local mode” where the vue app can connect DIRECTLY to the Vue, over my home network, without the cloud, and do some basic things.  I don’t need full-blown app functionality!   Just the basics to get me through a storm.   This would be SO SO valuable.   Your little device would take my $800 generator and give it manageability features of a $30,000 generator, just like that.  And it would help me when I need power management the most, when I really really NEED it.

[oziee]

If I had known that your purpose for this unit is to collect and sell my information I would not have bought this!! You are not even willing to accept that some users have the means and would rather store data locally and consume that data in their own specific way. Your way of displaying data fails to accurately consider alternative tariff settings for seperate inputs, for solar generation. Being able to LOCALLY consume data without relying on cloud based storage is something I would rather see as an option. You have recently changed your data retention settings as it is, so moving forward this might get even worse and we loose even more data, data that I could store myself in the way I want

[waterboyz]

Oziee said:  “If I had known that your purpose for this unit is to collect and sell my information …”

Did I miss reading about that in the fine print or Terms of Service?  Maybe I need clarification from Emporia.

I agree, once we get hooked will they continue to offer less?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by waterboyz.

[jpenyc]

Go to check how the emporia and the latest bill line up. Get notice servers are down till 1PM EST, thats another hour and a half give or take. Got here looking to find out if there was any option to collect local data. See there is not, and not plans to give any. Then, that the data is being sold. I should have read the eula. I just bought two and have them integrated into my HomeAssistant with no problem. The no Net, no Data is No Fly.
Hopefully I can still return them.

[jj613]

@jpenyc what have you seen about data being sold?   The EULA permits Emporia to use your data for marketing products to you, and aggregated data for any purposes.   That’s pretty much how all companies work today, and all the more so when ongoing service is free such as Emporia’s is.   I’d be interested to know what you saw or read about Emporia selling your data?  Is there something new that should alarm me?

[Paul]

I gave up on the Emporia Vue a year ago as with my less than stellar internet connection the data I was getting was horribly unreliable causing more frustration than anything else.

I agree that a local hosting option would make this product more useful. I have poor internet (rural area) and after struggling for months to try and make this work I was forced to give up. I would frequently see circuits report the EXACT same reading for minutes or even hours at a time because my data was not making it to the cloud so the server simply regurgitated the last data it received until it got new data. Bad data is worse than no data! The connection is apparently UDP so the device sends a packet to the cloud and has no idea if it made it or not and has no capability of resending as it has no idea that a packet (or 50) didn’t make it to the cloud.

It took me too long to figure out what the problem was so I can’t return the system and with the unreliability of the data I can’t be bothered to fart around with it and fudge the numbers to get something marginally useful. The devices are already bricks as far as I’m concerned.  There is NO reason that your cloud software could not be run locally other than you don’t WANT it to be.

To the others on this thread

North America Bundle (120V)

is a similar product that while more expensive DOES operate locally thus more reliable in installations where internet access is poor or non existent.

[jpenyc]

Thanks for the product heads up.

Re-read this post and reminded what @marty-emporia said

Therefore, we currently don’t have any plans to support local logging or data collection.

I don’t blast the business model, but making the data available locally in addition to the cloud for those who would like to access (unreliable service, off grid etc) costs nothing. Tends to lead me to believe that they are following the Will.i.not winky dinky debacle.

What’s the harm of an option to mqtt out the data?

[Pragmatist]

I have two complete Emporia systems with a total of 32 sensors. This was a significant investment in both $ and time yet I’m totally dependent on remote servers over which I have no control.

Since my purchase, Emporia has already changed how long they save some of my historical data. They did this without asking my permission.

Without a way to capture my data from my system on my server, I will always be at the mercy of the Emporia servers. These servers could become less responsive or less reliable over time or could eventually cease to exist.

This is no way to run a railroad. 🙁

[wz2b]

I wrote a separate post in the product suggestion forum but I think what I would like is to just have the emporia gateway device spit out periodic UDP updates the same as how weatherflow does it.  Look at their documentation and how simple it is.  https://weatherflow.github.io/Tempest/api/udp.html

 

[Anonymous]

At no time during the purchase via Amazon Uk was I made aware that I would be, required, to send my electricity usage data to a third party in a different country, in order to obtain any stated functionality.

Tomorrow. 24/06/2021 I will be lodging a formal complaint against Emporia energy with the information commissioners office in the UK. I will also be considering what legal options  I have to reclaim the expense of the product and installations fees from any UK legal entity.

The device will de-powered tomorrow, and my forum membership will be removed after this post.

My electricity usage data is [not] your business.

We take this sort of thing [very] seriously in the UK.

 

[chris153002]

Out of curiosity, does any one know of any alternative firmware projects for emporia view devices? i know the vue 2 has an esp32 at the heart of it.

[nateguchi]

I agree with all the comments above. Emporia must be forthcoming with local data access or they will lose the faith of its community

 

[sutekh]

I’ve had several of their devices sitting in my Amazon cart for months. I’d love to install them in my home (4 x 16 sensor devices) and my cabin (1 x 16 sensor device) and send data to my local InfluxDB / Grafana instance, but I’m not buying anything until they provide a local access API. Emporia’s now two plus year old assertions that “it’s in our backlog” or “we’re just a small team” is no longer believable.

Emporia: You could make this happen ASAP if you wanted to (don’t even offer support!) You’ve chosen not to. I suspect the rationale there is that you’re holding the door open to eventually start charging for access to the data. You’ve got threads full of people on your forums dissatisfied with that position who’s all been burned by abandoned vendor technology and it’s costing you business. You make a niche product that appeals to nerds and techies. It would be a mistake to assume we represent an insignificant portion of your potential market opportunity.

[5310HA]

Hi

Please STOP asking. They don’t want to provide it.   How do I know is I have probably have the only Vue that was configured to access a local MQTT broker.  SO I’m the prototype.  It works great provide updates every second to the MQTT broker that updates my Home Assistant and it feeds into InfluxDB and outputs to Grafana.  Just what you want.  To make it work, they need to allow their app to point to the address of your MQTT broker and provide a outline of their topic profile.  But they don’t want too.  Don’t want to support it. It not their market.

5310

[sutekh]

Okay, so YOU’VE got a one-off solution and now we’re all just supposed to stop asking now? Ha! Not likely. It absolutely IS their market, and they’re losing it. I’d happily pay MORE for a device with local access, as many others have also claimed.

[farcouet]

Any update on this? Really looking for this feature since I bought 3 of those… If there’s a prototype to configure a MQTT broker to send the data why not make this available to all as a unsupported feature?

[err]

@farcouet – you are late to the game. There is local ESPHome support now. Use that.

[farcouet]

yes I have seen it also after. But still a bit less interesting than being just able to forward directly in the configuration to MQTT or influx. And if I go the route to flash it then I will probably just change the configuration manually and configure MQTT as it’s already supported. Seems to be not that bad to do: https://flaviutamas.com/2021/reversing-emporia-vue-2

[BigJuanKer]

Hi,

Just in case someone from empoira is checking in on this thread.  I’d like you to inform your company that they have lost the sale of either the 8x50A or 16x50A Smart Home Energy Monitor.  How does that work for your companies business model?

This is the deal breaker.

Kind regards

[Rebeleader]

This is definitely a deal breaker.

I signed up to the forums (didn’t buy the product) just to say….

Until this issue is fixed to allow local only view of power data. This product is going to probably be a bait and switch.

 

The company wink did exactly that with their cloud only smartphone light hardware. Now this?!???

Consumers need to be aware that this is a scam. People have already complained about emporia cloud removing certain features since they bought. Cloud only is NOT the way to go.

 

Privacy matters let alone the fact that this company may not exist down the road …. You lost a customer here due to this.

 

For anyone else reading. Maybe the solution is Eaton or leviton smart breakers. Cleaner look anyways….

 

 

 

 

[danmc]

So glad I found this thread. Had 3 units sat in my Amazon cart and was just about to pull the trigger.

I’ve been burned too many times to fall for the old “This is on our road map” routine, or as someone has already said you see features that you once got for free slowly disappear, before being charged an addition charge for something that was once included gratis.

But the biggest kicker for me other than not owning my own data is if the company goes under you are basically left with an expensive boat anchor. No Thanks.

Dodged a bullet there. Emporia you have just lost several new customers as I was buying for several households.

[danmc]

Update: Bought a Shelly EM. Bar being able to monitor more than two channels it ticks all the boxes.

[Pete6]

Another vote for a no cloud install.  Why?  During power cuts my AT&T fiber internet often goes out even while my 7,000 Watt generator/inverter running my router and all the rest of my LAN/NAS and other bits of electronics.  The main reason I bought a Vue2 was to monitor my loads before and during running on the inverter.

Even if Emporia just gave me a real time webpage from the ESP32 I’d be happy but I’d rather not be using somebody else’s hard disk (sorry, cloud) at all.

Surely after the time this thread has been running Emporia could do this.

[Pete6]

Well, where does this stand?  I need to have a local data feed.  If the internet goes out.  I have no data. The internet often goes out when the power goes out.  My generator kicks in but now I have no power data to guide the regulation of power loading.

Give me a local data feed that I can feed to my NAS or MQTT server.  Give me a local web page directly from the ESP32.  That would be easy for your to do.

I need a 2nd 16 channel device but I am not buying it UNTIL I get a local data feed.

What happens if Emporia goes out of business?  All the cloud data stops.  That’s what happens.

Giving users local data is the most important confidence building update that Emporia can do today for its current and future customers.  I have already told 4 people not to buy Emporia simply because of this.

[schalli]

Just registered to echo this opinion.

I have a smart home and I value my privacy as well as my indepence from other clouds.
Having a device that only works when sending data to the internet and then having to read it back to display it locally is an absolute no-go for me.
I’d gladly buy the Gen 2 Vue if I had the option of doing everything locally.

Since that is not an option, I’ll have to shop for something else.

[Kaptain Obveous]

I am a new VUE2 user of only a few days and I like the product and it has potential.  However, as soon as I realized it would be dependent on Internet connectivity to access their cloud service I was ready to re-box and return and I still may do just that.

This option we speak of in this thread is absolutely doable in a profitable way by offering a “local server” license fee.  And since our devices are already connected to their cloud, sending a license-enabled flag to the unit is simple.

I can’t see how they’re going to exist for the long term without some recurring revenue stream, besides selling our data.  Right now, they sell a VUE2 unit and provide free cloud service in perpetuity.  How long can they endure this offering?  They could accomplish the “missing” ARR and grow the company and product by providing firmware updates during 1st year of use, then, you would pay for (firmware support) annually.  Optionally, they could make the local service license also renewable annually.  If their price points were fair & competitive, I would pay for the license and the support.

There are many pricing/licensing tier options they could consider and offer.

Best

 

• This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Kaptain Obveous.

[jyavenard]

Currently looking at adding monitoring to a new sub-board , I was using IoTaWatt on my main power panel so far, but availability has been problematic lately.

So the Emporia on paper looks like a good alternative.

But if I understand correctly, the only way I can integrate this with my existing monitoring system (which is a mixture of self-written scripts and Home Assistant) ; I will have to continuously fetch data from the internet web site to get access to power/energy readings?

No way to query the device locally?

I don’t care if it logged things to the cloud, I just want to read it locally.

Isn’t that doable?

[Tomasz]

Any update on this?

Would be nice to have possibility to add local lan MQTT Server in the app, to send all data to it.

[emporiacs]

We understand that some people may want to log and analyze their data locally; however, our software, hardware, and business is developed around the collection and analytics of energy data in the cloud.  You can try searching for “API” in our forums here to see what others have done.

[joelblogs]

Hi @emporiacs

> however, our software, hardware, and business is developed around the collection and analytics of energy data in the cloud

I’ve seen Emporia take this line for the last few years.

Is there any particular reason you think that providing us with local access, e.g. via MQTT, would be mutually exclusive of your business model?

Please, please, allow both.

I want live, up-to-the-second data availability to enable my home automations. For instance, in diverting excess solar around the house.

There’s no reason I can see why Emporia would prevent local MQTT for those who need it. Implementing local MQTT wouldn’t mean you have to stop harvesting our data. You can keep on doing what you’re doing now. But there would be the added benefit of happier home automation customers.

Otherwise you’re pushing people into flashing ESPHome onto your hardware. Then you get nothing.

Thanks in advance.

Joel

[emporiacs]

At this time we do not have an open API. We understand that some people may want to log and analyze their data locally; however, our software, hardware, and business are developed around the collection and analytics of energy data in the cloud.

[ddv2005]

It is not about what we want…it is about your terrible service that down to often and no support. Your service sucks and you must provide open API if you can’t make cloud service that works 99.9999% of time

[ogbrog]

Really not a fan of your software. There are dozens of issues that have been put forth in these forums that you have said you are “working on” that still haven’t been addressed. I live remotely with Starlink, the data you offer is incomplete due to the fact that my internet regularly drops for 3-4% of the day. It would be much simpler to allow a local API or MQTT support and let others come up with open source fixes, because your software engineers are obviously doing a pretty poor job of keeping up with what your customers want. It is a shame that you are ruining a fantastic piece of hardware with such terrible software and support. Y’all will have a 1 star review from me on amazon until there is a local API option.

[ogbrog]

I honestly would happily let you gather cloud data on my usage if there were local API support, I assume the data is beneficial to running a efficient grid which I benefit from. But since you refuse to do this I will likely end up hacking the hardware and flashing something like ESPhome on it, which will leave you with zero data and unhappy customers who would otherwise recommend your products.

[joelblogs]

Oh, wow.

You literally replied to my comment by saying exactly the same thing with the same words.

@emporiacs That’s just rude.

I replied to you at October 22, 2023 at 5:54 pm engaging with you, and quoting a previous reply of yours:

“> however, our software, hardware, and business is developed around the collection and analytics of energy data in the cloud”

Then on October 23, 2023 at 9:04 pm you reply with
“At this time we do not have an open API. We understand that some people may want to log and analyze their data locally; however, our software, hardware, and business are developed around the collection and analytics of energy data in the cloud.”

At least try and give the impression you care at all about your customers.

So, for the sake of clarity, this next section will be in block capitals.

WE KNOW YOU DON’T HAVE A PUBLIC API RIGHT NOW.

WE KNOW YOUR BUSINESS MODEL IS BASED ON SUCKING OUR DATA.

THAT’S OK.

WE WANT LIVE, LOCAL ACCESS TO OUR DATA OVER MQTT.

THESE THINGS ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.

PLEASE IMPLEMENT THIS OR YOU RISK A MASS EXODUS TO ESPHOME.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?

IF WE MOVE TO ESPHOME YOU GET NO DATA.

I’m sorry for the block capitals, but it really looks like you don’t bother to read before you respond.

Thanks again,

Joel

[JackInTN]

This morning we found we cannot get to the Emporia servers, and evidently they have been down for several hours (since 2AM and it is not 9AM and they are not currently up) to provide access to our data.

I don’t mind ‘web’ access but having local access is important to us too.  Especially in cases where your servers are unavialable to us for any reason (your issues, isp issues, transmission issues between POPs, whatever).

Personally I would like to be able just to log the same data you get from us locally on my own lightweight server.

For convenience using a central server for casual requests is fine, but we have been downloading data from you twice a month for years and it has proved to be very valuable in finding ‘rogue appliances’ and otherwise unknown loads on our system.

At the minimum please put a ‘server status’ page that shows the service provided (data collection, security, data distribution, etc) and whether it is up, down, degraded, next planned maintenance (with apparent downtime), uptime since (give a date, or last outage), and in the case of servers down, expected time till service resumption.  (yes, I did this kind of things in my real life as sysadmin years ag9)

[flyoffacliff]

I don’t really understand what you mean in this comment because there already is an open API used by PyEmVue, and it’s been around for years

 

[flyoffacliff]

@emporiacs

Was trying to quote you in that last message

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