New Emporia customer setting up system for a remote home with Generator

[sandman9]

Hi,  I am new to emporia, but I’ve noticed the product for a few months while searching solutions for my remote home and generator.  I was planning on building my own generator monitor using rasberryPi or Arduino, but Emporia seems like it can be the solution.  I am posting this for all and the Emporia designers so they consider my usage needs.

I’ve setup a test bed in my garage down south of my remote home.  The test bed was simply to power (black/white wires only) the Gen 2 Vue and put only the test leads on a source which would generate power and induce the sensors.  What I was able to determine was that:

1. The power consumption of the Gen 2 Vue itself was such that I could not read a current on either the black or the white. (I did try both wires)

2. Then I took an old power cord, cut off the end and put a normal AC receptacle on the wire such that I could put a sensor on only one lead.  I put a house hold box fan on that outlet and turned it on.   The current on circuit one was showing 0.18kw on the black wire of this setup.  I added a notification if my fan ran more than 5 minutes, I’d get notified.  Unfortunately I can’t find where I was notified, but I did get a message in the notifications “generator running Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 7:30:59 PM Remote – Circuit_1 met the threshold for 5 consecutive minutes, most recently using 0.180 kWatts during the 19:17 minute”.  Hopefully I’ll get notified and know my generator is running and potentially stuck on (which has happened) then I can call someone to shut off/inspect the generator.
3. Next, I turned off the fan and I see that the power dropped.

4. Next I unplugged my test system to wait if the Alert for a none responding Gen 2 Vue would send me a notification.  That would tell me i have a power outage, internet is down, and I’ll need to be concerned.  I only just unplugged the unit about 5 minutes ago and I’ve not gotten the notification they can’t talk to my system yet.  I am assuming they test every 15 minutes… we’ll see.

I am hoping that after I fully install this system in my remote home, that I can add a number of the systems to watch for system failures remotely.  I am considering double backing myself up by periodically having my home server call the Emporia system to confirm systems are operating properly with the APIs people are custom building.
I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else is doing similar solutions or reminding me of issues I may not be considering.  Of course focused on supporting the designers of Emporia so this solution will meet others needs.
I am looking forward to a good experience with this product.  If anyone can hint where these notifications would be going, I’d be interested in knowing.  Perhaps my account needs to be registered more than 8 hours before they send notification…

 

 

[sandman9]

Oh, I would also like to know
1. If the notifications will continue to come or will I only get one chance at a notification?

2. “Notification when your Emporia Energy Device is no longer sending data.” How long before this alert is sent to me?
Please reply if you know this.

[sandman9]

Running ‘PYemVue.py’ twice once with the Gen 2 Vue offline and then again tuning on the Gen 2 Vue, I see these results I can query for health.  I had two sensors plugged in and one I labelled as the Generator.

Note:  I’d want to know what rate I should throttle asking the system for information…

device_gid | channel_num | name | channel.usage | unit
262zyx | 1,2,3 | Remote | None | kwh

device_gid | channel_num | name | channel.usage | unit
262zyx | 1,2,3 | Remote | -0.0 | kwh
262zyx | 1 | Generator | 0.0 | kwh
262zyx | 2 | 2 | 0.0 | kwh

[emporiacs]

Thanks for the feedback! We’ll relay to the team.

[Author]

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