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  • in reply to: Is Vue 2 compatible with CGNAT? #8896 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    The switching is supposedly not that often, but can be as often as 2 or 3 times per minute, and given that each satellite is only reachable for 3 to 5 minutes, before they HAVE to switch… And I am not sure that that is the problem;  only that (spot checking the history)  it seemed to appear shortly after we discontinued our prior WISP connection.  I am intending to set up a ping logger deamon to see if the device is dropping it’s WIFI connection but only realized that it has been offline more than on recently when we began having issues with our AC unit and pulled the historical data to try and isolate when the problem began occurring.

    John Polasek
    Member

    I am making some assumptions here, but it sounds like the confusion comes in when considering 3 phase equipment that uses 3 individual CTs for a large load.  The VUE does not recognize that they are part of a single device and simply adds the three individual current times voltage values together… which if the equipment is “Y” connected (all 3 phases tied to a common return wire) delivers the correct result.  However, because in 2 phase circuits, the phases are displaced 120 degrees from each other, in a “delta” wired motor with no tie to the neutral, a lot of current simply runs around in circles without actually being used for power, but the CTs don’t know that and so give inaccurate readings.  And the only way to “fix” it would be for Emporia to enable “grouping” the individual CTs in the app in order for them to employ the same calculations they do on the mains (which they DO know are out of phase with one another)… all of the single phase loads (plugs, lights and the like) that come off one phase and go back to a neutral will be completely accurate.

    John Polasek
    Member

    Unfortunately, no.  The CT works by measuring the total sum of current passing through the core;  since (unless you have a short to ground at the load, a dangerous electrocution hazard that trips Ground Fault Interrupter devices) all the current that goes OUT through the positive wire comes back IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION through either the neutral or ground wire, the sum will be 0 if all three are inside the core.  That is why the unit is usually placed inside the circuit box where the “positive” (hot, color coded black or red in the US) wire is separated to go to the circuit breaker, while the neutral (common, color coded white in the US) goes to a common bar and the “earth” (Ground, color coded green or bare wire in the US) tied to a common bar that itself is tied to a stake driven into the ground.

    in reply to: Notifications are extremely delayed and unreliable #8293 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    The data that I pull down is the previous minute’s total power(KWH) drawn by each CT because that is all that  I need, but the downloader supposedly has the ABILITY to download the 60 individual instantaneous readings as a vector, although I have never used that feature.  A power spike that lasted only a second or 2, you’d have to search the vector for the biggest value programmatically or query the database by time, but a sustained high load over the entire minute would easily show in the total power consumed over that minute, as it did when the heat strips had to kick in to supplement my heat pump during the cold snap we had last week.

     

    in reply to: Notifications are extremely delayed and unreliable #8290 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    I can’t be sure without actually going to the effort (more than I care to) of actually monitoring the network traffic involved, but doing a once per minute grab of the previous 60 1 second data points for each channel would seem to likely be less taxing to their servers than someone who leaves their web app open and gets updates (with all the header and security handshakes) every second…  And as far as how much work and whether you have any geek friends to do it, I don’t know much about influx, but it seems like there are a bunch of utilities out there to do a lot of things if you google them.

     

    in reply to: Notifications are extremely delayed and unreliable #8288 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    If you have a bit of programming experience (or know somebody who does), a guy on Github has a downloader program that can automatically periodically copy the even the second by second history into JSON file or a local Influx database on your computer. And since you own the database, you can keep the history for as long as you have disk space to to keep it.  It is what I use to get the data to my Indigo home control system, but I simply use the “m” rather than the “s” option to keep the internet traffic to a minimum…

    in reply to: Notifications are extremely delayed and unreliable #8284 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    Just curious, but what do you need second by second numbers (as opposed to 1 minute data) for?  I continually pull the 1 minute data into my home control system, and that’s easily enough to turn on decorations in the living room tell me when the washer and dryer are done and start flashing the garage light if the freezer ever runs continuously for too long or stops running completely, or count run minutes on the AC fan to let me know when it’s time to change the filter.

     

    in reply to: IFTTT integration — what’s the hold up? #8267 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    The “holdup” is that doing so would allow local data collection without sending anything to the cloud… and THAT is something apparently completely against the Emporia “Business Model”…  Github already has several third party ways to download the cloud data into an influx database (one of which I am currently using to feed my home automation system), and one of my greatest fears is that as soon as Emporia gets enough units out there, they will block all access to their servers without paying as much as the market will bear in a monthly subscription…. or like the cloud only moisture sensors I purchased 6 years ago, the company will go out of business and I’ll be left with HTTP:404 trying to pull the data.

     

    in reply to: Introduce Yourself! #8266 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    John Polasek from Texas…

    My sole purpose was to replace a Sitesage unit that died (internal voltmeter apparently gave up the ghost and it started reporting 0 watts on all CTs; Sitesage said I’d need to buy a new unit for $600) after 12 years. I had been using the earlier system to feed real time circuit data to my home automation system to flash a couple of decorations in the living room to let me know when the washer and dryer finished out in the garage and keep track of the power being drawn by the freezer out there and send me an alert if it stopped or suddenly began drawing more than it should since I know of several people who lost hundreds of dollars of food when their seldom used freezer compressor died, a circuit breaker tripped, a contractor unplugged it to use their air compressor while repairing their roof and didn’t plug it back in afterward…  And being a geek, I kind of like having the ability to have the automation system generate plots on the fly that have a lot more flexibility and utility than the ones in the App.

    Real time power usage

    The only problem I have with Emporia is having to go through the cloud to pull back the data, since our rural wireless internet is not totally reliable and when it’s down, so are all my alerts and triggers, and I live in fear that Emporia will make downloading the data from their cloud a “for pay” service.

    John Polasek
    Member

    I’m not sure if Homeseer has the ability to read Influx databases or if you have the ability to write code to parse JSON channel data, but there is a github downloader that can access the cloud data from Helgew.  I use a python script to pull the last minutes channel data down into my Indigo home control server once a minute and treat that as pseudo real time data, which works well enough to alert me when the washer and dryer finish running and (should it ever happen) if the freezer ever stops drawing power because the breaker trips or compressor fails.  I am also keeping track of the minutes of run time on the fan for the central HVAC and checking on it’s power draw from time to time to see if the filter needs changing.

    I do wish Emporia would allow local access to the data because our internet is not 100% reliable and I hate losing the data stream when the local ISP drops their tower for an hour or two… but The company is adamant that they will NEVER allow that.

    in reply to: Discount selected circuits from the total #8256 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    You are aware that you can export your data to CSV files that can be read by Excel or google sheets to analyze it yourself in whatever detail you like, correct?

    in reply to: In app merging of metered breakers #8244 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    Did you use a multiplier of 2 on the “Garage Sub” or “Incubation Room”?  For the Garage Sub in particular, if you are only monitoring one of the sides of the double breaker feeding it, the Program is assuming that ALL the power being used in the garage is being used by 220V devices.  If most or all of it is being used by only one of the 110V legs, the power that Emporia is reporting may be nearly double the actual use. For sub panels with many 110 v loads, you need to monitor both sides of the breaker (call them Garage Sub A and Garage Sub B) feeding the subpanel with a multiplier of 1 on each.  Ditto if the Incubation room has a bunch of 110 v incubators all tied to the same side of a 220 to 110 breakout.

    John Polasek
    Member

    And I am currently doing the same thing in my home automation software with data exported from Emporia through the “Emporia Downloader” on Github… see https://community.emporiaenergy.com/topic/option-for-log-scale-on-charts-and-syncing-second-minute-and-hour-charts/

    Pinch to zoom would also be a huge benefit to change time scales in the graphs… my Indigo charts don’t do that.

    John Polasek
    Member

    Multiple channels simultaneously is one thing, but even for single channel graphs, allowing the use of a log scale (as opposed to the way they autoscale to the highest available value) helps a great deal when you have circuits that have low constant power draw for some control circuitry coupled with a large but constant motor or heating load when running.  As I scroll the minute display looking for when something turned on and off, if I miss the transition “jump”, the only indication is that the scale on the left jumps from 0 to 50 watts to 0 to 1 KW.

    in reply to: Combine Main of multiple Vues #8196 Report Abuse
    John Polasek
    Member

    “Emporia has promised updates to better handle multiple non-nested Vue2’s.  That and other features (like better 240V circuit support) seem to be continually postponed.”

    The feature that I would really like would be the ability to obtain real time data locally, but from what they have said on another thread, that one’s not even on their radar because “it doesn’t fit their business model”.  And this really makes me nervous for 3 reasons:

    1. Our internet options are not 100% solid, meaning if the ISP drops their tower for an hour or so (which happens once or twice a month) my updates into the home control sever die until it comes back up.

    2. If Emporia goes bankrupt and drops their cloud server like a company that had some neat soil moisture sensors that I used to adjust my sprinkler system through the cloud, I end up with useless pieces of junk that I can’t use any more.

    3. At any time, Emporia might suddenly decide to become a “for pay” server to stay in business, meaning I’d be paying whatever they demand to keep getting the data;  they claim that’s “not in their business model” as well, but as every knows, people change their minds.

     

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 21 total)