Energy Monitor and historical data

Other Devices & Integrations Power Management
#1

Hi all,
I’m going to buy a zwave system based on:

  • Vera plus gateway
  • Aeon energy meter (one clamp)
  • some additional devices: mainly smart plugs (fibaro), radiator thermostats (danfoss), …

Some of these devices can generate historical data (energy consumptions from clamps and smart plugs).
My question: where are these historical data stored? In Vera plus memory? In.an external device?

#2

I’m not aware of any internal history stored on these devices, but it may be there. However, it is relatively easy to collect the data yourself. I’m using DataYours with AltUI (see http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=35966.0). With this you can put the data on any server you like. I’ve got it on a Raspberry Pi. Data Mine is also a reasonable choice and can store to a USB drive connected to your Vera (see http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=35724.0).

I’m also running InfluxDB as a storage provider. In both cases I use Grafana to generate the graphs and view the data. See www.grafana.com.

Lots of possibilities. I started with Data Mine and am now gradually moving to InfluxDB and Grafana for most of my usage.

#3

It seems interesting, I’ll try …
Thanks

#4

Emoncms is another option, which probably has a lower level of difficulty to set up.

There are some threads on the board about it, just search. Based on what was posted here I wrote a blog about it which might be helpful.

[url=https://www.livehouseautomation.com.au/blogs/news/using-emoncms-to-log-power-use]https://www.livehouseautomation.com.au/blogs/news/using-emoncms-to-log-power-use[/url]

#5

The AltUI plugin already has interfaces set up for thingspeak and emoncms, so that makes it very easy indeed.

#6

[quote=“romolos, post:1, topic:197405”]Hi all,
I’m going to buy a zwave system based on:

  • Vera plus gateway
  • Aeon energy meter (one clamp)
  • some additional devices: mainly smart plugs (fibaro), radiator thermostats (danfoss), …[/quote]

Little update:
Vera Plus: cheap plastic but it works well. I had some problem with internet& service leds blinking but this was due to some ip conflicts with my wifi router.
Home Energy Meter (Aeon): ok, but it does not report some information (see a dedicated discussion)
Fibaro wall plug: it works, but some information not shown (fo sure I forgot something)
Multisensor 6: it works with all pros and cons already discussed here : no vibration, no UV … Also temperature value seems to be a little bit overstimate.
Dlink cam: I included also this wifi cam without problems. The good news (at least for me) is that this kind of inclusion doens’t stop dlink original service so I continue to get notification&co from the myhome dlink system.
Dlink sensor of presence: well… I had no success but I spent only 10 min on it
Dlink smart wall plug: No success, but I have to spent more time to understand better how to include it in vera.
Danfoss Thermostat: didnt try yet, next weekend game …

#7

Vera does NOT natively support this device. The only way to control this smart plug is with THIS plugin.

#8

Yes, I know.
I used that plug-in without success, but I have to try again with more attention (and time).

#9

Not a recommendation as such, but just saying what I’ve done:

I use Datamine 2 to log historical data to an external usb key (ensures the vera doesn’t fill up with info plus means the data is easy to backup/save)
I use Imperihome almost exclusively to control devices on my network, and it is able to display graphs easily (for example I would have the current freezer temperature showing on a screen, and by touching that it immediately displays the past 48 hours or so of temperature readings.
Works well for me. :wink:

As an aside, I used to use a clamp (actually 4 - I have three phase power plus solar) and found it to be ok, but not terribly accurate. Assume maybe 15% variation. My power supplier installed a ‘smart meter’ a few years ago and I now collect the info straight from that via a zigbee device from Rain Forest Automation. If you have a ‘smart meter’, I’d use that instead…

#10

[quote=“ninkasi, post:9, topic:197405”][…]
I use Datamine 2 to log historical data to an external usb key (ensures the vera doesn’t fill up with info plus means the data is easy to backup/save)
[…][/quote]

I spent a week trying to use Datamine2 but without success due to usb key not recognised by vera…
How did you solve??

#11

[quote=“romolos, post:10, topic:197405”]I spent a week trying to use Datamine2 but without success due to usb key not recognised by vera…
How did you solve??[/quote]

Go to Datamine device settings, Advance tab and then manually set:

SetDataDirectory: /DataMine/
SetMountPoint /dev/sda1

After this setting (it may be that you need to reboot to make these changes working) you should be able to open DataMine setup page (http://[yourveraIP]/dm/)

IMPORTANT: Disable native logging to USB, as if you have it working your data (vera logs or datamine informations) can then be stored on Vera local memory and fill it up completely. In worst case it can brick your controller as a result.
To check if your logging is set correct you can install system monitor plugin and check amount of the system free memory (you can track this data via DataMine). If you see that your Vera free memory drop dramatically, you should check if your logging is set properly. Also any kind of “can’t write user data” error may indicate that something with logging is not set correctly.