[HN Gopher] Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus...
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       Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana
        
       Author : hddherman
       Score  : 135 points
       Date   : 2024-05-05 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ounapuu.ee)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ounapuu.ee)
        
       | dainiusse wrote:
       | No need for that mate, just deploy home assistant or something
       | similar and you will get this (and more) out of the box
        
         | mindslight wrote:
         | Right up until the Home Assistant UI turns into a lagfest, the
         | installation dies, and you can't debug why because Docker. At
         | least that's what happened to me. And no, it wasn't RPi SD
         | power issues. This happened on an otherwise-stable amd64
         | server.
         | 
         | The Home Assistant authors' hostility towards simple native
         | distributions is now a show stopper for me. Long term
         | reliability is more important than quick initial setup.
        
           | cyberax wrote:
           | HA is actually pretty debuggable. Just install the SSH
           | plugin, then SSH into the HA box, and then simply "docker
           | exec" into the target HA container.
        
             | mindslight wrote:
             | ... and then not have any of your usual development tools,
             | environment, system layout, or repair techniques because
             | you're inside someone else's "works on my system" that they
             | threw over the wall.
             | 
             | It's obviously _possible_ to debug what goes on inside a
             | Docker image. It 's just not something I'm particularly
             | interested in dealing with, especially under duress.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | > _because you 're inside someone else's "works on my
               | system" that they threw over the wall._
               | 
               | FWIW, this can also be called _stable state you can
               | retreat to_. And build upon, e.g. adding a layer of
               | debugging tools.
               | 
               | I don't really like to deal with Docker, but at least I
               | have reasonable certainty it'll work. I prefer system
               | package manager or MSI, but if not that, it beats having
               | to build something when it's near-guaranteed that what
               | I'll get is _not_ the binary the authors had in mind, if
               | it even runs at all.
               | 
               | (Then again, I routinely rebuild Emacs to stay on the
               | bleeding edge. But it took a while to work out all the
               | usual dependency mess, and I even broke my system once
               | doing it.)
        
               | mindslight wrote:
               | It's certainly within my gamut to jump into an embedded
               | system to debug it, bringing/building tools as I go. I'm
               | just not looking to _opt into_ doing that on something
               | that doesn 't need to be that complex in the first place.
               | Same reason I run one decently powerful amd64 server that
               | does many things rather than a stack of Raspberry Pis,
               | one per software package.
        
               | cyberax wrote:
               | > ... and then not have any of your usual development
               | tools, environment, system layout, or repair techniques
               | because you're inside someone else's "works on my system"
               | that they threw over the wall.
               | 
               | The thing is, the "it works" is reproducible because of
               | containers. Which is a step above just hoping that it
               | works.
               | 
               | HA is also easy to "patch". You can just install your
               | custom components in `config/custom_components`, it can
               | also be used to "override" core HA files.
               | 
               | Finally, if you are doing intrusive development, you can
               | easily launch HA locally. macOS, Linux, and WSL are
               | supported. You will lose the ability to install add-ons
               | via the addon manager, but that's about it.
               | 
               | FWIW, I had the same aversion to their custom OS and
               | their crazy container-based setup initially. For a couple
               | of years, I used to run HA as a Python app and managed
               | the dependencies manually. Then I tried the HAOS and
               | it... kinda just worked.
        
           | baq wrote:
           | It's a Python app, _of course_ being distributed as a docker
           | image is the sanest way of doing it. I don 't see why you
           | couldn't just pip install it if you really wanted, but having
           | been a Python developer for close to two decades, I wouldn't
           | want to.
        
             | mindslight wrote:
             | I'm talking about distribution package managers, not pip.
        
               | darkwater wrote:
               | I happily ran a dockerized HA on a Debian for years now,
               | no need to do any complicated debugging (and even if I
               | did, it would not be difficult to inspect it properly)
        
           | tw04 wrote:
           | Nobody is preventing you from running Home Assistant core and
           | deploying everything else yourself manually.
           | 
           | Demanding the authors who gave you the software for free also
           | provide support for an installation method they've offered up
           | with no support is a bit ridiculous, don't you think?
           | 
           | That attitude is what causes open source projects to die
           | though...
        
             | mindslight wrote:
             | What do you mean "demanding support" ? I remember Home
             | Assistant authors being _actively hostile_ to people
             | packaging their software outside of the official Docker or
             | RPi images. Which is why it wasn 't in the Debian
             | repository, pushing me down that Docker path in the first
             | place. Here's the same dynamic on an associated project in
             | 2021: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326
             | 
             | If anyone chimes in and says they've been running Home
             | Assistant from nixpkgs (where I am now) for several years
             | with no hiccups, then I will certainly reconsider my
             | opinion. But based on my experience and what I've continued
             | to read since, it feels like trying to do that is an uphill
             | battle. One I'm not looking to take on, especially for
             | automation I'm relying on.
        
         | Havoc wrote:
         | Grafana is a hell of a lot nicer & controllable than HA
         | 
         | HA is great, but it's not the answer to everything
        
           | madaxe_again wrote:
           | Agreed.
           | 
           | I live off grid, so energy monitoring is a big deal for me.
           | HA is fine for "at a glance", but if I want any kind of
           | detail, I use grafana. I actually have my old openhab
           | instance still running purely as I can't be faffed setting up
           | all the piping from MQTT into influx again.
           | 
           | It's also possible to integrate the usage over time using a
           | dynamic time window to get Wh figures from wattage, which is
           | enormously useful for me, and is more accurate than the
           | figures HA gives in their power system.
           | 
           | HA is dead useful for getting alerts when the laundry
           | finishes, though - dumb machine, smart plug, look for a
           | sudden drop in power. Also does all our climate control.
           | 
           | So different tools for different jobs.
        
           | zimpenfish wrote:
           | Seconded - HA's graphs are great for a simple "is this going
           | up or down" glance but when you want to put a whole bunch of
           | things together for comparison or perform aggregations or
           | calculations, that's when you want Grafana et al.
        
           | Cyph0n wrote:
           | Why not both? You'll need to run a server either way.
           | 
           | HA can export data to Prometheus. Setting up and running HA
           | is much easier than figuring out how to get a set of
           | different smart devices to export metrics to
           | Prometheus/Influx. Let HA deal with that.
        
           | icehawk wrote:
           | It might be, but for all of the examples in the blog post, HA
           | does this out of the box.
        
         | Banditoz wrote:
         | Why not both?
        
         | whitehexagon wrote:
         | I'm also looking at a custom solution for my current migration
         | from WiFi sockets to Zigbee. It seemed impossible to do an
         | offline installation of home assistant, and discouraging signs
         | for running it without an internet connection.
         | 
         | There seems to be a sonoff usb stick that might act as a hub
         | and allow command-line monitoring of all devices, should be
         | perfect for feeding into grafana/prometheus.
        
           | baq wrote:
           | HA will happily run offline; if you mean HAOS then I don't
           | know what it does but it's an unorthodox Linux distro, but
           | once it installs it should also run offline without issues.
           | I'm also using their skyconnect zigbee coordinator and it
           | works very well.
        
             | whitehexagon wrote:
             | Yeah one of the tests was a RPi image and it wouldnt
             | complete without a LAN internet connection (only got 4G).
             | And it seemed far too weighty for a bit of home automation.
             | 
             | I recall the online requirement was for some ntp server
             | requests that cant be disabled.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | Yeah that's more of a rpi hardware requirement as it
               | doesn't have a battery and you realistically want to have
               | accurate time on your smart home controller, even -
               | especially - after it cold boots after power loss.
        
       | Xerox9213 wrote:
       | Yeah, not to mention the ability to automate things.
       | 
       | My latest automation: when the white noise machine is on for the
       | baby, the doorbell volume is turned down.
        
         | alchemist1e9 wrote:
         | Could you expand on how prometheus or grafana helps you
         | automate? I didn't know either enabled that.
        
           | Jleagle wrote:
           | I think this was supposed to be a reply to one of the Home
           | Assistant threads
        
       | holri wrote:
       | Missing from the blog. The power reading of the Tosmota device
       | should be calibrated: https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Power-
       | Monitoring-Calibration/
        
         | jhenkens wrote:
         | I would love a semi-automated way to generate a power-profile
         | for ESP-Home. Find a smart room heater with 3 levels perhaps,
         | and use home assistant to gather values at "Off", "1/3", "2/3",
         | "3/3", with a downstream power plug as reference (and a known
         | consumption of the downstream plug as well).
         | 
         | So I can just take my EspHome plug and very quickly generate a
         | standard set of mapping values for voltage and wattage.
        
           | ssl-3 wrote:
           | The easy way is with a resistive space heater and a
           | multimeter. I keep a big, dumb, thrifted "oil-filled
           | radiator" space heater around just to use as a big, safe
           | 3-speed dummy load with reasonably OK repeatability (nichrome
           | heaters do not have perfect temperature coefficients, but
           | they're stable-enough that using them to measure temperature
           | quickly begins to be a non-starter).
           | 
           | The level of integration you choose is entirely up to you. I
           | don't do this kind of thing much, so I'm OK with kludging
           | together a test rig as-needed with a handheld meter and
           | tearing it apart when I'm done. This makes good use of my own
           | time and tools, according to my personal proclivities.
           | 
           | But if I were doing it often, then I might buy the equivalent
           | of the HOPI meter that Big Clive uses in many of his videos.
           | It displays current and voltage, multiplies them to get
           | power, and also displays power factor -- concurrently, on
           | separate digital displays, in real time.
           | 
           | Or I might build something: A box with a current shunt with
           | some panel-mount meters and appropriate connectors would not
           | be too challenging to put together in an afternoon with parts
           | from Amazon and Lowes, depending on one's ability and desire
           | to deal with sheet metal at home. (I use galvanized steel
           | handy boxes and cover plates from Lowes for all kinds of
           | small-ish stuff. They're cheap, common, and durable-enough.)
           | 
           | Whatever the approach, a simple space heater with multiple
           | literal-speeds seems like a cheap and useful way to make it
           | happen unless you're trying to automate every part of it.
           | 
           | (But by then, making a dumb multi-speed space heater into a
           | "smart" multi-speed space heater that can be activated
           | programmatically with software like ESPHome and some relays
           | is probably pretty much a no-brainer, isn't it?)
        
       | ars wrote:
       | If someone else wants to try this, I strongly recommend against
       | using WiFi for the plugs, instead use Z-Wave or Zigbee.
       | 
       | Wifi is just not meant for this use case, it will be unhappy if
       | you start adding a lot of devices, and it will slow down your
       | main use of WiFi for your phone.
        
         | seszett wrote:
         | Not the first time I hear this but I have about 20 ESP devices
         | on my WiFi, almost all of them pushing data regularly and
         | polling for instructions (I don't use HA, but a simpler home
         | made solution) and I have no problem at all.
        
           | meatmanek wrote:
           | It helps that the IoT things almost invariably use 2.4GHz
           | while your data-hungry computers and phones usually use 5GHz.
        
       | dsab wrote:
       | Guys what are your favourite smart plug? I need one with easy
       | integration with grafana, not sucking, and shipment to EU
       | country?
        
         | tetris11 wrote:
         | ZigBee list of good devices:
         | 
         | https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/
        
         | ckolkey wrote:
         | I'm a huge fan of https://www.shelly.com/ - they have a built
         | in webserver and can be controlled via POST requests. No cloud
         | needed.
        
           | septic-liqueur wrote:
           | I also like their products very much. I installed a few of
           | them in my sockets. Some people argue that it's not safe to
           | put in your sockets walls and the 16A limit is realistically
           | lower before they can overheat and cause fire. That scared me
           | a little bit but I think most of the reports are from bad
           | wiring like using thin wires or not tightening the clamps
           | enough
        
             | spockz wrote:
             | I have a Shelly pro 1PM in my Breaker box for the car
             | charger. It gets to 80 degrees Celsius easily at 16A. I
             | have two other gripes with it:
             | 
             | 1: the slots/clamps are small which makes fitting 4mm2
             | wires a chore already. 6mm3 is impossible. 2: the
             | overcurrent protection is very trigger happy. Due to solar
             | panels in the street that voltage can vary significantly.
             | Apparently the charger doesn't always keep up exactly
             | resulting in a current of 16.0001A which is more than the
             | limit of 16 and poof, off it goes. Not sure whether this is
             | an actual fault in the charger or some rounding error.
        
         | argulane wrote:
         | ATHOM plugs are very nice, you can order one with ESPHome or
         | Tasomata firmware preinstalled and they can ship from Germany
         | https://www.athom.tech/
        
           | kryptoncalm wrote:
           | Note this vendor is different than the Athom company making
           | the Homey smart hub: https://homey.app/
        
         | whitehexagon wrote:
         | I've been happy with my tplink sockets, especially running them
         | off-cloud, and getting some command line control over them
         | (although I think that debug api got blocked on later firmware
         | updates). But quite easy to feed data into any db once you have
         | such control.
         | 
         | Just about to try some ikea zigbee sockets, seem cheap(7e) in
         | comparison. I hope I can also get them working command line
         | based, just trying to setup a sonoff usb stick with some python
         | package (bellows) as we speak.
        
         | Mister_Snuggles wrote:
         | I've got some Sengled E1C-NB7 plugs that I really like. The
         | form factor is nice, they work perfectly with Zigbee2MQTT and
         | Home Assistant, and they've got a power button on the device
         | itself.
         | 
         | I want to buy more and they don't seem to be available anymore.
        
         | kryptoncalm wrote:
         | I have two plugs in use that ship to EU (at least NL) and are
         | made (or at least certified) in the EU. The latter matters to
         | me because of fire hazards etc (e.g. [1]). Both can handle 16A
         | and connect over zigbee which helps to reduce idle power
         | consumption. 1. Innr plugs, e.g. SP240
         | https://www.innr.com/en/product/innr-smart-plug-eu-with-powe...
         | 2. Robb zigbee smart plug https://www.robbshop.nl/robb-smarrt-
         | slimme-stekker-zigbee-36...
         | 
         | [1] https://hackaday.com/2023/11/03/just-how-dodgy-are-cheap-
         | usb...
        
         | nikisweeting wrote:
         | I love these ATORCH ones on Amazon, they have a screen with a
         | bunch of useful details, super stable wifi connection, over-
         | voltage/current/power protection, etc.
         | 
         | https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BGSYJQK6/
        
       | leeoniya wrote:
       | i'm trying to nudge Grafana into the direction of IoT/SCADA
       | control, so we can be both, a great way to viz (data sources) and
       | to control (data sinks). not personally a huge fan of having to
       | recommend Home Assistant for that use case :)
       | 
       | (i work at Grafana Labs)
        
         | recursinging wrote:
         | This would be great. Were using Grafana dashboards for thermal
         | vacuum testing. Everyone is always asking for simple SCADA
         | functionality.
        
         | hackernewds wrote:
         | could you expand on your comment? what is data sinks as applied
         | to your idea?
        
           | leeoniya wrote:
           | similar to how you can make plugins for data sources, you can
           | make plugins for data sinks, like write over modbus, or POST
           | to http API or, publish to some kind of MQTT broker, etc.
           | 
           | since IoT devices have limited storage, usually the metrics
           | are dumped into another system like Prometheus. but that
           | Prometheus data source used plotting cannot be used to
           | control the device, which will have another endpoint and
           | another API, so we need some kind of concept of data sinks.
           | at least that's my idea right now, allow data links
           | configured in the panels to poke some "data sink" with values
           | that are available in the DataFrame or custom-entered into
           | the UI, like we do with traceID for Exemplars, etc.
        
         | applied_heat wrote:
         | If grafana supported numeric entry fields and buttons it could
         | easily replace wonderware intouch etc.
         | 
         | Traditional scada systems have such brutal plotting abilities
         | they are ripe for disruption
        
           | leeoniya wrote:
           | for sure. we're continuously adding capabilities to the
           | Canvas panel to support SCADA-type and flowchart use cases.
           | 
           | https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/panels-
           | visualization...
           | 
           | there's some initial movement towards "press Canvas element
           | -> invoke HTTP api call":
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6fg1TpfBUg
           | 
           | we added streaming/websocket data sources a few major
           | versions back.
           | 
           | i'm hoping to make something more standardized and pluggable
           | like data sources.
        
       | stavros wrote:
       | I got a Zigbee power breaker and hooked it up so all my flat's
       | power goes through it, and then made an e-ink display to show my
       | power consumption:
       | 
       | https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-the-timeframe/
        
         | 3abiton wrote:
         | That was a great write up! I wish I had the time to follow-up
         | this guide. Thanks for sharing it!
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | Thank you! It's not very hard to use, you basically just
           | flash my firmware and use my script to display images on the
           | Timeframe. That's about it.
        
           | hackernewds wrote:
           | Related to your comment so much, I got hurt
        
         | gog wrote:
         | Can you link the power breaker?
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | This one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005657383634.ht
           | ml?spm=a2...
        
         | shrx wrote:
         | I'm curious, which power breaker do you have?
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | This one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005657383634.ht
           | ml?spm=a2...
        
             | wannacboatmovie wrote:
             | You're running all your flat's power through that $14
             | Chinese rubbish and never assumed that shortcuts were taken
             | or quality would be an issue? How do you know it will
             | continue to function as a circuit breaker and isn't just a
             | piece of wire inside?
             | 
             | For the uninitiated, CE marking is meaningless (it allows
             | for self-certification).
             | 
             | I'd like to see Big Clive do a teardown of one of those.
        
               | theshrike79 wrote:
               | You can get less shit ones that aren't made of Chinesium
               | from Shelly
        
               | wannacboatmovie wrote:
               | Great suggestion. Some of their modules appear to be UL
               | certified.
        
               | stavros wrote:
               | > How do you know it will continue to function as a
               | circuit breaker and isn't just a piece of wire inside?
               | 
               | I don't care. I connected my previous breaker after it.
        
               | wannacboatmovie wrote:
               | Why not just use a current transformer? (Clamp over wire
               | type) It's much safer.
        
               | stavros wrote:
               | Do you know of a Zigbee one? That's also a good option.
        
               | wannacboatmovie wrote:
               | Some options at the $10 price point on AliExpress, though
               | I cannot recommend one, maybe another reader can. CTs are
               | the generally accepted way to do this and don't have to
               | modify mains wiring. Could also build your own; CTs are
               | inexpensive.
        
               | stevenhuang wrote:
               | > Why not just
               | 
               | Please learn to never use this type of phrasing when
               | offering suggestions. Your entire exchange was needlessly
               | patronizing and off-putting.
        
               | wannacboatmovie wrote:
               | Thanks Dad.
        
               | dist-epoch wrote:
               | > $14 Chinese rubbish
               | 
               | Where do you think the "quality" devices are made?
        
         | aksss wrote:
         | I think the aliexpress link for the display is busted (as they
         | do).
         | 
         | A natural integration would be with Home Assistant. I'm not
         | sure if the Earu breaker has an OOTB integration with HA yet,
         | beyond doing something like Zigbee2MQTT and configuring
         | entities for readings. It's a good pattern though - integrate
         | meter with your automation hub, let the automation hub push the
         | images to displays, for meter and everything else.
        
       | ryall wrote:
       | It's annoying that smart plugs/bulbs etc use wifi when Powerline
       | exists
        
         | whitehexagon wrote:
         | I have a box of old X10 devices here, one of the most reliable
         | home automation systems I ever set up. I only switched to WiFi
         | when my iobridge X10 controller failed and I couldnt work out
         | the RS232 protocol for a different controller.
        
         | Dalewyn wrote:
         | Powerline ethernet dumps an utterly horrifying amount of
         | electrical noise into both the wiring and the surrounding area.
         | Please don't use powerline unless you have no other solution.
         | 
         | Note: Powerline ethernet should not be confused with Power Over
         | Ethernet which is perfectly fine.
        
           | baq wrote:
           | I'm using it on two outlets after not having enough
           | prescience to install ethernet in my wardrobe-turned-office -
           | got any reading materials?
        
       | WesolyKubeczek wrote:
       | You need to be careful with what plugs you choose, though,
       | because they each have, let's say, their own peculiarities.
       | 
       | For instance, their overvoltage protection might not align well
       | with what the local regulations say. For example, in my region of
       | EU, the upper voltage tolerances are such that 264V must trigger
       | an instant poweroff, and also anything producing power must shut
       | off if the average voltage over the last 10 minutes was 253V or
       | more. However, TuYa sockets which pretty much are the only in-
       | wall variety I was able to find on the local market, shut off at
       | 260V. This tends to be somewhat problematic in an area saturated
       | with PV installations, like the one I'm living in.
       | 
       | This problem is compounded by the fact that the reported
       | measurements of sockets sitting on the same phase tend to differ
       | quite a bit. Some sockets tend to overstate the voltage compared
       | to neighboring sockets sitting on the same wires. Thus, they shut
       | off when they think it's 260V, while it might just as well be
       | 255V.
       | 
       | Just saying that if you put lots of those in your walls, you
       | might suddenly find yourself in a need to prepare some
       | automations to try and bring the sockets on once the voltage is
       | back to normal. This particular variety of sockets won't come
       | back on after the voltage drops.
        
         | baq wrote:
         | Shelly relays can be configured to do all these things and the
         | voltage safety threshold itself is also configurable (at least
         | in the Plus devices) but they aren't zigbee. Otherwise great
         | little devices.
        
           | darkwater wrote:
           | I cannot really understand why Shelly doesn't offer ZigBee
           | (and now Matter) options, only Wifi. This has always been the
           | biggest blocker for me.
        
       | richardjennings wrote:
       | I scrape power usage metrics from Tapo P110s and push them to
       | Grafana Cloud using https://github.com/richardjennings/tapmon -
       | although as other commenters have noted - using Wifi for smart
       | plugs has its rough edges.
        
         | rkagerer wrote:
         | I second that. I replaced a bunch of wall switches with Leviton
         | WiFi smart ones and would never go WiFi again. They're totally
         | unreliable. My Meross smart plugs fair a little better but
         | still lose connectivity now and then (got a bit better with
         | updates).
        
           | ssl-3 wrote:
           | I hear a lot about reliability issues with various wifi smart
           | devices.
           | 
           | I've had perfectly lovely reliability with wifi smart devices
           | in my mixture of zigbee/wifi at home, such that I don't
           | really have a preference. Except for one cheap ESP8266-based
           | wifi relay module that had some liquid damage (not the
           | module's fault), and the LED driver in my very first RGBW
           | light bulb finding death after being used for a few years (a
           | common-enough tale regardless of connectivity choice), they
           | seem to Just Work.
           | 
           | It's all semi-random brands of devices, bought over time.
           | 
           | I'm not doing anything _particularly_ fancy with the network
           | itself: It 's just a couple of hardwired dual-band Mikrotik
           | access points, with one upstairs at the back of the house and
           | one downstairs at the front of the house (perhaps non-
           | obviously, on non-overlapping channels). A Pi 4 with OpenWRT
           | quietly does the packet-slinging.
           | 
           | Like in many other places, the 2.4GHz band is approximately
           | ruined where I live these days. It's noisy and slow. But it
           | all works well enough to reliably toggle a relay on or off,
           | at least.
           | 
           | Am I just lucky? Are others just unlucky? Or is there an
           | actual pattern here?
        
       | recursinging wrote:
       | One step further. I just installed the Emporia Vue 2 in my
       | distribution box. 16 CTs plus the three mains phases. It's ESP32
       | based and there is a great ESPHome project that you can flash it
       | with for local only reporting. Add some HA and VictoriaMetrics,
       | and now I can see how the whole house behaves with Grafana. Next
       | up, Zero-Export using this data to steer my little OpenDTU solar
       | plant. We live in such cool times!
        
         | septic-liqueur wrote:
         | Opendtu solar plant - care to elaborate?
        
           | recursinging wrote:
           | OpenDTU is an open source project using an ESP32+CMT2300A for
           | talking to Hoymiles Micro-Inverters. Local Only.
        
             | jauntywundrkind wrote:
             | I did some scouting about for what microinverters would be
             | usable without a full professional install, for a small
             | under half kilowatt playing around. I was hoping I could
             | snap up some used enphases & try stuff out with a 200w
             | panel & my existing batteries. But I really didn't turn up
             | much; most discussion online made it seem like you needed
             | special installer access to get anywhere with Enphase.
             | Exciting to hear maybe this microinverter idea might not be
             | totally dead in the water.
        
         | pzduniak wrote:
         | Is anyone aware of any other OSHW alternatives to this?
         | Preferably with Ethernet. ESPHome would be preferable.
         | 
         | The clones I can find are roughly the same price as the
         | "original" hardware.
         | 
         | ATM90E32AS seems to be ~$1 per channel on JLCPCB, so I'd
         | imagine this could be pretty cheap with SMT assembly. My use
         | case is like ~60 circuits.
        
         | applied_heat wrote:
         | Victoria metrics and grafana is great. I only wish I could
         | enter descriptions for the metrics to populate the description
         | in the grafana metrics explorer which is traditionally done by
         | Prometheus metric metadata "help" field.
         | 
         | Victoria metrics/ grafana is supplanting our industrial
         | historian, which is admittedly not a best in class product - I
         | am sure osi pi is better
        
       | 123pie123 wrote:
       | i've just bought a cheap esp32 with a light sensor connected to
       | it. then connected light sensor (ie bluetac) to my electicity
       | meter that pulses every 1/1000 1KW/Hr, it uploads the data to
       | google sheets which graphs the output - works great
       | 
       | I also have another esp32 at my elderly relatives house with a
       | pir sensor connected to it, it's also sending the movement data
       | to a different sheet on the google sheets site, so that i can
       | monitor some sort of movement.
       | 
       | i'm i expecting google to discontinue this service at anytime -
       | yes, but its working for now. you can write and read data from
       | the google sheets via json via the esp32, not very inutitive but
       | doable (and free!!)
        
         | gog wrote:
         | I have a Frient Zigbee device that does the same, but sends
         | data to Home Assistant.
        
           | 123pie123 wrote:
           | Home assist looks good, but my requirements was that my
           | elderly relative was being monitored by all my family (ie
           | they're not on my home wifi/lan) hence the data on the
           | movement needed to be on the internet for all to see
        
         | whitehexagon wrote:
         | nice, I like the simple approach. My old meter only had a
         | rotating disc and it took all my effort to get a sensor
         | connected to my arduino that could detect the black mark on the
         | edge of the disc. There was just enough mem for a http service
         | to allow me to pull that value into my iobridge for remote
         | monitoring.
        
       | eMerzh wrote:
       | Homeassistant + Power calc
       | (https://github.com/bramstroker/homeassistant-powercalc) really
       | does wonder here,
       | 
       | you can "simulate" power of fairly stable appliances.
       | 
       | Then you chart that in a nice Sankey chart or in standard charts
       | and enjoy
        
       | sponaugle wrote:
       | I used IoTaWatt devices, which can be installed in panels. It is
       | a great solution for by circuit monitoring, and has direct
       | influxdb integration so you can use Grafana.
       | 
       | Per plug monitoring is cool however for getting specific devices
       | on a circuit.
       | 
       | (Short video about the setup:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tcbJCvuJG8)
        
         | gibbonsrcool wrote:
         | Wow it's a small world. I just discovered your channel recently
         | and love the content. Probably watched the home lab video like
         | 10 times. I have a historic building with 3 vacation rentals
         | that I'm in the process of adding some intelligence and
         | monitoring to, including a raspberry pi kiosk based on one of
         | your videos. Thanks for making them!
        
       | aksss wrote:
       | Surprised there's not more mention of Shelly monitors in these
       | comments. They're great for whole house (service entrance) and
       | circuit power monitoring. Pretty open integration, OOTB
       | integration with HA.
       | 
       | I think it makes more sense to use "dumb" OTS circuit breakers in
       | your house and augment with add-on monitor than combining the
       | capabilities into a tightly-coupled single device.
        
       | fidotron wrote:
       | Facetious but half serious reaction: surely grafana usage
       | nullifies any possible benefit from the monitoring? If there is
       | one piece of software regularly using way more resources than
       | seem reasonable it's that one.
        
       | kasey_junk wrote:
       | I nerded out on this a few years ago and ended up buying a not
       | well known device called a rainforest automation eagle
       | (https://www.rainforestautomation.com/rfa-z114-eagle-200-2/). Its
       | a pretty straight forward little linux device that reads your
       | smart meter (after being enrolled via your utility). It exposes
       | an xml api that I bridge to Prometheus
       | (https://github.com/kklipsch/reagle).
       | 
       | I also bridge my utility (ComEd's) pricing feed to prometheus
       | (https://github.com/kklipsch/comed_exporter). Between those 2 I
       | get pretty good whole home utilization and pricing info graphed
       | into Prometheus (and thus into Grafana).
        
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