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Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

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81–90 of 190 posts

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opendtu solar plant - care to elaborate?

OpenDTU is an open source project using an ESP32+CMT2300A for talking to Hoymiles Micro-Inverters. Local Only.

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.

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#82
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why not just use a current transformer? (Clamp over wire type) It's much safer.

> Why not just

Please learn to never use this type of phrasing when offering suggestions. Your entire exchange was needlessly patronizing and off-putting.

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just use a current transformer? (Clamp over wire type) It's much safer.

> Why not just Please learn to never use this type of phrasing when offering suggestions. Your entire exchange was needlessly patronizing and off-putting.

Thanks Dad.

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#84

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)

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

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can get less shit ones that aren't made of Chinesium from Shelly

Great suggestion. Some of their modules appear to be UL certified.

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#86
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm talking about distribution package managers, not pip.

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)

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#87
post #37

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…

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.

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.

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#88
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#89

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)

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

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.

Re: Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

#90
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005657383634.html?spm=a2...

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.

> $14 Chinese rubbish

Where do you think the "quality" devices are made?

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