Smappee - Electrical Signatures

thanks for sharing your always on details. In my case the boiler seems to be out of this number so more or less same level than the ones mentioned above. I am trying to see if I can reduce further to below 100.

@AndyVirus - Can you get the Ballast resistors you are using to stop your LED lights flickering in various loads?? (e.g. 1A / 2A etc). I'm thinking it could be used to help identify LED lighting per room if they each had slightly different Ballasts.. Unsure if Smappee can identify down to the /per amp level..?

Vangelis

@AndyVirus - Can you get the Ballast resistors you are using to stop your LED lights flickering in various loads?? (e.g. 1A / 2A etc). I'm thinking it could be used to help identify LED lighting per room if they each had slightly different Ballasts.. Unsure if Smappee can identify down to the /per amp level..?

Vangelis

Its an interesting thought... I have had my smappee since the start of this thread and it has not to date automatically detected many of my lights (only the ones of 60w and above).
I suspect it is just looking at the AMP difference between ON and OFF (with some clever logic to determine which is which and when), so to that end I would assume that if you changed the AMP draw of an lighting circuit so it is unique from anything else, it will be identified as a different/unique appliance. I am not sure of Smappee's sensitivity though and the lower the AMPs the less likely it is to be identified as it would be consumed in the fault tolerance of other devices such as the oven etc.

Not knowing how the magic of smappee works i am just guessing though.

Apparently it all works using 'Energy Disaggregation' !?!?

You have to get into the MHz Freq Sample Rate to distinguish between Lighting Circuits - Not sure what the sample rate of Smappee is (probably 1min?)

Interesting article about it all is http://web.stanford.edu/group/peec/cgi- ... 0Armel.pdf

Vangelis

Ooh! Will have to have a read tonight! Thanks!


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Just to let you know that i have finally started work on a Smappee plugin

So far, I have got the plugin to automatically define devices for the Smappee itself, Smappee appliances (whether identified or not) and Smappee actuators (aka plugs).
I have setup the Smappee and Smappee appliance devices with 'SupportsEnergyMeter' capability (so the info will appear in the Indigo UI) and am setting up the actuators (plugs) as relay devices so that they can be switched on and off via the Indigo UI.

To be able to use the plugin you will need to get request a client_id & client_secret by sending an email to support(AT)smappee.com - see this page. Tthe client_id & client_secret, together with your userid and password is used to access your Smappee info (it is setup in the plugin config).

Once I am a bit further down the line, I will add the plugin info into my Autolog area for download (via dropbox) together with some documentation.

Looking at the API (as it is at the moment) it doesn't have a mechanism for event processing and so I don't think it will be any good to detect when something goes on or off. The plugin has a polling capability and so it can poll at regular intervals.

The Smappee Plugs appear to be one-way i.e. you can tell them to turn on or off but can't query their status - so not as good as the TKB z-wave plugs in this respect.

If anyone has any suggestions / requirements let me know and I will see what I can do.

A follow up to my previous post - it looks like the functionality available at the Appliance level is limited to say the least

However this post on the Smappee forums I think gives some encouragement for the future of the API.

It means that the plugin will have limited functionality until the API is enhanced but at least you will be able to turn the Smappee plugs on and off