Autolog Smappee Controller Discussion

I have started work and am making good progress on the changes for handling the new gas / Water and costings and thought I would give an update on work-in-progress.

Here is the first cut Device Group dialogue:

Smappee Device Dialogue

smappeeDeviceGroup.png (43.24 KiB) Viewed 16081 times

Here is some first cut sample statistics output to Indigo's Event Log:

Smappee received 'Smappee Electricity' power load reading: 1278 W
Smappee received 'Smappee Electricity' energy total: 8.912 kWh (Gross 1.12 UKP)
Smappee received 'Smappee Net Electricity' electricity net reading: 1077 W
Smappee received 'Smappee Net Electricity' electricity net total: 3.309 kWh (Net 0.52 UKP; Saved 0.60 UKP)
Smappee received 'Smappee Solar PV' solar generation reading: 200 W
Smappee received 'Smappee Solar PV' solar generation total: 13.201 kWh (6.76 UKP)
Smappee received 'Smappee Solar PV Used' solar power used reading: 200 W
Smappee received 'Smappee Solar PV Used' solar energy used total: 5.603 kWh
Smappee received 'Smappee Solar PV Exported' solar energy exported total: 7.598 kWh

It shows the gross cost of the electricity (including any daily standing charge), the net cost and savings cost if you have solar PV and also solar PV Feed-In-Tariff earnings.

The specific unit rates used in the calculations are entered and saved via the Edit Device Settings for the relevant devices. The costs have also been added in as device states and so will be able to be displayed on a Control Page.

Once I have the Gas/Water meter I shall be able to add in the costs for those as well.

Wow. Looks good. Waiting for

Here is an example Control Page from work in progress on usage and solar costings.
It is mainly geared to the UK Feed-In-Tariff but may cater for other systems as I have tried to generalise it?

You will notice it has been a sunny day today

Smappee CP Example

smappee_CP_example.png (204.51 KiB) Viewed 16012 times

I am still testing this alongside incorporating major changes to support Smappee Sensors for Gas and Water.

Will use Solar and Gas monitoring via your plugin when you'll release it

So far my gas meter sensor works fine, love the idea to add it to Indigo as well.

Hi Shapa,
My Smappee Gas/Water Sensor turned up yesterday and is now installed and working. I had previously done most of the coding and was using test data to test it out. Needless to say when I installed the actual sensor it threw up a few bugs / features in my code that I have to finish sorting out

However, I have it running on my system and it is displaying the gas OK in Indigo.

I am considering how best to display the data as my gas meter is an old one and captures in cubic feet. On a gas bill this gets converted to kilowatt hours and that is what you are charged on. I am thinking that the Indigo display should show kWh. What units does your gas meter record in?

Do you (or any other Smappee users) have any views on what should be displayed?

Mine is showing cubic meters (Britain slowly moving to the metric system ) )

I'd say m3 must be available for sure - for me it's important as sometimes I'm spending 4-5 months abroad and it would be nice to know "mileage" to enter online

kWh is also good as (you are right) that's what we are seeing in a bill

I have got the plugin into a state where it is 99% there; the last percent could take a long time because I keep on adding things

The BETA version is available here: Autolog Smappee Controller Download

There are a number of significant changes from the original:

1. No documentation yet - it is still to be done
2. The plugin has been renamed as Smappee (as opposed to Autolog Smappee).
3. It also has a different bundle identifier 'com.autoloplugin.indigoplugin.smappeecontroller' - this is to follow suggested standards. This means that the this new version should be able to run alongside the old one but I suggest that you disable the old plugin before installing this one. Once you are happy with how this works then any Control pages can be altered to point at the new Smappee devices and the old Smappee devices can be deleted.
4. The plugin now supports the new Smappee Gas/Water sensor. It has only had limited testing so far
5. To add a gas/water device you edit the main Smappee device (Electricity) and do a Define and Sync... - the sensors can be added as is currently done for appliances and actuators. This will Queue a device to be added when you close the dialogue. Note a device is created for each of the two channels/ports on the Smappee sensor. If you are only using one channel/port then only queue one device (Suffixed 'A' for channel/port 1 and 'B' for channel/port 2. [Note this is different to the earlier image posted i.e. the Gas/Water device is now added as a completely separate device - I changed this so that it is easier to have multiple Smappee sensors ]
6. Conversion processing from cubic feet / cubic metres to kWh isn't implemented yet.
7. There are a lot of new states to give the costs being incurred or earned - edit the Electricity device and the Solar device to add in the base costs so that running costs can be calculated. The same also applies to any Gas / Water device.

Any problems / issues / feedback please post back here - thanks

Unable to save config

"Error creating debug folder - please correct error."

Tick the Show logging options to display the Debug logging folder - it should be '/Library/Application Support'

I obviously need to display the logging options if it picks up an error so that you can see what it says

Ticking the mark not doing anything

Ticking the mark not doing anything

Drag the bottom of the dialogue down - the screen should expand - there should be a scroll bar on the side?

Yep....

May be default dir must be /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation ?

Not really easy to create something from a standard user in the " /Library/Application Support" directly Permissions...

p.s. no scroll bar by default that's why it's confusing. may be window size must be increased on creation?

May be default dir must be /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation ?

Not really easy to create something from a standard user in the " /Library/Application Support" directly Permissions...

Good point - it worked for me as I am running as an administrator - I can understand that this wouldn't always be the case.
I was creating the logs in '/tmp' in the previous version but didn't think this was a good idea as it seemed too temporary.
I'll need to check with Matt/Jay as where they would suggest putting plugin log files - I think logging might be being enhanced for Indigo 7 so not sure what effect this will have (if any) on what should be done?

p.s. no scroll bar by default that's why it's confusing. may be window size must be increased on creation?

I think this is a "feature" of Indigo that isn't ideal IMHO. I would like Indigo to expand the dialogue when more content is revealed. You can't specify what size you want the window AFAICS. One answer would be to not hide the logging options but if everything worked as intended then those should be hidden as they are more advanced options which aren't normally turned. Obviously in this particular case (a bug in the program not handling the permissions correctly / setting a valid location) the options need to be shown.

Hopefully you have now progressed beyond the basic config and you can start to set-up devices and use the plugin.

Works fine so far. Excellent plugin, thank you very much!

Some questions / suggestions:

1) Billing - to add "reset" cycles? I.e. to be able to compare with an official bill - monthly charges...
Ideally, to store kWh and money spent values in variables (i.e. "Smappee_January_Gas_kWh", "Smappee_January_Gas_UKP", etc)

It would be nice to reset values shown in the UI every month then (to see gas and electricity consumed from a new billing cycle date, )

2) Electricity - only "net use" must be used in calculation , right? (not talking about generation payment which is a different story - BTW also would be nice to show)
Right now all price settings available for the main electricity "device" which is a summary of solar and "borrowed" electricity.

Works fine so far. Excellent plugin, thank you very much!.

Thanks for the kind words - I am glad it is working OK for you

Some questions / suggestions:
1) Billing - to add "reset" cycles? I.e. to be able to compare with an official bill - monthly charges...
Ideally, to store kWh and money spent values in variables (i.e. "Smappee_January_Gas_kWh", "Smappee_January_Gas_UKP", etc)
It would be nice to reset values shown in the UI every month then (to see gas and electricity consumed from a new billing cycle date, )

The UI values get reset every day at midnight - it has to be like this to show daily values and it is how the plugin is designed to process the data. If you reload the plugin, it automatically retrieves all the values from midnight so that the UI always shows the current state of play for a days usage. The UI Last Reset and Reset Date are actually inaccurate in that it assumes the reset date/time is when you click the reset button or reload the plugin when in fact it is midnight. I have previously requested (see this post) that this be able to be set by the plugin; hopefully in Indigo 7

However the point you make about being able to view historical data is good and is something I have been thinking about. I will have a think about how to do this. I would also like to be able to get the plugin to upload data to pvoutput.org - maybe for version 3

2) Electricity - only "net use" must be used in calculation , right? (not talking about generation payment which is a different story - BTW also would be nice to show)
Right now all price settings available for the main electricity "device" which is a summary of solar and "borrowed" electricity.

Not 100% sure what you are asking here but the total amount of electricity used will be in the Electricity Device states together with what you would have been charged by your electricity supplier if you didn't have solar. What you have actually used from the grid and the real cost from the electricity supplier is shown in the Net Electricity device states. What you have saved (by using Solar) and what this is worth is shown in Saved Electricity device states.

You can Edit Device Settings for the Solar device to enter what you earn on generation and export and also how your export percentage is calculated (it is normally assumed to be 50% for domestic properties with a Solar PV array of 4 kWH generation capacity or less). This table from of ofgem may help? : Feed-in Tariff (FIT): Tariff Table 1 April 2016 PV Only

Once you enter these figures then the SolarPV device will have states for generation income, export income, total of the previous two (which is what your Feed-in-Tariff amount will be based on) and a total of the FIT total + saved income (because you were using power form the Solar rather than the grid). So with this plugin it actually gives you info that isn't available from the Smappee App.

Looking at your image, I see the Gas Device units are being shown as Watts. If you edit your Gas device you can enter cubic metres for the units and also the charging rates for the Gas. At the moment you will have to work out manually (from info in your gas bill) how much you get charged for a cubic metre and enter this value.

I also note that it is nice and sunny in Swindon