Having trouble with Aeotec Home Energy Monitor GEN5

[leadfoot]

Has anyone been able to successfully add one of these to the ISY running 5.0.14. I found a video with someone adding it to a HomeSeer system and they said to add it non-securely. I've tried adding it to my ISY non-securely and I always get the warning from ISY saying I'm trying to add a secure device. I turn on the option to allow secure device to be added and try again. It does seem to add a bunch of nodes as shown in the attached image. I think the ZW 015, ZW 015.1 and ZW015.2 Energy Meter ones are total energy and energy from each of the 2 clamps. I have no clue what the 4.49.1 ones are.

It never seems to update energy values by itself and if I try to query "ZW 015 Energy Meter" it does update the values but it brings up a bunch of system busy dialogs and eventually ends up showing a "Request Failed" dialog. 

I have a Aeotec Smart Switch 6 for a sump pump which does update energy values when the sump pump turns on so I am a little puzzled why this home energy monitor doesn't do the same

Any help appreciated,

Ron

[lilyoyo1]

The smart switch 6 parameters need to be updated in order to show values. I wonder if it's the same for this device

[leadfoot]

I've been playing with the various parameters and I think I have it setup to send a report every 60 seconds and nothing seems to get sent. I have also tried to set it up so that it only sends reports when wattage changes by a certain amount and that didn't work either. 

[leadfoot]

Conclusion: I ended up returning the Aeotec Home Energy Monitor GEN5. After many back and forths between Aeotec and Universal Devices support nobody could come up with a way to get updates sent to the ISY so I gave up on it. 

[gduprey]

I have 4 of these installed - 2 in one house (dual 200 amp panels) and 1 each in two other locations.  All are US, dual-phase (split 240) power setups.  I have them configured to send updates when power changes more than 5% as well as reports every 5 minutes or so.  For the most part, they work fine.

The only problem I have had is that the kWh reported something jumps backward or forward.  I actually think it's a communications issue because it always corrects itself (if it were in the unit, not sure how things would "jump" back to normal).  I've had to write a lot of "defensive" code to figure out and ignore reports that are out of range and recover.

That said, 99% of reports and such are correct.  I think it's just a longish ZWave report and more susceptible to corruption.

Other than that, they have been hassle free to configure and always send reports.

One thing that I do religiously, regardless of what folks say, is that I always do the initial inclusion of every new ZWave device in the same closet as the ISY - within 2-3 feet.  I know it's less critical for non-secure devices, but it's become by default mode of inclusion and with a few few exceptions, has always worked (then I put it in the final location and heal the zwave network).

Oh - as for ISY versions, I have a mix of ISYs running 4.7.3 and 5.0.14 with these and they all work about the same.

[David Vaughn]

gduprey,

How did you set up the ISY to report your values and where to?  I have one of these as well and I'm just getting started but I'm at a loss on how to get the values somewhere that I can view them (ThingSpeak, whatever).  I read somewhere else that's using programs or Node Server and honestly I don't understand Node server to save my life.

[gduprey]

Not entirely sure I understand the question - the values are reported back to the ISY.  You can see them in the admin console of the ISY if you click on the power meter device.

In terms of what gets reported and when, you have to set ZWave configuration parameters.  It's a bit complex if you've not done bit-oriented math, but the docs have some examples.  The ISY admin console provides a simple tool to query and set ZWave parameter for any device (right click the device node in the admin console and follow the ZWave menu).  You can read some of it here (there is a complete PDF somewhere of all the config values for the device, but I couldn't find it).

https://aeotec.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000168073-home-energy-meter-gen5-setting-your-sensor-to-report-

As for ThingSpeak and such, I can't offer any help - I use my own software for everything, so not sure what else is out there that works with tie ISY and the HEM.  I'm sure some googling should turn up something though.

[David Vaughn]

Thanks that definitely helps with the reporting. 

 

As for ThingSpeak I was curious how to get the info out of the ISY. For example do you set a variable every time the HEM updates then read the variable by REST or something? 

[gduprey]

I use the REST interface.  You can directly read the nodes and attributes of each device and subscribe to be notified when they change.  So there is no other variables or programs needed on the ISY to do that.  The REST interface is pretty powerful - you can interrogate just about any attribute of any device, send commands, etc as well as access variables, run programs and lots of other stuff.

[heardc]

Just installed one of these using 4.7.3. Parameters 101-103 set to 15. 111-113 set to 60. I am getting reports only after querying the device , auto reporting is not working. The ISY throws a communications error from the admin console if querying from there. I have a program that queries the device every 10min, which will eventually die if I don’t check it. At least it doesn’t create a bunch of phantom nodes like all the other aeon labs products I have tried and eventually removed  

Tough call but getting a Bruletec is starting to feel like the better choice. I am using the rest interface to grab values and writing to a Google sheet which gets published to a web page. Pretty slick dashboard. 

[gduprey]

I have had this happen twice over a single 5 year install.  Both times, I was able to re-sync the Zwave nodes/whatchamajigit from the admin console and it started reporting again.  I agree that the AEOTEC seems to have a few problems (occasionally corrupted reports and this rare but real problem).  But 99.99% of the time, it works well, reports what I need and is affordable. 

I had a plan to write a script that would re-sync the nodes on the power meters if the script didn't see a report within a period of time, but while it would not be complex, it doesn't seem worth it for me given how rare this event is (and this is only in my oldest install with likely older firmware - my newer installs have never "gone offline" in nearly the same time interval (4 years for newer units for 5 year for oldest).

[heardc]

Thanks for the reply. I ended up using the rest interface to query from a .py running constantly in a raspberry pi. Seems to be working ok, not adding too much delay to the ISY, and good to have to one less ISY program running 24/7.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[heardc]

I found that disabling parameter 13 (CRC-16 Encapsulation) now allows the HEM to report updates as set by parameters 111-112-113 without the need to query anymore. This is using 4.7.3, expecting this to change for 5.0.16+.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tall-tom]

I was having the same issues with reporting. After I did a Syncronize as gduprey referenced it started reporting.

[matt.york]

It seems that sometimes the values are reported back to my ISY. I can see them in the admin console of the ISY when I click on the power meter device but the values change in frequently.

Am I getting these error messages because I have not set ZWave configuration parameters?

[matt.york]

Should the parameter size be 4?

[heardc]

I have 111, 112 and 113 set to 300.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk