Vera + BLI Powercost monitor (WIFI) + Bidgely (newbee)

Other Devices & Integrations Power Management
1

Hi,

I am planning on buying a Powercost monitor + a Vera light controller, and before commiting to it, I wanted to confirm the following:
1.- Will the Vera controller be able to communicate with the BLI powercost out of the box?
2.- If not, is there an app/plugin to accomplsih this?
3.- Alternatively, is the controller able to communicate with Bidgely?
4.- If not, can the controller talk to any of the other web based energy monitors: COSM (Pachube), PVOutput, Plot Watt, etc?

Thanks in advance for your answers, and excuse me if these have already been addressed in other threads (i looked, but didnt find anything)

Cheers,

reyemarr

2

Anyone??!! ???

3

I’ve not seen one for the BLI, but there are owner-built plugins for CurrentCost, TED5000 and Brultech. There is also support for ZWave energy monitors.

If you know how to code, and BLI provides and API, then you can probably write one yourself.

Natively Vera doesn’t upload to services like Bigdely, but it’s not hard to write something that does. I wrote a small snippet of code that pushes Vera data to SmartEnergyGroups (SEG). See the post in this category on the Brultech, since the snippet to upload to SEG is at the end of that thread.

Natively Vera will upload to a energy monitoring service called ERGY, but that plugin has been known to cause instability in Vera units in the past so people recommend that it not be installed. Do a subject search to see what I mean.

4

BlueLine Innovations is listed as a certified device partner on www.getvera.com (in the scrolling box of partner logos) but I have seen no further information on how to get Vera to work with the BLI wifi donut nor any of the websites it supports.

I have one too. No idea how to get it to work.

5

[quote=“reyemarr, post:1, topic:181250”]Hi,

I am planning on buying a Powercost monitor + a Vera light controller, and before commiting to it, I wanted to confirm the following:
1.- Will the Vera controller be able to communicate with the BLI powercost out of the box?
2.- If not, is there an app/plugin to accomplsih this?
3.- Alternatively, is the controller able to communicate with Bidgely?
4.- If not, can the controller talk to any of the other web based energy monitors: COSM (Pachube), PVOutput, Plot Watt, etc?

Thanks in advance for your answers, and excuse me if these have already been addressed in other threads (i looked, but didnt find anything)

Cheers,

reyemarr[/quote]

PlotWatt has an API. I’m going to see if I can make use of it. So there may be support for that for Vera in the future, but there isn’t right now. I posted more in reply to another thread here.

6

Thanks flaquito

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

7

I’ve written a script for uploading to PlotWatt. I’ve been using it for less than a day now, but it seems to be working fine.

8

According to the reviews on amazon this unit (I own one so will test), I pulled this info, anyone have any idea how to capture this for a device in vera?

This unit broadcasts the current status on the network every 31-32 seconds. If you have a Linux or Windows computer, you can capture the results for later use via this command:

nohup socat -u udp-recv:30278 create:EnergyUsage.txt,append &>> EnergyUsage.err &

socat should be in most distros (zypper in socat, sudo apt-get install socat) or here for windows […]

msgtype=PCMWiFi; DeviceID=XXXXXXXXXXXX; Inst=1981; Reg=13387786; Temp=31; BattLow=0; SQI=86; uTime=1369833832;
msgtype=PCMWiFi; DeviceID=XXXXXXXXXXXX; Inst=1995; Reg=13387803; Temp=31; BattLow=0; SQI=80; uTime=1369833864;
msgtype=PCMWiFi; DeviceID=XXXXXXXXXXXX; Inst=1976; Reg=13387820; Temp=31; BattLow=0; SQI=73; uTime=1369833895;
msgtype=PCMWiFi; DeviceID=XXXXXXXXXXXX; Inst=1968; Reg=13387837; Temp=31; BattLow=0; SQI=73; uTime=1369833927;
msgtype=PCMWiFi; DeviceID=XXXXXXXXXXXX; Inst=2008; Reg=13387854; Temp=31; BattLow=0; SQI=66; uTime=1369833959;
msgtype=PCMWiFi; DeviceID=XXXXXXXXXXXX; Inst=2008; Reg=13387871; Temp=31; BattLow=0; SQI=66; uTime=1369833991;

[ul][li]msgtype is constant.[/li]
[li]DeviceID is your mac address of the unit.[/li]
[li]Inst [/li]
[li]Reg is the Total consumption. I am not sure if that is since reset, or reboot of the actual sensor or wifi receiver.[/li]
[li]Temp is the temperature in C.[/li]
[li]BattLow will show 1 when the sensor’s battery is low, otherwise it is 0.[/li]
[li]SQI is the signal quality indicator of the wifi unit receiving the signal from the monitor/sensor. It is a percentage.[/li]
[li]uTime is unix time[/li][/ul]

Inst is the instantaneous demand in watt-hours and it is the actual demand at the time the reading was taken, not the average.

Reg value is the total accumulated power since the sensor was sync’s or the wifi unit set to factory defaults. If you change sensors the total also resets. Sensor readings are made every 32 seconds.

Gerry O’Brien
VP Product Development
Blue Line Innovations