Finally! This is what I’ve been looking for since getting my ST configured. Although, I don’t have a home meter, I’ve got numerous ST devices with meters. Many of which seem to work differently. Here is some brief feedback, based upon my first foray into configuring this:
Not all of this is intuitive, although I figured at least the basics out
It would be nice to get a warning when your subscription level selections are maxed out
It would be nice to allow switches * multiplier to be used for constant loads (perhaps this was possible, and I did not get there).
Some background on how to use the various sampling approaches would help. I’m assuming this is to deal with the inconsistent way with how devices report.
Per the above, I know my dishwasher is the highest rated load I have monitored, and yet it is not showing up as such.
I saw quite a few devices with both kWh and kW channels, although most of the ones I’m aware of report one or another. Did the software do some initial calcs, or is the is accessing data not available via the ST app?
It would be nice to set some type of hierarchy (like the outlet strip has 4 sub meters under it).
Hi @KennethEvers. The database got some bad data in it which stopped some of the aggregations from working for some people for a few days. The bad data has been removed and it should all be working again correctly now. Please let me know if you are still having trouble.
Hi @summer_breeze - thanks for pointing this out. It was a bug where the dashboards were only getting created for the first controller and not the second. This is now fixed.
Hi @homeagain - thanks for the detailed feedback. It’s always great to get someone else’s perspective on how it works. Taking a look at your individual comments:
Agreed that some parts could be more intuitive - what would be your top recommendation for making it easier? This would be helpful to prioritise the work.
Agreed - The challenge for this was always how to notify the user it had maxed out without spamming them every time a datapoint got ignored. We’ll have a think about how that might be best achieved.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this - can you give me a specific example? It is possible to set a multiplier and an offset to a channel in a graph (if this is what you mean?) but only via the API and not via the web site UI.
There is some background on the sampling / aggregations here: Constant Graph. If this is what you meant then we can make that a bit easier to find or did you mean something else?
If you can email contact@constantgraph.com with your ConstantGraph login email address and the channel number for your dishwasher, we can take a look
The software can convert between kWh and kW but only via the aggregation settings when you build your graph. It will not create channels that aren’t available in SmartThings (except for you you do energy disaggregation). If there is data being populated for those channels and you can’t see it in ST then it might be surfacing something new for you. However, more likely, I have seen channels are being reported there by ST but have no data in them. Again, if you email me I can take a look at your account.
Agreed - this is one of those features that never quite made it to the top of the list. There are some UI challenges here around how filtering will work with the hierarchy. I’ll take a look at when this could be done.
I think some basic instructions about selecting/ de-selecting items would help, Also, to clarify sequence of setting things up.
A counter that changes colors might help
Yes- a multiplier and offset would work -if that can be applied to binary items, then that would address this.
I saw this,but was not entirely clear where to use this. For instance, should difference be used for kW readings or COV outputs?
I will email this info.
Thanks for clarifying this, and yes, I noticed even some that said kWh in ST don’t report actual data. I’ll send my email.
I figured this would be a challenge, especially if the channels change, but I found myself doing this manually. Perhps in one area this could be done once, and allowed to show up on each view, even though manual, would at least do it once?
@homeagain - about item 2. with the subscription level maxing out. Having a counter might not be the best indication as your subscription allowance is measured over a 10 minute period and if you are not looking at the counter during the 10 minutes it goes over you won’t see that you have lost data.
As an alternative I have created a messaging system that gives you an alert if your subscription goes over. As this could happen up to 6 times an hour - the message alerts count how many times you have gone over and tells you in the message. You can dismiss the message, but if you go over again, it will display a new alert.
I didn’t originally realize the subscription limits were time sensitive. Perhaps on each screen where you select channels, it indicates the subscription cap, the current # selected, and the avg # selected over the last 10 minutes?
@homeagain - with respect to the hierarchy (item 7 on your list). It is possible to see a device view rather than channel view by clicking the menu icon above the channel list. The device view will group together all channels under a device reducing the list size significantly. Hovering over the channel icons to the right of the device name in the list will show you the name of each channel and clicking on them will add all of the channels to the current graph (up to a max of 20). Does this do the job?
I had figured out the sort option, which is very useful (you might want to add that explanation in the instructions). Your image didn’t come through, but it was unclear how to add groups of devices. I’ve added them one by one.
Although what I’m really looking for on the channel configuration page is that you could group items by the hierarchy (within a given type such as power) and then they show up as selections underneath the “master” item. This would then show up on all pages and would ideally be a one time manual configuration. This is mostly for powerstrips. Example:
Master Power Strip 1
Fan
Speaker
Master Power Strip 2
Woofer
Amp
If I were aggregating the values (I would choose to sum either Master Power Strip 1 and Master Power strip 2 or Woofer, amp, fan, speaker. I would not want to sum all 6 as then they would be double counted (assuming the master power values are working, which some of mine don’t).
ConstantGraph now has a new feature whereby you can group channels under a group name or “Custom Tag”. In the channel config menu you can assign up to 5 tags, so a channel could be in multiple groups. Then in the List Type menu you can select the new Custom Tags option to see all of your tag names. Clicking on a tag name will add or remove all of the channels with that name. Hopefully that will help anyone who has a lot of channels to manage.
Another little feature just released is a warning triangle next to any channel where the data has been truncated due to maxing out the subscription level. The warning will remain until new data comes in.
Someone also asked me (via email) about how to configure the Aeotec Home Energy Meter to report more frequently from the SmartThings hub. The SmartThings hub mainly uses the app for configurating and does a good job of hiding all of the technical details under the covers. I’ve therefore put together a step-by-step guide on how to configure the Aeotec Home Energy Meter
I like the addition, but I think it might be flagging some items that have zero values because they are off. I’ll send some examples of channels in error (because they are purposely scheduled off).
There was a question asked (via email) about whether it’s possible to leverage utility energy data from Smart Meters. There is the Chameleon app in SmartThings which uploads the previous day’s electricity data every day. I’m not sure which territories that works in though.
If you have the data available it’s possible to upload it into ConstantGraph via the API. On the top subscription you can send historical data with timestamps which can then be graphed next to other channels. You will need to generate an API Key via the admin page then make call the ConstantGraph API.
For example running the command below (from a command prompt) with the correct API key, will add the value 195 to channel 10 at epoch 1655412777 (which is Thursday, 16 June 2022 20:52:57 UTC). curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H X-Api-Key:0123456789ABCDEF -s https://data.mongodb-api.com/app/constantgraph-iwfeg/endpoint/http/data -d '{"app":"ST community", "version":"1234", "channels":[{"id":10, "data":[{"t":1655412777,"v":195}]}] }'
It should be possible to build a macro in an Excel spreadsheet to load data in
Hello all. Just to let you know that the latest release of ConstantGraph has gone out. It mainly contained bug fixes (thanks to everyone who pointed something out) and also added the ability to make a donation by supporting us on Ko-fi.
Hi Constant graph, this is great software. I have two requests:
Can you add TVOC measurements to the datapoints as an option? I bought an Aqara Air quality monitor and it works, but I can’t get good historical data in Smartthings. Here is the Edge driver I am using: Github Link
Can you make it so toggling the advanced menu options button in the Time Series editor does not revert the format of the graph? For example, I set all the data points to lines, then (accidentally) click the advanced button, now everything is columns with no easy way to go back.
Let me take a look over the next few days - it doesn’t look to hard on the face of it.
If you start in the “advanced” graph settings - you are able to change the Graph Type (e.g. line, column etc). If you then change to “basic” graph settings the Graph Type is chosen for you and depends on what you are graphing. As you point out, once this is changed there is no easy way back. I’ll have a think about the best way to do this. One option might be to put up an “are you sure” dialog when going from advanced to basic (it wouldn’t be necessary from basic to advanced).
Glad you are getting some good use out of the system!
Hi @Garrett_M. The TVOC reading should have been working for a number of days now. Let me know if you are having any trouble with it. I’m still looking at the advanced menu button.
Hi @granzy. If you go into the Graphs > Channel Config menu and select the channel you want to download them there is an option to download the raw data for the channel in CSV format.
Out of interest what do you want to do with the downloaded data? Maybe there is a feature that can be added for you instead?
