Hi everyone - Brand new to Smartthings. Please be patient with me. I am willing to work and learn, but need some pointers to get me in the right direction. I am a non-programmer (but eager to learn) that wants to plot his energy usage data so I can start actually using the data I’m collecting. I’ve seen a SmartApp or two that claims to provide this functionality, but when I paste in the code, I can’t seem to get beyond that… how do I use it?
It has seemed really hard to find a simple data graphing solution for some really simple data.
Can anyone help me out here please? Assume I am coming in with ZERO knowledge here on how smartthings works, because I am.
If you want to do this with zero programming, just go to https://thinglayer.net and sign up for an account. Read the faq and follow the setup procedure. You can get a graph of your home energy usage. If you want to go the SmartApp route, check out the grovestreams smartapp.
Thanks jodyalbritton. I will check out thinglayer.net. The Grovestreams app was what I actually tried, but had ‘failure to launch’ so to speak. Basically I got the code pasted in, but can’t see what to do next to actually use it. I saw someone in that thread also was trying to use Aeon HEM, and they had to add in a little code. I did the same. Apparently it worked for them, but I’m not seeing it. – Thanks
OK, looks like I figured out how to use GroveStreams to graph my energy usage, logged from Aeon HEM device. Any idea how to get datapoints more often than 5 min apart? Any idea where I can configure this to be more frequent (I would like more like 5 sec apart, but I’m data greedy)???
Zwave and zigbee are both mesh networks. They’re not designed for real time monitoring, but rather for tiny messages on low traffic networks. Sampling, typically once every 5 minutes or every 15 minutes. Also, there’s no forced sequencing, messages may bounce around the network a bit and can arrive out of order.
Most devices won’t report more often than every minute, and SmartThings won’t let you schedule more frequently than that.
Many zwave devices come with a fine print warning, “not to be used for medical devices,” for all these reasons.
There’s nothing wrong with mesh. The trade off for not having real time fixed routing is a network that is very cheap in terms of both energy draw and dollars per device. And highly resilient when any individual device goes offline.
But if you’re data greedy and you want real time monitoring, not sampling, you don’t want mesh. Choose star or tree topology, hard wired or cellular. Or WiFi if you’re ok with occasional drop offs. (WiFi is star topology, high data flow, forced sequencing. All good. But does lose connection occasionally.)
Or if you want to keep costs down and you want all the data but don’t need real time review install an inline recorder and upload the logs once a week or so.
So it just depends on what you want and are willing to pay for. Zwave energy monitors are fine for showing patterns of usage based on sampling. But not intended for constant monitoring and up to the second real time reporting.
Although a little old (2013) the following is a good discussion of energy monitoring systems.
Thanks JDRoberts for an excellent reply. Might you have a sec to expand a little on what kind of inline recorder options there are and how one might set that up?
Hi: I just got a ST hub likely V1 used off ebay and a AEON energy monitor also G1 or V1 from amazon. They are talking to each other but I only see instantaneous snapshot of W and accumulated kWh compiled every five minutes on a lengthening list. Is there a way to display this as a continuing graph? Thank you. --Tom in AZ