[OBSOLETE] OVO Energy (Connect) V2.2.5 (Smart Meter OVO customers)

That’s correct the Total Cost, Yesterday Total Cost boxes just have a – in them.

The graph is now displaying but is just a flat line, which I guess corresponds to the blank boxes!

Current usage displays fine.

Let’s see if I can fix this for you. You wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I haven’t had much feedback on this. What mobile device do you use?

First step, update the OVO device handler to v2.3.4 which I just published and see if that changes anything. You should see something in Total Cost after a couple of minutes if it’s working properly. Obviously Yesterday information will take a day to populate.

If not, check the logs in the SmartThings IDE. If it’s working fine, you should see the OVO Energy Device outputting this…

currentHour: 0, state.hour: 0, state.currentHourPowerTotal: 1.173,
state.currentHourPowerEntryNumber: 2, state.dailyPowerHistory: [Hour 0:0.5865]

The state.dailyPowerHistory variable is where it’s collecting all the data to populate the charts and other tiles.

Alex, I have had a look at this and it looks like the first time it is run, “data.yesterdayTotalPowerCost” is not setup so on the 1st call to “calculatePercentChange” (from line 174) this is a null

The debug log gives the following error:
error groovy.lang.GroovyRuntimeException: Ambiguous method overloading for method java.math.BigDecimal#minus.
Cannot resolve which method to invoke for [null] due to overlapping prototypes between:
[class java.lang.Character]
[class java.lang.Number] @ line 247

and adding some extra diagnostics showed that data.yesterdayTotalPowerCost was the variable at fault.

I notice there is another call further down which is also failing, but without going through the whole code, I suspect it will all be fine once the first initialisation has been done.

Yes, I noticed this last night and fixed it. Did you update to v2.3.5? It should have stopped this particular error.

As this null exception always happened, state.hour never got initialised and the other tiles would have never updated as that block of code was never reached.

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No, I was running 2.3.4

Updated to 2.3.5 now and its looking good so far.

Looking at the logs, I see it’s downloading the full account details very regularly - I wonder if this could be changed to be less frequent? Doesn’t really matter much to me, but I could see it mattering to OVO if many of us ever ran this.

Noted and sorted. Update both Smartapp to v2.2.3 and Device handler to v2.3.6.

I think it’s just the 2 of us making the API calls so I’m sure their servers can cope.

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@rogerl are you using the gateway ?

Yes @Nifty190 I believe that is the only way this could work at the moment.

A bit daft as the meters themselves are just ZigBee devices which we should be able to read directly, but my understanding is they are all “locked down” to stop us accessing them and I certainly haven’t seen any API for them.

That said, I am not sure how @Alyc100 got the API info for OVO as I haven’t seen that published anywhere either.

@Alyc100 this is great! Do you know how many people are using this? I work at OVO Energy on the live smart meter data project. You should come in to the office and meet the team at some point…

@iBeech Tom_Ranson RZR666 Nifty190 scoobaru I can send you a Smart Gateway if you’d like? (sorry can only tag 2 users)

I would LOVE a gateway to use. That would be really handy.

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Hi Tom,

Not many as I believe the Smart Gateway was only given out over a 6 month period and I am assuming that the number of users who own both the OVO Smart Gateway owners and SmartThings is tiny. I do know that a few people on this forum would love to have an OVO smart gateway to get this ST/OVO integration up and running. Is there a reason why the smart gateway program was ceased?

One thing I will add is that bringing in OVO live readings into SmartThings or any other smart home hub is the way to make me more aware about my energy usage over having an IHD display in the house that will probably never get looked at.

I now get a push notification summarising daily electricity and gas usage at midnight along with a % change compared with the day before. I can also set a daily maximum cost limit that I’m notified about if something is using an excessively large amount of electricity or gas which is really useful.

I can also plug OVO live meter readings into a rule to warn me if high levels are being used when my family are out of the house and automatically force all appliances, lights, boiler heating, hot water, electric heaters and underfloor heating thermostats to turn off just in case they have been left on.

On another note, the live meter readings have stopped working since 10pm Friday. The OVO mobile app and website now aren’t reporting my live feed usage. Is this a known problem?

On its way. Let me know on here when you recieve it and I can get you set up…

I’d love to have had one- but the guys refused at OVO refused to send me one, and I have since left ovo :frowning:

Hi Alex,

Very cool, this is the sort of thing we are looking at on the roadmap for our digital product.

We had to stop giving out Smart Gateway’s due to a change in regulation, see here for more info: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/497078/IHD_Policy_Framework_Licence_Conditions_Post_Consultation_Decisions_Final_for_Publication.pdf

We plan to launch an alternative live data solution in 2017. Happy to provide OVO smart customers on this forum with a Smart Gateway in the mean time.

Finally we are aware of the issue, and are looking into it - apologies.

BR - Tom

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Thanks for the update Tom.

Very impressed with OVO reaching out to this forum and great news about the live data solution next year. Is the plan for everyone to migrate to that or will smart gateway users stick with that solution?

Tagging @RZR666 @scoobaru @Nifty190 for the offer of an OVO smart gateway.

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Those with a Smart Gateway will still be supported :slight_smile: The new hardware will be offered with new smart meter istallations going forward.

Keep up the good work!

Tom

Hi @Teld_47 i would be very happy to receive a gateway please message me

I have updated the OVO Connect app to v2.2.4 and OVO device handler to v2.4. This release includes:-

  • Historical chart data now from OVO API
  • OVO API offline/online push notification
  • Offline / Online status tile
  • Yesterday cost and power usage/comparison figures now from OVO API
  • Better handling of offline OVO API scenario
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Please update the OVO Energy Meter device handler to v2.4.1 as the original offline detection was a bit too sensitive.

Now offline mode will now trigger when OVO API has been down for a 60 minute continuous period.

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