Has anyone done much with the Smappee energy monitor? The kit seems good, and (at least her in the UK), it’s a standard ST device, available from the ‘add things’ screen.
The thing is, although it returns separate values for mains power usage and solar generation, all of the existing ‘power’ apps only seem expect power monitors to provide a single value.
I’d like to do things like turn low-priority appliances like dehumidifier son only when I’m exporting power. Seems like a good use for ST.
But I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, so if someone has already done the donkey work…
In the US, at least, some people use the IFTTT indirect integration, which does distinguish between solar power and other power since it’s using the smappee channel. I don’t know if it works for the UK.
Thanks JD. I guess that would work but it would be nice to have something more direct. I was thinking about switching loads to mop up the solar export, but IFTTT is possibly going to add too much delay to make this worthwhile.
I had a look at the documentation for the Smappee API, it would need to be a cloud-to-cloud implementation with the appropriate call being polled to get current consumption data etc. Not impossible but I don’t have a Smappee
The issue would still be delay though
Edit: looks like someone tried last year… not sure if enough has changed for this to work.
The baked-in ST device handler already gets the Solar value. It’s just that none of the existing power-monitoring apps seem able to use it - they all assume that an energy monitor returns a single value.
Oh I see, I should have checked if there was a solution already Sadly that’s because of the lack of suitable “capabilities” for the device handlers. The solution would be to have two virtual power meters and a SmartApp that connects the virtual power meters to the individual values on the Smappee device handler.
Actually, it looks like the official integration only updates every five minutes or so, so not really good enough to copy with minimising solar export. I’ll use Smappee’s own Comfort Plugs instead.
I know @djtucker mentioned that he had a device type to interrogate Smappee locally, so might be a better option. I don’t know if he released the code or not though.
Hi Robby, I use local API pooling which gives me almost real time readings. However, I was remarked here that I should not pool it more frequently than every 5s and that in fact the local API is not intended to be used. Therefore, I haven’t publicised it. Anyway, if you want try it on your own rick then you can pool http://smappeeXXXXXXXX.local/gateway/apipublic/reportInstantaneousValues
with JSON path $.report and get real time power, voltage, current, etc. The correct smappeeXXXXXX.local address you can find in your app UI or use mdns-scan
Except when he says “pooling” he means “polling”.
It would mean ultimately that the data can be queried a lot more often than using the cloud API. Not realtime, but close.
It’s a shame that mDNS/DNS-SD or Bonjour is not currently supported else it’d make creating a Connect SmartApp much easlier. Instead the address details for the device on the LAN would need to be entered manually.
I believe this is what @PailOckenden is already using but requires more frequent updates of power usage than 5 minutes as it uses the cloud integration, not local.
Just purchased a smappee. Just wondering if you can add smart plugs through the official app within smart things and make them available as a device in “Things”?
Would be useless if they only updated every 5 minutes though.
I don’t think there’s any way to get the comfort plugs working with SmartThings. In fact, given the slow polling I’m not really sure how useful the Smappee / SmartThings integration is at all. It would be nice to fire off events in real time (e.g. If a certain appliance is detected, or if solar export goes above zero). But the delays make stuff like that pretty useless.
Sadly that’s because of the lack of suitable “capabilities” for the device handlers. The solution would be to have two virtual power meters and a SmartApp that connects the virtual power meters to the individual values on the Smappee device handler.