Archived Forum

Hi Stephen
You are quite right the emonHub documentation is lacking somewhat, however with the original emonHub, when you installed it and added your emoncms apikey(s), it would of worked correctly 'out of the box', it was designed to work in "OEM legacy mode" by default. 

The emon-pi variant of emonHub included on the 'post-emonPi' SDcard image is heavily adapted for use with the emonPi and emonCMS low-write v8.5, it can still be used in other ways but the settings and the image documentation lean towards the emonPi.

Are you intending to run a local emoncms? if so what version? 

The low-write v8.5 emoncms requires more info from emonhub to automatically configure the inputs, the node 10 configuration you see in the conf is to set up the inputs from the current range of emoncms hardware.
By having [[10]] declared in the [nodes] means the "legacy defaults" will be over ruled by what is defined, correct or not.

As a quick fix/test try changing the [[10]] to an out of range number eg [[100]], if you have added an emoncms.org apikey to the conf already then emonHub should assume node 10 is a "standard OEM" node and default processing used, I hope this is still the case for this version. but if not we can define "your" node 10.

I can see you have figured out the use of the single datacode 'h' which would have worked in pre-emonPi emonhub, in this version though it moves the problem along to scales (hence the error you see), emonhub has received 8 bytevalues which you have defined as ints so it is expecting 4 scales and gets 12, scale = 1 (no plural) should resolve this, but may not as there are several changes not in the original so I'm not 100%. 

So if using the local emonCMS low-write v8.5 or want node 10 defined anyway you could try 
[[10]]
    nodename = emonTx_1
    firmware = emonTxV2_CT123_Voltage
    hardware = emonTx_v2_2
    [[[rx]]]
        names = power1, power2, power3, Vrms
        datacodes = h, h, h, h # (a little more specific than datacode = h)
        scales = 1,1,1,1
        units =W,W,W,V 
        
This uses generic terms for [[[rx]]] names, you can replace with your own if you prefer eg grid, solar, hotwater, voltage etc to match any existing emoncms labels.

The more emonhub'ish way to have done this would of been to not include any default nodes active (leave commented out maybe or "just add node id" perhaps) and make emonhub allocate default values if the node is not defined so the equivalent of

[[any undefined node id]]
    nodename = the undefined node id
    firmware = ""
    hardware = ""
    [[[rx]]]
        name = the values array position
        datacode = h
        scale = 1
        unit = ""

please let us know how you get on as I'm sure other emonTx v2 users may find this useful.

Paul

Hello Paul,

thanks for the info, things start to make a bit more sense.

my plan, ultimately, is to use a linux server installed version of the CMS, and have the hub feed into that, but that is not set up yet as i was trying to setup 1 bit at a time and get it working.

is there a different SD image that i should be using? All the setup is very different from the last time i set this all up, so my learning curve has started from nearly zero again.

I have tried to setup the node as you suggested but something isn't  happy.

when i move the config to [[100]]. by moving the config away from node [[10]] the input it picked up by the "nodes" tab in the emoncms tab on the web config, where it wasn't before.

if i add a node defenition in that is "generic" as you suggest

-----

[[10]]
    nodename = 10
    firmware = ""
    hardware = ""
    [[[rx]]]
        name = the values array position
        datacode = h
        scale = 1
        unit = ""

-----

then this works ok, but i've clearly not defined any units or scales, etc.

if i try to define them with something like this :

[[10]]
    nodename = 10
    firmware = ""
    hardware = ""
    [[[rx]]]
        name = the values array position
        datacode = h, h, h, h
        scale = 1,1,1,1
        unit = ""

the config dies, and i get lots of these :

2015-07-04 11:25:09,964 WARNING MainThread RFM2Pi thread is dead

2015-07-04 11:25:10,206 WARNING MainThread RFM2Pi thread is dead

2015-07-04 11:25:10,456 WARNING MainThread RFM2Pi thread is dead
 

in the log.

i then have to change the config and reboot the pi to get it working.

clearly the 9 byte values recieved from the emon_tx are not straight numbers

i presume the data format is : unsig int - node id

sig  long - power1 (2 bytes)

sig long - power 2 (2 bytes)

sig long - power 3 (2 bytes)

unsig long - volts * 10 ( 2 bytes)

??

Trying this out :

-----

[[10]]
    nodename = 10
    firmware = ""
    hardware = ""
    [[[rx]]]
        name = the values array position
        datacode = l, l, l, L
        scale = 1,1,1,1
        unit = ""

-----

also fails, and i get the same

2015-07-04 11:25:10,456 WARNING MainThread RFM2Pi thread is dead

type error message.

i'm confused. clearly the node works, both the TX and RX sides, but trying to setup the data types fails totally, i'm clearly totally missing something!

Thanks!

Stephen.

I'm afraid I cannot explain the "WARNING MainThread RFM2Pi thread is dead" log messages beyond emonhub hasn't handled an error and that thread has crashed (which you had probably worked out).

The 9 values are node id plus 4 byte-pair integers. all the data settings ignore the node id and only refer to the data portion eg in your case the last 8 bytes. The datacodes then define how many values to form from those bytes.

When illustrating what emonhub should be defaulting to, the "the values array position" in italics in your particular case would be 1,2,3,4. This is to replicate the " normal behavior of the emoncms inputs module,

Also the use of plurals as opposed to the singular in datacode, scale and unit etc is deliberate to signify slightly different things, eg "datacode = h" means the data packet consists of only signed ints of an undefined number(legacy) like a global datacode for that node, so any even number of data bytes will be acceptable. However "datacodes = h" (plural) means the fully defined datacodes for this node is a single h therefore 2bytes/1 int, likewise "datacodes = h, h, h, h" specifically defines 4 ints (8bytes).

This use of plurals should be consistent through all the nodes data settings ie (names,) scales and units etc.

[[10]]
    nodename = 10
    firmware = ""
    hardware = ""
    [[[rx]]]
        names = 1, 2, 3, 4
        datacode = h 
        scale = 1
        units = w,w,w,v

or to be a little more specific try

[[10]]
    nodename = 10
    firmware = ""
    hardware = ""
    [[[rx]]]
        names = 1, 2, 3, 4
        datacodes = h, h, h, h
        scales = 1,1,1,1
        units = w,w,w,v

Paul

Thanks Paul,

that seemed to do the trick.

Just working through some issues with my install of opencms now :)

Stephen.

Thanks to this thread by Paul and Stephen, I finally managed to get my home energy monitoring system up and running...!

I bought my hardware almost 2 years ago, but never succeeded in setting it up properly. When I did a little cleaning of the mancave last week, I found my box of parts and decided to give it another go... with success this time!

Here in Belgium, there is a company that sells a similar commercial product. One of the features is that the software takes a 'DNA' sample of your electrical appliances so the system recognizes what is switched 'on' and thus what is causing the power consumption. Are there any plans to develop this for the openenergy community in the future?

Cheers,

Filip