15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Hi all,

 

i hope it has not been allready posted but i used the search and probably the wrong keywords.

What i am looking for is a remote readable meter.

The situation is as following:

We would like to meter 15 different groups in the house, get a monthly report etc.

 

We live in the Netherlands  , using 240 V  and i think its called a 1 phase system.

Now i do understand we need the emontx, my question is , is it possible to fit this much groups on 1 raspberry computer.

And how much Emontx we need for this, ive seen that 1 port is only capable for 4.5Kw so that probably is a port that has no use then because if my calculations are correct 240v x 16a= 3840 Watt 

But on some groups there is 2 x 16a fuse so that would be double then.

 

Well , i hope someone can give me some tips or his thoughts about it.

Thanks in advance

 

regards

vince

Robert Wall's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

"But on some groups there is 2 x 16a fuse so that would be double then."

There is something wrong there. You will not have two fuses / circuit breakers in parallel on one circuit.

Input 4 of the emonTx V3 is good to 18 A, but by changing the burden resistor (easy by putting a second resistor of 27 Ω in parallel - there are holes ready for a wire-ended resistor) you can have the full 100 A on all four inputs.

But if some of your fuses / circuit breakers are 16 A or less, which they will be, then it is better to use input 4 unchanged because you should get more accurate readings.

You will have 4 x emonTx, I think there will be a possibility that a reading might be corrupted from time to time because two emonTx's transmit at the same time, but this should be rejected by the decoding software.

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Great to hear, and thanks for the fast response.

I think i will order two for now and test a bit to see if they do not interfere with each other.

About the 2 x 16A , its a building with 10 rooms in it, Each of the room has its own group, but on each group are 2 fuses of 16Amps.

We want to measure all the rooms separatly and ofcourse not the both fuses because we need even more emontx pcb's, our thought is then 2 x 16A is 32A.

All the rooms also use a electric stove and some other equipment so i do not think it will exceed 20 Amps , probably less.

But you never know , maybe you are housing an idiot like this in your building haha http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut5DXxK1dvk

Not sure if i am correct but this is the situation.

 

I will post my findings here on the forum if someone wants to do the same.

i'll keep this updated

 

 

 

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Well the package has been ordered.

hopefully we receive it somewere in the new year.

order is the pi + preload sd + 2x emon tx and 8 clips for now to see if this is fully compatible.

Also googling to find out if there is still a possibility to switch 1 or 2 relays if the RF transmitter is connected as it uses also some of the pins  from the PI pinout.

So allot of reading to do ;)

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Well , i have connected one Emontx and the Raspberry,

done the config of the files and it sends data to emoncms.org ;)

 

So far so good, as i am not quite sure if the readings are 100% correct but i am going to get a separate measure device the one that you plug between the powercord and then use a clamp and this on the same device to compare the measured results.

As i connect the second emontx  it overwrites the data in emoncms, because it is also called node 10.

I could not find exactly in the wiki file how to change the emontx node number , if this even is possible of course.

I do have a rs232 connecter laying arround to usb that would fit on the emontx , i guess i can change it by programming it with this cable , but how to do this ?

Can any one help me pointing me to the right direction ?

Robert Wall's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

You can easily change the node number in your emonTx. But you must have some tools. You will need a programmer and possibly a USB extension cable, and you need to install the Arduino IDE also.

I think you have the emonTx V3. You must download the default sketch (emonTxV3_RFM12B_DiscreteSampling) from Github. In the sketch, look for a line like "const int nodeID = 10;"  - it is the number 10 that you change. Then you must reload the sketch, using the instruction near the bottom of the "Install the Arduino IDE page".

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Great Robert,

 

Thanks for this fast reply.

I have the programmer here for another board i have bought a while ago so this will work with the cable and all that fits on the emontx

indeed i got Version 3 and i will follow the steps.

I will let a message behind how it has developed

Jasper's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

You sure about those two fuses per group? What we in the netherlands call a group (american: circuit) is pretty much universally done, if old-fashioned smeltzekering/fuse, with two wires (live and neutral), with a fuse in the live wire and not in the neutral, and with a switch that switches both off. With an automatic circuit breaker (installatieautomaat), it will still be possible to switch both wires off, the live wire only is monitored for overcurrent, and if it trips the live wire will be switched off and the neutral may or may not be switched off.

Now one thing we do have here which is borderline insane according to the rest of the world is the so-called "kookautomaat". This consists of two separate, mechanically linked groups, with two lives and two neutrals, which feed together to a large cooking plate.

The third possibility is that each room simply has two separate groups going to it, and you want to measure them together.

Not sure which situation actually applies with you (post a photo of the meterkast somewhere!).

 

Either way, if you want to simultaneously measure the current in multiple wires, it should be possible to simply clamp the sensor over multiple phase wires (not the neutrals), the sensor should, I believe, add them up using physics. 

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Hi Jasper,

 

Well we figured it out.

Actually as i am not an electrician i might have used the wrong words.

Here is the cabinet of the house that we like to monitor,  each 2 fuses are from 1 room in the house.

The one on the right lower corner is 400V that is for the heating system and it looks like a ground circuitbreaker (aardlek ?)  at the same time , but we do not want to measure this one so that is not a problem.

I have connected the clamps for testing now in our own house to see if it worked and i used a multimeter to find the right wires ofcourse , and it seems i succeeded ;)

I did bumped into a "problem" with the programming but i have the feeling that i am using the wrong file, but the name seems correct.

I also looked to the programmer what connectors i needed and connected them on the right ones (rst-txd-rxd-5v-gnd) it powers the emontx up when i insert the usb programmer.

And here is the GIF file  whats happening when i want to upload the code.

 

Jasper's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Looks like you're missing a few libraries. 

https://github.com/openenergymonitor/emonTxFirmware/tree/master/emonTxV3

Libraries needed, download those and install them in your arduino installation.

 

All of those units are actually combination GFCI (Aardlek) with breakers (installatieautomaten), known as aardlekautomaten. The one bottom right is a 3 phase one (made from 3 single phase modules with a fuse, 1 switch for the neutral, and one large three phase gfci module, looks like), all the others are just single phase aardlekautomaten. Each room has 2 groups/circuits, apparently.

Edit: Good point -- I couldn't actually see whether or not the rooms are each on a single phase or not. With a panel this large it would be fairly easy to do that, (although a bit of a pig of a rewiring task requiring some complete downtime, if it needs to change), and balance the rooms out over the three phases rather than individual groups. The brown and black wire there are each on a single phase output side (by convention, input to output is always bottom to top in these things), so I'm not sure that it actually means they're on separate phases. You'd need to actually check the bottoms and see how those are distributed.

Robert Wall's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

You cannot put 2 wires through each c.t. where the wires are on different phases - like the 1st (Phase 1- brown) and 2nd (Phase 2 - black) in your picture. If you do, you will get the wrong answer. Read in Building Blocks about 3-phase systems to see why. Where the wires are the same phase (both brown, both black, both grey) then you can and you will correctly read the sum of the two currents.

How to install the libraries is here: http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/buildingblocks/installing-arduino-libr...

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Thanks both of you,

reading and trying again to get it sorted.

 

EDIT:  As i have been busy with the libraries, i think the description is a bit small or simple because i do not get it.

I get the part of installing and that it need different libraries but as i try the example , one time it works and gives the successfully notice i am a bit lost.

If i see the other libraries links on github, they are filled with files, what libraries or files do i exactly need.

When i start the  Arduino IDE program it takes about 2 or 3 minutes before it shows up, then i open a file , takes another minute or more, then up to the next and if all goes ok of course.

If i have to add all those files like this i am done in a week or so . i also tried to set the compatibility settings in windows 7 so the program runs in a virtual windows xp environment but that did not work either.

 

Robert Wall's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

I have just changed from Windows XP to Linux, but before I did I helped another member who was having problems with libraries in Windows. Here is a screenshot of my libraries in Windows XP: http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/3390#comment-17033. Read that post and the rest of the thread to the end.

I also have Windows 8.1 on here <cry> and I think I copied the whole "OpenEnergyMonitor" directory - hardware designs, software, libraries, test reports, Building Blocks articles, everything from Windows XP to Windows 8.1 and it all worked, so I think it should be the same in Windows 7.

The highlighted directory "Software" is set as the Sketchbook directory in the Arduino IDE.

When you download from GitHub, you need everything in each library. But be careful, some libraries must have the directory name changed to work. The "readme" will tell you when you must change the name.

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Hi Robert,

 

Thanks and i have read the last bit of the post.

Going to give it a go and will place my findings here.

EDIT: thanks for your patience btw haha.

I have done all the steps and the libraries seem to be on the right place or accepted by the program.

here i have a movie from whats going on this time , also you can see that the program is somehow a bit unresponsive when i click on extra for the com prt settings etc.

loading is very slow .

 

http://www.ledaanbod.nl/emontx/index.html

 

Here are the picures of the programmer i have, it is working with the same silicon drivers, but i have this programmer with a different sort of arduino card so it should not matter i guess.

 

Reinstalled the drivers , also reinstalled the IDE arduino software.

this does not matter.

On the topic i found i see many people talking about installing a new bootloader.

Robert Wall's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Sorry, I can't view the movie as I'm running out of bandwidth for this month.

So what now are your problems? It is slow, what else? Does it compile a sketch? Can it find the serial port? Does it load your emonTx?

If it is slow, where have you installed everything? Is the IDE in a 'standard' place for your system? Are the OEM files and sketchbook also in a 'standard' place for your system?

The usual reason that a Windows machine is slow is because it is swapping programs out of memory to disc and back again - and that is because you have too many programs running and you do not have enough memory for them to run in. I don't know if that is the case for you, it is something you need to find out.

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Ah already out of bandwidth that's bad, have to go several more days until the end.

Well the program response is very slow, i dont know if memory is a problem, like my adobe illustrator jumps open in a few seconds .

Using a SSD as startup drive and programs and 8gig ram i7  core laptop, so should me more then sufficient.

All the files are in the standard file location as the program wants to install it to, when i press compile it succeeds , but then if it tries to upload it to the emontx it just does not work.

Gives me over and over again the same error, and i have been reading on the arduino forums about it but many people say different things, from using the wrong virtual com port to rewriting the bootloader.

I checked the libraries if i have them all, i also checked what com port the USB programmer made , in my case com 7 so i changed it in the software, also to be sure , deleted the drivers, reinstalled, changed the port of the programmer to a free one com 4  and redo the previous steps but it didn't made any difference.

Also hold in the reset button until compiling is done, release and then it should upload, but of course it doesn't, so i checked the selection in the software if it was trying to connect to the right arduino processor/board and that is also correct as on the site described from installing / using IDE.

Then i thought lets see and try reinstalling IDE itself but no luck so far, the other notices are gone that i was missing the libraries.

 

(what do you mean , does it load your emontx ? can i look into a file folder or something with the program on the emontx ?)

 

edit:  i also tried to do the steps on a computer with windows xp, installed everything correctly  and all works until i try to upload it and it gives the same error.

 

Robert Wall's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

I think your computer should be good enough! From that, and because it also does not work on another machine, I would suspect the problem is with your programmer. I do know there are two versions, and if you have the wrong one it will not work. I cannot read the connections on your programmer, so check those especially if you are using single wires - not long ago someone said the connections were labelled wrongly because TX connected to RX - but of course that is correct and he was wrong. The GND and 5 V connections are obvious, then it is Tx - RX(D), Rx - TX(D) and RST - RTS.

I don't know how the emonTx V3 is programmed in the shop, but I very much doubt the bootloader is wrong.

 

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Thanks for the reply ,

i rechecked the connectors , actually i did it 1 minute ago.

I took the emontx out of the power cabinet  that was connected, replaced with the one i tried to rewrite.

But the error is still here, i also think the programmer is not the right one , strange as i used it before for my other board and its working there.

 

I do have a computer from my cctv that has a RS232 port , i also got a bag of rs232 connectors laying arround, i guess its possible to upload it by a real rs232 cable/port ?

 

 

EDIT:  well i used the CCTV computer with winxp,  the IDE software response is good, normal speeds.

Turned off the CCTV software, rebooted the pc so i was sure that com1 was unused.

grabbed a rs232 connected and used the soldering iron to connect 4 pieces of wire, i was not quite sure if i should connect the GND as well.

 

Used a pinout i found o internet,  used pin 2 / 3 / 5 /7  and still no result , same error as before. (used a ext power source also 5v 2A)

I find the wildest stories what to do, tried most of them but none of them worked in my case.

 

Any more ideas ?

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Anyone that has an idea what to do ?

Or is there someone in the Netherlands living not to far from Amsterdam that can change it for me/program ?

 

Robert Wall's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

I could reprogram it for you, but return postage will cost GBP 3.20 and your own programmer from the shop shipped to the Netherlands is GBP 10.20. I advise you to buy a programmer.

vincenttor's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

Thanks for the reply Robert,

 

one more question, the programmer is just a simple usb to rs232 converter correct ?

Why could i not program it with a real rs232 port ?

That port is working 100% as i am using it to control ptz from my camera system.

 

The programmer uses the CP2102 chipset that is in the shop , the programmer i have here uses exactly the same , and about a dozen others that are available on ebay for 2 dollars.

I just do not understand what is going wrong here :(

 

(also keeping in mind that i want to buy another 5 emontx v3 prints but as i am not able to program this will pass.)

Robert Wall's picture

Re: 15 meter readouts possible with 1 raspberry ?

As I understand it, there is a 5 V version and a 3.3 V version of the programmer. The one available in the shop is the 3.3 V one and it is clearly the right one to program the emonTx, the Nanode RF, the OKG Base, the emonGLCD.

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