emonHub in VM?

First post, be gentle!

I’m considering purchasing an EmonTx for monitoring power and temperature.

I will want the data to come in to my existing openHAB / Node-RED / MQTT HA infrastructure which runs in a bunch of VMs and Dockers on an unRAID server.

I know I can use an emonBase to capture the data and forward it to my existing instance of MQTT. However, I’m just a tad reluctant to add an extra device to my set-up (even a power-sipping Pi) as I’m on a mission to consolidate as much as possible into a single server.

I was wondering if there’s a way to emulate emonBase (emonHub?) in a VM? If I could set up a VM and pass through a wireless receiver, I could run the ‘capture’ side of things on my existing hardware and pass the data along to my existing MQTT/Node-RED/OH set up.

Of course, if emonHub is tied to Pi hardware and, specifically, the RFM69Pi receiver board, this wont work.

If there’s no such restriction, any tips for a compatible USB receiver that I could test?

Thanks for looking.

Being python emonhub will run on both linux and windows, so if you have a VM with access to a usb port, using a JeeLink will do the job with little or no additional mods or further configuration beyond defining the com_port in emonhub.conf (usually /dev/ttyUSB? or /dev/ttyS? on linux or COM? on windows)

I use a jeelink on a window PC for emonhub development.

Excellent. Many thanks.

Looking forward to getting to grips with Eamon.