emonPi stopped recognising CT clamps

Hardware emonPi
1

I’m having a odd issue with my emonPi / emonTx setup that I can’t get to the bottom of, nor can I find the right combination of search terms to find any hints here.

The emonPi boots and emonCMS starts and works fine. Feeds that are provided externally via MQTT are working just fine, but it has stopped recognising all of the CT clamp based feeds be they from the two directly connected clamps or the three on my emonTX.

The feeds just seem…stuck. They haven’t updated since September 28th and nothing I have done seems to bring them back to life.

I have checked all the physical connections. I’ve upgraded to the latest versions of all firmware, OS and emonCMS. It reboots fine, just always this problem with the CT Clamps.

Can any one please point me in the right direction of where this might be going wrong, or tell me what additional information I can provide to help with that determination? As you can see I’ve been working on this for a while to no avail!

2

@xyleth

Assuming that you have an emonPi1 (silver aluminium box with a LCD and a button on the top) plus an emonTx3 or emonTx4:

The measurement/radio receiver board in the emonPi1 originally used the DS (discrete sampling) method and the Jeelib radio protocol by default. In February 2023 new firmware became available for the measurement board which used the more accurate CM (continuous measurement) method, and the LPL (Low Power Labs) radio protocol. The LPL protocol has now become the default for new models. Note:

  1. the CM method can not be used with the Jeelib radio protocol - it has to use the LPL protocol.
  2. there was an intermediate JeelibNative radio format that could be used with CM measurements, but LPL was adopted as the default.

If the emonPi1 measurement/radio receiver board firmware was updated to CM/LPL then:

  1. The emonPi1 would stop receiving data from emonTx3/4s that were still using the Jeelab protocol. This could be fixed by either updating the emonTx3/4s to the LPL firmware #, or reverting the emonPi1 to the emonPi1 DS/Jeelab firmware #.
    2) Because the data sent from the CM/LPL EmonPi measurement board to the Pi over the serial port ttyAMA0 was now different (both in content and baud rate) #, the Pi could not understand the voltage, power and radio # etc measurements sent from the board. For CM/LPL this could be fixed by updating the emonHub configuration. For DS/Jeelib this could be fixed by reverting the emonPi1 to the emonPi1 DS/Jeelab firmware and the corresponding emonHub configuration #.

For more details, see below and posts 3 and 7 #

From memory, the things that changed in the CM/LPL update were

  1. the /dev/ttyAMA0 baud rate increased from 38400 (DS/JeeLib) # to 115200 (CM/LPL), which affected the emonHub Interfacer settings #
  2. the emonHub Node settings # for the emonPi changed as the CM/LPL format included a message number at the beginning of the data and extra pulse2count,E1,E2 measurements
  3. the CM node name for the emonPi in emonHub was originally suggested as emonpiCM. As the original DS node name was emonpi, this meant that the CM data did not appear in the original inputs, unless the CM node name was changed back to emonpi.
  4. there were problems with incorrect results showing oh the emonPi LCD

So you might want to check whether any software and firmware updates you’ve done are compatible and have the correct emonHub interfacer and node settings.

Don’t know if this helps! Apologies in advance for any mistakes! # edited for clarity

@TrystanLea Perhaps something on this could be included in the emonPi1 Docs?

3

Just to add you CANNOT use the LPL Library (and hence the LPL protocol) with the very early RFM12B radio modules, normally found on emonTx V2, emonTx V3.2, some early emonTx V3.4, and early emonTHs.

4

It is an emonPi 1 and a emonTX 3, yes.

I’ve reset the firmware to DS/Jeelab but that doesn’t seem to have made a difference. And would that affect the two onboard CT clamps as well?

This is the current server information - the feedwriter seems stuck constantly with these points waiting for write.

Server Information

Server Information

Services

  • emonhub :- Active Running

  • emoncms_mqtt :- Active Running

  • feedwriter :- Active Running - sleep 300s 185 feed points pending write

  • service-runner :- Active Running

  • emonPiLCD :- Active Running

  • redis-server :- Active Running

  • mosquitto :- Active Running

  • demandshaper :- Active Running

  • emoncms_sync :- Active Running

Emoncms

Server

  • CPU :- 1 Threads(s) | 4 Core(s) | 1 Sockets(s) | Cortex-A53 | 76.80MIPS |
  • OS :- Linux 4.19.75-v7+
  • Host :- emonpi | emonpi | (10.170.1.76)
  • Date :- 2025-01-02 16:34:59 UTC
  • Uptime :- 16:34:59 up 2:56, 0 users, load average: 0.05, 0.07, 0.05

Memory

  • RAM :- Used: 19.59%
    • Total :- 975.62 MB
    • Used :- 191.17 MB
    • Free :- 784.45 MB
  • Swap :- Used: 0.00%
    • Total :- 100 MB
    • Used :- 0 B
    • Free :- 100 MB

Disk

  • **** :- - / :- Used: 53.76%
    • Total :- 3.92 GB
    • Used :- 2.11 GB
    • Free :- 1.62 GB
    • Read Load :- 1.33 KB/s
    • Write Load :- 207.03 B/s
    • Load Time :- 2 hours 22 mins
  • /boot :- Used: 20.55%
    • Total :- 252.05 MB
    • Used :- 51.79 MB
    • Free :- 200.26 MB
    • Read Load :- 0 B/s
    • Write Load :- 0 B/s
    • Load Time :- 2 hours 22 mins
  • /var/opt/emoncms :- Used: 13.90%
    • Total :- 9.98 GB
    • Used :- 1.39 GB
    • Free :- 8.09 GB
    • Read Load :- 0 B/s
    • Write Load :- 46.59 B/s
    • Load Time :- 2 hours 22 mins
  • /var/log :- Used: 2.79%
    • Total :- 50 MB
    • Used :- 1.39 MB
    • Free :- 48.61 MB
    • Read Load :- n/a
    • Write Load :- n/a
    • Load Time :- n/a

HTTP

  • Server :- Apache/2.4.38 (Raspbian) HTTP/1.1 CGI/1.1 80

MySQL

  • Version :- 5.5.5-10.3.17-MariaDB-0+deb10u1
  • Host :- 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1)
  • Date :- 2025-01-02 16:34:58 (UTC 00:00‌​)
  • Stats :- Uptime: 11228 Threads: 15 Questions: 32659 Slow queries: 0 Opens: 49 Flush tables: 1 Open tables: 43 Queries per second avg: 2.908

Redis

  • Version :-
    • Redis Server :- 5.0.3
    • PHP Redis :- 5.0.2
  • Host :- localhost:6379
  • Size :- 514 keys (896.94K)
  • Uptime :- 0 days

MQTT Server

  • Version :- Mosquitto 1.5.7
  • Host :- localhost:1883 (127.0.0.1)

PHP

  • Version :- 7.3.9-1~deb10u1 (Zend Version 3.3.9)
  • Run user :- User: www-data Group: www-data video Script Owner: pi
  • Modules :- apache2handlercalendar Core ctype curl date dom v20031129exif fileinfo filter ftp gd gettext hash iconv json v1.7.0libxml mbstring mosquitto v0.4.0mysqli mysqlnd vmysqlnd 5.0.12-dev - 20150407 - $Id: 7cc7cc96e675f6d72e5cf0f267f48e167c2abb23 $openssl pcre PDO pdo_mysql Phar posix readline redis v5.0.2Reflection session shmop SimpleXML sockets sodium SPL standard sysvmsg sysvsem sysvshm tokenizer wddx xml xmlreader xmlwriter xsl Zend OPcache zlib

Pi

  • Model :- Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2 - 1GB (Stadium)
  • Serial num. :- A6BFBF88
  • CPU Temperature :- 36.48°C
  • GPU Temperature :- 36.5°C
  • emonpiRelease :- emonSD-17Oct19
  • File-system :- read-write
5

If your SDS card is 4 years old, it could be failing. It’s probably worth getting a new one, writing the ‘latest’ SD download to it and then backup the data on your present SD card and restore it to the new one. Then continue with the original problem. (You’ll need a card reader, either attached to your emonPi or to your Laptop.)

If your emonTx V3 has the RFM69CW in it (see Docs: RFM12B & RFM69CW Wireless Transceiver Modules — OpenEnergyMonitor 0.0.1 documentation) I’d suggest updating it and use the LPL version in both it and your emonPi.

You need to set the baud rate for communication between the RPi and the ‘emon’ front end (or ensure it’s correct) in your emonhub.conf file. This affects everything coming in via Radio and the currents and voltage measured by the ‘emon’ part.
This what @rupert inferred by:

6

That’s got it!

Thank you so much :smiling_face:

7

The emonPi1 measurement board can use either the CM/LPL or DS/JeeLib versions of firmware; however each firmware version requires different Pi emonHub entries.

For clarity, here’s the two sets of emonHub entries for the CM/LPL and DS/JeeLib versions of firmware for the emonPi1 measurement board. Hope I’ve got this right! Any corrections welcome!

A) emonHub Settings for emonPi measurement board with CM/LPL firmware:

  1. Interfacer (n.b. com_baud = 115200)
[[emonpi]]
    Type = EmonHubOEMInterfacer
    [[[init_settings]]]
        com_port = /dev/ttyAMA0
        com_baud = 115200
    [[[runtimesettings]]]
        pubchannels = ToEmonCMS,
        subchannels = ToRFM12,   

        group = 210
        frequency = 433
        baseid = 5                              # emonPi / emonBase nodeID
        calibration = 230V                      # (UK/EU: 230V, US: 110V)
        quiet = true                            # Disable quite mode (default enabled) to enable RF packet debugging, show packets which fail crc
        # interval =  300
  1. Node
[[5]]
    nodename = emonpi
    [[[rx]]]
       names = Msg, power1,power2,power1pluspower2,vrms,t1,t2,t3,t4,t5,t6,pulse1count,pulse2count,E1,E2
       datacodes = L, h, h, h, h, h, h, h, h, h, h, L, L, l, l
       scales = 1, 1,1,1, 0.01, 0.01,0.01,0.01,0.01,0.01,0.01, 1, 1, 1,1
       units = n,W,W,W,V,C,C,C,C,C,C,p,p,Wh,Wh

B) emonHub Settings for emonPi measurement board with Jeelib firmware:

  1. Interfacer (n.b. com_baud = 38400)
[[emonpi]]
    Type = EmonHubOEMInterfacer
    [[[init_settings]]]
        com_port = /dev/ttyAMA0
        com_baud = 38400
    [[[runtimesettings]]]
        pubchannels = ToEmonCMS,
        subchannels = ToRFM12,   

        group = 210
        frequency = 433
        baseid = 5                              # emonPi / emonBase nodeID
        calibration = 230V                      # (UK/EU: 230V, US: 110V)
        quiet = true                            # Disable quite mode (default enabled) to enable RF packet debugging, show packets which fail crc
        # interval =  300
  1. Node
[[5]]
    nodename = emonpi
       [[[rx]]]
        names = power1,power2,power1_plus_power2,Vrms,T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,pulseCount
        datacodes = h, h, h, h, h, h, h, h, h, h, L
        scales = 1,1,1,0.01,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,1
        units = W,W,W,V,C,C,C,C,C,C,p