Newbie - initial learnings from assembly stage

Getting Started
1

Hi All, I just thought I’d Post a couple of learnings from my initial assembly of my EmonPi kit, (one with Display and one displayless…) Assembly of case is straightforward, however initial mounting of my Raspi 3 B+ required opening up of the PCB mounting holes to fit the supplied M4 hardware.
Once this was done, Initial power up was problematic, with the display acting erratically, and the Raspi rebooting. After some initial investigation it was found that the USB port on the Raspi was shorting two solder pads on the EmonPi board (labelled JP4) this seems to be because the supplied standoffs are a little short. Anyway after judicious application of insulating tape to both the Raspi USB Ports and the EmonPi board all seems OK. Initial bench setup with the 9V VT, and supplied CT went OK with connection via Ethernet, Wifi then setup, and EmonPi is operating OK on Wifi Alone - Setup local account in EmonCMS, and ready for next stage install at final location. I will need some assistance seting up EmonCMS for solar PV type 2 install with one EmonPI installed at the PV inverter location (measuring generated power) and one at my Consumer unit (measuring Import/Export)

2

Sorry in my previous post should have said M3 Hardware.

3

In the non-master emonhub.conf (this can be done from the local emoncms web interface),

  1. point MQTT interface to the master emonPi IP address.
  2. change the baseid to 4
  3. copy the node definition that starts [[5]] and make it node 4 and change the name
[[4]]
    nodename = emonpi2
    [[[rx]]]
        names = power1,power2,power1pluspower2,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

If you want the data on both, just create a second MQTT interfacer on each and point it to the other one!

4

Thanks Brian, I will let you know how I get on once the hardware is properly installed…
Cheers,
Ian

5

Hi Brian,
I have finally got round to installing the Intake end EMONPI, and have configured the system as you suggested - all looks good on the MASTER EMONPI, however the slave unit is showing nothing on Inputs or display. I assume that your statement - If you want the data on both, just create a second MQTT interfacer on each and point it to the other one! is the reason why… however when I try to add the additional MQTT interfacer everything just errors - can you assist me with the text I need to add, as I am clearly making a hash of it…
Thanks,

Ian

6

IIRC, these are communicating via Wi-Fi as the distance is too great for the RFM signal?

Post what you have, but basically you need to copy the existing MQTT settings, change the name [[MQTT2]] for instance and update the broker host address.

If you have 2 systems, each one needs 2 MQTT sections; one points to the local machine and the other points to the remote machine. The only thing to watch is that the node-IDs of the 2 instances are different.

TBH unless you need a backup, I wouldn’t bother.