Interestingly the emonTx in the garage (with a co-located hard wired wi-fi access point) fell over again over night. When I tried to Restart it through the emonESP software I noticed that on the first attempt it initially said 1/3 (33%) successful messages then fell over again, and then on a re-attempt it said 1/2 (50%), and fell over. RSSI is showing as -35.
It remains disconnected.
I am genuinely confused …
It might not be a popular opinion, but I think the issue is the ESP8266 TCP stack and this is not necessarily specific to the Emon implementation.
Personally, I’d cut my losses and rig up a PiZeroW either directly connected or with an RFM board, and install EmonHub.
TBH not sure anyone has done that, but should not be too difficult - the serial data is just coming direct rather than via the RFM board.
Thanks Brian - happy to go down that route financially, but might be outwith of my skill set; will do some reading. Is it “easy” to install emonHub on to a “blank” PiZeroW ? I have played with a Pi before a few months ago (programming traffic lights on a bread board etc) via VNC Viewer, but little else.
For info, here is a short 36 sec video of what happens when I try to restart an emonTx through emonESP - watch the top left which shows how it does connect, then falls over.
Julian
Talking to @glynhudson here, a couple of thoughts for a way forwards.
We will setup a long term test in the office here running EmonESP master branch, to see if we can replicate with the current version.
My personal experience:
I’m running the EmonESP timer branch (includes control features but also works as a standard logger) on my heatpump monitor and posting to an emonbase locally which means there is less latency and less risk of slow internet issues causing issues for the ESP8266 TCP stack. It’s generally been quite reliable, It is on the edge of Wifi range and I did have one issue a month or so ago where I must have knocked the board into an area of Wifi shadow, moving it back into position reduced the RSSI by -2 and it started working well again.
On a separate installation I have an EmonTx with the ESP8266 adapter posting to emoncms.org and that has also been reliable. The psent an psuccess have both reset a number of times over the last year but have all continued fine after the reset without intervention that I can remember. Im not 100% sure which branch and version of EmonESP Im running on that ESP8266 adapter, it may be the timer branch as that’s the branch that I’ve most recently worked on.
@haffle Id be tempted to say it would be worth you trying the timer branch. It is probably easiest if I send you a set of adapters ready to go, would you be happy to try that?
If that doesn’t work then I think @borpin’s suggestion of going for a raspberrypi based approach would be worth pursuing further.
@TrystanLea Very happy to try the timer branch (albeit not totally sure what it is 
). Might need some guidance to set it up.
FWIW my internet feed is FTTC and I get a reliable ~28 down, ~8 up with little fluctuations of note.
Experience is that it is internal routers that are the issue. I have some ‘quality’ Ubiquiti kit and the performance to Android phones/tablets is atrocious to the point I connect them to a cheap TP-Link AP!
I have done it but many years ago. Basically it is a python script run as a daemon by systemd so not complex.
Noted; I won’t try to defend it, but I have a non-wifi enabled Draytek Vigor 2760 Modem/Router (maybe not enterprise class but not some rubbish supplied by my ISP either), connected via Cat5e to various Apple access points. I only have Macs & iDevices in the house.
The Draytek is in charge of DCHP, and I have “fixed” the internal IP addresses of the 4 emon units within it in an attempt to try to prevent IP allocation issues when, say, an iPhone comes back in to range.
Great, I will get these adapters sent to you today, the setup is much the same as you current adapters, the UI looks a little different but wifi and emoncms setup sections are the same.
@TrystanLea When I compare my psent graphs to yours above, unlike you I have several periods of flat-line-zero data which you don’t. Some of my older data would have been when I had yet to wire up access points very close to the EmonTx’s (so RSSIs could have been an issue), but today’s problems in the garage are not. The three graphs show month / week / day.
Thanks @haffle it will be interesting to see if the issues persist with these three new adapters. I’ve prepared and tested them here, they will be in the post for you this afternoon.
IME it is the WiFi that is the problem and the authentication part which trips some routers / APs up. Wired, everything works as expected. I had one of those family of routers and all was well until it started overheating 
.
@TrystanLea Many thanks! Will keep you updated
@borpin Unless I am missing something, & I know nothing about board design, but it does seem a shame that the emonTx doesn’t have an ethernet port. 
Would a UART > ethernet widget work? Something like this perhaps?
Trystan, the new adapters arrived today - many thanks. Should I just replace the ESP8266s with these and then re-configure them in a similar way to the instructions in Using the emonTx v3 with the ESP8266 Huzzah WIFI module — OpenEnergyMonitor 0.0.1 documentation ?
Presumably this is just a communications thing, and past data won’t be lost?
TIA 
Great! Yes as long as you set the nodenames the same it should just join up without change.
@TrystanLea All three installed, and seem to be working. 
. RSSI values of -33, -31 and -34
Whilst setting them up, should I have entered any data in “+Control”? I haven’t done so yet.
Great, no you dont have to touch the timer part. That’s an option for ESP8266 control devices.
By way of an update; Trystan kindly sent me three “timer branch” wi-fi widgets for my three EmonTx’s & these have been running now for exactly a week. As you can see from the psent graph below all channels have been rock solid for the entire period - a significant change from when I was using the ESP8266’s. 
I’m not quite sure what the difference is between the new and old wifi widgets, but it would appear that for my set up this change has been fabulous. TBH I very nearly came to giving up on this whole emon system, but I am very pleased I didn’t, and remain very grateful to everyone who has helped out with suggestions etc etc.
I will monitor things for another week or so, before I give a final verdict, but will then contact Trystan re: payment etc.
Thanks @TrystanLea - I returned the original x3 ESP8266s to you via Royal Mail yesterday. Output from the new widgets has been rock solid since I installed them 
