Simple energy monitor - Beginners guide

Hi everyone,

My colleague (Tausiq) and I have been working on a gateway for beginners onto OEM. We have now created a final draft for a simple energy monitor. It covers:

  1. Identifying required OEM Hardware
  2. Connecting to network and setting up data logging platform (EmonCMS)
  3. Installing Hardware
  4. Creating energy monitoring apps using EmonCMS

It is based on the readily available information on the OEM guide. However, some sections have been reworded and some additional information has been included to make the process more user-friendly specially for those with no previous background. You can find the draft here:

Simple Energy monitor - OEM Guide.pdf (3.5 MB)

We would greatly appreciate your feedback and contributions :smiley:

Ps. The video mentioned and highlighted in yellow on the guide will be made public soon. Things that we would like to add on the next revision are:

  • Information on the cost comparison app (how to set it up and what it is useful for)
  • Information on the octopus agile app (though that might be covered in its own individual guide instead)

Tausiq and Rocio

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Thank you Rocio,
I will read in detail and let you know.
My first bits of feedback are:

  1. As a complete novice I get confused about which steps should be completed using which machine - the Raspberry Pi or another, like now I’m using a laptop. I thought it would be good to plug a screen, mouse & keyboard into the RPi, somebody said that isn’t necessary, but when I did I could actually operate the RPi. So, things like the Etcher, do I use that form the laptop & push to the RPi or on the RPi and pull? At the beginning I need really basic instructions about what to plus into what!
  2. I am taking advantage of having to replace the distribution board in its entirety (the old one caught fire), so I have the luxury of DIN-rail mounted whole-current meters, which I will connect via fancy RS485 cable & a USB adapter to the RPi. This may not be a common set up, but I think it will make an elegant solution, and would be good to somehow share the opportunity.
    Thank you for sharing the guide!

Not trying to hijack Rocio’s thread. Just want to answer Dan’s question…

Neither.
Etcher doesn’t push or pull data. It writes the data directly to media physically connected to
the computer it’s running on. e.g. a card in a built-in SD slot or USB-SD card reader.

Here’s what you do:

Remove the µSD card from the RPi and insert it into your laptop or a USB card reader
if no SD card slot is available. I put a link to an example of a reader in your thread.
(https://community.openenergymonitor.org/t/really-basic-set-up-for-emoncms-and-raspberry-pi/18329/14)

Write the image file to the card with the app of your choice. e.g. Etcher, RasPi Imager, WinImage, etc.

Put the card back in the RPi.

Boot your RPi and continue from there.

Hope that answers your question and clears the confusion. :grin:

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Thank you Daniel,

We shall consider that for the Heat Pump guide and the next revision of the simple energy monitor.

We have just uploaded the complementary Youtube video mentioned in the guide that shows you how to access the EmonPi via SSH. Hope it helps!

All the best,

Tausiq and Rocio

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Hi Rolop

Thanks for putting the work into that document - good work!

‘Usability / UX’ is one of my interests - particularly making written documents as easy as possible for the reader. In the modern world, there are so many things we need to know (compared to 100 years ago) - that we all find new information takes ‘effort’ to understand.
Hence good UX is to make the words as easy to understand step by step.

For example -a really powerful principle: just change the order of words, can make them much easier - put the WHY not the WHAT first. This change does NOT change the words - just the order!

An example from your doc: Table 1

The most important WHY words -are the first line in the 2nd column: ; eg 'WiFi or ethernet connection available at electric meter location’

But the 1st column, that acts like headers… is full of tech jargon that the user is new to, eg ‘EmonTx + EmonBase’ - so that just makes their brain suffer!

SECONDLY

The flowchart Fig 1 - is very early in the document - but is very complex! Using lots of jargon words that will be new to the user.

So better - is to NOT show it there. Show it later in the document. (theory: When going on a journey - you do not need to know the house number and street = just the road you need to take next, and a rough direction (N E S W))

Even better - one way to ‘introduce the brain’ to the flowchart is in small pieces: eg at the top of page under the title ‘Identifying required OEM Hardware’ - paste in just the relevant part of the chart: ie

image

Similarly - changing page 1 will help introduce the brain to the 4 steps: visually, so when the eye sees those coloured objects it will ‘recognise’ /digest them more easily
Replace like this:

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